[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 145 (Wednesday, September 18, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6139-S6140]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         REMEMBERING JUAN LOPEZ

  Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, over the past 6 years, my office, and the 
office of my predecessor Senator Leahy, have received reports of 
recurring threats, attacks, arbitrary arrests, and assassinations of 
members of the Guapinol, Tocoa, and other communities in the Bajo Aguan 
region of Honduras. Those crimes were intended to intimidate and 
silence those who opposed an open-pit iron oxide mine and the Ecotek 
Thermoelectric Project which threaten their livelihoods and the 
region's environment and who challenged the companies and corrupt 
officials who profit from those projects.
  Then on Saturday, September 14, I learned of the murder of Honduran 
environmental activist Juan Lopez, the latest victim of this epidemic 
of vigilante violence. Mr. Lopez, a winner of the Letelier-Moffitt 
Human Rights Award in 2019, had been a victim of wrongful imprisonment, 
false prosecution, and had spoken out against corrupt officials in 
Tocoa.
  This outrageous crime struck a nerve for me because Mr. Lopez's 
murder was the latest in a pattern of similar killings. There have been 
six other assassinations of members of the Guapinol water defenders. No 
one has been prosecuted or punished for those crimes or for the murders 
of scores of other environmental and human rights defenders in 
Honduras.
  Juan Lopez, like Berta Caceres--whose murder in 2016 was linked to 
officers of the company responsible for the hydroelectric project she 
and others in her indigenous community opposed--was a person of 
integrity. Both were courageous defenders of the environment and their 
communities, threatened by powerful interests supported by the corrupt 
Honduran Government of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez 
who, throughout that period and until his arrest and conviction for 
drug trafficking, was supported by the United States.
  Mr. Lopez was killed after the Inter-American Commission on Human 
Rights (IACHR) issued precautionary measures in October 2023. The 
issuance of an IACHR protective measure is a mechanism to insist that 
the Honduran Government protect individuals who are at severe and 
urgent risk of irreparable harm to their rights to life and safety. But 
the Honduran Government failed to implement effective protective 
measures on behalf of these communities or their advocates like Mr. 
Lopez.

[[Page S6140]]

  Such measures, if not enforced, are no better than the paper they are 
printed on. And that is the reality in Honduras, where people like Juan 
Lopez have had no one and nothing to protect them.
  Instead, it is the victims, the activists, who are arbitrarily 
arrested and imprisoned, accused of crimes which in reality amount to 
nothing more than peacefully defending their land and their right to a 
healthy environment. Some have languished in pre-trial detention for 
years, for simply protesting a mine that has polluted the water source 
of thousands of people.
  Honduras is currently a member of the United Nations Human Rights 
Council. Members of the council have a responsibility to uphold human 
rights standards. That has been a criterion of membership since the 
council was established in 2006. Yet the human rights of people like 
Juan Lopez and the other Guapinol water defenders are routinely 
violated with impunity.
  My thoughts and condolences are with Mr. Lopez's family and with the 
other families in the Bajo Aguan communities. In response to this 
pattern of violence and the assassination of Mr. Lopez last Saturday, I 
believe that, at a minimum, three things need to be done, beginning 
immediately, and I urge the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras to insist on 
them as well: an international commission of experts to support the 
Honduran prosecutor's investigation of the murder of Juan Lopez, to 
ensure the investigation is credible, thorough, and impartial; 
protection for human rights defenders at risk in the Bajo Aguan region; 
and investigations of the abuses and corruption denounced by Juan Lopez 
and the pattern of violence against the Guapinol defenders.
  The threats, false arrests, wrongful imprisonment, murder, and 
impunity in the Bajo Aguan have been tolerated--and in effect tacitly 
and even actively encouraged--by Honduran officials for far too long. 
It has also received far too little attention from the United States 
and other governments that have put the interests of foreign investors 
above those of the impoverished people who live in that troubled 
region. I hope that Juan Lopez's death will not only be answered by 
holding accountable those responsible, but that it will also mark the 
beginning of real change in the Bajo Aguan. The people of those 
communities should not have to live in fear that powerful companies and 
corrupt officials will steal their land, pollute their rivers, and 
murder them for peacefully defending the natural resources that are 
rightfully theirs.

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