The Committee to Protect Journalists issues a report condemning the Honduran government for "fostering a climate of lawlessness".
Update: The Center for Constitutional Rights has urged Secretary Clinton not to support Honduras' readmission to the OAS, in part because of the human rights situation.
Mike O'Connor of the Committee to Protect Journalists has issued a report on Honduras, where seven [The Economist says eight] of the 22 journalists murdered worldwide have perished. Unfortunately, the report summary reads: "After minimizing the crimes, Honduran authorities are slow and negligent in pursuing the killers. The government is fostering a climate of lawlessness that is allowing criminals to kill journalists with impunity." This falsely implies that the problem is government ineptitude. The report itself, while cautious about attributing blame in a situation where the government has very eptly produced no evidence that might identify the perpetrators of the crimes, is much clearer, saying:
"...authorities did little to raise confidence that they were investigating the crimes aggressively."
"...many journalists fear the murders have been conducted with the tacit approval, or even outright complicity, of police, armed forces, or other authorities."
"...CPJ also found an alarming pattern of impunity in these cases, as evidenced by the authorities’ inability or unwillingness to take obvious steps to investigate the crimes and arrest the perpetrators."
"The [anonymous] diplomat...said general lawlessness in the country serves the purposes of a small elite class..."
"The government is required by international treaty to follow the directives [by the OAS' human rights branch to protect journalists], but it appears to have to ignored most of them, adding to the suspicions of many that it is colluding in violent repression."
the national government announced that it had asked for help from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. Such help, though, is more symbolic than real. The FBI assigned one agent, who began work three months after the killings began, and often had only scant physical evidence and incomplete investigative reports to review.
The US press has consistently tried to blur the situation, trying to imply that these murders are just the work of criminals, or that the resistance is equally responsible. For the latter, they continue to point to the murder of the daughter of journalist Karol Cabrera, despite the fact that the police determined that the motive for that murder was a soccer rivalry. Even CPJ recycles this lie, evidently in search of false balance.
The CPJ report, for its many faults, makes it less possible for the United States to pretend that all is well in Honduras.
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Update: (Via Honduras Culture and Politics,) The Center for Constitutional Rights has drafted a statement and written a letter to Hillary Clinton condemning US attempts to lobby for the readmission of Honduras to the OAS in part because of the repression of the press, including the murder of journalists.
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Thanks to Dirkster42 and Daisy Cutter for recent diaries on Honduras, and to many others (e.g., Lysias, Robert Naiman, Cadejo04, DavidSeth, ElizabethGurley), who have also helped to document what has happened. I have followed the story of the Honduran coup on Mercury Rising ever since the day of the coup (from which this diary is drawn), and have contributed seven diaries to DK, the most important of which are the series Whom the Gods Would Destroy 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.