African palm oil stokes land conflict in Honduras
AFP. August 3, 2012 (full story after Garifuna action)
UPDATE from Miriam Miranda who visited St Louis last November: Rights Action – July 27, 2012 HONDURAS – Petition in Defense of the Rights, Culture and Territory of the Garifuna People
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/defend-the-sovereignty-of-honduras-and-the-culture-and.html
Grassroots Pressure Works – You Did It! US Withholds Funds to Honduran Police Now, the US government is responding to the grassroots pressure by withholding funds to Honduran law enforcement units directly supervised by 
Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, the SOA graduate who became the new national police chief. Funding will be withheld until the U.S. can investigate allegations that he ran a death squad a decade ago.
HONDURAS COOPERATING WITH US HUMAN RIGHTS PROBE
By MARTHA MENDOZA and ALBERTO ARCE
http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/13/2950538/honduras-cooperating-with-us-human.html
New Investigative Report into DEA-Related Killings in Honduras Finds Inconsistencies Between U.S. and Honduran Officials’ Statements, Survivor Accounts
DEFEND THE SOVEREIGNTY OF HONDURAS AND THE RIGHTS, CULTURE AND TERRITORY OF THE GARIFUNA PEOPLE
Petition published by OFRANEH, July 25, 2012
The Garifuna People have lived in Honduras for 215 years, after being expelled from the island of San Vicente, where our culture’s ethnogenesis took place in the mid-17th century. The loss of our communities’ traditional territory has been an ongoing process for over a hundred years. The Honduran State handed over huge tracts of land to banana companies in exchange for laying down railway infrastructure. Military officials, politicians and businesspeople joined forces to seize beachfront lands, with the pretext of “tourism development.” Our territories are being converted into protected areas, without any consultation with affected communities.
But it was the coup in 2009 that marked the beginning of a definitive offensive by the State. The appropriation of the Bay of Trujillo by Canadian citizen Randy Jorgenson – known in his country as the “Porn King” – for the creation of a tourist emporium led to the destruction of the Garifuna community of Rio Negro.
In 2010, the government that emerged out of the June 2009 coup began to promote concessions of national territory for the creation of a quasi-independent state, with its own judicial, administrative and security systems. US economist Paul Romer promoted the concept of Charter Cities (“Ciudades modelos” in Spanish), intervening in the National Congress for the quick approval of a Special Development Regions (RED) law.
Demonstrating the interest of Canadian investors in taking over the Caribbean coast of Honduras, Canadian Senator Gerry St. Germain participated in a special congressional session on RED regulations. In 2011, without debate, the congress legislated regulations for the charter cities.
Government authorities have indicated that the first RED will be located between the Bay of Trujillo and the Sico river – an area with 24 Garifuna communities that are considered to be a cultural sanctuary. This same corridor is becoming an area controlled by people associated with organized crime, engaging in the illegal purchase of lands with the collusion of government institutions.
On October 18, 2011, a group of lawyers filed a motion of unconstitutionality regarding the REDs to the Supreme Court of Justice. This past February 25, the Attorney General’s Office (Ministerio Público) declared that there were grounds for the motion to proceed. Immediately, the National Congress began a campaign to pressure and influence the court, including a threat to make cuts to its budget.
The independence of the judiciary – an element without which democracy itself is in question – is at stake in Honduras.
PLEASE SIGN THIS PETITION: http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/defend-the-sovereignty-of-honduras-and-the-culture-and.html
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African Palm Oil
Growing demand for African palm oil, a key ingredient in cosmetics and processed foods, is fuelling deadly land disputes in the Honduran countryside, pitting large landowners against landless peasants.
At least 78 people have been killed over the past three years as a competition for land heats up in Honduras’ rich Aguan Valley, the center of the country’s burgeoning African palm industry.
Large landowners have turned extensive acreage to African palm cultivation as prices for palm oil have risen in international markets.
Those increases have been driven by global demand from the cosmetics and processed foods industries and more recently for its use as a biofuel.
“There is a boom now with the African palm because, as oil prices rise, everyone wants to shift to biofuels,” said analyst Gilberto Rios.
