Human rights observers hoped that the 2009 election, however illegitimate, would bring an end to the governmental murders, kidnappings, rapes, and beatings that characterized the Micheletti regime. Instead, these abuses have intensified, but are better hidden. Now a new phase of governmental violence appears to have begun with the suppression of the land rights movement in Bajo Aguan.
Added, 3PM Eastern, 4/12. Film of the militarization of Aguan can be seen at:
http://www.youtube.com/...
http://www.youtube.com/...
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Nothing special, unless you realize it's all directed against a few hundred small farmers. Via El Libertador and Adrienne (of course).
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In a previous series of diaries (1,2,3,4,5), we established the following basic facts:
1. The coup that removed President Zelaya was illegal under both Honduran and international law to which Honduras is a signatory.
2. Elements of the US government, notably the military, were involved in the execution of the coup.
3. The State Department, after a brief feint at enforcing international law, shifted tack and supported the dictatorship.
4. There were extensive human rights abuses, with the true toll of misery much, much higher than acknowledged by the State Department.
5. Elections were held in an atmosphere of fear and intimidation, lacking a free press. The opposition withdrew from the elections, and all accredited international observers refused to participate.
Please note: this diary could not have been written without the diligent work of Quotha and Honduras Culture and Politics. Most of the links provided below are thanks to them.
Even those who called the elections a sham hoped that, somehow, the new regime would manage to end the murder and mayhem and set the stage for a return to normalcy. As a condition for full recognition, the US demanded a truth and reconciliation commission. Without accountability--and maybe a little punishment--who could feel secure?
It is now clear that the United States is constructing a conceptual Potemkin Village, pretending that Honduras is meeting the conditions that every real democracy regards as essential. The sham elections were the first step, after which the US began pouring in money to the bankrupt dictatorship. There never was a government of national unity, but prior to the election, the dictatorship co-opted one member of the resistance, Cesar Ham, who has been brought into the government as his reward. A truth and reconciliation commission that lacks even a single member of the resistance was the second step. As a bow to cleansing the government of coup members, the general who executed the coup, Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, was made head of the telephone company Hondutel, giving him a stranglehold on media.
Now a new, high-level effort--nature still unknown, but probably related to creating a propaganda smokescreen--appears to have begun. Arturo Valenzuela has announced that Honduras has met all the requirements for re-integration into the OAS. (The OAS' decision will be based on the recommendations of a commission headed by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and former Chilean president Ricardo Lagos). According to Radio Globo correspondent Felix Molina, who spoke to anthropologist Adrienne Pine, Otto Reich, famous for having run the Reagan psychological warfare effort against the American people in the 1980s arrived in Tegucigalpa on April 8th for a "consultancy."
Reich is not the only arrival to draw attention. Former Latin American CIA National Intelligence Officer Fulton Armstrong, and House Foreign Affairs Committee senior staffer Peter Quilter have been discussing things with pretend-president Porfirio Lobo. To grossly oversimplify, Fulton Armstrong would appear to represent the Senate and Republicans, while Quilter would appear to represent the House and Democrats.
Since the election, the human rights situation deteriorated. Mass detentions and mass beatings all but ceased as demonstrations ceased. However, the use of covert terror tactics, including murder, directed against resistance leaders and journalists appears to have actually increased. Here are a few of the reports that have come in:
Note: Dates may not be those on which incidents occurred or even when they were blogged by others. They are usually the date on which I blogged about them.
Jeremy Kryt, In these Times, 2/4/10:
"In terms of the human rights situation, our overall impression is that in some ways it’s worse since the [presidential] elections [of November 29] than it was before," said Victoria Cervantes, coordinator of the Chicago-based human rights organization Los Voz de los de Abajo. Cervantes met with In These Times in the capital of Tegucigalpa last week, at the conclusion of a fact-finding trip that combined several international human rights delegations from the United States and European Union.
"What we’re seeing now is a violence that’s very selective against people and communities in resistance," Cervantes said. "But violence that is very much the style of the death squad and paramilitary violence [of the Cold War era]. In other words, resistance people are found in their closets with their hands tied, ropes around their necks. People have been found with their tongue cut out. Decapitated bodies. [Others have been] raped and tortured."
According to Meri Agurcia, a human rights worker with the nonprofit Committee for the Families of Disappeared Persons in Honduras (COFADEH), the numbers support Cervantes’ theory. COFADEH has confirmed the deaths of seven resistance members in January alone. In the previous six months, COFADEH reported a total of 28 politically-motivated killings of nonviolent resistance members.
