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Archives: March 2010
HONDURAS: UPDATE ON HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES
¡José Leonel Álvarez Guerra Presente!
¡Viva la lucha heroica del movimiento campesino!
¡Resistimos y Venceremos!
José Leonel Álvarez Guerra Present!
Long Live the Heroic Struggle of the Campesino Movement!
We Resist and We will Win!
Tegucigalpa 8 de abril de 2010
Wednesday, April 7th our compañero José Leonel Álvarez Guerra, member of the La Confianza Cooperative, the MUCA (Unified Campesino Movement of Aguan) and active member of the National Front of Popular Resistance was assassinated.
We vehemently condemn his death at the hands of assassins hired by the landowners, Miguel Facusse, Reinaldo Canales and Rene Morales, with the approval of and complicity of the government's security apparatus.
José Leonel becomes another martyr of the peasant struggle, the expression of the great necessity to change this system of exploitation and oppression that marginalizes, silences and kills the working people.
While they murder our compañeros and compañeras and threaten to massacre entire campesino communities, the regime of Porfirio Lobo tries to present itself as being concerned about human rights. We reiterate our call to the international community to demand punishment for those responsible for the crimes committed against the Honduran people in Resistance.
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José Leonel Alvarez Guerra (35), a member of La Confianza with the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán, MUCA, was killed by two men on a motorcycle, when he was coming home in the Manga Seca neighborhood in Tocoa, Colón, this Wednesday, April 7.
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/jose-leonel-alvarez-guerra-muca-member-assassinated/)
Also, great reporting from Radio Progreso about the murder of journalists in Honduras:
The government of Porfirio Lobo offered a financial reward to those who can give information about any of the five murders of the journalists that occurred in March. Several of these journalists were also members of the National Front of Popular Resistance, which shows that there is persecution of those opposing the coup. Journalists feel helpless in the current political instability to be able to perform their jobs.
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/04/07/honduras-the-most-dangerous-country-for-journalists/)
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In Honduras, journalist slayings raise alarm
Five journalists have been killed in March. The violence underscores the continued instability of Honduras nine months after a coup that led to the election of a president in November.
By Alex Renderos and Tracy Wilkinson
The Los Angeles Times
March 31, 2010
Reporting from Mexico City and San Salvador
Nine months after a military-led coup plunged Honduras into political turmoil, human rights groups are denouncing what they see as an alarming spate of attacks on journalists, including the killings of five in March alone.
No one has been arrested in the slayings, and speculation on motives has run the gamut. The violence illustrates the depth to which Honduras remains unsettled and on edge, even after a new president was elected in November and installed in January amid promises to heal national divisions.
International free-press organizations called on President Porfirio Lobo to fully investigate the killings and put an end to them.
"These attacks are seriously restricting freedom of expression and undermine citizens' right to be informed on issues of public interest," Carlos Lauria of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists said in a statement. He called the violence "unprecedented."
The five journalists killed this month were victims of drive-by shootings in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, and other cities. Some were known to be sympathetic to ousted President Manuel Zelaya; others had no public political leanings.
Independent of politics, Honduras has a high homicide rate, and several of the journalists worked in parts of Honduras rife with drug-trafficking and smuggling rings.
Jose Bayardo Mairena, a reporter for the Excelsior radio station, and Manuel Juarez, who worked for Super 10 radio, were traveling Friday in Olancho province, about 75 miles north of Tegucigalpa, when gunmen pulled up alongside their car and shot them, their colleagues said.
Other journalists were killed in similar shootings on March 1, 11 and 14. One of the victims, Joseph Hernandez Ochoa, was killed as he drove with colleague Karol Cabrera, a TV news host known for her support of the coup. She was injured. Three months earlier, attackers shot at Cabrera's car, killing her pregnant 16-year-old daughter. Cabrera says she has received numerous death threats.
"I think what we are seeing with these murders is that there are still dark forces at work," Leo Valladares, a law professor who served as Honduras' human rights ombudsman for a decade, said in a telephone interview from Tegucigalpa.
He noted that both the extreme right, long the dominant power in Honduras, and the extreme left would have reasons for sowing fear. Many on the right oppose any effort by the Lobo government to sustain dialogue with Zelaya supporters and other dissidents. Many on the left refuse to recognize Lobo because he was elected while a repressive de facto government was in charge and, they maintain, whitewashed the coup.
Jose Osman Lopez, president of the Committee for Free Expression in Honduras, said the killings of the journalists are part of a wider deterioration in human rights that has especially hurt opponents of the coup and belied talk of reconciliation.
(http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-honduras-reporters31-2010mar31,0,1555729.story)
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US coverup of situation in Honduras
(http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4977)
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Upon hearing the name of one of the recent martyrs in Honduras, Simon Rios decided to record it & put it up on youtube. Please help divulge: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL-6WcNmVFQ
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Original alert from the MOVIMENTO UNIFICADO CAMPESINO DEL AGUAN (MUCA)
in Spanish is below this article by Annie Bird
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Important related links to Billy Joya´s past human rights violations:
Caso Billy Joya (Derechos y Equipo Nizkor)
(http://www.derechos.org/nizkor/espana/doc/joya/)
Billy Joya es conocido por coordinar y dirigir torturas y asesinatos en Honduras durante los años 80 (Mercurio Digital) (http://elmercuriodigital.es/content/view/20368/57/)
El militar hondureño Billy Joya, denunciado en España por torturas (El País, 1998) (http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/HONDURAS/ESPAnA/HONDURAS/militar/hondureno/Billy/Joya/denunciado/Espana/torturas/elpepiint/19980805elpepiint_12/Tes)
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CAMEPSINO FARMER KILLED ON APRIL 1 IN COLON, HONDURAS POLICE TRAINED TO
COMMIT ILLEGAL ACTS WHILE BILLY JOYA TRAINING PARAMILITARIES IN COLON April 2, 2010 By Annie Bird, Rights Action
An extremely dangerous situation is developing in the municipality of
Tocoa, department of Colon in the region known as the Aguan in Honduras.
In the days leading up to yesterday’s murder of a young campesino
farmer, the preparation of an operation intended to (falsely) confirm
the existence of an armed resistance movement in Honduras was exposed.
Reports claim that a renowned death squad member from the 1980’s is
training paramilitary forces, while a select police unit is being
prepared to “combat guerillas.”
This extremely high level of violence, repression and impunity threatens
the lives of campesino families organized in the Movimiento Unificado
Campesino de Aguan (MUCA) who are immersed in land conflicts with some
of Honduras’ most powerful businessmen. It also threatens to present a
justification for greater repression of the non violent resistance
movement in Honduras (the Frente), who along with many nations in the
world do not recognize the legitimacy of the Pepe Lobo government, and
who are calling for a new constitution.
ATTACKS ON MUCA MEMBERS
On April 1, 2010, 22 year old Miguel Alonso Oliva was fatally shot in
the back during the occupation of the Boleros farm. This killing comes
after the steady escalation of the presence of military, police and
private security forces in the area.
The morning of Lobo’s inauguration, January 27, 2010, a group of police,
military and private security forces entered a MUCA community, where
they opened fire and gravely injured four young men. The timing of acts
of extreme repression during significant moments appears to be a pattern
meant to send messages to the Frente.
In addition to the violence, disinformation is being published in the
Honduran press stating that the MUCA families are an armed guerrilla
movement tied to the national Resistance movement, financed by
international drug traffickers, tied to the Colombian guerrilla movement
the FARC and with the backing of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
Though blatantly false this fabrication is disturbingly similar to
narratives being promoted in the United States Congress by lobbyists and
right wing congress people. The objective of the manipulation of
Honduran press may not only be to manipulate the Honduran population,
but apparently to substantiate a false narrative presented to the
“international community.”
Hondurans have been very savvy and capable in avoiding an armed or
violent response to the coup and the provocations of the anti-democratic
forces. They know that an armed resistance movement would provide
justification for even greater repression and even more pervasive
de-legitimation of their political demands.
POLICE WIFE DENOUNCES OFFICERS DETENTION FOR ILLEGAL ACTS
In a communiqué dated April 1, 2010, the Committee for Defense of Human
Rights in Honduras (CODEH), explains that on Friday, March 26, 2010 it
received a phone call from a woman who stated:
"I speak for more than thirty police officers who have been locked up
for over two weeks, in the premises of the Regional Police Command of
Tocoa, Colon, I am the wife of one of them…these officers were brought
from various regions of the country such as La Paz, Comayagua,
Choluteca, among others, having been told they were being recruited for
a mission to Tegucigalpa. From Tegucigalpa they were sent to Colon… they
are being trained to commit acts that are against the law, they are
offering better pay and that if something happens to implicate them they
will immediately be transferred to places they came from, they are told
they will confront guerrillas and that was why they were paid well; they
make them go hungry while they claim it is because of those people who
they soon are going to fight."
Following CODEH’s denouncement on national television of the situation,
the Human Rights procurator from the city of Tocoa, Colon attempted to
visit the named police station in Tocoa but was denied entry, apparently
confirming the report.
CODEH concludes that “the thirty policemen selected from various sectors
of the country, can be used to make a false belief in the media that
they died in combat in the area, confirming the existence of an armed
resistance, with this justify the eviction with the death of dozens of
farmers and gain control of land.”
The psychological preparation for the material authors of gross human
rights violation, such as massacres, that is suggested in the
denouncement of the officers being denied food and being told their
hunger is caused by the ‘guerillas’ they will combat is a well
documented process widely employed during the 1980s in Latin America. So called “False Flag” operations were also a tactic widely used and
well documented in the 1980s.
BILLY JOYA, RENOWNED TORTURER AND DEATH SQUAD COMMANDER
The same CODEH communiqué continues, “CODEH members who are in the area
[Aguan], received the following information "that the area is Mr. Billy
Joya Amendola, hired by businessmen to coordinate operations in the
area, he is currently in the facilities of the Fourth Battalion Infantry
based in the city of La Ceiba, Atlántida, where is there is a group
training for paramilitary actions… another group is being trained in a
in the Fifteenth Infantry Battalion based in the town of Rio Claro,
jurisdiction of the municipality of Trujillo in the department of Colón.”
The Fifteenth Battalion has been consistently implicated in providing
direct support to the businessmen implicated in the illegal acquisition
of cooperative land. The commander of the military
battalion is reported to hire reservists and paramilitaries, and
supervise the private security forces on the African Palm plantations.
Witness claim the Fifteenth Battalion illegally detained two young members of the MUCA as they rode on their bicycles on January 13, 2009 .
On January 27, at 8 am, families living in the Left Margin of the Aguan
River, in Trujillo, were subject to an unprovoked attack by elements of
the Tocoa Police, the Fifteen Battalion and private
security forces. Four campesinos were seriously wounded. Police and
military attempted to delay their transport to a hospital.
Billy Joya is a Honduran widely rumored to have close ties with, or to
work for, the Central Intelligence Agency, and to principally reside in
the United States. He is renowned in Honduras for his participation in the “Battalion 316” death squad, responsible for the
kidnapping and torture in the 1980s. Since the 1980’s, Billy Joya is
reportedly the owner of major private security firms in Honduras and has
consistently held security advising in government cabinets charged with
overseeing policing and security.
THE STRUGGLE OF THE COOPERATIVES IN THE BAJO AGUA
Early in the 1990s, while Central America was still immersed in “peace
processes,” a wave of legislation across Latin America destroyed legal
mechanisms to insure the possibility of securely held collectively owned
land; its impact resonated the loudest in Mexico where the reform of
Article 26 of the constitution destroyed the Ejido system; this was an
important factor in the formation of the Zapatista movement.
In Honduras, that same international land agenda hit hard. In 1992
changes to Honduras’ agrarian reform legislation made it possible for
land acquired through the agrarian reform program to be resold. This
allowed the incredibly politically powerful Honduran businessmen, Miguel
Facusse, Rene Morales and Reinaldo Canales, beginning in 1998, to destroy 29 African Palm oil producing cooperatives of the Aguan
region through the use of paramilitary violence to intimidate
cooperatives into selling and other illegal mechanisms. These methods
are very similar to methods being employed throughout the region by drug
traffickers to acquire land. In this way these men have become some of
largest landholders in Central America. They have also received
significant financing from the private sector funding arm of the Inter
American Development Bank.