Palm oil currently sells for about $950 a ton, double what a farmer can make from corn in the local markets.
A farmer can make up to $4,000 a hectare (2.5 acres) raising African palms, which are easy to grow and require relatively little labor.
Honduras exported $200 million worth of palm oil, making it the nation’s fourth export, behind coffee, bananas and farmed shrimp.
But in the Aguan valley, the spread of large-scale African palm cultivation has also led to land grabs, less employment for farmworkers, and disruption to local supplies of staples such as corn and beans.
Thousands of families of farm workers are occupying some 7,000 hectares of land in the valley, challenging the hold of a small number of landowners who have put together huge tracts of land from what were once small plots.
The growing tension this week prompted the Honduran Congress to pass a law making it illegal to carry weapons in the northeastern department of Colon, where the Aguan valley is located.
Police began enforcement operations Thursday, setting up checkpoints on roads to search cars for weapons. Exempted from the ban were private security firms and law enforcement in the region, which also is dealing with drug-related violence.
“On the one hand, the disarmament is good because there is a lot of crime here,” said Arnulfo Lopez, 66, as he left his 13-hectare (32-acre) farm.
“But those who go armed are the landowners’ guards because what the peasants carry are machetes.”
The deputy director of the National Agrarian Institute (INA), Ramiro Lobo, recalled that it was the local government that first began encouraging farmers in the Aguan valley to shift to African palms in the 1980s.
In 1992, the administration of Rafael Callejas paved the way for big business in the palm oil trade, passing the Agricultural Modernization Law, which allowed farmers to sell land they had received through agrarian reforms.
Directors of farm cooperatives used the law to sell off arable land held by poor farmers to big landlords.
“Participants in the cooperatives were not aware of the sales, which is why they continue to insist that the land belongs to them,” Lobo said.
Palm cultivation multiplied rapidly on the landlords’ newly acquired estates, leaving in its wake many people angry over the loss of their livelihoods.
The leftist government of Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) decreed that vacant land parcels owned by landowners would be redistributed to farmers, but after a June 2009 coup, the government annulled the decree, favoring the big landowners.
Half a year later, peasants began a series of land occupations that today involves some 7,300 families, the director of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan (MUCA), Yoni Rivas, told AFP.
In April, some 3,500 Honduran farming families launched a coordinated land occupation, squatting on 12,000 hectares (29,652 acres) nationwide, ratcheting up the tensions over land rights, authorities said.
In August 2011, unidentified assailants killed four people, including the leaders of two farm workers unions, in Aguan.
The military-police in the region told AFP the incident “was just a common crime. It had nothing to do with the agrarian conflict.”
Farm workers’ leaders however have insisted that they had been deliberately targetted because of their activism.
| Grassroots Pressure Works – You Did It! US Withholds Funds to Honduran Police Over the last few weeks, thousands of you around the country have sent messages to your Members of Congress, urging them to ask US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to suspend US assistance to the Honduran military and police, given the widespread, serious human rights violations by the U.S.-trained Honduran security forces.Now, the US government is responding to the grassroots pressure by withholding funds to Honduran law enforcement units directly supervised by Juan Carlos “El Tigre” Bonilla, the SOA graduate who became the new national police chief. Funding will be withheld until the U.S. can investigate allegations that he ran a death squad a decade ago. The strategy of using death squads for the military’s dirty work is certainly nothing new for SOA students: Roberto D’Aubuisson established the Death Squads that were responsible for much of the violence in El Salvador in the 1980′s, and Benedicto Lucas Garcia masterminded the creation of the Civil Defense Patrols in Guatemala. Mexico’s José Ruben Rivas Peña , who took the SOA’s elite Command and Staff Course, called for the “training and support for self-defense forces or other paramilitary organizations in Chiapas,” and many of the Colombian officers cited in reports about collaboration with paramilitary groups graduated from the School of the Americas (SOA). A report, released by the State Department says that it “is aware of allegations of human rights violations related to Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla’s service”and that the U.S. government has established a working group to investigate.This is a good step in the right directionthat only happened because you were pushing for change. However, we need to push further. We don’t yet know how much of the U.S. funding for the repressive Honduran state forces is affected. What we do know is that graduates of the SOA, who head state security forces under the illegitimate post-coup regime of Porfirio Lobo, continue to work in complicity with private security forces to repress small farmers and cooperatives from defending the lands that provide their sustenance. We also know that political repression is among the worst in the hemisphere: journalists, opposition activists, and LGBT activists have