The peasant leader Maria Teresa Flores, who was missing since last August 7, was found dead with signs of having been tortured and then executed with shots from a firearm.Flores, mother of 14 children, was part of the Coordinating Council of Peasant Organizations of Honduras (COCOCH) and she used to head the Peasant Organization of Honduras (OCH).
The body of the leader was found, in a state of decomposition with shots and signs of having been tortured, on Wednesday at 10:00 am about 35 kilometers from the city of Siguatepeque, according to reports from relatives.
Flores had disappeared on Saturday, August 7 at noon, after having left Tegucigalpa bound for home at 6:00 in the morning. She had contacted a member of a peasant group and said she was in Siguatepeque waiting for a bus to get home. Her family has since then not heard anything about her until today when they found her body in decomposition, said the story of journalist Mabel Marquez.
According to the journalist, the agrarian leader, was coordinator of several peasant groups in the area where she resided, in the department of Comayagua and was originally from the town of Meambar.
The year before Maria Teresa Flores had lost 15 relatives in a car accident while returning from the funeral of a relative.
A political assassination.
The leader of the National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP), Carlos H. Reyes, called the death of Flores, a “political assassination”, framed in the repression the country lives under after the coup.
Reyes questioned whether “those who make decisions (about the assassination of social leaders) are at the highest level, advised by key elements of the U.S. embassy.”
In recent months there have been a series of murders and executions of people, to the extent that the country was ranked as the most violent in the world by a British publication “The Economist.”
The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, COFADEH, reported a few days ago that there is a state policy of systematic violation of human rights in Honduras.
Translated by Sofia Jarrin
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