Tomorrow, I officially join the Peace and Social Concerns committee of my local Quaker meeting. To get myself prepped, I've been digging a little on the situation in Honduras. According to a story in today's Washington Post, Seven Honduran Broadcasters Slain in Since March 1, government repression since the coup is ongoing. More on the flip.
From the WaPo article:
Honduran television reporter Jorge Alberto "Georgino" Orellana had just left the station where he hosted his own show when a man stepped from the shadows, shot him dead and vanished. On Tuesday, Orellana became the seventh Honduran broadcaster to be gunned down since March 1 in a country where complaints about human rights abuses have increased since a military-led coup in June.
Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch said the government of President Porfirio Lobo has shown little willingness to solve a pattern of threats, harassment and attacks on grass-roots leaders, unionists and priests since the coup.
"Lobo just recently woke up and realized this could become a serious obstacle on his agenda to rejoining the international community," Vivanco said. "But it's not good enough. It's too little, too late. They need to investigate and prosecute those responsible for threats and abuses. They need to prosecute those who are in bed with organized crime."
The Washington Post also cites a report from Reporters Without Borders that Honduras has become "the most dangerous country for journalists."
The five murders and the flight into exile in the space of one month mean that Honduras was the world’s most dangerous country for journalists in the first quarter of 2010. No one has been brought to justice for any of the murders or any of the physical attacks or acts of intimidation or censorship of journalists and human rights activists since last June’s coup.
The coup lives on in what continues to take place. Worse still, the government installed after the controversial 29 November elections appointed one of the coup’s generals, Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, on 8 March to head the state telecommunications company, Hondutel. His appointment is an incentive to further impunity.
Yet, according to a recent Nation article by Dana Frank, Hondurans' Great Awakening, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asserts that "We believe that President Lobo and his administration have taken the steps necessary to restore democracy." Frank goes on to detail just how far from the truth that statement is.
I returned to Honduras in February for the first time since the coup to find a country trnasformed. 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 the some of the identifying details of those with whom I spoke.
The ongoing murder of journalists with apparent impunity testifies to this danger. From Frank's article
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 Vasquez Velasquez, who was dismissed only to be named head of Hondutel, the state-owned teleophone 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 Funez benitez, of the sanitation workers' union. On March 14, two vehicles shot forty-seven bullets into the care of Nahun Ely Palacios Arteaga, news directo of Canal 5 in the Aguan Valley, killing him instantly. Both men had protested the coup government.
Update, with hat tip to Cedwyn: Narco News has a report on Disappearing the Truth in Honduras.
The June 28, 2009 coup in Honduras caught the world’s attention, though outside of Honduras little was said about the objective of the coup; to stop the proposal for a new constitution in Honduras.
The terrible repression that followed the coup has also prompted international response, but the political proposal of victims of the repression has been invisibilized.
The coup is now in its final phase, a phase that cannot be consolidated; the "disappearance" of the proposal for a new constitution. A two pronged strategy is being employed.
On one hand, the creation of the appearance, without the actual reality, of national reconciliation processes, such as a ‘truth commission’ which for lack of participation of the human rights victims, among other problems, does not meet international standards for a truth commission.
On the other hand, escalating violence and repression continues against the non violent resistance movement, which continues to demand a new constitution and does not recognize the Pepe Lobo government, like many nations of the world since the elections he "won" did not fulfill most indicators for democratic elections.
This phase in the coup is the most dangerous and prolonged.
The coup has also been disastrous for LGBT activism in Honduras. The International Gay and Lesbian Rights Commission reports that an activist, Walter Trochez (aged 27), was murdered on December 13, 2009, the latest in a series of anti-LGBT violent acts that have escalated since the coup.
The human rights of people in all sectors of Honduran society are being systematically violated as the direct result of the military coup. However, the accelerated rate at which LGBT people have been killed in the last five months suggests a targeted pattern of violence.
Those killed since the coup include:
1. Vicky Hernández Castillo, transgender, June 29, 2009
2. Valeria, (Darwin Joya), transgender, June 30, 2009
3. Martina Jackson (Martín Jackson), transgender, June 30, 2009
4. Fabio Adalberto Aguilera Zamora, gay, July 4, 2009
5. Héctor Emilio Maradiaga Snaider, gay, August 9, 2009
6. Michelle Torres, (Milton Torres), transgender, August 30, 2009
7. Enrique Andrés García Nolasco, gay, September 2, 2009
8. Jorge Samuel Miranda Mata (Salome), transgender, September 20, 2009
9. Carlos Reynieri Salmerón (Sadya), transgender, September 20, 2009
10. Marión Lanza, transgender, October 9, 2009
11. Montserrat Maradiaga (Elder Noe Maradiaga), transgender, October 10, 2009
12. Juan Carlos Zelaya, transgender, October 26, 2009
13. Rigoberto Wilson Carrasco, transgender, November 2, 2009
14. José Luís Salandía, gay, November 2, 2009
15. Anonymous man, gay, November 4, 2009
16. Walter Tróchez, gay, December 13, 2009
The work of Walter Tróchez, the most recent victim of this violence, included dissemination of information about human rights in Honduras. As an LGBT activist, Tróchez also reported on the human rights of LGBT people during the coup, and advocated for HIV/AIDS prevention and combating religious fundamentalism.