Category: Chapter 9

Facussé threatens human rights activists, beheads peasants

Chapter 9 / The scale and nature of present day violence / Troublesome Lawyers and Human Rights Defenders

04/26/2011 | AP

If you are wondering, dear reader, why I didn’t post on last week’s assassinations, including beheadings, it was because I simply could not handle it. It’s no excuse, the campesinos in Aguán aren’t backing off. But sometimes even the secondhand trauma is too much. It’s one of those dilemmas of violence research- one’s own pain is voluntary, in a sense, and thus cannot be legitimately compared to the pain of those who are experiencing the evident, immediate trauma (except within a theoretical framework of a violence continuum, using a million caveats). But perhaps my twisted gut, this sense of nausea and impotence can provide some small insight, even thousands of miles away, into the terror embodied by those facing the barrels of Facussé’s assassins’ guns.

In any case, when he’s not busy ordering the murders of campesinos who get in the way of the WWF-eco-certified African Palms he has on the lands he stole from them, Facussé, who has admitted on national television that his guards kill peasants (and yet has never been investigated by the government for his role in these murders) is now fighting back. Tired of people calling him out, he took out a full-page ad in La Tribuna to publicly denounce/threaten the human rights defenders who have affected the only thing he cares about- his profits. What’s really astounding—and not just speaks, but shouts to the level of US-backed impunity in Honduras—is that, in order to personalize this threat against his opponents, he not only names them, but quotes exactly what they have to say about him, just as unapologetically as he admitted to doing exactly what many of them accuse him of- murdering campesinos. The ad, included below as an image, reads as follows:

To the Honduran Nation and International Community:
We write here to inform you that we are being subjected to a smear campaign using false accusations of national and international NGOs. Said campaign has the aim of destroying over 50 years of work to provide Hondurans and Central Americans with products of the highest quality, investments in the billions of lempiras, the creation of more than 8,000 direct jobs, the generation of more than US$100 million in profits annually, and the creation of more than 100 thousand indirect jobs.

The most recent campaign is aimed at blocking the certification of the company by the UN for the sale of carbon credits for the development and implementation of clean energy projects and projects for environmental conservation; to stop international financial institutions from financing our companies, thus putting at risk the investment so desperately needed by the country and finally to promote the boycott of our products.

We ask you all to not be fooled by these people and groups that denounce us internationally irresponsibly and with sinister intent, not only with the aim of destroying the hard work of thousands of Hondurans and Central Americans in making the Dinant Group what it is today, but also of undermining the environment for investment and development in Honduras.

We call upon the corresponding Honduran authorities to investigate what we have stated here.

To the Honduran nation and international community, we reiterate here our commitment to continue helping the development of the country, through business practices committed to the conservation of the environment and through proper corporate social responsibility.

Miguel Facussé Barjum, President, Dinant Corporation/ Exporter of the Atlantic

“To affect [his/its] business, profits and image is an important tactic, and we will do whatever we can to ensure that these projects do not continue receiving funding”,
said to Sirel the representative of FIAN Honduras, Ana María Pineda

“We, Artists in Resistance, Feminists in Resistance, and many allied groups along with the youth, have a boycott campaign against the products of Miguel Facussé”…
Karla Lara, of Artists and Feminists in Resistance of Honduras

As such, the decision to launch a boycott campaign against the products of the Dinant Corporation means joining together the desire of thousands of Hondurans who want to deal a blow to the economic and political power of Miguel Facussé, one of the leading exponents of this structure”
Lorena Zelaya, member of the FNRP

Miguel Facussé is “an assassin and thief straight out of Hell” who will “make himself owner of the entire country using the same methods he uses here”:
Father Fausto Milla, in relation to Zacate Grande

“The soldiers and police are commanded by Miguel Facussé, despite the fact that they are paid by the Honduran people, but they obey the orders of the de facto powers that have taken control of the nation”.
Bertha Oliva, COFADEH

