Brussels, 25 April 2008: The ITUC has sent a strongly-worded protest to the President of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, about the murder of Rosa Altagracia Fuentes, General Secretary of the Workers’ Confederation of Honduras (CTH), trade union leader Virginia García de Sánchez and the motorcyclist Juan Bautista Gálvez, killed early on the morning of 24 April at the La Marimba bridge on the highway between El Progreso and San Pedro Sula, by six armed assailants whose faces were covered by balaclavas according to eye witnesses. Altagracia Fuentes was shot 16 times.

Sister Altagracia Fuentes was the General Secretary of one of the ITUC’s affiliates in Honduras, the CTH, and in that capacity had taken part in the ITUC’s Conference Against Impunity in Guatemala, held at the end of January in Guatemala City, and in the Founding Congress of the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA) last March in Panama.

The ITUC together with the TUCA and the Honduran trade union movement strongly condemn these assassinations. Their treachery and premeditation demonstrate a level of violence we thought no longer existed in the Honduran trade union world and take us back to the years of bloodshed we believed had been consigned to Honduras’s past.

In a letter addressed to the President of Honduras (ES), Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the ITUC, expresses his deep dismay and urges him to “carry out a full investigation to establish, as quickly as possible, the motives for the murders and identify those materially and intellectually responsible for these crimes, to punish them with the full weight of the law”. He further insists that the President must ensure that the fundamental ILO Conventions ratified by Honduras are fully respected.

The ITUC represents 168 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national affiliates.

For more information, please contact the ITUC Press Department on: +32 2 224 0204 or +32 476 621 018 .