In 2001, the now landless families from the cooperatives destroyed in
this process formed the MUCA, through which they continued to
investigate the illegalities in the manner in which the Aguan cooperatives had been acquired. In 2004 they presented the first of many
law suits. Unfortunately as is the standard practice in Honduran justice
administration, the suits simply have not been expedited, this kind of
corruption is what inspired hunger strikes by Honduran justice operators
in 2008.
This forced the farmers, beginning in 2006, to undertake a series of
peaceful protests, which culminated in a negotiation process. The
negotiations had advanced to the point of signing an important agreement
with then president Manuel Zelaya on June 12, 2009. The agreement would
have allowed the farmers to acquire land title to the contested farms,
as they provided sufficient proof of their land rights.
However, the June 28, 2009 military coup forced an end to the land
titling process. Thus, on December 9, 2009, during the de facto regime
headed by Roberto Mitcheletti, the MUCA began occupying the farms to
which they hold legal rights but which were illegally in the possession
of Facusse, Morales and Canales. The immediate response was an attempt
to portray the land rights movement as an armed guerrilla movement
connected to international terrorism and drug trafficking.
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WRITE TO NORTH AMERICAN POLITICIANS
The US and Canadian governments must be held partially responsible for the on-going State terrorism and repression in Honduras:
* both governments indirectly legitimized the military-oligarchic regime after the June 28th military coup;
* they recognized the illegal "elections" on November 28, 2009;
* they attended the January 27, 2010 "transfer of power", when the regime of current leader Pepe Lobo took power;
* they are now promoting the "normalization of relations" with Honduras in the international community;
* both governments continue to ignore the well-documented State-sponsored killings and repression;
* both work to invisibilize the massive social movement and the call for a new constitution.
The legitimate struggle of the majority of Hondurans - peaceful and courageous - continues. They need on-going support. They also need Canadians and Americans to pressure our own governments - the main supporters of the Honduran regime - to condemn the systemic repression in Honduras; to not turn a blind eye to repression and impunity and casually maintain full political, economic and military relations with the regime.
State Department Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs at (202) 647-0834 or WHAAsstSecty@State.Gov
The White House (http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/) or at (202) 456-1111
Contact the US House of Representatives (https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml) or at (202) 224-3121
Contact the US Senate (http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm) or at (202) 224-3121
Here are some ideas of actions we can take:
1. Protests in front of the Honduras Embassy in the U.S. and regional consulates
2. Demand from the High Commissioner for HH.RR. of the United Nations that an investigating commission starts work immediately in Honduras to address the systematic assassinations of members of the organized opposition to the former dictatorship and the current administration.
3. Demand that the U.S. stop supporting the Lobo administration based on the systematic violation of HH.RR. and his lack of action to preserve the lives of its citizens. There should be a weekly event in Washington DC with protesters carrying the pictures of the compas assassinated up to now following the example of the Mothers of La Plaza de Mayo. We could the same in major cities were we have presence and demand from elected congressmen and senators to demand a stop of U.S. support to the present Honduras government.
4. Request from the Organization of American States a condemnation of HH.RR. violations and assassinations and the ratification of their decision not to recognize this administration based on these crimes against humanity.
5. Disseminate information about these attrocities through all means at our disposal and pressure commercial media to cover these assassinations.
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/04/04/muca-repression-in-aguan-imminent/)
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The Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán, to the Honduran people and national and international human rights organizations, denounces:
1.-The murder of our colleague Miguel Angel Alonso farmer is part of the new strategy of extermination of MUCA by landowners Miguel Facusse, Reinaldo Canales and René Morales, with the participation of the army, national police and the naval base of Puerto Castilla.
2.-Paramilitary, military, and police groups are being trained in the fourth infantry battalion in Ceiba Atlántida under the command of Billy Joya in the premises of the Atlantic factory exporter in the Quebrada community, in the Tocoa municipality, and in the installations of the 15th Battalion in the Rio Claro community, Trujillo municipality, Colon department.
3.-Beginning on Tuesday, April 6, the occupied land will be intervened militarily, in a violent and bloody way, with the installation of mines and traps. This repression is being called Operation Thunder and includes measures such as the arrest and assassination of MUCA and National Resistance Front leaders as well as the mass detention of peasants and farmers.
4.-The police and army vehicles operating in Colon use the landowners private cars, are armed with AK47s, use ski masks and conduct daily operations with paramilitary forces against the MUCA.
5.-We hold the landowners, the national army, the national police, and the current government for the deaths that have already occurred and for the innocent blood that could run with the development of Operation Thunder.
FOR THE LAND, FOR OUR COUNTRY, FOR OUR CHILDREN, we will continue to fight until victory.
Tocoa Colon Honduras, April 2, 2010
RELATED: Police Trained to Commit Illegal Acts while Billy Joya Training Paramilitaries in Colon, Honduras: ex paramilitares colombianos habrían sido reclutados para trabajar como mercenarios:
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/police-trained-to-commit-illegal-acts-while-billy-joya-training-paramilitaries-in-colon/)
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3/25/2010 University union leaders arrested, charged with sedition
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/university-union-leaders-arrested-charged-with-sedition/)
During a court hearing with the Criminal Justice Section of Tegucigalpa, judge Melvin Bonilla issued precautionary measures against 10 of the 16 members of the Workers Union of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (Sitraunah), accused by the prosecution of sedition, coercion, and usurpation.
Bonilla also issued house arrests against 5 people for being over 60 years old, and another worker because he has diabetes. The judge who bears the burden of proof is Alina Aguilera, but she could not conduct the hearing this day and Judge Melvin Bonilla. acted in her place. A team of lawyers with the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (Cofadeh) came in person to the seat of the court located in La Granja, Comayagüela, but they were prevented from entering by the security guards and police.
Cofadeh believes that the judge’s actions violates the process of presumption of innocence. The defense said there is no risk of flight by the accused so preventative detention was unnecessary.
Moreover, the union defendants argued that there is no risk of obstruction of justice by their clients, so the decision to give them provisional measures of preventive detention is due more to a kind of bias towards the workers union for being a part of the National Front of the Popular Resistance.
Despite the restrictions on information, it is known that the 10 union members will be deprived of their freedom and will remain imprisoned at the National Penitentiary, located in Tamara, Francisco Morazán, about 15 kilometers from the capital, until the time and date
of next hearing.
The court building remained guarded by a strong contingent of riot police stationed in front, sides and back of the court building, while more than a hundred members of the National Resistance Front demanded outside the immediate release of the union workers. The conflict between the union workers and authorities of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) had not been resolved for three weeks, since there was no agreement on a number of wage increase demands presented by SITRAUNAH. They had proceeded to take the university campus buildings to protest the stalemate in negotiations.
Around 4:00 pm the riot police (over one hundred) fired tear gas and struck protestants with batons as a show once again of repression against the National Front for Popular Resistance.
The unionists’ lawyers requested a new hearing to review the precautionary measures, based on Articles 80 and 82 of the Constitution of the Republic, and 173 numerals 5,6 and 7 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
SOURCE: Defensores en línea
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3/25/2010Professor José Manuel Flores, FNRP member, assassinated
Professor Manuel, as his friends called him, was in the back of the facility overseeing his pupils when he found his murderers. They had crossed the perimeter fence and fired their guns at close range.
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/professor-jose-manuel-flores-fnrp-member-assassinated/)
[Asesinan a profesor de ciencias sociales José Manuel Flores miembro activo de la Resistencia Nacional Contra el Golpe de Estado
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, 23 de marzo de 2010. A las tres de la tarde fue avistado una persona desconocida frente a las instalaciones del Instituto
Oficial de Secundaria, San José del Pedregal, esta inusual presencia de un desconocido provocó inquietud entre los alumnos y profesores, más de
treinta profesores (as) integran el staff del personal docente que cubre las obligaciones pedagógicas en el centro educativo.
Entre los docentes se encontraba el Profesor en Ciencias Sociales José Manuel Flores, quien cubría su rol de maestro consejero; testigos en el
lugar de los hechos vieron dos vehículos pick up, aproximarse por la parte trasera de las instalaciones de la Institución, uno color Verde y otro
color blanco; por su apariencia modelos 2009.
El Profesor Manuel, como le llaman sus amigos y amigas, se encontraba en la parte de atrás de las instalaciones, haciendo su labor de supervisión
con los alumnos (as), ahí se encontró con los asesinos, estos habían pasado el cerco perimetral y dispararon su armas de fuego a mansalva, el
profesor Manuel se encontraba en una terraza y se fue al vació, desde arriba los asesinos volvieron a disparar, en la huida a uno de ellos se le
enredo el gorro pasamontañas en la serpentina que sirve de seguridad perimetral, ya ellos había abierto un boquete esperando a su victima, el
Profesor murió en el acto.
De esta manera asesinan otro miembro más de la Resistencia Contra el Golpe de Estado, el Profesor Manuel era miembro del Partido Socialista de los
Trabajadores (PST), escritor de artículos algunos ellos publicados en el diario la Tribuna y otros en el periódico digital el SOCA de tendencia socialista.
Este es el primer caso de un profesor que es asesinado en el interior de las instalaciones educativas, frente a sus compañeros (as) y alumnos,
quienes ordenaron y planificaron este crimen tienen claro su propósito estratégico, inundar de miedo el movimiento pacifista de la resistencia,
asesinar a lideres prominentes de este movimiento, cometer estos crímenes sen comprometer a sus miembros de los cuerpos de seguridad del Estado,
para tal acto trabajan en la transnacionalización del crimen contratando sicarios de otros países que han llegado a Honduras para hacer venganza,
vengarse de aquellos que en su afán de justicia frente a la agresión criminal consecuencia del golpe de Estado, quebraron vidrios, pintaron
paredes, lanzaron una botella con gas, caricaturizaron religiosos, defensores de derechos humanos y periodistas, pusieron apodos a los agresores.
COMITÉ PARA LA DEFENSA DE LOS DERECHOS HUMANOS EN HONDURAS]
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Lawyers denounce before the IACHR that amnesty only applies to some
The amnesty was agreed before President Porfirio Lobo took office. However, during the IACHR 138 period hearing session, a group of eight lawyers representing various organizations in Honduras reported the competent authorities “are not applying amnesty.” “The amnesty is to be applied automatically by the Public Ministry and competent courts, but we have not been able to get that for people who opposed the coup,” charged attorney Roger Ordoñez, from the Center for Prevention, Treatment and Rehabilitation for Victims of Torture and their Families(CPTRT).
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/03/23/lawyers-denounce-before-the-iachr-that-amnesty-only-applies-to-some/)
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FIAN: Urgent agricultural reform is needed
The inadequate agricultural policy launched after 1992 led to the enactment of the Modernization and Development of the Agricultural Sector Law, which is the cause of a deepening poverty in the rural sector and the violent conflicts that are increasingly taking lives.
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/03/20/urgent-agricultural-reform-needed/)
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3/19/2010 Directors of COHDEFOR in Bonito Oriental, assassinated
Jose Antonio Cardoz and Jose Concepcion Carias, both around 50-years-old, were killed at noon yesterday by unidentified individuals who opened fire with a shotgun as the campesinos were driving home after a day’s work in the Carbonal community, Bonito Oriental, Colon Department.
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/directors-of-cohdefor-in-bonito-oriental-assassinated/)
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IMMIGRATION: Update on proposed legislation, Schumer-Graham bill
Our Message to Congress: Immigration Reform NOW!
WASHINGTON - Today, tens of thousands of Americans gathered on the National Mall to demand that elected officials repair our broken immigration system. Below is a statement from Marielena Hincapié, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, who attended the march.
"Today, we at the National Immigration Law Center joined thousands to March for America. We marched for the workers who have been detained in immigration raids or exploited because of their immigration status. We marched for the hundreds of thousands incarcerated unjustly in immigrant detention centers. We marched for the immigrant youth who fight for access to higher education at risk of being deported from the country they've called home since they arrived as children. We marched for the millions of future Americans who could not be here today but who have faith in President Obama's promise to reform our immigration system.
Americans will no longer tolerate a system that has for decades failed to meet our societal and economic needs. It's time for President Obama and Congress to do what's right for our country."
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Shown March 18 -- to be available for future screenings:
The 800 Mile Wall highlights the construction of the new border walls along the U.S.-Mexico border as well as the effect on migrants trying to cross into the U.S. This powerful 90-minute film is an unflinching look at a failed U.S. border strategy that many believe has caused the death of thousands of migrants and violates fundamental human rights.