“Save the Rainforest makes an urgent call to send a message to the British government to withdraw authorization from these two projects that will directly benefit Miguel Facussé Barjum, repeatedly indicated by campesinos organizations to be the primary individual responsible for the violence and violation of human rights in the Bajo Aguán”.
Save the Rainforest, German NGO in relation to the projects of carbon credit sales

“the loans that are being provided to this man [Facussé], who has become the number one criminal in Latin America, for now, with the ability of mobilizing an army that at this moment, openly patrols the streets of the Aguán, in Tocoa and in Trujillo, carrying out acts of terror in the numerous cooperatives in the palm agrarian sector in the Aguán”.
Andrés Pavon, CODEH

What I have seen is outrageous and Facussé is a criminal”
Mirna Perla, Salvadoran judge and member of the parallel True Commission set up by the FNRP

We have confirmed the lack of seriousness of the Attorney General and a generalized dissatisfaction in the region, which could lead to a dangerous increase in conflict. Furthermore—explained the leadership of FIAN International—, international standards are not being applied with regards to evictions. They are premeditated violent acts, without legal backing, and represent crystal-clear violations of human rights”,
Central American coordinator of FIAN International, Martin Wopold Bosien.

Quotha content by Adrienne Pine is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Quotha content by Adrienne Pine is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Impunity through the Honduran Public Prosecutor’s Office

Chapter 9 / A Culture of impunity

Extracts from an interview with Berta Oliva, Coordinator of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), 23 August 2010, Tegucigalpa, conducted by Martin Mowforth and Lucy Goodman.

The international human rights institutions ask us: “Have you already made a denunciation to the Public Prosecutor?” By doing so we are strengthening a broken and criminally corrupt institute of the state. The worst thing for us to do is to make a serious denunciation and to name witnesses. We’ve had so many witnesses who have been assassinated.

On 30th July 2009 a teacher in a protest march was assassinated – he was called Roger Iván Murillo. There was a teacher ready to give his testimony about Roger’s assassination to the Public Prosecutor. He was a witness who knew who shot Roger because he was close to his colleague. Prior to his testimony the Public Prosecutor offered to give him protected witness status and within the month he was assassinated.

In September there was a lad who filmed when they entered the barrios and shot a union president. He went to the Public Prosecutor with his film to say that he had the proof and that if they would guarantee his safety he would give it to them because on the film you can see and identify who shot him. The event was on the 22nd September, and he went to the Public Prosecutor on the 25th September. In December his wife was killed. She was driving their vehicle and it was an attempt on his life, but they killed his wife instead.

Berta Oliva gave a number of other examples of how citizens’ resort to the Public Prosecutor gave rise to attacks on the person of those who had tried this approach.

How on earth can people go to give testimony in a legal action to the Public Prosecutor when the first thing they do is kill them? That is an indefensible situation in a failed state; that is what little hope we have in justice.

‘Anyone Can Murder A Woman In Honduras And Nothing Will Happen’ Women and girls in the barrios live in constant fear of sexual attack and a violent death

Chapter 9 / Troublesome women

We are grateful to Rights Action for permission to reproduce this article by Sorcha Pollak.

By Sorcha Pollak, May 11, 2015

The windowless room in downtown San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second city, bustles with activity as more than a dozen women take their seats at a long oak table. Water bottles are distributed and the electric fan switched to full blast to alleviate the oppressive summer heat creeping through the half-open door.

As the chatter dies out, Dicsa Bulnes clears her throat, introduces herself and begins to speak. “As a woman I feel trapped. I am a prisoner in my own home, there’s nowhere for me to go. I have no freedom.”

Bulnes, who is from the marginalised Afro-Caribbean Garífuna community, pauses for a moment to take a sip of water before she continues. “My partner nearly killed me. He still sends me threatening messages on my mobile attacking me. I’ve tried reporting him but the authorities won’t do anything. It feels like they are forcing women to buy their own coffins, to return to the attacker and suffer through the violence.”

Bulnes is a member of the Foro de Mujeres por la Vida (Women’s Forum for Life), an organisation which campaigns for women’s rights in a country that increasingly turns a blind eye to the violence and persecution that plagues the lives of countless women.

