CoLatino: Murder of Dora Alicia Sorto Rodriguez, Dec. 26, 2009

New act of violence against environmentalists in Cabañas

Saturday, December 26, 2009
Diario Co Latino, San Salvador, El Salvador

Ivan Escobar
Diario Co Latino staff

Less than a week after the murder of the environmentalist Ramiro Rivera in Cabañas, today another murder was reported, this time a woman who was also a member of the town’s environmental committee.

Around 3:30 this Saturday, Dora Santos Sorto Rodríguez was assassinated. Rodríguez was the wife of Santos Rodríguez, also a member of the Cabañas environmental committee, who months earlier suffered injuries to his hands in an attempt on his life.

According to sources familiar with the events, the woman was accompanied by her two-year-old son at the moment of her assassination by unknown individuals. The boy has been hospitalized because of injuries he suffered.

The victim’s husband, the sources said, is one of the principal witnesses in crimes against Ramiro Rivera, an environmentalist who was assassinated last Sunday along with another person.

This Saturday’s murder happened in the town of Trinidad in the municipality of Sensutepeque in the department of Cabañas, where Rivera was assassinated last weekend.

This murder marks the third this year against members of the environmental movement, who lately have shown an iron resistance against the mining projects being pushed in the zone by the transnational company Pacific Rim.

It should be emphasized that this new act of violence adds to the murder of Marcelo Rivera last June and has caused shock on a national and international scale.

The environmental movement in Cabañas has maintained a constant, peaceful protest since the transnational company began trying to develop mining projects in the zone. So far, these efforts have been held back by the arrival of the new government. However, the company has brought an international lawsuit that could force the government to pay a million-dollar fine.

The communities in the region are resisting the mining because, in addition to affecting the ecosystem, it would affect daily life in the zones, putting the lives of hundreds of people at risk. The company plans open-sky mining, which has a great impact on the environment. Additionally, the planned mining would use mercury to purify extracted gold, which has caused environmental disasters in other countries.

This week, the FMLN bloc has requested that the authorities deepen investigations, taking into account that the recent murders cannot be considered common crime, since in one manner or another they have been related with other acts, legislators said.

The authorities have promised to investigate in-depth, since the assassination of Rivera, last Sunday, happened despite his police security. It should be remembered that in addition to the murder of Marcelo in June, a wave of threats came against the staff and journalists of Radio Victoria, an alternative media source in the zone that supports the environmentalists.

Communicators Against Climate Change (Comunicadores Contra el Cambio Climático, or C4), a new movement of professional journalists in environmental topics, has reacted to this new act with concern and demanded that the authorities deepen their efforts to avoid environmental murders.

 

http://www.diariocolatino.com/es/20091226/nacionales/75125/

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