Aggregated on Mercury Rising, 2/14/10:
...[T]he home of the vice president of the beverage union was invaded, and the computer he used for organizing taken, the kidnapping and torture of a Resistance couple and their family, the murder of a leader of the nurses’ union, Vanessa Yamileth Zepeda ...and a report on the hacking of Vos el Soberano, which is probably the largest news aggregation site for the Resistance....a link to a story by Kari Lyderson of In These Times on the murder of Vanessa Yamileth Zepeda,...an interview of journalist Cesar Silva[ in which he reports being kidnapped, beaten, and waterboarded]
Defensores en Linea, translated by Adrienne Pine, February 21:
"a dead rat hanging from a fishing line in her door and walls plastered with fecal waste interrupted the tranquility of Gilda Velásquez Martínez, Director of Shelter without Limits and Founder of Ovaries in Resistance."
From Arturo J. Viscarra, translated by Adrienne Pine, February 24th:
Elizabeth Gutierrez Reyes is the coordinator of the National People’s Resistance Front (FNRP) for Puerto Cortés...On Thursday, February 11, 2010, Elizabeth’s 14 year-old daughter [name withheld] was following her usual routine when she was savagely attacked by a group of "well-dressed" adults....an approximately 30-year old man in a collared shirt pulled her close to him and said something along the lines of, "Be careful not to scream, or I will kill you." She noticed that he had a handgun in a holster under his jacket. Once they had their young victim isolated, the gun-toting man and several women dressed in business suits began to assault the teenager while yelling profanities at her.
Reported on Quotha, February 25th (more here):
FNRP supporter Claudia Larisa Brizuela Rodriguez was gunned down in her home in San Pedro Sula. Her two young children, ages 2 and 8, witnessed their mother’s murder.
From Tiempo, March 1, on MercuryRising; since this appeared, allegations (for which I have seen no foundation) have been made that Cabrera may have engineered the shooting, so it's unclear whether she was or was not the target:
another shooting involving journalist Carol Cabrera, who again emerged unscathed. Although Cabrera was pro-coup, she had reported on having video and details on sexual activities within the halls of government. She had been calling the wives who were being cheated on, whom she called "deer." Twenty seven year old Joseph Antony Hernández Ochoa, a TV presenter on Channel 51, died in the attack.
Aggregated on MercuryRising, March 12:
61-year old journalist David Meza has been murdered by unknown persons. He was a correspondent for pro-coup Radio América, as well as a reporter for El Patio Radio and Opening the Breach. At 5:20 PM he was driving his green Kia Sportage when he was shot....Miguel Facussé Barjum, oligarch and owner of food emporia, Dinant Chemicals, and oil processing in Colon, sent thousands of employees to march on the presidential palace now occupied by Pretendisent Lobo Sosa, and (this may be a wee exaggeration) to attempt to conspire against Lobo.
Aggregated on MercuryRising, March 17th:
March 16th: (Via Adrienne) Twenty seven year old Freddy Antunez, who had been kidnapped along with the child of union leader Mauro Gonzales, was found dead with hands tied and three gunshots in his neck in Olanchito, Yoro.
March 16th: The OAS human rights group CIDH denounces the assassination in a hail of gunfire of anti-coup journalist Nahún Palacios .
March 12th (Via Adrienne): Ramon Ulises Castellanos and Miguel Sauceda, residents of El Naranjo in the state of Atlantida, were kidnapped and executed as part of the terrorization of squatters (who may be legitimate landowners)
March 2 and 11: Journalists David Meza Montecinos and Joseph Ochoa, murdered.
March 8: Congressional authorities, as well as–paradoxically– authorities of the Women’s Institute, ordered the violent repression of peaceful protests by feminists. The violence appears to have been orchestrated by the Institute of Women, since they chose to hold their event at the same location as the protesters had long before announced they were planning to have their event. When the Institute for Women ordered the feminists’s power cut, the feminists protested and this was met by billy clubs. It’s hard not to see that as staged violence.
Aggregated on MercuryRising, March 28th:
Via Adrienne as translator, a report on Vos from Cesar Silva, "This morning journalists José Bayardo Mairena Ramírez and Manuel Juárez were murdered, killed by numerous [60] gunshots. The murders took place in the department of Olancho, on the highway to the city of Juticalpa....Reporter José Bayardo Mairena Martínez worked in the local Canal 4 and was considered one of the most hard-hitting journalists in the region of Olancho department, who strongly questioned the coup d’etat carried out June 28, 2009. He also had systematically denounced the constant human rights violations carried out by the army and police against citizens in resistance on the radio station in Olancho where he worked. For his part, journalist Manuel Juárez, who worked at Radio Excélsior and Canal 4, also had strongly criticized the violent acts going on in the country." ... Via Adrienne, a report from CDM-CIPRODEH-CODEH-COFADEH-CPTRT-FIAN translated by Sandra Cuffe complains about the use of the military against squatters (who may be the rightful landowners) in Bajo Aguan, including human rights offenses such as "arrest and detention of minors (children between 5 and 8 years of age); confinement in places of detention with no legal authorization (a case in which detainees were held in military facilities in the region); the supposed authorities did not identify themselves at the moment arrest, and did not read the detainees’ rights or inform them of the supposed charges." ...Sandra Cuffe also translated this report from CODEH, saying: "Witnesses on the scene saw two pickups approach the rear of the [San Jose del Pedregal High] school premises, apparently 2009 models, one green and white. Professor [of Social Science Jose] Manuel [Flores], as his friends called him, was in the back of the facility overseeing pupils, when the assassins found him. They passed the perimeter fence and fired their guns at close range... The teacher died instantly."