The forum has called a meeting in its small San Pedro Sula office so a female journalist from a safe western country can hear about the daily battles endured by the women of this small central American nation.

Aside from having one of the highest murder rates in the world – a national homicide rate of 79 per 100,000 – Honduras is rapidly becoming one of the most dangerous places on Earth for women.

Over the past decade, this nation of just over eight million people has witnessed a sharp increase in domestic and sexual violence and gender-based murder, a phenomenon known as femicide.
According to the University Institute for Democracy, Peace and Security in Honduras, 531 women were murdered in 2014, the majority of these aged between 15 and 24. Although this number was slightly lower than that of the previous year – there were 636 recorded murders of women in 2013 – the lack of accountability for this violation of a woman’s most basic human right has normalised the concept of femicide.

Between 2005 and 2013 the number of violent deaths of women increased by 263.4 per cent.
Carolina Sierra, spokeswoman for Foro de Mujeres por la Vida, says any attempts made to improve women’s rights before the 2009 military coup, which ousted reformist president Manuel Zelaya, were erased by the current administration.

“The increased militarisation of the country means all measures now focus on weapons and the military, while any measures that were taken to protect women’s rights have been completely abandoned,” says Sierra. “It’s almost like there’s a carte blanche for the assassination of women. Anyone can murder a woman in Honduras and nothing will happen.

“With this lack of accountability, women’s bodies are being used to send a message of fear and hate to the rest of the population.”

In 2014, the United Nations reported that 95 per cent of cases of sexual violence and femicide in Honduras were never investigated, while only 2.5 per cent of cases of domestic violence were settled.

Living in fear
Maria Teresa Meza, who lives in a small shack in the Bordo Gavión riverside slum of San Pedro Sula with her children, says sexual violence is the daily lot for most young women in the community. “Rape is a real danger for young women living in the bordos. If you let your daughter step outside her home she will either be raped or forced into selling drugs.”

Teenage girls living near the bustling food markets in the capital, Tegucigalpa, face the same level of violent abuse. Sarai (19) says many of her friends became pregnant when they were only 12 or 13 after meeting gang members in the marketplace. She says gangs “own the barrios” of Tegucigalpa, controlling how women walk, talk and dress. “They walk around the area monitoring everyone who comes in and out. They know exactly what’s going on and every single detail of our lives.”

Wendy (14) says women and girls are the first to suffer under this brutal culture of drugs, extortion and violence. Freedom of speech doesn’t exist in a world where themaras youth gangs rule the streets. “All I can see around me is violence; there never seems to be any light. Women don’t have the freedom to walk down the street without worrying about being attacked. The men rule and the women must follow.

“Some young women are raped by their own families,” she adds quietly. “They’re raped by their uncles and fathers.”

Supaya Martínez, co-director of the Centre for Women’s Studies Honduras, says gangs govern every aspect of a woman’s life, down to the colour she uses to dye her hair. “If a woman dyes her hair the wrong colour, the local gang will kill her.”

Martínez says people have learned to justify femicide by arguing that female victims are involved in gangs or connected with drug traffickers.

Murder of beauty queen
Last November the bodies of the Miss Honduras beauty queen, María José Alvarado, and her sister were found in the region of Santa Barbara in western Honduras. The sister’s boyfriend was found guilty of murdering the women in a jealous rage. However, Martínez says the government claims the young women were connected to drug-traffickers.

“It’s as if it was their fault. They place the blame on the victim and basically say she was responsible for her own death.

“There hasn’t been a strong enough response from the government to end this. Women die every day but no one is punished and so the crimes just continue.”

Last year UN special rapporteur on violence against women Rashida Manjoo called for the Honduran government to address the “climate of widespread and systematic crime, corruption and impunity”.

Supports cut
However, as part of its process of restructuring in 2014, the government actually downgraded the status of the National Institute for Women, cut funding to women’s rights groups and abolished the police emergency telephone line for female victims of violence.

