Thank you. I just don't want to go over my time. I could talk about Honduras for hours. I am aware of that, and I don't want to go over.
We've had serious concerns about the protection systems for human rights defenders for many years, but this was exacerbated post-coup d'état, when we have seen journalists such as Nahúm Palacios actually killed. He had protection measures, orders, basically, from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and so the states had been required to provide him protection, and yet just weeks later he was murdered.
We also had a case very recently, of Dina Meza, who is a very famous journalist and human rights activist. She received multiple threats. She also has the same protection measures and orders from the inter-American system. They have required the government to take action to protect Dina Meza, and those protection measures have not been implemented thus far.
We've seen human rights defenders receive a phone number to call in emergencies. When they have tried to call, it's either dead or there is no one there to respond. There are also concerns about the police officers who are assigned to them. They sometimes don't even know who they are protecting, or what times they are meant to be there, or they just simply don't turn up.
There are particular concerns around women human rights defenders. We've seen women human rights defenders receive particularly targeted and gendered threats of sexual violence, and those again go uninvestigated. Clearly, what we'd like to see is the government take a really strong stand, and we're not seeing that. Again, it's the disparity between their verbal commitments before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights or before the UN and the actual reality on the ground which is not changing and in fact is deteriorating for human rights defenders.
Of course, when you have a situation this precarious for human rights defenders, you can only imagine what it's like for those ordinary people who are trying to access the justice system even without the assistance of human rights defenders. For those who seek redress, if they have had a human rights violation occur against them or even a situation of common crime, there just isn't that faith in the justice system. In fact, in many cases we've seen people express fear of going into a police station to report a crime.
One of the things we were excited about when we realized that you were interested in hearing from us is that Canada obviously has a very particular and important role in Honduras, and a particular ability to influence and to have an impact in relation to human rights. That is one reason we wanted to encourage you to consider pushing for the Honduran government to take a strong stance on human rights defenders and to start making sure that there are the right funds and actual support across all ministries for the protection of human rights defenders and for the investigation of human rights violations committed against human rights defenders, and indeed for holding police and security forces to account for human rights violations that they are accused of.
Interestingly, we've had many reports, which we haven't documented yet, of private security guards being involved in human rights violations. These are very serious allegations that we have received. We've received reports that private security guards have been involved in sexual assaults, in rape, in threats, in harassment of campesino leaders. This is particularly in the Aguán region, but we have reports outside of that region as well of private security guards being involved in the harassment of human rights defenders and leaders of local communities, particularly in areas where there are disputes over the land.
We saw that the United Nations working group on the use of mercenaries recently went there. They issued an interesting statement in February, again expressing serious concern about the use of private security guards and their alleged involvement in human rights violations. I just wanted to highlight that.
It's not something we've documented from Amnesty International as yet, but we have received sufficient reports to just highlight it to you as a concern, particularly in a context where the police are obviously in need of huge reform and there is an increasing use of private security guards for civilian policing duties. We're sort of seeing that trend and wanting to highlight that to you now as something that is of concern, and there is this interesting statement now by the UN working group on the use of mercenaries.
We've asked on many occasions for public statement at the highest level from the Honduran authorities supporting human rights defenders, recognizing their valid role, recognizing the importance of their role in the protection of human rights in Honduras and their contribution to society, expressing zero tolerance for human rights violations against them and exercising due diligence in terms of the investigation of attacks and threats against human rights defenders.
We would also like to see proper consultations. I'm sure this is something that perhaps Canada can also encourage the Honduran authorities to do, to up the efforts to resolve the land disputes in the Aguán.I think we'd like to see those efforts redoubled. We'd also like to see proper consultations in relation to the use of land. Where there are companies that are interested in using particular tracts of land, we would like to see proper consultations in line with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
For example, there are indigenous peoples throughout Honduras, and their concerns are often not taken into account. Where we could, we would encourage some prioritization of indigenous peoples' rights but also women's and girls' rights as well. We see that there's a deficit there.
Where there's a case like Antonio Trejo or the attacks against human rights defenders, it's also really valuable where the international community can also come out and show their leadership there in terms of supporting human rights defenders and saying that this sort of crime should not go unpunished, that it has to be investigated. Somebody has to be held to account for attacks like the attack against Antonio Trejo, his brother, and the 11 human rights defenders whom we issued urgent actions on in favour of last year.
The last urgent action we issued last year was in favour of an environmental activist who had just gone out on the radio. She had been on TV in the morning talking about opencast mining and the potential impacts and her concerns around some companies that had been operating in the area. She got home to find an e-mail death threat, basically saying for her to close her mouth and that her coffin wouldn't be big enough to contain her mouth. She has been a well-known environmental activist for years. You can see there that even just to speak out on an issue like environmental concerns can immediately result in a death threat against you, and the access that these individuals have to e-mail, to their mobile phone numbers, is quite incredible.
We would like to see better investigations and zero tolerance, really, on these sorts of crimes against human rights defenders.