DR1 Daily News - Dominican Republic

Constanza community members and environmentally-aware persons are calling for justice after environmental defender, 39-year old Francisco Ortiz Baez was murdered. He had denounced the indiscriminate extraction of materials for the construction from a Tireo, Constanza river in La Vega province.

Olmedo León, executive director of the Ecological Society of Cibao (Soeci), said the murder was possible due to the lack of a regime of consequences in the country.

According to the environmentalist, the environmental damage to the tributary in Tireo is a complaint that Soeci has been making for more than two decades, “without anyone intervening.”

León maintains that the lack of authority gives power to the unscrupulous who damage natural resources.

He says that environmentalists are constantly threatened and sometimes attacked when they report the occurrence of...