Since border walls have been built, well over 5,000 migrant bodies have been recovered in U.S. deserts, mountains and canals. Some unofficial reports put the death toll as high as 10,000 men, women and children. As a direct result of U.S. border policy, migrants are forced to cross treacherous deserts and mountains in search of low skill and low paying jobs in the United States. The New York Times writes, "Current border strategy is serving as a funnel through deadly terrain." The 800 Mile Wall documents, in great detail, the ineffective and deadly results of a failed border policy and offers some thoughts and on how the current human rights crisis may be resolved. Directed by John Carlos Frey and Produced by Jack Lorenz. Running Time: 90 min.
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The New Disappeared: Missing Migrants Along the US-Mexico Border. Thursday, March 25, 2010 5:30 – 7:00 pm in Tegeler Hall Room 207. SLU Alum Sara Bollinger (BA in Spanish and International Studies) will discuss the increasing numbers of migrants who simply disappear as a result of U.S. border enforcement policies. She will discuss her research, including interviews with "sending families" in Mexico. A Doerr Center “Just Dinner.” Please RSVP by email to shollan2@slu.edu
More...
link
COUNTRY UPDATES: Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru.
On Monday, March 15, 2010, Jhonny Hurtado, President of the Human Rights Committee of the hamlet of La Catalina in the State of Meta, was assassinated. Hurtado was a 59-year-old campesino, who was tending to his parcel of land when he was shot. The Guayabero River region is occupied by Military Mobil Brigade No. 7, which makes up part of the Omega Military Force. The Military constantly patrols the region, violating human rights, and threatening human rights leaders. The Military presence in the region is a cause of deep concern for the residents of this area since the Military is continuing to issue accusational and threatening statements against the social and human rights leaders of the region. The Military also subjects the citizens of the area to checkpoints, censes and accusations that greatly worry the people of the region. At the end of 2009, Hurtado, as the elected head of a Human Rights delegation, publicly denounced the human rights violations in the area.
Please write to your Senators and Representatives demanding a stop of military aid to the Colombian Army and an investigation of the Colombian military.
Your Representatives in Congress: See the Action Center at our site: www.colombiasupport.net
ALSO WRITE TO THE FOLLOWING US OFFICIALS:
Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs: Arturo Valenzuela : valenzuela@gmail.com
Human Rights Director US Embassy Colombia: Carolyn Cooley: CooleyCN@state.gov
And write to officials in the Colombian Government demanding an investigation of those responsible for the assassination of Jhonny Hurtado and their prosecution :
In Colombia:
-Ministerio de Defensa Asuntos Internacionales : sergio.restrepo@mindefensa.gov.co
-Oficina de Derechos Humanos, Ministerio de Defensa: elena.ambrisi@mindefensa.gov.co
-Oficina de Asuntos Internacionales de la Fiscalia: franciscoj.echeverri@fiscalia.gov.co
-Procuraduria General: secretariageneral@procuraduria.gov.co
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From Jubilee USA:
I just wanted to send a quick note and share with you our good news. Late Wednesday, the US House of Representatives passed the Haiti Debt Relief and Earthquake Recovery Act of 2010! You sent over 2,000 messages to your Members of Congress last week in support of Haiti and debt relief for even more countries - and it made an impact.
The passage comes a week after the US Senate approved the Haiti Recovery Act (S2961). Both bills will make sure that Haiti will receive debt cancellation fast.
Last month, thanks to advocacy around the world, G-7 finance ministers committed to cancel Haiti's $709 million in outstanding debts to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and International Fund for Agricultural Development. Now it's just a matter of making sure they act quickly, which Congress is doing by using the influence of the United States in the financial institutions.
The passage of both bills shows that our leaders on both sides of the aisle can respond quickly when the call for justice is heard loud and clear.
Thanks for your hard work.
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http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iLRc4xRTwzEnD6Uz55LRaUOiT4Lg
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Published: Thursday, March 11, 2010
Bylined to: AFP
US general says no evidence of links between Venezuela and FARC-ETA
AFP: The general in charge of US military activities in Latin America said Thursday he had no evidence of links between Venezuela's leftist government and Colombian and Basque guerrilla groups. "We have not seen any connections specifically that I can verify that there has been a direct government-to-terrorist connection," General Douglas Fraser, head of the US Southern Command, told a Senate hearing.
"We have continued to watch very closely for any connections between illicit and terrorist organization activity within the region," he said. "We are concerned about it. I'm skeptical. I continue to watch for it."
Fraser's comments follow charges by a Spanish judge linking alleged assassination plots in Spain by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the Basque separatist group ETA to Venezuelan "governmental support."
Venezuela has rejected the charges, which raised tensions with Spain.
Arturo Valenzuela, the assistant secretary of state responsible for Latin American affairs, told another congressional panel Wednesday there had been some evidence of some kind of Venezuelan assistance to the FARC.
Fraser, however, said he was aware only of "old evidence" of assistance.
"But I don't see that evidence. I can't tell you specifically whether that continues or not," he said.
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Honduras: Whitewashing the coup https://nacla.org/node/6451
Nahúm Palacios was assassinated. It seems he was involved in covering the HR abuses in Aguán against MUCA campesinos:
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/2010/03/15/nahum-palacios-journalist-assassinated/)
Here´s a summary of human rights abuses committed against media in the past few months:
(http://hondurashumanrights.wordpress.com/category/media-rights/)
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Salvadoran Foreign Minister Stresses the value of Cuban solidarity
HAVANA, Cuba, March 13 (acn) Cuba's solidarity with the Latin American and Caribbean peoples in the preparation of physicians, was highlighted this Friday in Havana, by Hugo Martinez Bonilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of El Salvador.
In Cuba doctors are prepared with that extra on sensitivity and humanism which are so necessary in our countries, the Central American diplomat said during his visit to the Latin American School of Medicine (ELAM).
He recalled how "we saw this project born in Cuba and sent to a group of youngsters from Morazan to prepare in this school, which we contribute to select and now, 10 years later, this is a consolidated reality," he said.
After describing Shafik Handal, a leader of the FMLN, now deceased, as an enthusiastic promoter of the ELAM project in El Salvador, Martinez pointed out that in his country they are already enjoying the results of it "because you start seeing in doctors in El Salvador a different approach, closer to reality and humanity."
He also said he was happy to find out that about 20 his countrymen graduated from ELAM, were part of the Henry Reeve Brigade, sent by Cuba to Haiti to strengthen the work of the Cuban physicians who were there before the earthquake of January 12.
He then spoke briefly with Irvin Ottoniel Arias and Carlos Ortiz, two Salvadorans doctors graduated in Cuba, who after serving for a month in Haiti, are passing through Havana before returning to San Salvador.
Previously Dr. Midalys Castilla Martinez, vice-rector of ELAM, gave the visitor a detailed explanation about the current situation and prospects of the institution where there are currently studying some 10 000 young people and 451 have already graduated.
Martinez Bonilla, who arrived in Cuba on Thursday, paid tribute to the Cuban National Hero José Martí, in the Revolution Square and on Saturday he will inaugurate the embassy of his country in Havana.
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MEXICO: PEMEX Union Leaders Fired
PEMEX Union Leaders Fired
www.afgj.org
Employees Forced to Resign from Union of Lose Their Jobs
URGENT ACTION REQUIRED!
(This alert was originally published by LabourStart.)
Some 30,000 technical and professional employees of PEMEX (the huge public Mexican petroleum complex) finally won the right to unionize upon their third attempt. The new union's victory was short lived. Some fifty leaders and activists active in the "Unión Nacional de Técnicos y Profesionistas Petroleros" (UNTyPP), have been fired since January, joining many others who had been fired during the first two unionization efforts. Now, members are being informed that in order to retain their jobs they are required to sign two documents, one calling for the cancellation of the union's registration and the other a resignation from the union.
Organizers are asking you to contact Mexican and PEMEX officials today! Please act now to support the Unión Nacional de Técnicos y Profesionistas Petroleros.
http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=654
More...
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HONDURAS: Hondurans' Great Awakening by Dana Frank
Hondurans' Great Awakening
by Dana Frank
Two powerful forces have swept through Honduras since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya: one magnificent, the other truly horrible. The first is the resistance movement that rose up to contest the coup, surprising everyone in its breadth, nonviolence and resilience. The second is the new regime's brutal repression in response. "It's been terribly painful, and a great awakening," reflects Ayax Irías, a sociologist at the National Autonomous University of Honduras.
While the conflict continues to escalate, the Obama administration is vigorously supporting the coup regime under Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa. "We believe that President Lobo and his administration have taken the steps necessary to restore democracy," declared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on March 4. But the resistance movement itself, with its demand for a reconstitution of Honduran society from below, is a vivid testament to the country's need for real democracy. As the resistance faces off against the US-backed oligarchs and military, there's no question that this is the most important moment in Honduran history, even more important than the immense general strike of 1954, from which all modern Honduran history flows.
I returned to Honduras in February for the first time since the coup to find a country transformed. People involved in the resistance were bursting with political energy, with an utterly new faith in their power. But they were also well aware of how dangerous the situation is--as am I, so I am changing some of the identifying details of those with whom I spoke.
Most obviously new was the graffiti, which was everywhere I went--from Tegucigalpa, the capital; to San Pedro Sula, the big industrial city in the north; to the smaller cities of El Progreso and La Lima in the banana zone; to, most daringly, the walls along the US Air Force base at Palmerola. "¡Golpista!," the all-important epithet that means a perpetrator or supporter of the coup, or golpe de estado, was splayed on storefronts, television stations and houses. Most messages were straightforward: "Militares Asesinos" or "¡Elecciones No!," protesting the November 29 elections, boycotted by almost all pro-resistance candidates, who objected that no free and fair elections could take place under military occupation. Others were more pointedly personal: "Micheletti Pinochetti," equating the coup-regime president, Roberto Micheletti, with the dictator of Chile after its 1973 coup, Augusto Pinochet. "Erase me, golpista!" taunted one wall.
Even more remarkable was the change in young people. Teenagers and twentysomethings I had known for a decade--largely the children of trade unionists--who before hadn't been politically engaged at all, were suddenly sitting up in their chairs differently, eager to tell me stories of marches they'd joined, tear gas they'd tasted. One 15-year-old girl arrived in a red T-shirt reading, "I ♥ Honduras Without Golpistas." Cellphones kept going off with newly popular songs of the resistance as ring tones--"Traidores" or "Nos Tienen Miedo Porque No Tenemos Miedo" (They're afraid of us because we're not afraid), the song by Argentine Liliana Felipe and Mexican Jesusa Rodríguez, which has become the informal anthem of the resistance.
Older folks in the resistance, by contrast, had a sober look in their eyes. Unlike their children, those in their 50s and 60s know how much more terrible things can get; they lived through the 1970s and '80s in Central America. But as veterans of those struggles, they also had a clear sense that this was the main chance they'd been waiting for their whole lives; people were finally coming together and rising up. "All these years I've been involved in the struggle, but I've never felt that change was so close," Efraín Aguilar, a lifelong union activist, told me in low, firm tones.
In Tegucigalpa, I mentioned to a cabdriver the name of a Honduran Congressman I had just met in the airport the day before. "Golpista!" he spat out. He rattled off the man's connections to Micheletti and the most elite of Honduran oligarchs and kept talking with me about the resistance. Finally I asked him, Aren't you afraid to speak so openly with an unknown passenger? "After what we've been through, it doesn't matter anymore," he said.
When the military packed President Zelaya onto a plane to Costa Rica on June 28 in his now-famous pajamas, and the majority of Congress installed Micheletti as president with the collusion of the Supreme Court, enormous semi-spontaneous demonstrations and protests followed, beginning that same afternoon. Hundreds of thousands of people streamed into Tegucigalpa from small villages and cities throughout the country. An ad hoc national coalition calling itself the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular formed within days, uniting the campesino movement; indigenous, African-descent and women's organizations; human rights groups; trade unions; and, most astonishingly welcome, the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movement, in what they together refer to as un movimiento amplio, a broad movement. Trade unions make up the backbone of the movement, especially the teachers, public-sector workers, banana workers and bottling-plant workers, whose meeting halls are essential to the resistance. But part of what makes the resistance so strong is its diversified base, with each social group organized within its own constituency, each with a representative in the top-level coordinating committee--and each with its own stake in reconstituting Honduras.
The women's movement is just one example. Numerous observers reported that 60 to 70 percent of the demonstrators have been women, who join the resistance not only as individuals but also with long-established groups like the Center for Women's Rights; they have specific collective demands, linking the coup, the resistance movement and their vision of a new future. "Ni golpe de estado ni golpe a mujeres," for example, showed up on posters, in chants and in demands that the Frente take on domestic violence.