been murdered with impunity.Call the Honduras Desk in the State Department at 202-647-3482 and let them know that while we appreciate that some of the funding is being withheld, their report and the investigation; it is absolutely urgent that ALL U.S. military and police training and aid to the repressive Honduran security forces be cut immediately. Afterwards, call the Capitol Switchboard at 202- 224-3121 and talk to the office of your Member of Congress. Let them know that we need them to amplify our voices at the State Department, that we need them to also work for the end to all U.S. military and police training and aid to Honduras as well as for the closing of the notorious School of the Americas, where many of the people responsible for the coup and the ongoing repression in Honduras were trained.HONDURAS COOPERATING WITH US HUMAN RIGHTS PROBE By MARTHA MENDOZA and ALBERTO ARCE http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/13/2950538/honduras-cooperating-with-us-human.htmlTEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduran Foreign Minister Arturo Corrales said Monday that the country is cooperating with the U.S. investigation into allegations that the new national police chief once ran a death squad and that no U.S. funds are being handled by the police chief. It wasn’t clear what police units would be affected by what the Honduran government called a temporary hold on funds while a U.S. group looks into the alleged human rights violations by National Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla, nicknamed “The Tiger.” Honduran police units work directly with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and other U.S. law enforcement with projects inside of Honduras. Earlier Monday, U.S. Ambassador Lisa Kubiske confirmed to the AP that the State Department is barring aid to Bonilla and anyone working under him until an investigation is complete. “We take human rights very seriously,” she said. The embassy said in statement that overall aid is not being cut to Honduras. Despite repeated U.S. criticisms that law enforcement agents have murdered and tortured people, an in-house State Department report sent to Congress Wednesday certifies that Honduras meets U.S. human rights requirements to receive all $56 million appropriated by Congress. But the report said no U.S. military or law enforcement aid – including $1.3 million in foreign military assistance, and another $1.7 million in peace and security funding – can go to anyone working under Bonilla until he is cleared. “They have asked the Honduran government for information and we have given it. What happened a decade ago for us is something that has already been adjudicated,” Corrales said. “We expect the investigation to be completed as quickly as possible.” Members of congressional appropriation committees can separately place a hold on funds if they have human rights concerns, but to date, no one has done this publicly. Bonilla was named police chief May 21 as part of President Porfirio Lobo’s efforts to reform a department that is widely accused of killings and human rights violations. The decade-old report that resurfaced after his appointment named Bonilla in at least three killings or forced disappearances between 1998 and 2002 and said he was among several officers suspected in 11 other cases. Only one of the allegations against the now-46-year-old Bonilla led to murder charges, however, and he was acquitted in 2004. The report said the U.S. still gives support to “special Honduran law enforcement units, staffed by … personnel who receive training, guidance, and advice directly from US law enforcement and are not under Bonilla’s direct supervision.” Earlier this year the DEA assisted the Honduran national police in a series of controversial cocaine raids that led to seizures of more than a ton of cocaine and several deaths, including four people who locals said were innocent civilians traveling in a river at night. The raids were part of aggressive new enforcement strategy in Honduras, a major transshipment point for drugs heading to the United States. U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said it was “prudent” to limit aid until questions about Bonilla are resolved, according to Kerry’s press secretary Jodi Seth. Congressman Jim McGovern, D-Mass, who in past years introduced legislation pressing for human rights in Honduras, “strongly believes that those who have committed – or allegedly are currently committing – human rights abuses should not receive any form of U.S. assistance until they have been fully investigated and, if warranted, prosecuted,” said his spokesman Scott Zoback on Monday. Honduran historian Rodolfo Pastor in June drafted a letter eventually signed by more than 300 academics and advocates demanding the U.S. cut funding to Honduran law enforcement agents. On Monday, speaking by phone from his home in San Pedro Sula, he said he was pleased with the U.S. stance. “No one in Honduras was going to demand Bonilla be cleared,” he said. “It’s important that the American government, for whatever reason, is taking a position on this, forcing this to happen.” Stand in solidarity with our compañerxs in the South and mobilize your community for the November Vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia (November 16-18, 2012) to speak out for justice and against oppressive U.S. foreign policy. Join your voice with thousands of human rights activists, torture survivors, anti-war veterans, students, families, union workers, and artists from across the Americas, at the largest grassroots anti-militarization mobilization in North America. Click here for more information.
