Santos Felipe Escobar Garcia was a leader of the Pech indigenous people in Santa María del Carbón, in Olancho, a state in the north east of Honduras.
Family members reported that Escobar García had been kidnapped on 29 December, 2019, and since then he had been reported disappeared.
On 3 January, 2020, Escobar García’s body was found in Iriona, Colón, on the Atlantic coast of Honduras. The body had been tied in a sack and showed signs of torture.
Escobar Garcia was the third indigenous rights defender killed in Honduras in one week.
According to a statement issued by the Movimiento Amplio por la Dignidad y la Justicia (Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice), MADJ), “The violence against the indigenous population does not stop in Honduras. The original peoples are the most martyred by the looters of the wealth of the nation in complicity with the state.”