What unites the resistance is not just opposition to the coup regime but a positive vision of a new Honduras, to be enacted through a national assembly that would, in turn, produce a new Constitution. The slogan I saw everywhere, "Por un constituyente no excluyente" (For a constitutional convention that doesn't exclude), captures widespread hopes that the new Constitution, modeled after ones recently passed in Bolivia (2009), Ecuador (2008) and Venezuela (1999), could guarantee and expand basic rights of the sectors that make up the resistance, such as land rights for campesinos and indigenous peoples, women's rights and basic labor rights.
The resistance, broadly defined, has a solid middle-class presence as well, including not just left-wing college students but large numbers of Liberal Party members loyal to Zelaya. During the big marches in the capital, many supporters from the middle class weren't comfortable joining on foot, so they came in their cars, whole families honking, waving banners and shouting. In one march on August 17, thousands of cars joined at the end, so many that it took them two hours to pass by.
By a sheer act of collective will, the movement has been overwhelmingly nonviolent, a decision made entirely from below, then officially ratified by the resistance coalition after the first week. What supporters call their movimiento pacífico, in classic Gandhian fashion, has served to sharply highlight, within Honduras and all over the world, the brutality of the government.
>From day one, the coup government launched a vicious assault on those
who dared to challenge it, deploying not just the military but municipal police and newly mobilized paramilitary assassins. Peaceful demonstrations full of old people and children were met with volley after volley of tear gas, the kinds that make you vomit or cry or feel like you can't breathe, or all three. According to eyewitnesses, media reports and independent Honduran human rights groups that are bravely tracking all this repression, police swept through crowds beating marchers with batons sporting new metal tips, snatching bystanders and protesters alike and throwing them into the back of trucks. Once in custody, many were beaten, tortured and/or raped. According to the Committee of Families of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), more than 3,000 people have been illegally detained since June 28. COFADEH reports that at least forty-one Hondurans associated with the resistance have been killed, including trade unionists and GLBT activists. One of the first was Isis Obed, 19, shot in the head by a government sniper from atop the Tegucigalpa airport at a demonstration on July 5 when President Zelaya tried to return by plane. The great majority of those killed have been rank-and-file activists who were kidnapped or shot in their homes or in the streets by unknown assailants.
While much international attention has focused on the capital, the repression has been nationwide. On the highway in Choloma, outside San Pedro Sula, protesters at twelve demonstrations in July, August and September occupied a strategic bottleneck through which trucks have to pass carrying industrial products to Puerto Cortés. Witnesses reported that the protesters were met with brutal attacks: tear gas and beatings, but also violence directed especially at women, including nightsticks jammed into women's crotches, rapes in detention and foul insults telling them they deserved it because they weren't in their proper place in the home. Irma Villanueva, 25, testified on the radio that she was detained and gang-raped by four police officers after a demonstration in Choloma on August 14.
In a snowballing process of collective awakening and self-discovery, though, this ongoing process of protest, repression and even greater subsequent protest has changed ordinary people's sense of themselves and their power--all the more astonishing because none of this was supposed to happen in Honduras. "Hondurans always had the reputation of being cowards," reflected Irías, the sociologist. "I never imagined that Hondurans had the ability or disposition to struggle like this." Before the coup, Honduras was largely known as the political black hole of Central America: during the 1970s and '80s, it didn't produce large guerrilla movements on the left as did its neighbors Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Instead, it served as the "USS Honduras," the base for the Reagan administration's Contra war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.
Honduras did, in fact, have a small armed left in the '80s and government-sponsored death squads led by the notorious Battalion 3-16, which killed more than 100 activists. But the country's population of 7.8 million, despite a poverty rate above 60 percent, has remained largely in the ideological thrall of a few oligarch families locked into a two-party patronage system, never able to mobilize a third party from the left and not, in general, engaged in meaningful debate.
Now, if nothing else, the country is politicized down to the bone. "What I love is that everyone--men, women, old people, little kids--is talking about politics," said Zoila Lagos, a veteran of the 1980s struggles who lives in a poor barrio near Choloma. In Tegucigalpa especially, activists discussed the resistance openly with me, in stores, in cabs and on crowded streets downtown. One young man told me it was a deliberate strategy: "We're normalizing the resistance, normalizing the concepts of struggle, so they're something familiar." There's a new moral line in the sand between the resistance, representing the vast majority of the Honduran people, and the golpistas--the oligarchs, their media and the military.
The alternative media have been essential to this rapid politicization at the grassroots. When the coup was launched, every metropolitan daily newspaper except one, every big-city television station except one and the great majority of the mainstream radio stations overtly supported the new regime, spouting bald lies that even the most neutral could see
through: that the protesters were just violent riffraff; that Hugo Chávez was about to invade Honduras. La Prensa, a San Pedro Sula daily, even airbrushed out the blood dripping from the head of Isis Obed in a photograph taken just after he was killed at the airport. The outrageous collusion of the mainstream media, owned by the same oligarchs who have controlled the government for decades and who perpetrated the coup, contributed to the growth of popular consciousness and a higher level of critical thinking about the power structure within Honduras. "It opened the eyes of the people. The media are exactly the same, but the people aren't," observed Padre Melo, an esteemed Jesuit priest who directs Radio Progreso, an alternative radio station in El Progreso.
Critiques of the press were everywhere I went, like the big white banner sporting the logo of one of San Pedro Sula's leading dailies, promising "Get Stupid in Three Days. Read La Prensa." People kept repeating their favorite chant from the marches: "¡No somos cinco, no somos cien, prensa vendida cuéntanos bien!" (We're not five, we're not a hundred, sold-out press, count us well!).
Alternative radio has been particularly important in breaking through what those in the resistance call the "media fence" around the coup. Two powerful stations, Radio Globo in the capital and Radio Progreso in the north, have fully developed studios, transmitters and websites. Others are low-wattage operations run by indigenous groups, or Radio Uno in San Pedro Sula, run by teenagers in their school uniforms out of a journalism school. The programming on these stations is highly participatory--full of call-ins and local news reports--and it fills the streets, as vendors, cabdrivers and store owners play them day and night.
The coup government is well aware of the importance of the resistance media and has repeatedly clamped down on these outlets as well as opponents in the print media, often brutally, accusing them of "media terrorism." On the day of the coup, for example, the military surrounded Radio Progreso and shut it down for several hours. Since then, "we've gotten bomb threats almost daily," reported Radio Progreso director Padre Melo. Most recently, on January 6 unknown assailants burned down Radio Faluma Bimetu, a station run by Afro-indigenous Garífuna people in Triunfo de la Cruz.
No one really knows how deep all this popular politicization runs. Many Hondurans are keeping their heads low, quietly cheering on the resistance. Others still believe the mainstream media and are grateful that the government is "restoring order." We do have a few crude quantitative measures. While the government keeps revising its initial figures downward, it appears that the November 29 election, boycotted by the resistance, had only a 35 or 40 percent voter turnout. For another measure, 450,000 to 600,000 Hondurans, a very low estimate, participated in demonstrations on the two biggest days of protest: July 5 and September 15. As a percentage of the population, that's the equivalent in the United States of more than 20 million people.
On February 17 I was interviewed on Radio Uno by Pedro Brizuela, a wily and witty veteran communist in his 70s, who for many years has been working with the Garífuna along the Atlantic coast. Exactly one week later, assassins gunned down his 36-year-old daughter, Claudia, as she opened her front door in San Pedro Sula. It was a clear message to Pedro and to anyone else in the movement: keep fighting, and we'll kill your children.
Under the new Lobo administration, the repression isn't over, and it's getting more insidious. Lobo has reappointed the same military leaders who perpetrated the coup, with the exception of Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was dismissed only to be named head of Hondutel, the state-owned telephone company, which the oligarchs are itching to privatize. Paramilitary-style violence against the resistance has escalated since Lobo's inauguration on January 27. On February 15, two masked men on a motorcycle gunned down Julio Fúnez Benítez, of the sanitation workers' union. On March 14, two vehicles shot forty-seven bullets into the car of Nahún Ely Palacios Arteaga, news director of Canal 5 in the Aguán Valley, killing him instantly. Both men had protested the coup government.
The government, military and media want to pretend that this is all common crime, which is, in fact, rampant in Honduras--violence has touched both sides. On March 1 one outspoken pro-coup journalist was shot at, and her driving companion, a TV reporter, was killed. But no one in the movement believes there is anything random about the recent murders of resistance members, including one campesino activist, two trade unionists and a rank-and-file activist, which appear clearly intended to terrorize the grassroots resistance.
What happens next? The Lobo administration faces the task of suppressing a movement that is truly popular, with great determination, organizational capacity and hope. The Frente is still consolidating and expanding its regional base. It has announced that it does not recognize the Lobo government and plans to continue to destabilize what it views as a weak and illegitimate regime. It has denounced the impunity that continues, including the so-called "amnesty" in which the generals who perpetrated the coup--and who, with the exception of Vásquez Velásquez, remain at the top of the armed forces--were swiftly charged, tried and exonerated in January. The Frente's plan is to continue to challenge the government at the grassroots, forcing in the next year a National Assembly that would, in turn, lead to a constitutional convention and a new Constitution. It is already moving forward with plans for its own National Assembly on June 28, the anniversary of the coup. The Frente has announced it will eventually become a political party, but not for some time, in part because of the risk of co-optation as it tries to hold together its diverse base. "The struggle has only begun," observed Zoila Lagos, my friend from Choloma.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration has swiftly recognized Lobo's new government and is pretending everything's just fine in Honduras. US aid, both military and humanitarian, is flowing once again, shoring up an unstable government with little legitimacy. Inside our own media fence, Honduras has largely dropped from the headlines.
Progressives in the United States need to make sure the Obama administration doesn't get away with shoring up the coup regime of the Honduran oligarchs and military. We need to demand that the United States withdraw its recognition of the Lobo government; halt all aid, as the Frente has explicitly requested; cut ties to the Honduran military, including ongoing training at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly known as the School of the Americas); and close the US base at Palmerola. Obama and Clinton should denounce the ongoing human rights abuses and the outrageous impunity granted the Honduran armed forces, police and paramilitaries--along with the Congress members and Supreme Court justices who backed the coup. If we're going to achieve any of these goals, though, we need to build our own movimiento amplio in support of the Honduran people. We can begin by building up grassroots pressure on members of Congress, district by district, working through our own unions, faith communities, immigrant organizations, GLBT and women's groups.
Whatever happens next, the Honduran people are not going back to sleep. As Carlos Humberto Reyes, the grand charismatic figure at the head of the resistance, who ran for president as an independent but pulled out in protest, said to me, "The important thing is that the people have changed."
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MEXICO: Chiapas Resistance and NAFTA
(http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/jessica-davies/2010/03/mitziton-community-chiapas-resisting-government-road)
Reporter's Notebook: Jessica Davies
Mitziton: A community in Chiapas resisting the government road
Posted by Jessica Davies - March 5, 2010 at 12:19 pm
On Sunday 28 February, a major conflict took place in the Chiapan community of Mitziton, when around one hundred members of the evangelical ‘Army of God’, widely seen as a paramilitary group, attacked Other Campaign supporters in the community. Over 200 police attended, in ten police lorries, and the road between San Cristobal and Comitan was closed for many hours. Each side took three members of the other side hostage, and several people received bullet wounds from the guns of the Army of God or were beaten up. Huge fires were lit, and ambulances were prevented from getting in to treat the wounded.
A statement from the community assembly tells how Other Campaign adherents were tied to poles blindfolded and left like this for twelve hours, “they were brutally beaten and tortured while they poured gasoline over them, saying ‘we are going to burn you alive’ ”. Agents of the State Preventive Police “were already in place, but when they heard the shots did nothing. They only approached when the aggression was over”. Government officials who were present “did nothing, only gave statements to the press to confuse people”.
The incidents were grossly misrepresented in much of the press, despite the presence of human rights observers to monitor the situation. What had happened was presented solely as a conflict over timber, as it was precipitated by one of the evangelicals illegally cutting down five trees. He did this without gaining the permission of the community authorities, necessary because trees are protected in Mitziton.
