Behind the murder of Berta Cáceres: corporate complicity
Behind the murder of Berta Cáceres: corporate complicity
The
corporate denial of violation of human rights in the death of Berta
Cáceres reveals the web of complicities and impunity that prompted her
assassination.
Berta Cáceres was
killed while sleeping in her home in La Esperanza, Honduras on 3rd
March 2016. Over the past few years, she had been harassed, and received
multiple death threats for her role in the movements she led opposing the Agua
Zarca dam project. The project threatened
to cut off the water supply to the Indigenous Lenca community in Honduras,
depriving them of the right to sustainably manage and live off their
territories and sacred river.
Cáceres won the 2015
Goldman Environmental Prize for her work. But even before her death
she had already paid a heavy price for her activism, because of which, her
daughters and son had been forced to leave the country as their lives were
under threat. Less than two weeks after Berta’s murder, 150 families members of
the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH),
founded by Berta, were evicted from the community of Rio Lindo, Cortés, by the
Military Police and the Special Force ‘Cobras’.
And Nelson García, also a member of COPINH, who
had assisted families evicted earlier in the day, was murdered.
Global outrage
Caceres’ assassination,
the obvious climate of widespread human rights violations, and overwhelming
impunity in Honduras, have provoked outrage in the country and across the
globe. This has manifested in massive
demonstrations in Tegucigalpa, New York and elsewhere, in strong effort to put pressure
on the government and corporations involved in the ring of complicity to
Berta’s murder, to respond and put an end to the escalating violence.
On the very same
day as Berta’s murder, Hidroeléctrica Agua Zarca, a project of the Honduran
private energy company Desarrollos Energéticos, SA (DESA), issued a statement
immediately denying any involvement in the murder: “Hidroeléctrica
Agua Zarca roundly affirms that there is no direct nor indirect connection
between the project and the regrettable event that ended the life of the
indigenous leader.”
The Caceres family
and members of COPINH however, dispute this position, pointing to DESA in a communiqué as the main source of multiple
threats, persecution and aggression against the Lenca community and COPINH
members.
Who’s involved
A deeper look at
who is behind the Agua Zarca dam project points to both national and global
complicities by financial institutions and corporations.
At the national
level, DESA is the local private energy company in charge of implementing the
project. The company is partially controlled by the wealthy Honduran Atala
family, whose billionaire member Camilo Atala recently turned his Grupo
Financiero Ficohsa into the biggest financial conglomerate in Central America
by acquiring most of Citibank’s assets in the region.
The Atala family
has done little to hide their support for the 2009 Honduras military coup that
ousted democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya. With the backing of
Honduras’s business elites, the Lobo administration that followed the military
coup embraced the neoliberal development model with the slogan "Honduras is Open for Business" granting 41
hydroelectric dam illegal concessions in 2010 alone, including the Agua Zarca
project.
Most of these dam
projects were granted on indigenous territory without prior and informed
consent of the affected communities, and in blatant violation of International Labor Organization Convention 169,
which requires that "consultation with indigenous peoples should be
undertaken through appropriate procedures, in good faith, and through the
representative institutions of these peoples".
But the Agua Zarca
project also has crucial international funding support from at least the Central American Bank for Economic Integration;
the Dutch development
bank FMO; Finnfund from Finland and German company Voith
Hydro. The World Bank via the International
Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm, has denied their involvement in the project.
Projects continued regardless of community resistance
Chinese state-owned
Sinohydro Group,
one of the largest hydropower engineering companies in the world, was the
original contractor hired to build the dam.
