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Honduran police violently evicted a group of Indigenous women activists from the front of the Public Ministry earlier this week; the activists are calling for a thorough investigation of Berta Cáceres’ death in March.

Tegucigalpa, or Tegus as it is commonly referred to, is the Honduran capital city and home to government offices.

The Lenca women from the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) staged the nonviolent action to protest the lack of results from an official state investigation into the murder of Cáceres, a legendary indigenous activist. Protestors unfurled banners from the second floor balcony of the Ministry that read Berta Vive (Berta Lives).

Armed gunmen entered Cáceres’ home on 3 March killing her and leaving environmental activist Gustavo Castro Soto severely injured with two bullet wounds.

Two military officers and a policeman approached and arrested one of the activists COPINH told the press. The arrestee claims she was assaulted by Honduran state authorities before her eventual release.

Shortly after, some 120 military authorities and riot police accompanied by a small tank arrived in order to disperse the remaining protestors whose numbers did not exceed 20 persons.

Berta Cáceres endured violent threats for much of her storied career of political activism organizing for indigenous people and environmental justice, but her assassination still came as a tragic surprise to her closest relatives.

Olivia, one of Cáceres’ daughters, told The Guardian during a trip to New York just a week after her death “I had never imagined someone with national and international recognition, and that had won the award, that this would happen.”

Cáceres’ family is calling for an external, independent investigation into Berta’s death, especially after it was revealed that the lead state prosecutor formerly represented DESA, the company behind the Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam which Cáceres and COPINH vigorously resisted.

They have further blamed the Honduran state for failing to protect Cáceres in light of consistent threats to her life.

Environmental activist Gustavo Castro Soto, the man who was injured during the assassination of Cáceres, has been in the custody of Honduran authorities since the attack. He was released only this week.

The Mexican national and witness to Cáceres’ death told Democracy Now! after his release that the movement that Cáceres had worked so tirelessly to promote would not be silenced by intimidation or violence:

“What we are confronting are forces very powerful, obscure forces, filled with ambition, and these forces are what the movements are fighting. And I think for this, as well, COPINH has been an example of the power of this struggle and the unbreakable spirit of the comrades of the indigenous communities, who have marched, who have walked, until exhaustion, all to demand respect to their territories and to demand their land be free of these mega projects that are being imposed and that are evicting people from their lands."