What the press did not say was that this action was clearly one of deliberate provocation, intended to incite violence and division, and to weaken and discredit the community assembly which represents the majority of the population. Nor did they say that the paramilitary groups have the full support and protection of the state government to attack with impunity. Finally, they presented the events as a ‘mere inter-religious conflict’, rather than a symptom of the struggle by many indigenous groups to prevent the loss of their lands to the San Cristobal - Palenque highway, which in Mitziton would destroy 40 hectares of pine and oak forest, 10 hectares of community farmland, and two wells. Finally, they failed to indicate that this attack demonstrates once again the government’s intention to put an end to all the political and social struggles and movements connected in any way to the Zapatista movement and its sympathisers.
Background
Mitziton is a Tzotzil community situated in a rural part of the municipality of San Cristobal, next to the headquarters of military zone XXXI Rancho Nuevo. The origin of the community lies in the expulsion of over 30,000 residents from San Juan Chamula in 1976, when the ‘traditional’ Catholics broke with the ‘progressive’ Catholic diocese of San Cristobal, which was then following the teachings of Liberation Theology under Bishop Samuel Ruiz. Evangelical protestant groups were also expelled.
As in many communities in Chiapas, therefore, there are political and religious differences. Approximately 500 residents of Mitziton are Catholics and adherents of the Other Campaign, while 98 are members of an evangelical religious organisation called ‘Eagle Wings’ (Alas de Aguila). They oppose the Other Campaign, and are also members of the Army of God (Ejercito de Dios), a branch of their church. The majority in Mitziton call this group ‘the un-cooperative ones’ (non-cooperantes) because they do not take part in community work. “These ‘soldiers of Christ’ are nothing more than a paramilitary organisation”, they say.
The members of the Eagle Wings church are followers of Pastor Carmen Diaz Lopez, who was expelled from Mitziton in 2001, for the alleged trafficking of undocumented Central American migrants. He is said to have persuaded other evangelicals not to cooperate in community activities, and is alleged to be financing the Eagle Wings church.
The Army of God emerged from an armed group called ‘My Brother’s Keeper’. Its stated aim is to protect its evangelical members from expulsion, displacement or harassment, and to promote their development and advancement. It has a politico-military structure, and its Commander-in-chief is Esdras Alonso Gonzalez. In June 2006, he, along with the Eagle Wings and other local evangelical churches, presented 120 male and female members of the Army of God to a religious ceremony in San Cristobal. They had had military and religious training, wore military-style uniforms, and marched in military cadence. Since then the organisation has continued to grow.
Resistance to the road
Construction of the San Cristobal to Palenque toll road was due to begin in 2009, as one of the first steps in the plan to develop the Palenque - Agua Azul area into a luxury paradise for ecotourism. In February, the Chiapas state government announced that it was to begin preparations for work on the 8-mile stretch of road between San Cristobal and the Rancho Nuevo military base, and engineers went to Mitziton, without asking permission, and told local people they were measuring for the super-highway, for which Mitziton was to be ‘kilometre zero’.
The community met together in assembly in March, and decided to reject the highway which would cut their ejido in half, destroying their homes, lands, forests and water sources. They issued a formal statement of resistance in April. “The bad government has violated our rights as indigenous Tzotziles, since at no time have they told us they want to build the highway here, and they never asked permission to enter our territory and take measurements...We will organise and defend ourselves, we are not alone”. They explained that the highway would destroy 10 family homes and 10 hectares of land where they grow potatoes, beans, radishes and corn. The highway would also destroy 40 hectares of forest.... “The bad government clearly knows that our community produces tree seedlings of different species, so we will never allow the destruction of our land. We do not benefit at all from building the highway, only big businesses benefit. The bad government make promises and promises and all that happens is imprisonment, torture, abductions and other violations of human rights”.
The plans for the highway accentuated the differences between the two sections of the community; the evangelical group were in favour of the toll road passing through Mitziton lands, and were in support of, and supported by, the PRD state government. “Ever since we adhered to the EZLN’s Other Campaign, we saw that they began to publicly show off with their uniforms so we can see them,” a Mitzitón spokesperson told Proceso magazine.
Killing in Mitziton
On 21st July 2009, 30 Other Campaign adherents, following an agreement by the Mitziton assembly, went to measure their communal lands. They were attacked by 60 members of the evangelical group with machetes, slingshots, clubs and stones. A truck carrying five people, two of them armed with shotguns, was driven at high speed towards the group, running them over, killing Aurelio Diaz Hernandez and injuring five other men who were taken to hospital. Witnesses had no doubt the killing was intentional. The victims say that the Army of God members are heavily armed, and that they use the truck involved in the killing for people trafficking, and for transporting illegally felled timber. They say that two pastors of the Eagle Wings church had seriously threatened the Other Campaign members during the two days prior to the incident, including shooting bullets into a truck.
The protests continue
Mitziton residents held a protest march soon after the killing, which was joined by people from many parts of the region. The protest, in the form of a mock funeral procession, demanded the cancellation of the highway from San Cristobal to Palenque, the self determination of communities, and justice for Aurelio Diaz Hernandez. For six hours, they marched on the Pan-American Highway, carrying a symbolic casket. Each hour, they permitted the line of backed-up cars to pass in both directions and then blocked the highway for another hour. Details of the killing, the demonstrations, and the background, were published in La Jornada, Proceso, and by the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Human Rights Centre (Frayba).
Following this, the commander-in chief of the Army of God, Esdras Alonso, sued Frayba, the community leaders in Mitziton, and Hermann Bellinghausen from La Jornada, for defamation of character and blocking the highway. The Army of God had become more visible on the streets of San Cristobal, marching in military formation and military uniform and commanded by military officers, a symbol of force and power.
Soon after, Mitziton came together with two other affected indigenous communities, Jotolá and San Sebastián Bachajón, to campaign together against the planned new highway. A six-hour roadblock was held by over a thousand Other Campaign adherents, followed by a press conference. Representatives denounced the current situation, “we are faced with bad neoliberal projects that offer no benefit to indigenous people in any way, and the plundering of our land, which threatens our very presence on it”. Other Campaign members from Mitzitón condemned the fact that after a month there had been no arrest made for the murder of Aurelio Diaz Hernandez. They also reported that “the paramilitaries continue to threaten us with their guns, firing them often into the air during the evening and night” and that public officials from the Ministry of Communication and Transportation had “made new attempts to trick us into signing an assembly certificate to give them permission to pass through our territory to build the highway to Palenque.” They continued “the non-cooperative ones from the Army of God, the ones who killed our comrade, continue to arrive with their truck full of migrant brothers. We want to prevent further smuggling in our territory, to make sure none of the people of our community will ever be run over or attacked again”.
In conclusion, the representatives of the three communities explained that they had met on this occasion to defend their land, their rights and their indigenous culture that “the bad government wants to destroy and continue destroying like they did with our ancestors.” The three communities demonstrated against the road together again later in the year in San Cristobal.
The Chiapas state government continued to deny that the route of the road had been decided, while engineers visited communities seeking approval for the super-highway to pass through their lands. On August 18, after the state government’s denials were published in the media, agents of the Secretary of Communications and Transportation went to Mitzitón asking them to sign a paper stating that the assembly had agreed to let the toll road pass through their territory. Ejido members refused. Threats continued, as when on August 24th, one month after the murder, several members of the Army of God entered a house in Mitzitón, brandishing machetes, and told a woman they were going to kill her husband.
A visitor to the community in September commented: “Earth movers are at Mitziton's door, ready to carve up their land for the new toll road to Palenque. Meanwhile, the heavily armed Army of God members continue to threaten violence. They beat up a 17 year old boy and cut down the hand-painted signs proclaiming resistance to the toll road. The ejido commissioners have denounced them as criminals who traffic in ‘undocumented brothers.’ The commissioners allege that the state government has known about this human trafficking for 10 years and has just covered it up”.
However, in a surprise move in October, the Chiapas government finally announced the route of the new road, which had previously been surrounded in secrecy. Instead of adopting the original plan drawn up by the Ministry of Communications and Transportation, which would have cut Mitziton in half, the state chose an alternative route, which did not pass through the community.
The state government had become notorious for spreading lies and disinformation, so people did not know what to believe, even more so in December 2009, when, in an astonishing press release the Chiapas governor, Juan Sabines Guerrero, said he had “suspended work on the San Cristobal - Palenque highway in response to the high tension in the area”. He went on to say, with stunning duplicity, “in Chiapas, the people command and the government obeys. The people have the right to self-determination”.
Events of February 2010 prior to the attack
The first statement issued in February by the Mitziton authorities denounced the theft of the ejido’s official seal, which had been given by the thief to the Army of God, enabling them to issue false statements as if from the ejido. The second denounced the fact that the killer of Aurelio Dias Hernandez had been released from prison after four months ‘as the killing was unintentional’, and was now organising paramilitary activity.
The third statement, issued on 20th February 2010, denounced the fact that four heavily armed masked men wearing civilian clothes, assumed to be federal agents, had illegally attempted to kidnap one of the community leaders on the outskirts of their community. Fortunately, people were engaged in community work nearby and came to his assistance, leading to the armed men retreating at high speed. They statement continues by saying that they are well aware that state and federal ministers are working in conjunction with the paramilitary group the Army of God ‘Eagle Wings’.
“We want to say to the bad government that they should respect our community and our agreements, because here the people command, and if anything happens, it will be the government’s responsibility. We know very well that all the repression we are suffering is because we have defended our territory, but we will not allow our land to be destroyed by the passage of the San Cristobal Palenque highway, because it is the only land we have”.
The letter is signed “from the organised people of Mitziton, adherents of the Other Campaign. The people united will never be defeated”.
IMPORTANT ISSUES ARISING
- The spreading of disinformation and lies by the media, at the behest of all three tiers of government. “They represent us as savage Indians”.
- The determination by the state authorities to push ahead with their planned tourism and infrastructure developments whatever the cost, and hence the use of any means necessary to destroy opposition to their plans.
- The increasing use of paramilitary groups, often disguised as evangelical organisations, as instruments of counterinsurgency, to repress, intimidate, torture, threaten, injure and attack social movements, especially those connected in any way with the Zapatistas.
- This is the second time this year when members of paramilitary groups appear to have deliberately shot members of their own side in an attempt to give the impression that Zapatistas or Other Campaign adherents are using guns. This would give the Mexican army a pretext to attack and destroy Zapatista communities – the undoubted aim.
- Despite the horrific number of killings currently taking place on a daily basis in Mexico related to the ‘drug wars’, despite the carnage that is Ciudad Juarez and the explosion in organised crime, there are more federal troops in Chiapas now than in any other state in Mexico.
- This is not the end of the story. We are asked to write letters of support, and remain vigilant.
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FEBRUARY 2010 CHIAPAS/ZAPATISTA NEWS SUMMARY
1. Paramilitaries Ambush Bolom Ajaw Zapatistas - On February 6, PRI members from Bolom Ajaw ambushed Zapatistas from Bolom Ajaw. The Chiapas Attorney General reported 1 PRI member dead from a bullet wound and 11 injured by bullets. The Zapatista Junta in Morelia reported 1 Zapatista shot and gravely injured, while the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center reported 3 Zapatistas injured by bullets. The PRI members are suspected of still belonging to the Organization for the Defense of Indigenous and Campesino Rights (Opddic), a paramilitary gang, although they claimed leaving that paramilitary grouping in a much-publicized media show more than a year ago. It is clear that the Attorney General believes the Zapatistas fired weapons, thus violating the 15-year truce. The Zapatistas are claiming that they were not armed and claiming that the PRI death and injuries were caused by friendly fire. According to a detailed report now available from Frayba, PRI members were on several sides of Bolom Ajaw and were shooting at the same time. It states that some PRI members were caught in the crossfire and injured by the flying bullets, as were 2 Zapatistas. Bolom Ajaw has a spectacular virgin waterfall and is adjacent to the Agua Azul Cascades tourist area. The government has responded by heavily militarizing the area around Bolom Ajaw. There are more federal troops in Chiapas than in any other state in Mexico, once again demonstrating that the government is more afraid of Zapatista thought and practice spreading than it is of drug trafficking and organized crime spreading.
