San Pedro Sula.
On Sunday night an indigenous leader was shot dead in the municipality of Sant Antoni in the department of Cortés, northern Honduras.
This is Joan Carles Turons Escalante, 41, a human rights and social rights advocate for the indigenous peoples of Honduras.
Joan Carles Turons, who was also president of United Communities, of the group of Defenders of Mother Earth, was completed in front of its children in the village New Granada.
According to friends of the victim, the indigenous leader had just visited his mother when in front of the Catholic church in New Granada he was intercepted by three subjects, who without saying a word opened fire on him.
At least 40 bullet casings of different calibers were counted at the scene of the crime.
Jorge Vásquez, of the National Platform of Indigenous Peoples, said that Joan Carles Turons was being watched and persecuted for his struggle for the protection of the Lenca people and their lands.
“We were constantly talking to him. He told me that the (protection) mechanism was not doing anything for him,” Vásquez said, adding that although the Lenca leader enjoyed precautionary measures granted by Human Rights, “it was never done. effective “.
Vásquez remembered Turons as an active person and concerned about land protection, so he made several allegations of exploitation and logging; he also ruled out that the crime was for enmity, but for “the work we do.”
In this regard, he concluded, “we demand that the authorities come up with the whereabouts of the assassins, As much as the material and intellectual authors “.