Yes, I can hear you.
It is a pleasure for me to be here to talk to you about the situation since the murder of my mother. She was the coordinator of COPINH, the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. She was murdered on March 2, 2016, just before she turned 45.
It was a dark day for everyone. It has been very painful for everyone throughout the country. The world no longer has the human rights defender that she was, someone who did everything in her power to make sure that international commitments and the ancestral territories of the Lenca people were protected. She challenged the extractive industries and always defended the Lenca people's rights, and particularly those of indigenous women.
In 2009 there was a coup in our country that changed the situation in our country completely. Following that coup, 35% of our land was earmarked for mining and hydroelectric projects. That was in the context of an illegal and illegitimate coup. There were a number of concessions provided for hydroelectric projects and more than 150 concessions for mining projects. They are being carried out throughout the country, but they are concentrated particularly on indigenous lands.
Indigenous peoples try to live in harmony with nature and to preserve natural resources and protect them from companies that convert them into goods to be sold and exploited.
With regard to human rights, defenders of human rights have been criminalized increasingly since 2009. There have been more than 3,000 cases of prosecution of human rights defenders since 2009, and 17 of them have been put in prison. My mother was one of them.
Global Witness in Honduras says that Honduras has the highest number of murders of human rights defenders and environmental defenders in the world. From 2010 to 2015, at least 109 persons who defended the environment and indigenous lands and farmers in Honduras were murdered. My mother was constantly threatened. She lived under threats to her life because of her convictions to defend the environment.
This significantly intensified the attacks against my mother. She was threatened. She was harassed. She was threatened with death, twice at least. I have to say with regard to the harassment and prosecution that came from the Honduran state that we believe her murder was actually originated as early as the coup, and that's because the coup led to an increase in extractive industries and to an increase in military presence to repress indigenous organizations.
In 2013 Tomás Garcia was murdered in the very community that is fighting the Agua Zarca dam. The company responsible for that dam is the one we blame for the murder of my mother. It's also important to say that this is not an isolated case. It's part of a chain of murders that have been taking place since 2009 when the coup occurred.
There have been 33 death threats linked to DESA, which is the company responsible for the dam and the hydroelectric project. The Honduran state has not done enough to prosecute those cases.
There were also protective and precautionary measures for my mother through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and the government of Honduras was obligated to follow those precautionary measures. They did not do enough and obviously that led to my mother's murder.
I also have to say that specifically with regard to the Canadian government's participation in our country and Canadian investment, we think that is also part of the problem we have in our country. It is important to recall that the Canadian government worked directly with the U.S. government to legitimize the coup in 2009, and the elections that followed were also declared to be just by the Canadian government and the U.S. government, but the OAS had said that it was obviously a coup.
In 2011, the Prime Minister of Canada was one of the first to visit Honduras after the coup. Canadian business men and women interested in mining extraction also visited Honduras. The Canadian government and the government of Honduras have a free trade agreement, and we believe that it is an illegitimate free trade agreement because it was also agreed to in the context of a country governed by a coup.
The Canadian government has worked on the new mining act in Honduras that is part of the act that legitimizes mining extraction in Honduras, and is at the root of all of the problems we are having.
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