The COPINH, the family of Berta Cáceres and the team of
lawyers of the MADJ, present ourselves before the public to warn about the
future of the judicial process for the assassination of our colleague and
general coordinator, Berta Cáceres and the assassination attempt of our
companion Gustavo Castro.
In a few days we are to present to a hearing for the
purpose of the submission of evidence in the case without having the possibility of accessing
all the evidence collected for more than 2 years in judicial and investigative
raids and proceedings carried out by the Public Ministry and the ATIC. On at
least 35 occasions the prosecution of the case has refused to deliver
information or has done so in a partial, segmented or irregular manner.
We have submitted specific requests for the information necessary
to participate effectively in the trial of the assassination of Berta Caceres with
due guarantees and the Public Ministry has ignored them, as well as repeated
court orders by the Court of Judgment to deliver the information, such as the one
that expired last Friday, after the expiration of the term of 5 days.
Since the day of the assassination, the Public Ministry and
the State of Honduras have systematically denied us access to the truth. We
have been denied access to basic information about what actually occurred. They
have denied the Lenca People and the Honduran people in general the truth about
what happened with our compañera Berta Cáceres, this despite the
intermediations of the IACHR, and letters of concern from the United Nations
agencies and the European Parliament.
We must denounce that this attitude of the Honduran
authorities only benefits those responsible for the assassination of Berta
Cáceres, and the intellectual authors of the crime who have still not yet been
prosecuted.
The trial we face today is against the people who were paid
to murder Berta Cáceres: the paid assassins and the mediators. These are individuals
who are the basic links to those who actually gave the order to assassinate our
COPINH leader. However, from the perspective of the authorities, the
prosecution of the case tries to limit access to only these links instead of pursuing
prosecution of the intellectual authors of the crime.
The absence of persecution of those who, from managerial
posts, ordered the murder of our compañera Berta Cáceres is the direct responsibility
of Attorney General Óscar Chinchilla, who from his official position has been
complacent about the irregularities in the case and the lack of investigation
of the obvious intellectual authors of the crime.
It must be known that David Castillo Mejía, general manager
of DESA, known persecutor and stalker of Berta Cáceres was captured not by the will
nor investigation of the Public Ministry but by a complaint made by our legal team.
This particular complaint was not presented solely for David Castillo Mejía but
for a number of other people from the company DESA, and for which there has
been no further action or response.
In this court case, the reality of the indigenous territories
and campesino communities of Honduras that organize to confront the corporate
cartels is emulated. In this trial we are not facing the defense of the
individual Sergio Rodríguez but the defense of the corporation DESA, its
managers and owners. We also face the reality of complacency of state authorities
complicit in impunity, such as the ongoing violations of the human rights of our
communities.
With the consent of the State, we face an economic regime
that seeks to put an end to the opposition of our Popular Organizations and
Indigenous Peoples to a national project of development that brings hunger,
destruction, tears and blood to the communities historically most marginalized by
the same State. With this official consent, even the condition of victim is
denied to the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras
(COPINH).
We reiterate and warn that we are facing at the greatest
disadvantage, a judicial process with enormous irregularities and violations of
the rights of the victims.
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