"Omar Cruz Tomé, the third social leader assassinated in Honduras in January", 21 January 2023

...Omar Cruz Tomé, president of the Los Laureles peasant cooperative...[,]...is the third social leader assassinated in Honduras so far this year...

Cruz’s colleagues directly point to the Dinant company as being behind the murder. On January 11, the activist had denounced Miguel Mauricio, leader of that Honduran agricultural firm, before the Public Ministry for being an “actor and accomplice” of an armed criminal structure called “Los Cachos,” according to a public letter to the presidency. , issued by the human rights firm Estudios para la Dignidad...

Rivas had seen Cruz that same morning at a meeting between several cooperatives that make up the Aguán Valley Agrarian Platform, an organization that has been defending the recovery of land by peasants for more than 25 years. “We shared some reports that we were preparing and talked about the risk situation in the area,” he explains...Until now, the National Police have not provided details about the violent death of the human rights defender.

According to Rivas, the threats to his partner were “frequent”...

Los Laureles is one of 84 agricultural cooperatives that were initially created in the Honduran land reform process. This was the owner of more than 600 hectares of land. Some peasants have been stripped of them by Dinant, according to the organization...

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Oacnudh) condemned the events...and urged the State of Honduras “to intervene in a timely, adequate, comprehensive manner and in guarantee of human rights to protect the population, particularly human rights defenders, of the generalized violence in the Aguán area”...