In Honduras, a Journalist Explores an Activist's Murder

[Judi Lynn]

A conversation with Nina Lakhani, author of “Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet”
BY AUDREY WILSON | JUNE 21, 2020, 9:46 AM



Honduran Lenca women takes protest to demand of justice in the murder of Honduran activist Berta Caceres, during the second anniversary of her death, at the Public Ministry headquarters in Tegucigalpa on March 2, 2018. ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

In March 2016, gunmen stormed into the home of Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres and murdered her in her bedroom. The killing came after years of threats against Cáceres and her powerful grassroots activism. Just a year earlier, she had been awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for leading a successful campaign against the construction of four large dams in Indigenous Lenca territory—a project involving the Chinese company Sinohydro and the International Finance Corp., in partnership with a Honduran company.

Honduras remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world for environmental activism. Most killings go unpunished, but seven men were convicted of Cáceres’s murder in November 2018. The hitmen included army officers, and two had received military training in the United States. Nina Lakhani, now the environmental justice correspondent for the Guardian US, covered Cáceres’s grassroots movement for years while based in the region and was the only foreign journalist present at the trial.

Lakhani puts Cáceres’s life and death at the center of her new book, Who Killed Berta Cáceres? Dams, Death Squads, and an Indigenous Defender’s Battle for the Planet. She spoke with Foreign Policy about Cáceres’s activist education, the experience of covering her killers’ trial as a foreign reporter, and questions that remain about the case.

More:
https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/06/21/in-honduras-a-journalist-explores-an-activists-murder/

May Berta Cáceres rest in peace.

May Honduras finally win its right to elect the leaders it wants, needs, instead of having them either assassinated or overthrown and replaced by US right-wing puppets.

It's exactly what Berta, all those who struggled before her, and all those who suffer now, have wanted from the first.