Honduras’ Human Rights Crisis

TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS–The military-backed, de facto government of Honduras had hoped that the November 29 presidential election would quell a political standoff that had lasted for more than five months. But, just over two weeks later, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. The vote itself was marred by fraud and deception, and many countries in the world have refused to recognize its legitimacy.

The democratically-elected president, Mel Zelaya, remains besieged in the Brazilian Embassy, surrounded by hundreds of troops and riot police. Repression by authorities continues, and the country has endured a dramatic spike in violence, with mass shootings and robberies becoming even more prevalent.

But the circumstances surrounding the violent assassination of two anti-coup resistance members in recent days has sent out fresh shockwaves, calling up grim memories of the death squads that roamed Honduras a generation ago.

Two activists murdered, as violence rises in capital

On December 11, the decapitated body of Corrales Garcia was found about 50 kilometers east of the capital of Tegucigalpa, according to a report by the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras. Garcia was last seen in police custody, after being picked up December 5 in a mass raid against nonviolent resistance members near the capital. “What’s going on in the country is a low-density attack strategy,” said Andres Pavon, president of CODEH. “The authorities aren’t assassinating the masses, they’re killing selected individuals, or small groups of people. In that way it’s very much like the [nineteen] eighties,” Pavon said.

The other case involved the death of Walter Trochez, 27, a well-known resistance member and gay activist, who was shot twice in the chest on Sunday evening in downtown Tegucigalpa. Trochez, who was HIV-positive, was gunned down in a drive-by shooting while on his way home from distributing AIDS awareness literature. Witnesses reported the motorcycle involved was a police model, and that the men wore police uniforms.

“Amnesty International fears that Walter’s killing may be a sign of worse abuses to come in the atmosphere of political instability and fear that has prevailed since the coup d’état in June,” stated the world’s foremost human rights organization, in a press release this week that confirmed Trochez had been previously targeted for his human rights work.

Gilda Velazquez, director of Refuge without Limits, another human rights group in the capital investigating the recent executions, said that Trochez had survived a kidnapping attempt by masked gunmen on December 4, who had interrogated him as to the whereabouts of other resistance leaders.

According to those who were kidnapped with the beheaded Garcia, they too were abused and interrogated while imprisoned. Criminal Investigation Division (DIC) uniforms and vehicles were also reported in each case.

“The police want to break up the neighborhood resistance cells,” Velazquez said, “because the resistance is building political citizenship in these poor neighborhoods. And that scares the authorities. They’re terrified of the people experiencing that kind of empowerment.”

The Criminal Investigation Division (DIC) declined to comment on either case for In These Times, but Adolfo Reyes, 42, an intelligence officer with the National Police, agreed to discuss the rise in violence in general.

“The crime wave is the work of common criminals, nothing more,” said Reyes, speaking via cell phone from San Pedro Sulu, Honduras’ largest city. Reyes maintained that whoever was killing resistance members was doing so for private, not political reasons. “There are many gangs. There are many drug traffickers. Who knows what kinds of things these dead people were involved in?”

According to CODEH, more than 40 people have been murdered in the capital of Tegucigalpa in the last two weeks–with 15 deaths coming just over the weekend. Pavon isn’t ready to dismiss police involvement.

“There is no doubt in our minds the deaths of Garcia and Trochez were political assassinations,” said Pavon. “It is also instructive to note that in the police report Garcia was shot in the head, but his head has not yet been found.”

‘Basic rights cancelled’

The coup against Zelaya last June 28–which occurred the same day that the first-ever national referendum in the nation’s history was scheduled to take place–sparked a powerful but peaceful, nationwide resistance movement. Hundreds of thousands have marched and rallied in near-daily demonstrations for months, demanding the democratic referendum, as well as Zelaya’s restitution.

But the massive outpouring of popular support has been met with equally severe police repression. Since the coup, more than 3,000 people have been beaten and detained, hundreds more wounded, and at least 28 members of the resistance have lost their lives at the hands of police, soldiers and political assassins, as authorities seek to crack down on nonviolent anti-coup forces around the country. (On December 16, Human Rights Watch called on the government to investigate murders of gay, lesbian and transgendered Hondurans, citing a “a crisis of intolerance.” To download a report by the group Red Lesbica Cattrachas detailing murders of LGBT Hondurans since the coup in June, click here)

The military takeover itself has led to a severe economic crisis, as foreign governments slash investment and aid programs. Small businesses have been particularly hard hit, and according to official sources, Honduras has lost more than 100,000 jobs since June.

Even before the coup, Honduras was both the poorest and most crime-ridden country in Central America. But, according to Javier Zuniga, the head of Amnesty International’s recent fact-finding mission to Honduras, conditions are much worse now.

“We can see the consequences of the coup on the population, their physical integrity, and their liberty,” Zuniga told In These Times, during an interview in Tegucigalpa. “People have witnessed the killing and wounding of their compatriots. They’ve seen others arrested, detained, and accused of crimes of opinion.”

Zuniga explained that, according to international standards of human rights evaluation, the Micheletti regime in Honduras was in serious violation of all protocols.

“Almost all basic rights have been canceled [in Honduras],” he said. “The right of expression. The right not to be maltreated or tortured. The right of a free press. The freedom of movement. The freedom of association. All of these rights are essential.”

Putschists drive poverty, poverty drives crime

“Zelaya had initiated a series of humanitarian and environmental reforms that won him the affection of much of the population, but angered business and military elites who have traditionally ruled the country,” said international human rights expert Dr. Juan Almendares, speaking at his clinic in the capital.

The referendum scheduled for the day of Zelaya’s ouster would have allowed a nonbinding opinion poll of the populace, according to Almendares, who attended the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and won the coveted Humanitarian Award in Washington D.C., in 2007.

“The military-installed puppet President Roberto Micheletti has declared the intention of this poll was to install Zelaya as a Hugo Chavez-like dictator,” Almendares said. “But there was no mention of this in the referendum itself, and neither Zelaya nor his followers have ever suggested such a thing.”

Another local human rights expert, Noemy Peres, co-founder of the Committee for Families of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), said the rise in violence was linked directly to the post-coup increase in poverty.

“The de facto government has canceled Zelaya’s reforms, like social security and financial aid for students, as well as bonuses for the poor. So, as poverty goes up, so does crime and violence. But it is not something this government wants to recognize,” said Peres, who claimed that in more than 20 years of human rights work, she had “never seen a wave of violence like this.”

Resistance leader Juan Barahona echoed this sentiment. “This city is like a war zone,” Barahona told In These Times at the conclusion of a march of several hundred through the heart of the capital. “Fifteen dead in just one weekend. That is worse than Afghanistan, or Iraq. If 15 people die in Iraq over a weekend, it is very big news. But down here? Nobody cares.”