Elizabeth Zúñiga
Elizabeth Zúñiga is a journalist and 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.
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.