“We’re living in a country where women don’t feel safe enough to report acts of violence to the authorities,” says Sierra, adding that many women who speak up about injustice must pay for it with their lives.

“Men are killing women with rage, fury and cruelty. We’re scared to speak out but this is the daily lot we’re living.

“We’re forced to live in a culture of violent machismo which has become a natural, accepted part of Honduran society.”

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/anyone-can-murder-a-woman-in-honduras-and-nothing-will-happen-1.2207043

Rights action: www.rightsaction.org

Otto Pérez Molina

Chapter 9 / Emergency in Guatemala

Elected at the end of 2011, General Otto Pérez Molina was inaugurated as President of Guatemala in early 2012. After training at Guatemala’s National Military Academy, the School of the Americas and the Inter-American Defence College, Pérez Molina served in the Guatemalan army’s special forces known as the Kaibiles which are described by Wikipedia as “notoriously brutal”[1] and by the Commission for Historical Clarification (Comisión para el Esclaracimiento Histórico, CEH) as “a killing machine”.[2]

He later became director of military intelligence and inspector-general of the army, but during the 1978 – 1982 period of slaughter in the Guatemalan countryside he served as a major in the Ixil Triangle in the El Quiché department of Guatemala. It was here that acts of genocide were routinely committed against local Mayan populations. These acts were documented by the United Nations sponsored Truth Commission[3] which reported on war crimes and acts of genocide committed during the 35 years of internal conflict and which found that the military had been responsible for 93 per cent of the 660 massacres which took place during the conflict. Over a half of all the massacres took place in El Quiché department and many of these took place in the Ixil Triangle where Pérez Molina was in charge of counter-insurgency at a time when 80 – 90 per cent of the villages were razed.[4]

The Truth Commission was unable to name individuals involved in the slaughter, but a letter of allegation sent in July 2011 by three human rights defenders[5] to the United Nations accused Pérez of involvement in genocide and torture committed in El Quiché during the Guatemalan war.[6] Pérez has always denied any wrongdoing during the war and is proud of his record, particularly his involvement in the peace process negotiations. Despite this involvement in the peace process, investigative reporter Allan Nairn has demonstrated the links between the operations of the Guatemalan death squads at the same time (1994) as the G-2 Intelligence Unit was headed by Pérez Molina.[7] Prosecutors, however, have declined to pursue actions against him on the grounds that the evidence is believed to be slim.[8]

In his election campaign, Pérez tried to reach out to indigenous groups and to emphasise his progressive and reforming side, despite his promises to crack down on violent crime and drug traffickers with an ‘iron fist’.

[1] Wikipedia entry for Otto Pérez Molina (19 March 2012) (accessed 23.03.12).
[2] Commission for Historical Clarification (February 1999) ‘Guatemala: Memory of Silence’, available at: http://shr.aaas.org/guatemala/ceh/report/english/conc1.html (accessed 14.04.12).
[3] Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH) (1999) ‘Memoria de Silencio’, United Nations.
[4] Mica Rosenberg and Mike McDonald (11 November 2011) ‘New Guatemala leader faces questions about past’, www.reuters.com/article/2011/11/11/us-guatemala-perez-f-idUSTRE7AA38320111111 (accessed 1 April 2012).
[5] Annie Bird, Co-Director, Rights Action; Jennifer K. Harbury, human rights attorney; and Kelsey Alford-Jones, Director, Guatemala Human Rights Commission-USA.
[6] Europa Press (20 July 2011) ‘Denuncian a Pérez Molina por genocidio y tortura de indígenas en Guatemala’, www.europapress.es/latam/guatemala/noticia-guatemala-denuncian-candidato-perez-molina-genocidio-tortura-indigenas-guatemala-20110720220454.html (accessed 1 April 2012).
[7] Allan Nairn (17 April 1995) ‘CIA Death Squads’, available at: www.whale.to/b/nairn.html (accessed 19.04.12).
[8] Op.cit. (Rosenberg and McDonald).

