San Pedro Sula.
On Sunday night, an indigenous Lenca leader was riddled with bullets in the municipality of San Antonio in the Cortés department of northern Honduras.
It’s about Juan Carlos Cerros Escalante, 41, an advocate for the human and social rights of indigenous peoples in Honduras.
Juan Carlos Cerros, who was also president of United Communities, from the Mother Earth Defenders group, he was killed in front of his children in the village New Granada.
According to the victim’s friends, the indigenous leader came from his mother’s visit in front of the Catholic Church in New Granada He was intercepted by three subjects, who without a word opened fire on him.
At least 40 bullet casings of various calibers were counted at the crime scene.
Jorge Vásquez, of the National Platform of Indigenous Peoples, said Juan Carlos Cerros is being pursued and persecuted for his fight to protect the Lenca people and their lands.
“I talked to him constantly, he told me that the (protection) mechanism does nothing for him,” Vásquez said, adding that although leader Lenca enjoyed human rights precautions, “it was never effective. “.
Vásquez remembered Cerros as an active person and concerned with land protection, for which he made several reports of logging and logging; likewise, he ruled out that the crime was due to enmity, but rather “because of the work we do.”
In this regard, he concluded, “we ask the authorities to find out where the killers areas well as material and intellectual authors “.