An anti-mining activist was shot and killed in Honduras, President Xiomara Castro said, vowing justice for the latest such murder in one of the world's most dangerous countries for environmentalists. Juan Lopez, 46, was gunned down as he left church Saturday in the northeastern town of Tocoa, his widow Thelma Pena told AFP. Castro condemned the "vile murder" in a post on the social media platform X late Saturday and said she had ordered an investigation.
"Justice for Juan Lopez," Castro wrote. Lopez, who belonged to the ruling Libre party, campaigned against open-pit iron ore mining in a forest reserve in the vicinity of Tocoa, where he worked in the town hall. In an interview with AFP in 2021, Lopez discussed the risks that he said environmental activists face in this poor and violent Central American country.
"If you start defending common interests in this country," he said, "you clash with major interests." "If you leave home, you always have in mind that you do not know what might happen, if you are going to return," said Lopez. At a recent news conference, the activist called for the resignation of Libre officials caught on video negotiating bribes with drug traffickers in 2013.
That video recently ensnared Carlos Zelaya, a brother-in-law of the president. He resigned his seat in congress after admitting he took part in that meeting with drug gangsters. The UN country representative of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Isabel Albaladejo, urged invest.