2. Provocations in Mitzitón by Army of God - The Mitzitón Ejido issued two denunciations this month. The first reported the theft of the ejido's official seal. The man who stole it turned it over to a paramilitary Army of God faction in the ejido. He was placed in the village jail. After his detention, shots were heard coming from the location where the Army of God meets and San Cristobal's municipal president threatened to use the full weight of the law against ejido authorities if they didn't release the man who stole the seal. The second denunciation states that: 1) the man responsible for the death of Aurelio Diaz Hernandez was released from prison after only four months because the judge found the killing unintentional, and now that man is organizing paramilitary activity, saying that the government supports them (the paramilitaries); 2) the municipal president of San Cristobal named a second rural agent from among the group of paramilitaries, raising concerns about economic support coming to the paramilitary faction; 3) members of the Army of God held a meeting on February 7 in which they agreed to purchase weapons to "finish off" the organization in the community (referring to the Other Campaign). Allegedly, they also agreed to detain and disappear an ejido authority belonging to the Other Campaign and a representative of the Frayba Human Rights Center. (See, Items #3 and #4 below). Moreover, they denounced the fact that the San Cristobal municipal government appointed an Army of God member as a rural agent and that because the paramilitaries stole the ejido's seal, they are now able to issue false documents from the ejido signed by the paramilitary rural agent.
3. Mitziton Denounces Attempted Kidnapping - Mitziton authorities denounced that on February 20 four masked men tried to kidnap one of their leaders, Manuel Díaz Heredia, as he was walking along the road. The fact that many villagers were nearby saved him. The denunciation alleged that the masked men were federal agents from the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI in Spanish), a Mexican agency similar to the FBI .
4. Mitziton Confrontation Leaves 7 Injured - The evangelical faction in Mitziton cut down 8 trees without permission, so ejido authorities, adherents to the Zapatista Other Campaign, took the trees to a municipal agency. In reprisal, on Sunday, February 28, the evangelicals detained and beat up 3 Other Campaign members, tying them to posts. When some of their companeros went to rescue them, the evangelicals shot at them and three received bullet wounds. During the fight, one evangelical was gravely injured by 2 bullets and 3 others were beaten up. The Other Campaign members were taken to a hospital, as was the evangelical with bullet wounds. The other 3 evangelicals who were beaten up in the fight were taken hostage and remained overnight in the back of a pick-up truck because the Other Campaign members would not allow the truck to leave the community until their companeros were released. Other Campaign members blocked the highway with trucks and huge fires. On Monday, more than 200 police arrived in Mitziton, defused the situation and oversaw the exchange of all those detained.
5. Supreme Court Overturns Chiapas Election Reform - On February 15, Mexico's Supreme Court overturned the election "reform" passed by the Chiapas state Congress several months ago and ordered it to carry out direct and popular elections in such a manner that the elected municipal council members could take office on January 1, 2011. The Congress had passed legislation giving its members the power to appoint the 118 municipal councils. The purpose of the "reform" legislation was to change the timing of local elections to the same time as federal ones in order to save money. That legislation has been the subject of great criticism and controversy in the state.
6. Human Rights Defender Kidnapped and Threatened with Death - Margarita Martinez was kidnapped in San Cristobal by unidentified men while she was on her way to pick her son up from school. They put a plastic bag over her face so she could not see them, put her in a vehicle, hit her in the face, punched her in the ribs, threatened her with death and told her to stop pursuing the criminal complaint she filed in Comitan against authorities for an illegal November break-in of her residence. Margarita and her husband, Adolfo Guzman Ortiz, work for the human rights NGO "Enlace, Comunicación and Capacitación," with offices in the city of Comitan, Chiapas. Guzman Ortiz has also received death threats, which were reported in our January News Summary. The criminal complaint alleges police agents committed the break-in. Frayba is expressing great concern for the safety of this couple.
In Other Parts of Mexico...
1. Carlos Montemayor Dies - Award-winning author and translator, Carlos Montemayor, lost his battle with cancer and died on February 28. He was an advocate for indigenous peoples throughout Mexico and translated many indigenous languages into Spanish. He was a good friend to the Zapatistas and a voice of logic and reason in Mexico's political struggles. His death is a big loss to those from below in Mexico.
2. 16 Youths Assassinated in Ciudad Juarez - The month of February began in Ciudad Juarez with the murder of 16 young men at a party. Gunmen entered the party, separated the males from the females and then opened fire on the young men. Ciudad Juarez has suffered some of the worst violence in Mexico's war against drugs. In 2007, the city recorded 190 executions associated with narco-violence. The number jumped to 2,290 after federal troops began to arrive in 2008, and last year more than 3,400 executions were recorded. According to some NGOs, Juarez has suffered 35% of all the deaths from the drug war, seen 10,000 children orphaned and caused 60,000 families to flee to El Paso. Juarez is across the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo from El Paso, Texas, connected by an international bridge. Juarez citizens and business leaders are so fed up with the government's inability to protect them that they have once again threatened to request the presence of United Nations troops to bring about peace. Juarez residents also held protests calling for the ouster of Mexican president Felipe Calderon, the governor of Chihuahua (state) and the mayor of Juarez, as well as a referendum on the removal of the federal Army from Juarez.
3. Soldiers Beat 2 Youths in Guerrero, One Dies - In the mountains of Guerrero, a young man died after being severely beaten by soldiers who demanded money from him and his friend so that the soldiers could continue drinking. The friend lived to tell the story to local authorities. Local NGOs in Guerrero report that most of the state is completely militarized, that social protest has been criminalized and social leaders persecuted.
4. Obama Requests More Money for Merida Initiative - President Obama's budget request for Fiscal Year 2011, submitted to Congress on February 1, included an additional 310 million dollars for the Merida Initiative; that is, for Mexico's war against drug trafficking. The new funds would be used to strengthen institutions and security forces and less for sending equipment.
5. In Oaxaca, Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno Is Free! - An appeals court upheld the decision of a district court judge in Oaxaca granting a protective order to Juan Manuel Martinez Moreno, an APPO member wrongly accused of the murder of Indymedia journalist Brad Will. The Attorney General of the Republic appealed that decision, but lost the appeal, so Martinez Moreno is now free.
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Compiled monthly by the Chiapas Support Committee.
The primary sources for our information are: La Jornada, Enlace Zapatista and the Fray Bartolome de las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba).
We encourage folks to distribute this information widely, but please include our name and contact information in the distribution. Gracias/Thanks.
News Summaries from previous months are now posted on our web page.
http://www.chiapas-support.org
_______________________________________________________
Chiapas Support Committee/Comité de Apoyo a Chiapas
P.O. Box 3421, Oakland, CA 94609
Tel: (510) 654-9587
Email: cezmat@igc.org
http://www.chiapas-support.org
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COUNTRY UPDATES: Chile, Peru, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala
Carlos Quiroz has the details on his Peruanista blog: http://peruanista.blogspot.com/2010/03/afro-peruvian-activist-in-hunger-strike.html
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Celebrating Compromises in Uruguay: José Mujica Inaugurated as President
Written by Benjamin Dangl
The smell of fried food and sausage sandwiches filled the Montevideo air as José “Pepe” Mujica assumed the presidency of Uruguay on Monday, March 1st. Street vendors lined the inauguration parade route selling Uruguayan flags to a boisterous crowd which cheered, “Olé, olé, olé, Pepe, Pepe.” Mujica, a former Tupamaro guerilla who was imprisoned and tortured under the country’s dictatorship, stood in front of the multitude with his wife and vice president as he led the crowd in singing folksongs that were outlawed during military rule.
Link to full article: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/uruguay-archives-48/2385-celebrating-compromises-in-uruguay-mujica-inaugurated-as-president
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http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5541/to_resist_is_to_survive/
‘To Resist is to Survive
Nearly 10 years after Argentina’s economic collapse sparked a movement, worker-run cooperatives endure another crisis.
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HONDURAS: US and IMF Funding Resumes; System of Abuses Continues
Remember General Romeo Vasquez, the military's no.1 golpista (SOA grad) who Lobo initially confirmed as head of the army's high command and then, when this led to an international outcry, ended up stepping down? Well he just got what is probably the most highly prized sinecure that the Honduran state has to offer: the top position at the state telecom company Hondutel. Pretty outrageous stuff. And, meanwhile, rumors are growing that the Lobo government's intention is to privatize Hondutel (a move that was strongly resisted by Zelaya)
Romeo Vásquez, nuevo gerente de Hondutel
El 17 de junio de 1976 y durante el mandato del general Juan Alberto Melgar se fundó la Empresa Hondureña de Telecomunicaciones (Hondutel).
09.03.10 - Actualizado: 09.03.10 09:03pm - Iván Vásquez: ivan.vasquez@elheraldo.hn
Tegucigalpa,
Honduras
Orden general. A 12 días de su remoción como jefe del Estado Mayor de las Fuerzas Amadas, el general Romeo Vásquez Velásquez fue nombrado en la gerencia de Hondutel, una empresa que fue dejada al borde de la quiebra por los gobiernos anteriores.
Vásquez Velásquez, un militar protagónico en los acontecimientos del 28 de junio, fue nombrado ayer como gerente en el marco de una reunión del directorio, efectuado en la Secretaría de Finanzas.
La subgerencia recae en el ex perito del Ministerio Público, Jesús Mejía.
Inteligencia
En conferencia de prensa, Vásquez Velásquez advirtió que combatirá con "inteligencia" la defraudación telefónica de llamadas internacionales, conocido como tráfico gris.
Hondutel ha explicado que delincuentes profesionales utilizan tecnología para convertir llamadas internacionales como si fueran locales. Mediante esta creciente operación dejan de ingresar millones de lempiras a las arcas estatales.
"Una de las especialidades que tengo es la inteligencia y la inteligencia hay que aplicarla de manera adecuada para tratar de tener la mayor información y poner los correctivos que sean necesarios", expresó.
Primeras acciones
"Agradecemos al presidente de la República, Porfirio Lobo, por su respaldo y por depositarnos esta gran responsabilidad, que además es un reto, para tratar de manera adecuada con la responsabilidad que se tiene con esta empresa de los hondureños. Tenemos la obligación de levantarla", expresó Vásquez Velásquez.
Se manifestó a favor de efectuar un estudio conocido como FODA, mediante el cual se conocen las fortalezas y se trata de mermar las debilidades de la empresa. "Haremos un estudio completo de cuál es el mejor plan de inversión y cómo rescatar a la empresa", indicó.
El general se mostró escéptico respecto a cierta información negativa en cuanto a las finanzas de la empresa porque se debe efectuar un análisis profundo, identificar los problemas y luego solucionarlos.
Vásquez Velásquez respondió a los periodistas que los "militares saben de todo" y que lo acompaña la experiencia obtenida en el directorio del Instituto de Previsión Militar (IPM) y en el Hospital Militar, ambas entidades pertenecientes a las FF AA de Honduras.
"Fui presidente del IPM durante cinco años y vicepresidente de Lafarge Incehsa", expresó el nuevo funcionario.
Demanda millonaria
El nombrado subgerente de Hondutel, Jesús Mejía, negó estar vinculado con la telefonía privada Pronto, propiedad de Inversiones Apolo, que interpuso un millonario proceso administrativo en contra de Hondutel.
Al respecto el ingeniero Mejía es citado, en una opinión legal emitida por el Ministerio Público el 6 de marzo de 2009, como el autor de un dictamen perital en el cual se apoyan los asesores legales de Inversiones Apolo, para que la Fiscalía cierre la denuncia por tráfico anormal de llamadas. Hondutel teme que Pronto interponga una millonaria demanda en contra de ellos por daños y perjuicios.
Hondutel perdió en el 2009 más de 80,000 clientes, situación que mermó los ingresos de la estatal.
Además, existe el desafío del personal supernumerario. Esta semana se informó de cuatro escenarios para Hondutel: mantenerla 100% estatal, hacerla una empresa de capital mixto, buscar subsidiarias y desincorporar a Hondutel y concentrar al Estado en su papel de regulador y subsidiario.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/world/americas/05briefs-clinton.html?ref=world
U.S. to Resume Aid to Honduras
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that the Obama administration would resume aid to Honduras that was suspended after a coup last year and urged Latin American nations to recognize the new Honduran government. Mrs. Clinton said the Honduran government that took office in January was democratically elected, was reconciling the population split by last June’s coup and deserved normal relations with countries that cut ties after the ouster of the former president. But Human Rights Watch said opponents of the coup had been killed, detained and attacked over the past month.
Given the control that US Treasury has over decision-making at the IMF, this is a predictable consequence of the administration's decision to restore all aid to Honduras. This is a real godsend for Lobo as he will now have access to signficant IMF SDR funds
IMF recognizes new Honduras government -
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund recognizes and will deal with the administration of President Porfirio Lobo in Honduras, an IMF spokesman said on Friday, a day after the U.S. urged reluctant Latin American countries to restore ties with the country.
