José Ángel Flores
José Ángel Flores was the President of the Movimiento Unido Campesino del Aguán (Aguáan United Farmers' Movement, MUCA), an organisation created in 2006 to recover land that was redistributed through an agrarian reform in the 1960s, specifically in the Aguán Valley. Silmer George was also a member of MUCA. Along with other land rights leaders from diverse farmers' organisations in the Aguan Valley, José Ángel Flores was a beneficiary of precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Commission on 8 May 2014 (No. 50-14). However, the Honduran state failed to implement this request, as evidenced by the absence of protective measures for the human rights defender as well as the judicial harassment experienced by him and his relatives as a result of his peaceful human rights work.
Human rights defenders suffer extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment as well as judicial harassment, threats and stigmatisation. Journalists, lawyers, prosecutors, those defending the rights of women, children, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community, indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities, and those working on environmental and land rights issues are particularly at risk.