Aggregated on Mercury Rising, March 31st:
ournalist José Alemán , a correspondent for Radio America and Tiempo collaborator, has fled Honduras after being attacked by two men. They entered his apartment, firing wildly. Not finding him in, they stalked him on the street. The police told him they couldn’t provide any security. ...Revistazo reports that a group of businessmen warned a Congressman, Juan Orlando Hernández, that they had overthrown one president and could do the same to Lobo. He passed this on to the president and both of them took it, not surprisingly, as a threat. ...A young teacher, Denia Mejia, has received death threats and rape threats of a significant enough nature that the case has been taken on by Defensores en Linea. Her apartment was searched and sacked, and a laptop and camera stolen.
Eleven labor leaders were released from what is euphemistically called "preventive detention" (more honestly called "state-sponsored kidnapping"). They will have to sign in on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, but will face judgment as free people.
Aggregated April 4 on MercuryRising:
Via Adrienne, a report sourced to Rights Action (not up on their web site) that the death squad leader Billy Joya is training a paramilitary group for running a false flag operation. Presumably, his forces will pretend to be a non-existent guerrilla movement in the Bajo Aguan area, against which police are being sent as sacrificial lambs: "disinformation is being published in the Honduran press stating that the MUCA families [squatters who may actually be the legal owners of the land] 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." Shamefully, this narrative is being spread by US congressmen. Vos el Soberano has an alert, but sourced to the Bajo Aguan farmers association, MUCA. The call it Operation Trueno, run by the Fourth Infantry Battalion in Tocoa (town of Quebrada de Agua) in the Exporter Factory of Atlántico and by the Fifteenth Battalion in Trujillo, Colon (town of Río Claro). They will attack on April 6th, it is alleged. MUCA says they have booby-trapped the area as a defense.
Also, a farmer, Miguel Alonso Oliva, has been slain. A full description by Los Necios is here and COFADEH’s statement translated into English is here
The influential human rights organization FIAN has called for violence against the Bajo Aguan squatters (who may be the legal owners of the land) to cease. ...
Mario Alonso was beaten and threatened by his boss, sports boss Jorge Abudoj Fixione, for demanding labor rights.
The cops have opened 130 investigations against members of the resistance, according to Defensores en Linea. Members of the SITRAUNAH union apprehended two covert agents, with a list of 135 leaders of social movements, including Altagracia Fuentes, who was gunned down.
Aggregated on Mercury Rising, April 7th:
Another member of the Bajo Aguan farmers’ association, MUCA, has been murdered, according to Vos el Soberano (no direct link). Thirty five year old Jose Leonel Alvarez Guerra was shot as he arrived home by two people on a red motorcycle.
The Bajo Aguan situation is, at the moment, the most worrying. The central source of conflict and crisis in Latin America has historically been over land and water rights. Small farmers, many of them indigenous people, do not have the skills to participate in the industrial and post-industrial economy. They live at the margins of society, receiving minimal education and health care. Therefore, forced urbanization for them--at best, maquila work--means a deepening of poverty and misery. Their labor, on which they are at least able to subsist, is replaced by agribusiness. In the case of Bajo Aguan, apparently agribusiness wants to establish huge palm oil plantations: for biofuels, I guess.
Under former President Manuel Zelaya, an attempt was made to examine land ownership and, where indicated, restore lands to farmers who had been displaced. The Lobo administration stopped this effort and probably has destroyed documents which could prove land claims. In the Aguan Valley, squatters-- who may be the legal owners of the land-- were displaced at the order of oligarch Miguel Facusse.
There have been a number of murders of squatters (who may be the legal landowners). But that is the tip of the iceberg. There have been many disappearances, questionable arrests, and terror tactics against the squatters (who may be the legal landowners). Now the area has been heavily militarized, with the arrival of troop transports and, according to human rights activist Andres Pavon, three infantry brigades. There are fears-- I hope these are unfounded, but according to Honduras Culture and Politics, they have appeared even in pro-coup El Heraldo-- that a massacre is about to begin.
These are the questions that we should be asking of our representatives in Congress and of the State Department:
1. Why is the US pushing for reintegration of Honduras into the OAS, when the government has not fulfilled US demands?
2. Why has US refused to discuss the full range of governmental human rights abuses in Honduras, instead choosing--in the absence of evidence-- to treat it as a "both sides do it" story?
3. Why has the US dispatched high-level representatives to Honduras? Is there a connection to Otto Reich's consultancy?
4. Why has the US not urged restraint over the Bajo Aguan situation?
5. At a time when Americans are going hungry and homeless, why are we paying to prop up a dictatorship?