But in late 2013, Sinohydro decided to withdraw from the Agua Zarca
Project, publicly citing ongoing community resistance and outrage following the
death of COPINH environmental activist Tomas García who was shot and killed by
the army near the project site. Responding to a query by the Business &
Human Rights Resource Centre Sinohydro Group said: “Right from the very
beginning of our mobilization, it was noticed that there were serious interest
conflicts between the Employer of the Project, i.e. DESA, and the local
communities, which were treated as unpredictable and uncontrollable to the
Contractor. Therefore, Sinohydro Corporation Limited instructed to suspend all
the site performance and ongoing preparations, and demobilized all his manpower
from the project site on July 15th 2013.” The surprising
withdrawal of the Chinese company in 2013 citing conflict with local
communities however, did not elicit any doubts from the ostensibly human rights bastions, Dutch and Finnish backers of the
project, who continued business as usual until Berta’s murder was too much of a
scandal to conceal.
Too little too late
Hours after Berta
was murdered FMO and the Finnish corporation, released a statement regretting the murder and calling “for
a thorough investigation on the events and to hold those responsible to
account” while they state to be “currently working with our contacts in
Honduras to review exactly what has happened.”
However, the day
after publishing the statement, FMO published a document on FAQ on the project clearly responding to the
obvious negative attention following Berta’s killing. The document focuses only
on the benefits of the project promising to “prioritize local recruitment and
provide school materials to all students of the 11 communities”. In addition
they say,“FMO is also aware that in
many cases, our clients do not possess the knowledge and/or experience in
implementing projects to the international standards of best environmental and
social practice that FMO requires…”And so with a
stated civilizing mission oriented towards “developing countries with weak
governance” as the FAQs refer to Honduras, any doubts of complicity in
violation of human rights are cleared. Green-washing corporate neo-colonialism
at its finest.
It was only after
the murder of Nelson García, another COPINH member, on Tuesday 14th March that FMO
announced in a statement its decision "to suspend all activities
in Honduras, effective immediately. This means that we will not engage in new
projects or commitments and that no disbursements will be made, including the
Agua Zarca project”
FinnFund decided to
follow suit, to suspend disbursements to the project, though the CEO of the
fund, Jaakko Kangasniemi, explained to Development Today
“we still believe that the people in the affected areas want this project. But
at this juncture we have to take a look at the situation”.
The suspension of
activities is a welcome decision; but is too little, too late. Suspending
activities in Honduras is not nearly the same as pulling out permanently,
something that COPINH members have been demanding for a long time.
US complicity, unrestrained corporate power, and government impunity
Attempts to wash
the guilt away also holds true for the US State Department, who admittedly supported the coup in Honduras in 2009. In a short statement released March 4, it offers “the full
support of the United States to help bring the perpetrators to justice”.
There is absolute
silence, as one can expect, about the permanence of US military aid and troops
in Honduras that have only fuelled repression of social movements and violence,
putting the country on the podium as “the deadliest place for environmental
activists” according to Global Witness.
Berta’s murder is
not an isolated case fuelled by the specific context in Honduras but one of the
most extreme examples of deadly complicity between unrestrained corporate
power, government impunity and elites across the world. Examples abound: from
the Niger Delta where women continue to challenge oil exploration by international oil
companies; in Mexico where indigenous women are fighting to keep their
communities’ land from large scale wind energy production projects; in Brazil
where the collapse of a mining dam in 2015 resulted in deaths
of the local community and continues to pose a risk to the survivors; in South
Africa where pharmaceutical companies continue to block the access of affordable generic
antiretrovirals to the poor and vulnerable communities infected with HIV; and
in The Philippines where malicious attacks and threats perpetrated by State
agents, against women human rights defenders (WHRDs) resisting repression and
operations of mining companies increased in August 2015 prompting the condemnation
of the Women Human Rights Defenders International Coalition (WHRDIC). There are
millions of Bertas around the world that simply cannot be
stopped by selected killings, for they are the seed in the persistence of
struggles.
“We must shake our conscience free of the rapacious capitalism,
racism and patriarchy that will only assure our own self-destruction”, said Berta when she accepted the Goldman
Environmental Prize. She was only describing the web of complicities and
impunity that prompted her assassination.
The corporate
denial of complicity in the violation of human rights and death of Berta
Caceres is green-washing corporate neo-colonialism at its finest.