Honduran environmentalists under threat

Chapter 9 / The scale and nature of present day violence / Troublesome environmentalists

The following article was included in the January 2008 ENCA Newsletter (no.44) as a report on a summer 2007 ENCA study tour of Honduras.

By Martin Mowforth

ENCA’s 2007 environmental study tour of Honduras met with our Honduran counterparts who work in a range of grassroots socio-environmental organisations there. We met and spent several days with members of the Fundación Prolansate, the Olancho Environmental Movement (MAO), the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras (COPINH) and the International Centre for Information on Cover Crops (CIDICCO). With several members of these organisations we also attended the launch of an Amnesty International report on ‘Persecution and Resistance: The experience of human rights defenders in Guatemala and Honduras’.

Even before our involvement with Amnesty International, it is no exaggeration to say that we had been shocked by the level of danger suffered by our Honduran counterparts in these organisations. Had we been aware of this beforehand, we would have allowed ourselves at least a couple of days after each of our visits to these organisations to absorb the reality of the threats they have to live with. A little background may be helpful to explain the situation our partner organisations face, along with a few details of some of the assassinations which have already occurred and the threats currently faced.

In the 1980s, whilst wars raged around Honduras, the country became known as USS Honduras for its role in harbouring, training and supplying the contras in Nicaragua. In that decade it developed its own death squads – like most of the death squads in Latin America, they were inspired and trained, overtly and covertly, by branches of the US government – to snuff out dissent and opposition within its own borders.

The peace accords and the end of the wars fought in the territories of its three neighbours (Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua) did not exactly bring an end to the activities of the death squads in Honduras. The political targets were replaced by those deemed appropriate for a spot of social cleansing – street children and vagrants. Casa Alianza (a street childrens’ organisation which works in a number of Central American capital cities) reports the violent deaths and arbitrary executions of 3,395 children and youths from 1998 to 2006 (inclusive)[1] – a systematic form of genocide, or as Casa Alianza calls it “a selective policy of extermination”.

But the death squads also began to make themselves available for other targets, one of which was provided by environmentalists and social activists who were leading protests against the indifference, disruption, dislocation and contamination caused by commercial activities and so-called development projects. Since the assassination of Jeannette Kawas in 1995, environmentalists in Honduras have been a major target for the death squads.

Jeannette-Kawas-300x297Jeannette Kawas (pictured) was the President of Fundación Prolansate, an environmental and conservation organisation which has the responsibility for the care of a number of protected areas on the northern coast of Honduras around Tela Bay. It was as a result of her work that these areas were granted stronger protection by the Honduran state and that a large area around Punta Sal was awarded the status of a National Park. But this work did not please everyone, and the advances made during her presidency of Prolansate were seen as obstacles to the development of a number of business projects. The organisation was involved in campaigns against transnational companies which were deforesting and polluting the local environment. It was also involved in a local controversy which approved the movement of landless campesinos (supported by the Honduran Ministries of Agriculture and Tourism) into areas under Prolansate’s protection. Moreover, the area was seen as ripe for tourism investment, and land purchases by interested companies and individuals (even without the construction of tourism infrastructure) had already forced up land values and converted the area into a source of capital accumulation.

Jeannette Kawas was assassinated in February 1995, and still nobody has been brought to justice for the crime. Despite all the possible sources of violence given above, it is currently believed that the intellectual author of the crime was Jorge Montoya who had sold land for logging, the permit for which was cancelled by AFE-COHDEFOR, the state Forestry Commission, under Jeannette Kawas’ prompting and local management.

Carlos-Escaleras-r-220x300Carlos Escaleras (pictured) was assassinated in October 1997. Throughout the 1990s Carlos coordinated the efforts and campaigns of COPA, the Coordinating Body of Popular Organisations of Aguán, and in this role he often found himself and the organisation protesting about the contamination caused by a palm oil extraction plant owned by Miguel Facussé, a rich and powerful businessman and nephew of a former President of Honduras. Amongst others, Facussé has been accused of the intellectual authorship of the assassination of Carlos, but “the parliamentary immunity of some, the economic, political and military power of others and the complicity of judges and magistrates have been the obstacles to justice; as a result of these, the intellectual authors and material assassins have remained wrapped in impunity”[2].

