On 27 October, armed men carried out an attack against the Garífuna community of Vallecito, possibly targeting Miriam Miranda, coordinator of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). That same day, Garífuna woman defender Melissa Martínez, leader of the Punta Gorda community, received a message containing a death threat against her and her family, and explicitly mentioning the four young men from Triunfo de la Cruz who have been forcibly disappeared since August 2020: “we know who you are, what you look like, where you live, who is your family. Stop putting your nose where it doesn’t belong black bitch [‘negra HDLGP’] watch your step or they will find you like one more of all those black people they go around searching for alive.”
These attacks took place after the newspaper La Prensa published a defamatory article on 26 October 2025 that falsely affirmed that the Garífuna Peoples have occupied around 40 tourist condominiums in Trujillo. This publication adds to the grave and worrying racist smear and stigmatization campaign carried out by various corporate media outlets after OFRANEH filed a historic complaint against Televicentro on 16 October. Since then, armed attacks similar to the one perpetrated in Vallecito have also taken place against other Garífuna communities in different areas of the country.
We must highlight that both Miriam Miranda and the Vallecito community are beneficiaries of precautionary measures granted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Nevertheless, attacks against her and the community have not stopped. As revealed in our report, “The land belongs to those who work it and defend it. 10+ years of attacks against women defenders of land, territory and the environment (2012-2024)”, just between 2020 and 2024, our registry system documented 98 attacks against Miriam. Between 2020 and 2025, our registry also documented 2,076 attacks against OFRANEH and the defenders who belong to the organization. More than half these attacks (63%) were perpetrated in the last two years, which shows the intensification of the persecution and attacks against OFRANEH and the Garífuna Peoples.
The National Network of Woman Human Rights Defenders in Honduras and IM-Defensoras express our deep concern regarding the persistance of these armed attacks against OFRANEH, the Garífuna Peoples and their leaders, and we remind the Honduran State of its responsibility to guarantee their security, their lives and their right to defend the Garífuna ancestral territory.
We also repudiate the racist defamation and smear campaign and the hate discourse being carried out by certain communications media, who we hold responsible for the violence unleashed by their false and irresponsible publications.
We demand that the State of Honduras stop the policy of dispossession and extermination of the Garífuna Peoples and guarantee respect for the right to collective ancestral property.
Finally, we call on the international community to stand in solidarity with OFRANEH and the Garífuna Peoples, and to remain vigilant of the serious context of violence and persecution against its members and leaders like our sisters Miriam Miranda and Melissa Martínez.