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Honduras: News & Updates

Honduras did not experience civil war in the 1980s, but its geography (bordering El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua) made it a key location for US military operations: training Salvadoran soldiers, a base for Nicaraguan contras, military exercises for US troops. The notorious Honduran death squad Battalion 316 was created, funded and trained by the US. The state-sponsored terror resulted in the forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of approximately 200 people during the 1980s. Many more were abducted and tortured. The 2009 military coup d’etat spawned a resurgence of state repression against the civilian population that continues today.

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News Article
A lesson from Afghanistan for US policy in Latin America
August 30, 2021
"Perhaps the most relevant parallel from the past decade is Honduras. How does the US end up cooperating with a violent and corrupt drug trafficker like Juan Orlando Hernandez as it did under both the Obama and Trump administrations? Well, corruption is so ingrained in the system that it is difficult to do any infrastructure or security projects without working around someone close to corruption networks. Domestically, the immediate political alternatives to JOH are similarly corrupt and often openly opposed to US interests around the region. It’s easier to work with JOH than antagonize him in a region where the US already has too few allies. The US has to balance its desire to promote democratic leaders with other policy priorities including security, counter-narcotics and migration issues. "
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News Article
Migrant Justice: Central American Youth Migrants Show Signs of PTSD and Stress
August 26, 2021

The trauma experienced by Central American minors before, during, and after their unaccompanied journeys to the United States puts them at high risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental health problems, creating further obstacles to their success in school and broader integration into U.S. society. New research into results from the CLALS Pilot Project Household Contexts and School Integration of Resettled Migrant Youth, which included interviews and qualitative surveys (including a validated PHQ-9 Modified for Teens and the Child PTSD Symptom Scale, CPSS), revealed that about one-third of unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala show symptoms of moderate to severe PTSD — significantly higher than the general population....Many of the youths suffered deeply from separation from parents who preceded them in traveling to the United States, sometimes blaming them for problems and abuses they suffered back home, but they generally fared better than those whose parents had not emigrated.

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RRN Case Update
RRN Case Update: Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, 8/16/21
August 16, 2021
AUG 2021: RRN letters summaries
Please see this summary of the letters we sent to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries. We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: (1) protect people living under threat, (2) demand investigations into human rights crimes, (3) bring human rights criminals to justice. IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras 08/15/2021
August 15, 2021
Campesino organizers in the Bajo Aguán Valley of Honduras persist in their struggle for access to land to to grow food for their families. The challenges are daunting: false criminalization of their leaders and continued assassinations. Long-standing land conflicts between campesinos and businesspersons in the Bajo Aguán have placed campesino leaders at serious risk for many years. Despite the granting of precautionary protective measures to 123 leaders in the region by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the killings continue. Assassinated in recent weeks were: Santos Marcelo Torres, former member of the campesino organization Movimiento Campesino Fundación Gregorio Chávez (MCRCG, also known as “Gregorio Chávez”) (June 26, 2021) and Juan Manuel Moncada, a recent leader of “Gregorio Chávez” (July 6, 2021). Falsely criminalized are two current leaders of “Gregorio Chávez”: Jaime Adali Cabrera del Cid and Hipólito Rivas. We demand that the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP) stop making statements that stigmatize and falsely accuse the land defenders in the Bajo Aguán. We demand that the government of Honduras fully implement precautionary protective measures for land defenders in the Bajo Aguán Valley.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 08/03/2021
August 3, 2021
Police in Honduras routinely use violence to repress freedom of expression. On August 1, while reporting for TVC Corporation, police officers in Intibucá shoved journalist Henry Fiallos to the ground and broke his mobile phone. Henry Fiallos had been receiving death threats (threatening to kill his children) because of his reporting on the case of Keyla Martínez (cf IRTF RRN letter February 15, 2021), who was killed in police custody in February. This is not the first time that police attacked Henry Fiallos. In July 2020, while the journalist and his cameraman were covering an attempted escape of inmates from La Esperanza prison, a police officer was recorded on video hitting the cameraman on his right arm to prevent him from recording the unfolding news events. We demand an immediate investigation and disciplinary action against the police who assaulted journalist Henry Fiallos.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 08/02/2021
August 2, 2021
The government of Honduras—in collusion with mining companies—continues to harass and criminalize environmental defenders. On July 23 the National Police unjustly detained (and, fortunately, later released) Reynaldo Domínguez. Reynaldo is one of many environmental defenders in the northern coastal departments of Honduras who continue to defend the Guapinol River and advocate for the release of the Guapinol 8—eight environmental defenders who have been in pre-trial detention since September 2019. He is active with the Committee Pro-Defense for the Common Good, which is working to get the government to cancel the environmental license granted to the company Inversiones Los Pinares to operate an iron oxide mine within the Montaña de Botaderos National Park. It is widely understood that the extraction of iron oxide is intended for the production of steel by Nucor Corporation, which is based in North Carolina in the United States.
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RRN Letter
RRN Letter: Honduras, 08/01/2021
August 1, 2021
Members of the Environmental Committee of the Siria Valley live with constant threat. In 2019, during an in-country visit by delegates of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), environmentalist Olga Velázquez gave testimony that she was being subjected to intimidation and surveillance by strange men at night. Flash forward two years later. At approximately 8:00pm on July 28, five men dressed in Preventive Police uniforms arrived at her house in Cedros municipality, Francisco Morazán Department. They did not arrive in a police patrol car. Olga recognized the civilian car as one similar to one parked in front of her house a few days prior. In an act of intimidation, three of the men entered her house without justification or confirming their identities.
PDF icon 2021_08_01_defensoresenlinea_honduras_letter.pdf
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RRN Case Update
RRN Case Update: July 2021
July 31, 2021
July 2021 - RRN Letters Summary
Please see below a summary of the letters we sent to heads of state and other high-level officials in Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico, urging their swift action in response to human rights abuses occurring in their countries. We join with civil society groups in Latin America to: -protect people living under threat -demand investigations into human rights crimes -bring human rights criminals to justice IRTF’s Rapid Response Network (RRN) volunteers write six letters in response to urgent human rights cases each month. We send copies of these letters to US ambassadors, embassy human rights officers, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, regional representatives of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and desk officers at the US State Department. To read the letters, see https://www.irtfcleveland.org/content/rrn , or ask us to mail you hard copies.
PDF icon 07_rrn_letters_summary_jul_2021_-_for_website.pdf
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News Article
Honduras: Femicidio y violencia sexual contra mujeres, delitos que se normalizan
July 19, 2021

The case of the 17 year old student Riccy Mabel Martínez puts in the public eye the most extreme violence that women in Honduras suffer: femicide. July 13, 2021 marked 30 years since the violent murder of the student, violated and assassinated with rage by military personnel in a case in which impunity took precedence. "It was the femicide that marked a precedent, above all for the fight against the violent deaths of women," said the coordinator for el Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de Mujeres (CDM), Helen Ocampo, to Criterio.hn. However, these crimes "with the years have been normalized more," she added. Between 2011 and 2020, 4,707 violent deaths of women were registered, according to CDM.

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News Article
Migrant Justice: Migration Is Not the Crisis. It's more military and private development.
July 18, 2021

Aviva Chomsky, author most recently of Central America’s Forgotten History: Revolution, Violence, and the Roots of Migration, points out that the president’s new plan for Central America, supposedly aimed at the “root causes” of migration to this country, is the disappointing equivalent of ancient history even when solutions are actually available. He’s once again offering that region the kind of “aid” that helped create today’s “migrant crisis.” As it happens, more military and private development aid of the Biden’s plan calls for won’t stop migration or help Central America.

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