Carlos Antonio Luna (pictured left) was assassinated in May 1998 at the age of 42. He fought against illegal timber felling in the region of Catacamas in the department of Olancho and exposed those responsible for it. In April he received death threats, and he left with COFADEH (the Honduran Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared) a note to say that if anything happened to him, the intellectual authors of the threats were Lincoln Figueroa, a nationalist deputy who, it was known, had already remarked that only killing Carlos Luna would solve thCarlos-Antonio-Luna-pictured-left-256x300eir problems; Jorge Chávez, a timber merchant; José Angel Rosa, another timber merchant who had repeatedly threatened Carlos with death; and the Soto family who were involved in the illegal exploitation and trafficking of timber. Jorge Chávez was captured in 2002 and served four years in jail, gaining his freedom in 2006. The other intellectual authors remain free. The material assassin Oscar Rodríguez is currently serving a 27 year sentence for the crime.

Carlos Roberto Flores (pictured right) was 28 when he was assassinated in June 2001. He paid with his life for his opposition to the Babilonia hydroelectric project. Six security guards of Energisa, the company responsible for the project, are accused as material perpetrators of the crime – three of them have been detained and three have fled. Accused as intellectual authors of the crime is Héctor Julián Borjas Rivera, President of the Energisa company, which had received a $270 million loan from the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (BCIE) for the project. He has not been arrested.

José Mauricio Hernández Cáceres was assassinated in November 2002. He was killed because of his public opposition to illegal logging in Olancho. In 2004, Alexis Días Cáceres was sentenced to 20 years in prison for committing the crime with two accomplices who were given lesser sentences. Within the communities in Olancho in which José was known, it is widely believed that the intellectual authors of the assassination are Rúben Antúnez (a cattle rancher), Francisco Zúñiga (mayor of the communCarlos-Roberto-Flores-pictured-right-203x300ity of Jano and an exploiter of the local forest timber) and Juan Lanza (a timber merchant).

Carlos Arturo Reyes (pictured below left)Carlos Arturo Reyes (pictured right) was 23 years old when he was assassinated in July 2003. After the March For Life in 2003, his name appeared on a death list of environmentalists to be assassinated. Carlos’s brother, Francisco Nahín Reyes Méndez, is believed to be responsible for the assassination. Francisco is known for his violent character and is also believed to have killed his girlfriend. It is thought that he was used by the logging companies to carry out this crime, after which he fled to the USA. But he returned several months later and is still at large in Honduras.

In December 2006, two members of the Environmental Movement of Olancho (MAO by its Spanish initials), Heraldo Zúñiga and Roger Iván Cartagena, were shot dead in the town of Guarizama, in Olancho. They were killed in execution style bCarlos-Arturo-Reyes-pictured-right-216x300y four members of the national police who are now in custody. The MAO has consistently campaigned against illegal logging in Olancho department since the year 2000 and has not been afraid to name the names of those responsible and to denounce corrupt officials of COHDEFOR, the Honduran Forestry Development Commission, which issues permits for felling. In May 2006 Heraldo Zúñiga stated that he had received several death threats after publicly exposing cases of illegal logging in the west of the department. That same month the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) requested information about this case from the Honduran government, which implemented protective measures for Padre Andres Tamayo, leader of the MAO. No protective measures for other members of the MAO were implemented. After the executions of the two MAO members in December 2006, the IACHR ordered the Honduran government to provide protection for other members of the MAO, but as ENCA members discovered during their visit in August 2007, no such protection has yet been provided.