New Investigative Report into DEA-Related Killings in Honduras Finds Inconsistencies Between U.S. and Honduran Officials’ Statements, Survivor AccountsResearchers Conducted Extensive Interviews With Survivors, Eyewitnesses, and Honduran and U.S. Government Officials For Immediate Release: August 15, 2012 Washington, D.C.- A new, in-depth report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and Rights Action has found glaring inconsistencies in the accounts of what occurred on May 11, 2012, when four people were shot and killed in a DEA-related counternarcotics operation in the Moskitia region of Honduras. The report notes that while U.S. State Department officials have stated that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) played only a “supportive role,” numerous eyewitness accounts describe North Americans in U.S. Army-style uniforms engaging in a central role in the operation, and that U.S. Embassy officials have admitted that the Honduran partners engaging in such joint operations report directly to the DEA. The report also describes in detail the legitimate reasons that each of the shooting victims and survivors had to be in the vicinity of the operation in the early morning hours – in contrast to U.S. officials’ statements implying that they were likely involved in drug trafficking. “What emerges in this report is a deeply disturbing depiction of Miskitu families from the region violently attacked in a military-style ambush,” CEPR’s Alexander Main, co-author of the report, said. “The government operatives involved seemed to have had a ‘shoot first, ask questions later’ approach, and children and women, at least one of whom was pregnant, were killed as a result.” The report, “Collateral Damage of a Drug War,” concludes with a series of recommendations to the U.S. government, including a suspension of U.S. assistance to the Honduras Tactical Response Team (TRT) based on the human rights stipulation for U.S. assistance to foreign security forces set forth under the Leahy Law. While the U.S. decided last week to suspend assistance to the Honduran National Police while it investigated Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares’ past ties to death squads, it is not clear that the TRT is included in the suspension as it receives “training, guidance, and advice directly from U.S. law enforcement.” Yet it is the TRT that was involved in the May 11 incident, and which, according to Honduran and U.S. officials, was responsible for the shooting deaths. The report is based primarily on extensive in-person interviews with survivors of the shootings, and many eyewitnesses in a nearby community who say they experienced beatings, humiliation, threats, and rough treatment by uniformed Americans in the hours following the shooting. Family members of shooting victims say the Americans prevented them from assisting their loved ones who had been shot. Other locals in the community say the soldiers stole gasoline and other items from them, and one man described being forced, at gunpoint, to ferry cocaine to a helicopter while his mother lay bleeding on a log in the river. ”The U.S. must find a way to deal with its drug problem that does not involve turning indigenous communities into combat zones,” commented the report’s co-author, Annie Bird of Rights Action. The report notes that the investigation of the incident by Honduran authorities appears to be severely delayed and important investigative measures such as the interviewing of key witnesses have not been carried out, even though a former U.S. police detective employed by the U.S. Embassy provides technical support to the investigative team. DEA agents that participated in the May 11 operation have not been questioned, nor have ballistics tests been performed on their weapons. The report also analyzes the impact of U.S. drug policy in the Moskitia region, and concludes that the “militarization and military-style tactics applied to drug interdiction efforts are negatively impacting Miskitu communities and are not yielding effective results.” Researchers Alexander Main, Senior Associate for International Policy at CEPR, and Annie Bird, Co-Director of Rights Action, a human rights monitoring organization with decades of experience working in Central America, wrote the report based on interviews conducted last month, and other research. In addition to providing detailed eyewitness testimony, the accounts provided by U.S. officials, and a description of key evidence, the report also provides a summary of the Honduran authorities’ investigation into the incidents so far, and the legal measures being pursued by the survivors and their families. |