IMF spokesman Andreas Adriano told Reuters the IMF planned to send a mission to Honduras to conduct an economic assessment, the first since last year's coup that toppled President Manuel Zelaya.
Asked whether the IMF had received a request for funding from Honduras, Adriano added: "We have not received any request for financial assistance."
(Reporting by Lesley Wroughton)
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Clinton Tries to Mend Honduras Dispute on Central American Tour
March 05, 2010, 1:01 AM EST By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on her first trip to Central America since last June’s coup in Honduras, announced the U.S. is restoring aid to the country and urged its neighbors to normalize ties following the election of a new president.
“Honduras has taken important and necessary steps that deserve the recognition and the normalization of relations,” Clinton said yesterday in Costa Rica, citing moves by President Porfirio Lobo to form a unity government and establish a truth commission to investigate abuses after President Manuel Zelaya was ousted and sent into exile by Honduras’s military.
While the Obama administration joined Latin American states in strongly opposing the coup last year, the U.S. disappointed many in the region by recognizing the election of Lobo, a conservative National Party candidate, without insisting that Zelaya be restored to power first.
Part of Clinton’s mission during a six-nation regional tour, which culminates today in a planned meeting in Guatemala with Lobo and four other Central American and Caribbean presidents, is to mend fences with nations that criticized the U.S. for capitulating to politicians who backed the removal of Zelaya, an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Soldiers rousted Zelaya at gunpoint and put him on a plane to Costa Rica in his pajamas after the Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant for him. Opponents alleged he was trying to rewrite the constitution to stay in power.
OAS Suspension
Honduras was suspended from the Organization of American States, and excluded from a new 32-nation regional group that met recently in Mexico.
“Other countries in the region say they want to wait a while” to recognize the new government, Clinton told reporters. “I don’t know what they’re waiting for,” she said, adding that “President Lobo and his administration have taken the steps necessary to restore democracy.”
Since Lobo took office, Honduras has restored diplomatic ties with 29 countries that broke relations following the coup, Lobo’s spokesman Bladimir Bacca said today in a telephone interview. Ten countries, including major economies Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina, insist the election of Lobo is illegitimate because voting was overseen by a government installed by the coup leaders.
‘Restoring Aid’
Clinton sent a letter on March 3 to Congress “notifying them that we will be restoring aid to Honduras,” she said at a meeting of foreign and trade ministers in San Jose, Costa Rica. Clinton spoke at a meeting of Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas, a gathering of 17 Western Hemisphere nations dedicated to increasing economic opportunities.
Honduras, the second-poorest country in Central America after Nicaragua, was hobbled by as much as $200 million in lost investment since Zelaya was overthrown, according to Jesus Canahuati, vice president of the Business Council of Latin America in Honduras. The country also lost more than $200 million in frozen international aid and loans.
Following Zelaya’s ouster, the U.S. administration suspended more than $30 million in funding for military assistance, as well as development projects through the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Millennium
Challenge Corporation.
Meanwhile, several U.S.-based human rights groups and nine members of Congress urged Clinton yesterday to demand a thorough investigation of what they asserted were ongoing human rights abuses under the Lobo government.
‘Human Rights Situation’
The Congressional letter, signed by John Conyers, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary committee, among others, urged Clinton to send “a strong unambiguous message that the human rights situation in Honduras will be a critical component of upcoming decisions regarding the further normalization of relations, as well as the resumption of financial assistance.”
Human Rights Watch said abuses against coup opponents continued after Lobo’s January swearing-in. Honduran authorities should investigate murders and attacks in the past month which may be “politically motivated,” the New York-based group said in a March 3 letter to Honduran attorney general Luis Alberto Rubi.
Clinton’s visit to Guatemala will be a chance for Lobo to seek support for his country’s return to the OAS, Bacca said.
Push for Recognition
The Lobo government is also pushing for international lenders, including the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank, to recognize the new government, William Chong, the country’s new finance minister, told Radio America.
Presidents Alvaro Colom of Guatemala, Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, Oscar Arias of Costa Rica and Leonel Fernandez of the Dominican Republic will join Lobo and Clinton today in Guatemala City, Guatemalan foreign ministry spokeswoman Andrea Furlan said. Furlan said Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega did not respond to an invitation.
Also on Clinton’s agenda will be concerns over drug trafficking and public safety in the region.
Guatemala’s national police chief and top anti-narcotics official were arrested this week and charged with a shooting last year over stolen cocaine that left five police officers dead.
The Merida Initiative, a U.S. program to combat drug trafficking primarily in Mexico, contains limited funding for Central America.
Guatemala’s Colom told Clinton last month that “our security forces are overwhelmed with the challenge posed by various criminal organizations,” said Francisco Villagran de Leon, the country’s ambassador to the U.S.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-05/clinton-tries-to-mend-honduras-dispute-on-central-american-tour.html
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Clinton Presses Region to Recognize Honduras
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: March 5, 2010
MEXICO CITY — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ended a five-day tour of Latin America Friday with a lightning trip to Guatemala, where she promised Central American presidents more help to fight drug trafficking and repeated her call for more countries to recognize the new government of Honduras.
The new Honduran president, Porfirio Lobo, attended the meeting in Guatemala City, an appearance that signaled a step toward normalizing relations with neighbors El Salvador and Guatemala.
Many countries in the hemisphere have refrained from recognizing Mr. Lobo’s government because it came to power with an election held under a government installed by a coup last June. Washington has argued that Mr. Lobo was chosen in fair elections that had been scheduled before the coup.
On Thursday in San Jose, Costa Rica, Ms. Clinton announced that the United States was restoring more than $30 million in aid to Honduras it had suspended after the coup.
“We support the work that President Lobo is doing to promote national unity and strengthen democracy,” Ms. Clinton said at a news conference in Guatemala on Friday after talks with the Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom, The Associated Press reported.
Cota Rica and Panama, who also attended the meeting on Friday, have already recognized the new Honduran government. The leftist Nicaraguan government of Daniel Ortega, who did not attend the meeting, is unlikely to do so.
Earlier on this trip, she had received a cautious response to the idea from Brazil, one of the holdouts. Appearing with Ms. Clinton on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Celso Amorim described some of Mr. Lobo’s actions since taking office as positive, but would not commit to restoring full relations with Honduras. A military coup “is the kind of thing that cannot be easily absorbed,” he said.
In her discussions on drug trafficking, Ms. Clinton promised that the United States would work more closely with Central America, where drug cartels have increased their presence in response to the crackdown in Mexico.
Although Ms. Clinton said the United States would help improve maritime security and support efforts to strengthen the police and judiciary in Central America, she did not make any specific promise on the amount of aid Washington might offer.
Since 2008, Congress has approved $1.3 billion in antidrug aid for Mexico and $248 million for Central America under the Merida Initiative.
Video: Hillary Clinton in Latin America
http://www.soaw.org/presente/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=274&Itemid=81
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Hillary Clinton's "Damage Control" Trip to Latin America
By Mark Weisbrot
This column was published by The Guardian Unlimited on March 5, 2010. If anyone wants to reprint it, please include a link to the original.
Hillary Clinton's Latin America tour is turning out to be about as successful as George W. Bush's visit in 2005, when he ended up leaving Argentina a day ahead of schedule just to get the hell out of town. The main difference is that she is not being greeted with protests and riots. For that she can thank the positive media image that her boss, President Obama, has managed to maintain in the region, despite his continuation of his predecessor's policies.
But she has been even more diplomatically clumsy that Bush, who at least recognized that there were serious problems and knew what not to say. "The Honduras crisis has been managed to a successful conclusion," Clinton said in Buenos Aires, adding that "it was done without violence."
This is rubbing salt into her hosts' wounds, as they see the military overthrow of President Mel Zelaya last June, and the United States' subsequent efforts to legitimize the dictatorship there as not only a failure but a threat to democracy throughout the region.
It is also an outrageous thing to say, given the political killings, beatings, mass arrests, and torture that the coup government used in order to maintain power and repress the pro-democracy movement. The worst part is that they are still committing these crimes.
Today nine members of the U.S. Congress - including some Democrats in Congressional leadership positions -- wrote to Secretary Clinton and to the White House about this violence. They wrote:
"Since President Lobo's inauguration, several prominent opponents of the coup have been attacked. On February 3rd, Vanessa Zepeda, a nurse and union organizer who had previously received death threats linked to her activism in the resistance movement, was strangled and her body dumped from a vehicle in Tegucigalpa. On February 15th, Julio Funes Benitez, a member of the SITRASANAA trade union and an active member of the national resistance movement, was shot and killed by unknown gunmen on a motorcycle outside his home. Most recently, Claudia Brizuela, an opposition activist, was murdered in her home on February 24th. Unfortunately these are only three of the numerous attacks against activists and their families..."
Secretary Clinton will meet Friday with "Pepe" Lobo of Honduras, who was elected president after a campaign marked by media shutdowns and police repression of dissent. The Organization of American States and European Union refused to send official observers to the election.
The Members of Congress also asked that Clinton, in her meeting with Lobo, "send a strong unambiguous message that the human rights situation in Honduras will be a critical component of upcoming decisions regarding the further normalizations of relations, as well as the resumption of financial assistance."
This was the third letter that Clinton received from Congress on human rights in Honduras. On August 7 and September 25 Members of Congress from Hillary Clinton's own Democratic Party wrote to her to complain of the ongoing human rights abuses in Honduras and impossibility of holding free elections under these conditions. They did not even get a perfunctory reply until January 28, more than four months after the second letter was sent. This is an unusual level of disrespect for the elected representatives of one's own political party.
For these New Cold Warriors, it seems that all that has mattered is that they got rid of one social democratic president of one small, poor country.
In Brazil, Clinton continued her Cold War strategy by throwing in some gratuitous insults toward Venezuela. This is a bit like going to a party and telling the host how much you don't like his friends. After ritual denunciations of Venezuela, Clinton said "We wish Venezuela were looking more to its south and looking at Brazil and looking at Chile and other models of a successful country. "
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim responded with diplomacy, but there was no mistaking his strong rebuff to her insults: He said that he agreed with "one point" that Clinton made, "that Venezuela should look southwards more . . . that is why we have invited Venezuela to join MERCOSUR as a full member country." Ms. Clinton's right wing allies in Paraguay's legislature - the remnants of that country's dictatorship and 60 years of one-party rule - are currently holding up Venezuela's membership in the South American trade block. This is not what she wanted to hear from Brazil.
The Brazilians also rejected Clinton's rather undiplomatic efforts to pressure them to join Washington in calling for new sanctions against Iran. "It is
not prudent to push Iran against a wall," said Brazilian president Lula da Silva." The prudent thing is to establish negotiations."
"We will not simply bow down to an evolving consensus if we do not agree," Amorim said at a press conference with Clinton.
Secretary Clinton made one concession to Argentina, calling for the UK to sit down with the Argentine government and discuss their dispute over the Malvinas (Falklands) Islands. But it seems unlikely that Washington will do anything to make this happen.
For now, the next crucial test will be Honduras: will Clinton continue Washington's efforts to whitewash the Honduran government's repression? Or will she listen to the rest of the hemisphere as well as her own Democratic Members of Congress and insist on some concessions regarding human rights, including the return of Mel Zelaya to his country (as the Brazilians also emphasized)? This story may not get much U.S. media attention, but Latin America will be watching.
Mark Weisbrot is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington, D.C. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy.
The Center for Economic and Policy Research is an independent, nonpartisan think tank that was established to promote democratic debate on the most important economic and social issues that affect people's lives. CEPR's Advisory Board includes Nobel Laureate economists Robert Solow and Joseph Stiglitz; Janet Gornick, Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Director of the Luxembourg Income Study; Richard Freeman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University; and Eileen Appelbaum, Professor and Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University.
Center for Economic and Policy Research, 1611 Connecticut Ave, NW, Suite 400, Washington, DC 20009
Phone: (202) 293-5380, Fax: (202) 588-1356
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50549
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HAITI: Update
...When the professors and politicians say they will help Haitian workers by giving them jobs, what they really mean is that they plan to take the jobs away from Dominican, Mexican, and Central American workers -- and pay the Haitians even less for doing the same work...
by David L. Wilson, MRZine
March 4, 2010
Within days of a January 12 earthquake that devastated much of southern Haiti, the New York Times was using the disaster to promote a United Nations plan for drastically expanding the country's garment assembly industry, which employs low-paid workers to stitch apparel for duty-free export, mainly to the U.S. market. This, according to several opinion pieces in the Times, is the way to rebuild Haiti.