The litany of assassinations could continue, but space prevents it. Today’s most pressing concern is the list of those currently living under threat of death or of persecution and prosecution by the authorities acting upon accusations made by the illegal loggers and companies whose operations they oppose. Those under threat of death include those listed after the first March For Life in June 2003, when thousands of people walked more than 170 km from Juticalpa in Olancho department to Tegucigalpa to demand an end to the illegal timber operations in Olancho. The march was headed by Padre Andres Tamayo, the priest in the town of Salamá, who now has a permanent bodyguard of Honduran soldiers because of the death threats he has received. Padre Andres drove us around various parts of Olancho to show us the deforestation, the areas where the MAO and local communities have blockaded roads to stop the loggers, the places where unarmed local residents have experienced tense stand-offs against hired gangs armed with AK-47s and Uzis. But what disturbs members of the MAO most is the threats faced by other members of the MAO who have no bodyguards and no protection despite the IACHR’s instructions to the Honduran government. Recent history shows that the threats are not idle. The logging companies and all those who profit from the operation will stop at nothing to ensure the profits they gain from selling their timber to the USA and Europe[3].

[1] Casa Alianza UK Newsletter, February 2007. 35 per cent (1,193) of these were children under the age of 18.
[2] Comité de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH) (2006) Erguidos Como Pinos: Memoria sobre la construcción de la conciencia ambientalista, Tegucigalpa, page 48.
[3] Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) (2005) ‘The Illegal Logging Crisis in Honduras: How US and EU imports of illegal Honduran wood increase poverty, fuel corruption and devastate forests and communities’. The report is available from the EIA’s website: www.eia-international.org

CISPES Supports Human Rights Defender in Face of Death Threats

Chapter 9 / The scale and nature of present day violence / Troublesome Lawyers and Human Rights Defenders

Sent: 26 January 2010 09:01 by Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)

CISPES would like to express our heartfelt solidarity with El Salvador’s Human Rights Ombudsman, Oscar Luna, who announced last Thursday, January 21 [2010] that he and his family have been receiving death threats. Luna declared that the threats have been delivered in the name of supposed extermination groups, demanding that he leave the country within 48 hours so as to not “obstruct the work of social cleansing” that they are attempting to carry out against “delinquency.” The re-emergence of such “social cleansing” groups was previously denounced by former Human Rights Ombudswoman Beatrice de Carrillo in 2006.

Oscar Luna has been an outspoken advocate for human rights in El Salvador. He defended the Suchitoto 13, water privatization protesters who were charged under the anti-terrorism law and denounced electoral fraud by ARENA during the 2009 elections. Most recently, he has pushed the Attorney General’s office to investigate the intellectual authors of the murders of Marcelo Rivera, Ramiro Rivera and Dora Alicia Sorto Recinos and mobilized his office to provide protection for environmental activists in Cabañas. He has decided not to leave his post, nor to leave the country. Instead, he is calling on the Attorney General and the head of the National Civilian Police to investigate and to provide additional protection for him and his family.

On January 16, El Salvador celebrated the 18th anniversary of the Peace Accords, when much of the State’s repressive apparatus was formally dismantled. However, the re-emergence of death squad structures, and the continued death threats against and assassinations of social movement activists, FMLN leaders and human rights defenders, represent a terrifying roll-back in the struggle for real democracy. CISPES stands with Mr. Luna in defending his position and in continuing his important work of promoting human rights in El Salvador and we call on the Attorney General’s office and the National Civilian Police to do everything within their power to protect Mr. Luna and all others in the struggle for justice in El Salvador.

You couldn’t make it up – III – Top brass gangsterism

Chapter 9 / The drug channel

The following are extracts from an article by Annie Bird which appeared in a Rights Action communiqué 15 August 2010 and was entitled ‘Cracks in the wall of impunity and corruption’ (www.rightsaction.org).

This week arrest warrants were issued against at least 19 members of an organised crime network that operated at the highest levels of Guatemalan justice administration from 2004 to 2007, though some have been active in organised crime and death squads since the 1980s.

One figure apparently involved in this network worked for President Reagan aid Lt Col Oliver North and former CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles. Amongst other political crimes, the network appears to have been involved in the 2007 murders of PARLACEN congressmen.

