Honduras environmental rights activist murdered

Honduran indigenous activist Berta Caceres, an award-winning environmentalist, was shot and killed in her home on Thursday, her family said, labelling her death an assassination.

Caceres won the 2015 Goldman Prize, considered the world’s top award for grassroots environmental activism, for leading the indigenous Lenca people in a struggle against a hydroelectric dam project that would flood large areas of native lands and cut off water supplies to hundreds.

Caceres’s mother, Berta Flores, said the police had indicated her daughter was killed in a robbery, “but we all know it was because of her struggle.”

Caceres, a 43-year-old mother of four who had received death threats for her activism, was shot dead in the early hours of Thursday at her home in the western town of La Esperanza, Ms Flores told TV network Globo.

In awarding her the prize, the Goldman organisation had said: “Her murder would not surprise her colleagues, who keep a eulogy — but hope to never have to use it. Despite the risks, she maintains a public presence...”