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An international coalition of environmental groups demand full investigation and overhaul of national forest policy.

Hondurans who speak out against timber barons’ destruction of the forests are subject to death threats and intimidation. Smouldering pine forests, Honduras, April 2005. Copyright David Sims / Environmental Investigation Agency Community members gather to hear Father Andres Tamayo, leader of the Environmental Movement of Olancho, which battles illegal commercial logging on their lands, Honduras, April 2005. Copyright David Sims / Environmental Investigation Agency

Eleven environmental groups, with millions of members worldwide, are demanding action from the President of Honduras following the alleged murder by state police of two Honduran activists.

On the eve of the first anniversary of his inauguration, President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales faces an international outcry over the shooting deaths of Heraldo Zúñiga and Roger Ivan Murillo Cartagena on December 20, 2006, in the town of Guarizama in central Honduras. The two men were local leaders in the Environmental Movement of Olancho (MAO), a grassroots organization that fights illegal and unsustainable logging by commercial timber companies in their community forests. Their police killers were allegedly acting under the influence of the country’s powerful timber interests.

Zelaya took office on January 27th 2006 voicing strong commitments to crack down on the illegal logging these activists were fighting. Up to 50% of timber in Honduras is illegally harvested; the U.S. is the primary market for its pine and mahogany products.

Zúñiga and Cartagena are among eight environmental activists killed since 1995 in Honduras, five of them in the department of Olancho. Although MAO’s guiding force, Father Andrés Tamayo, has brought international attention to his cause (including a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize in 2005), he and his fellow leaders continue to be subject to regular death threats and intimidation.

The coalition’s letter emphasizes the need for Zelaya’s government to “give this case the thorough attention and due process it requires to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice, and do everything in your power to prevent this from ever happening again.”

Members of the coalition voiced serious concerns about Honduras’s environmental commitment in light of the killings. Said Patrick Alley, Director of Global Witness, which has conducted an Independent Forest Monitoring program in the country: “These terrible murders shine a spotlight on the forest sector of Honduras. The sector suffers from grave mismanagement.” Allan Thornton, President of the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), which documented the country’s illegal timber trade in a widely publicized 2005 report, agreed: “Will Honduras’s track record of impunity for crimes against forests and against the people who fight for them continue?”

Adding to environmentalists’ concerns is a controversial new dam - “Patuca 3” - planned for the country’s largest river. “We only hope that people who dare to challenge this dam initiative will not be silenced in what we fear is becoming the Olancho way,” said Osvaldo Mungía, Executive Director of the Honduran organization MOPAWI. In 2001, an activist was killed for protesting a dam project in the same region.

The organizations whose representatives have signed the letter to the president are:

Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL)
Central American Indigenous and Campesino Coordinating Association for Community Forestry (La Asociación Coordinadora Indígena y Campesina de Agroforestería Comunitaria Centroaméricana, ACICAFOC)
Defenders of Wildlife
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
Forests and the European Union Resource Network (FERN)
Friends of the Earth-U.S.
Global Witness
Greenpeace Spain
Honduran Ecologist Network for Sustainable Development (Red Ecológico Hondureña para el Desarrollo Sostenible, REHDES)
Mosquitia Pawisa (MOPAWI)
Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)

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