Case History: Elizabeth Zúñiga
On 1 September 2015, the university employing human rights defender Ms. Elizabeth Zúñiga summonsed and questioned her about statements she made regarding recent death threats she received.
Elizabeth Zúñiga is a member of the syndicate of workers of Regional University Centre of the Pacific Coast (Centro Universitario Regional del Litoral Pacífico - CURLP), a branch of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (Universidad Nacional Autónoma - UNAH).
She had been collaborating with Mr. Héctor Orlando Martínez Motiño, a fellow human rights defender who was killed on 17 June 2015. Héctor Orlando Martínez Motiño was president of Section 6 of the Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras - SITRAUNAH (Workers' Union of the National Autonomous University of Honduras). She and Héctor Orlando Martínez Motiño had been working on 34 cases of human rights violations, including a number related to the personnel of the university, and Elizabeth Zúñiga is now the only person with information on these cases.
On 1 September 2015, the university employing human rights defender Ms. Elizabeth Zúñiga summonsed and questioned her about statements she made regarding recent death threats she received.
Together, she and Héctor Orlando Martínez Motiño had been working on 34 cases of human rights violations, including a number related to the personnel of the university, and Elizabeth Zúñiga is now the only person with information on these cases.
At 9:30 am on 1 September 2015, following a summons which she received on 31 August 2015 informing her she would be subject to disciplinary proceeding, Elizabeth Zúñiga presented herself at the offices of CURLP where she was questioned about the public declarations she had made regarding the sabotage of her car, as well as working conditions in the university. She was further asked if she had ever been directly threatened, a question which she refused to answer.
Both the sabotage to the human rights defender's car and the summons to the offices of the university follow the pattern of intimidation to which Héctor Motiño, a beneficiary of protection measures from the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, had been subjected. He had been intimidated by personnel at the university where he worked, threatened and had his car sabotaged before he was killed.
Additionally, human rights defender Mr Donatilo Jiménez, who was a colleague of Hector Motiño in SITRAUNAH, was disappeared on 8 April 2015. Following an accident with a tractor, Donatilo Jiménez left work and told colleagues he would be back in some hours. When he did not return, these colleagues raised the alarm and later that day the human rights defender's car was found abandoned. He has not been heard from since. Donatilo Jiménez's family were aware of disagreements he had with the authorities of the National Autonomous University in Tegucigalpa regarding violations of workers' rights. Furthermore, he had reported corruption to the Head of Security of the university, following which the two men who had informed him of this were killed. When Donatilo Jiménez began a campaign for an investigation into the killings, he was threatened with death by the Head of Security.
On 17 August 2015, journalist and human rights defender Ms Elizabeth Zúñiga publicly denounced the fact that her vehicle had been sabotaged, in an act possibly intended to kill her.
On 12 August 2015, Elizabeth Zúñiga noticed that her car was making strange noises after she had retrieved her vehicle from the car park of the National Autonomous University of Honduras, which is monitored by a private security firm. She recorded the noises but continued using her car over the next three days. On 15 August 2015, the human rights defender brought the vehicle to a mechanic. After inspecting her vehicle, she was informed that three bolts had been loosened on her back left wheel, which could easily have caused a serious car accident. During this period, Elizabeth Zúñiga's mother, also received a phone call in which she was warned “Digale a su hija que se calle ya, sino se le dará en lo que más le duele” (Tell your daughter to shut up now, or else she will get it where it hurts most).
This incident is particularly worrying given that the vehicle of Hector Orlando Martínez Motiño was also sabotaged in this way some months before his killing. Front Line Defenders also published an urgent appeal regarding intimidation towards the lawyer working on his case, Ms. Reina Lilian Rodríguez. Since the killing of Hector Orlando Martínez Motiño, there have been no advances in the case, creating a climate of impunity which facilitates this kind of intimidation and harassment of human rights defenders.