The outlines of the plan were drawn up a year earlier, in January 2009, by Oxford economist Paul Collier, but the leading proponents of development through sweatshops have been liberal Democrats in the United States. [...]
Read the full article: http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2010/wilson040310.html
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CHILE: Government declares martial law in central Chile after earthquake
Chilean President-elect Sebastian Piñera prepares to take office March 11
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/chile-archives-34/2367-chiles-president-elect-starts-cashing-in
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The true impact is beginning to take hold:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/02/world/americas/02chile.html?th&emc=th
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The WSJ praised the Pinochet regime for earthquake preparedness but...
A piece by Naomi Klein from the Nation Magazine:
http://www.alternet.org/story/145897/naomi_klein%3A_how_socialism_protected_chileans_from_earthquake_fall-out
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Wall Street Journal cites Chilean earthquake to praise Pinochet
World Socialist Web Site By David Walsh 2 March 2010
In an editorial published Monday, “A Tale of Two Quakes,” the Wall Street Journal compares the outcome of the massive earthquake that hit Chile on Saturday with the dimensions of the human disaster that has unfolded in Haiti.
Citing the far greater scale of death and destruction in Haiti, the newspaper praises the comparatively higher level of preparedness for such a disaster in Chile, and writes: “But such preparation is also the luxury of a prosperous country, in contrast to destitute and ill-governed Haiti. Chile has benefited enormously in recent decades from the free-market reforms it passed in the 1970s under dictator Augusto Pinochet.”
One wants to respond, to coin a phrase, “Lie, but at least make sense.”
The Haitian people live in dire misery above all because the small island has been under the direct thumb of the US for a century, having experienced military occupations, some lasting for decades, on several occasions. The US propped up the regimes of the hated and brutal Duvaliers, father and son, for thirty years, from 1957 to 1986.
In the most recent period, Washington and the global financial community have imposed “free market” policies on Haiti—precisely the policies that the Journal claims saved Chile from a massive loss of life in its earthquake—with disastrous consequences for the Haitian population. The small farmers in Haiti have been ruined and crowded into Port-au-Prince’s horrific slums, the worst in the Western hemisphere. Whatever infrastructure and social fabric previously existed have been devastated, compounding the toll of death and destruction from the January 12 quake.
Chile’s historical and social development is different. It won independence from Spain in 1818, and although the social structure remained largely intact and the population enjoyed few benefits from independence, the country did not experience the direct domination of the US as Haiti did.
In any event, Chile can be said to be “prosperous” only if one focuses on the conditions of the wealthy. The CIA-backed military dictatorship that took power in September 1973, overthrowing the Allende “Popular Unity” government, killed tens of thousands of political opponents, torturing an equal or larger number in the most barbaric fashion. This is the regime the Journal holds up as a model.
Rule by Pinochet’s sadistic torturers (advised by economist Milton Friedman and other “free market” theoreticians) created the basis for the “Chilean miracle,” which, again, was a miracle only for the country’s wealthy.
In the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup, the country experienced the sharpest rise in joblessness and most severe drop in wages in South American history. Between 1974 and 1975, as thousands of left-wingers, academics and trade unionists were being mutilated and killed in secret prisons, the unemployment rate doubled. By 1983, nearly 35 percent of the work force was unemployed. This led to a wave strikes, and again tens of thousands were rounded up by Pinochet’s forces.
What the Journal so admires about Chile of the 1970s and 1980s was the vast transfer of wealth that took place, enforced by the military and secret police. By the time Pinochet was forced to give up power in 1990, the caloric intake of the average Chilean had fallen by some 20 percent.
Between 1980 and 1989, the wealthiest 10 percent of the population increased its share of the national wealth from 36.5 percent to 46.8 percent; conversely, the bottom 50 percent of the population saw their share fall from 20.4 percent to 16.8 percent.
Two decades later, Chile remains one of the most socially unequal countries in the world. As a 2009 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development study noted, “Chile has a high level of income inequality compared to other countries… Income inequality in Chile is high even by the standard of Latin America, the region with the highest levels of inequality in the world.”
Chile was ranked behind only Brazil and Colombia on the continent in terms of income inequality at the beginning of the last decade.
In any event, the Journal’s rosy picture of the Chilean disaster is called into question by various news accounts. The Globe and Mail (Canada) reports that Chilean authorities “are now saying the [death] toll could be ‘in the thousands.’” Rescue crews, the newspaper notes, were struggling “to assess the damage and raced to reach trapped survivors in the numerous tiny, isolated coastal towns that bore the brunt of Saturday morning’s quake.”
As for the Journal’s smug reference to “Chile’s stricter building codes,” the Globe and Mail reporter notes, “the reality is quite different in smaller towns like Constitucion [a resort and fishing town]. In areas with shortages of affordable housing… ‘people built houses wherever they lived’—shantytowns built of a mix of wood and cement.”
Meanwhile, the Chilean regime has dispatched police and readied the armed forces to suppress “looters,” i.e., the “desperate residents [who] scrounged for water and supplies inside empty and damaged supermarkets,” according to CNN. “Authorities used tear gas and water cannons” to disperse the residents.
The cable channel also reported that in Concepcion, a provincial capital, “there were not enough police to control all those seeking food and supplies from stores. Some became desperate as supermarkets closed and gas was unavailable.”
Praise for Pinochet is nothing new for the Journal. Like one of its idols, Britain’s former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the mouthpiece of Wall Street has weighed in numerous times on the side of the murderous Chilean regime and its chief.
On the occasion of Pinochet’s (temporary) detention by British authorities in October 1998, the Journal gnashed its teeth and proclaimed that the general had “headed the coup that saved his country.” Under the military, the newspaper asserted, Chile was transformed “from a Communist beachhead to an example of successful free-market reform.”
At the time of the hated dictator’s death in December 2006, the Journal declared that Pinochet “took power in a coup in 1973, but ultimately he created an environment where democratic institutions would prevail.” He supported “free-market reforms that have made Chile prosperous and the envy of its neighbors.”
The Journal’s affection for Pinochet brings to mind the famous phrase about Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, “He made the trains run on time.” The newspaper’s editors have a natural inclination for authoritarianism and dictatorship.
They would be very pleased if the working class and political opponents of capitalism in the US could be dealt with as they were by Pinochet. The editorial board, speaking for the biggest financial looters, dreams of police and military on the streets and internment camps for socialists.
None of this pro-fascist material evokes any sort of a protest from the liberal media in the US. The Journal counts on the utter cowardice of the New York Times and other such pillars of the liberal establishment, as well as on the latter’s own increasingly anti-democratic sentiments.
The author also recommends:
Mourning for Pinochet—US establishment shows its affinity for fascism
[13 December 2006] http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/dec2006/pino-d13.shtml
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HONDURAS: Human Rights Violations Continue
Claudia Larissa Brizuela, daughter of FNRP activist, assassinated
Posted on February 24, 2010
Tegucigalpa (AFP). A well-known activist with the Resistance Front against the Coup of June 28 in Honduras, Claudia Brizuela, was shot at and assassinated today, Wednesday, February 24, in San Pedro Sula, north of country, this group denounced.
“Today at 2:00 pm, unidentified people came to the Céleo Gonzáles neighborhood, north of the city, knocked on Claudia Larissa Brizuela’s (36 years old) door and shot her several times, killing her immediately,” said a communique of the National Resistance Popular Front, as it goes by its new name.
Brizuela was Pedro Brizuela’s daughter, ex-union member and one of the oldest militants with the Honduran Communist Party. Nowadays, he works with the Unified Democratic Party (UD) and is a columnist with La Prensa newspaper.
“Pedro has manifested that the action was a message to him and members of the Front, and that it was a cowardly crime that shows the systematic aggression of terrorist groups and escalation of criminality taking place with the consent of the government,” said the communique.
He declared that this was part of a “systematic and selective aggression against members of the National Front of Resistance,” and those who opposed the coup against Manuel Zelaya, but continue their fight for a Constituent National Assembly, the foundation of the republic but more importantly, a new constitution.
SOURCE: Nación, http://www.nacion.com/ln_ee/2010/febrero/24/mundo2281047.html
Please join us in calling the State Department’s Human Rights desk in order to demand that our government not continue to ignore systematic human rights violations. The United States is one of only a handful of governments that has officially recognized Pepe Lobo’s coup-stained administration, which is not recognized by the UN, OAS, and the vast majority of Latin America. The United States is dramatically impeding any progress towards international human rights by attempting to force others to legitimize the abusive government of Honduras.
Dial 202-647-4000 and ask for Human Rights Desk at the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. Alternately, you can ask to speak to the office of Maria Otero, Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs, who coordinates the work of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Sample script:
Hi, my name is ____________ and I am calling because I am deeply concerned about the human rights situation in Honduras. On February 24, Claudia Larisa Brizuela, activist and daughter of prominent member of the resistance movement and opposition media personality Pedro Brizuela, was assassinated in her home in San Pedro Sula in front of her two young children. In recent weeks, other resistance leaders have been attacked and murdered, amounting to over 254 documented human rights violations since Porfirio Lobo took power only a month ago. This represents the continuance of an ongoing policy of state terrorism and aggression that began after the July 28th coup d’etat.
The U.S. has not supported democracy in Honduras through this crisis. I understand that the U.S. split from a regionally unified position on the Honduran coup in supporting a transition that did not require the return of President Zelaya or hold any of the coup-perpetrators accountable for their actions. The U.S. also split from the majority of Latin America by recognizing the fraudulent November 29th elections that took place under conditions of martial law. While the U.S. may never repair the damage done by its anti-democratic actions around Honduras, I demand that steps be made in the correct direction. I ask that the U.S. SOTRONGLY CONDEMN the Lobo administration for continued human rights violations and call for the protection of all human rights defenders and media workers in Honduras, while cutting military aid to the country. I also urge the U.S. to reject the Lobo administration's proposed Truth Commission, and push for an independent truth process that would thoroughly investigate the human rights violations and other crimes committed under the interim government of Roberto Micheletti, as well as the current administration, instead of simply whitewashing the coup in Honduras. NO BUSINESS AS USUAL. Thank you.”
This alert was written by allies in the Central American solidarity movement.
For more information about the crisis in Honduras, please visit:
Comunicado about the murder from the FNRP: http://quotha.net/node/723
The Quixote Center: http://quixote.org/
School of the Americas Watch: http://soaw.org/
Honduras Resiste: http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/
National Resistance Front Against the Coup (en español): http://contraelgolpedeestadohn.blogspot.com/
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WASHINGTON OFFICE ON LATIN AMERICA
Promoting Human Rights, Democracy, and Social and Economic Justice in Latin America
February 24, 2010
Washington, DC
WOLA Deplores Escalation of Human Rights Violations in Honduras
The Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) is deeply concerned about the escalation of severe human rights violations in Honduras. WOLA calls for an end to these attacks, for a thorough investigation of these criminal acts and for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.
Immediately following the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo on January 27, there has been a notable increase in attacks against people opposed to the June 28 coup d’état and their family members. They include:
On February 24, Claudia Larissa Brizuela, a member of the opposition movement and mother of two, was murdered inside of her home by unidentified intruders. Her father, Pedro Brizuela, is a prominent opposition politician and journalist.
On February 15, Julio Benitez, a member of the workers’ union (SANAA), was murdered outside of his home in a drive-by shooting in Colonia Brisas de Olancho.
On February 12, Hermes Reyes, a member of an opposition group, was kidnapped and beaten by three paramilitaries. That same day, men who identified themselves as police looted the home of Porfirio Ponce, a union organizer and opposition activist.
On February 10, a family of five in San Pedro Sula was abducted for five days. Two of the women were raped and all five were tortured. All are active members of the political opposition movement.
In early February, two reporters were kidnapped by paramilitaries in Tegucigalpa. The paramilitaries physically abused the reporters and demanded that they divulge information about the opposition movement.
“The respect for human rights deteriorated following the coup d’état on June 28, 2009. Even the US Government has acknowledged this and it is alarming that it is continuing under the new government,” stated Vicki Gass, a Senior Associate on Rights and Development who lived in Honduras for two years following Hurricane Mitch. WOLA warns that continued human rights violations and pervasive impunity will undermine the government’s goal of rebuilding trust in democratic institutions and embolden perpetrators of political violence. “If President Lobo wants international recognition and aid reinstated after his country was shunned by governments following last year’s coup, then he needs to get the military back in the barracks and end these violations,” she added.
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