"Bank faces lawsuit over Honduras dam project as spirit of Berta Cáceres lives on", 18 May 2018

The organisation co-founded by the murdered environmental activist Berta Cáceres is taking legal action against a Dutch bank over its involvement in the construction of a...dam project in Honduras. The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (Copinh), along with the Cáceres family, announced the suit against the Dutch development bank FMO, one of the backers of the...dam on the Gualcarque river, in the Netherlands on Thursday. FMO suspended loans to the company after Cáceres’ death. Last year, following protests by members of Copinh, the bank, along with the Finnish Fund for Industrial Cooperation, Finnfund, withdrew from the project. Channa Samkalden, the lawyer leading the action against FMO in the Netherlands, told a press conference that the bank’s funding provided the company leading the construction work, Desarrollos Energéticos SA (Desa), “with the means and the reason to spread…violence and intimidation in order to break the resistance against the dam. Last week, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Michel Forst, called for “strong, urgent action” to be taken to protect activists in Honduras.