The investigation by CICIG, the United Nations sponsored Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala, focused on extrajudicial executions within the prison system. Jails in Central America have played a key role in coordinating organised crime activities. Control of the prisons is critical in the struggle for dominance between organised crime networks.

Two of those wanted for arrest are Carlos Vielmann, named Minister of Governance in 2004, and Edwin Sperinsen, named Director of the National Civil Police in 2004. The two resigned together in 2007 amid accusations of running a death squad and they left Guatemala later that year. Vielmann currently lives in Spain and Sperinsen currently lives in Switzerland. A third, Alejandro Giammettei, was Director of the Penitentiary System, and sought asylum in 2010 in the Honduran embassy in Guatemala City.

The 2007 accusations and the arrests in August 2010 were related to ‘social cleansing’, extrajudicial executions within the prison system. The CICIG investigations demonstrate that this network killed gang members and criminals with the logic of protecting the higher levels of organised crime.

Sperinsen and Vielmann worked closely together and were also implicated in a strategy of criminalising protests and killing protestors. … In August at least nine were arrested and at least ten other arrest warrants were issued. Those arrested include former heads of special police units to fight kidnapping, extortion and an elite unit within the penitentiary system.

All of the arrests were related to two ‘operations’ undertaken by the network, Operation Gavilán (Hawk) and Operation Pavo Real (Peacock). Operation Hawk tracked three prisoners who had escaped from El Infiernito prison in October 2005 and weeks later extra-judicially executed them.

In Operation Peacock, prison authorities supposedly re-took control of El Pavón prison, in the course of which seven prisoners were killed. Press reports claimed that a mafia had controlled the prison for ten years and that prison facilities served as the headquarters for criminal activities, that kidnap victims were held in the prison and that drugs were processed there. Though the press also reported that the prisoners were killed in the confrontation, it was demonstrated they were executed and that the death squad had compiled a list of targets to be executed during the operation.

Many of those now with arrest warrants participated directly in the operation, including then Minister of Governance Carlos Vielmann, then Director of Police Edwin Sperinsen, Chief and Assistant Chief of Special Investigations Javier Figueroa and Victor Soto, and Director of the Penitentiary System Alejandro Giamattei.

Oligarchy

Chapter 9 / The 2009 coup and its aftermath in Honduras

The essence of the term oligarchy is captured by the briefest of descriptions as ‘rule of the few’. But the vagueness and uncertainty of the term are highlighted when trying to define who exactly the few are. Originally the term applied to rule by a local lord or family whose wealth allowed power over local decisions, but as populations, state machinery and national integration grew, the power and wealth of some families and business sectors grew disproportionately.

The sector of activity in which the oligarchy is involved varies from country to country. It may include specific productive sectors of a country such as plantation agriculture, logging or mining; the business sector may be dominated by foreign interests rather than national; the church may wield significant power over local populations; or some families may have benefitted from a history of financial dealings from which they have accrued enormous wealth.

In his important work on ‘The Political Economy of Central America since 1920’[1], Victor Bulmer-Thomas explains how a traditional élite of small merchants and landowners had been replaced by the 1920s by a powerful new élite, based largely on the export sector as growers, traders or financiers (particularly of coffee). The success of this new élite had been so great that

the new interests came to form a virtual oligarchy exercising economic, social and political influence out of all proportion to their numbers. The new élite absorbed foreigners into its midst without losing its national character and demanded from the state changes in legislation to guarantee an adequate supply of land and labour for the expansion of the export sector.[2]

The close links between the US government, US transnational companies and Central American oligarchies, resulting from a history of US involvement in and control of the Central American economy and military, are explored in other parts of this chapter.

[1] Victor Bulmer-Thomas (1987) The Political Economy of Central America since 1920, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[2] Ibid., p.2.

María Santos Domínguez

Chapter 9 / The scale and nature of present day violence / Troublesome Lawyers and Human Rights Defenders

On 5 March 2014, as human rights defender Ms María Santos Domínguez returned to her home, she was surrounded and attacked with sticks, stones and machete by a group of seven individuals. Her husband and her son came to her rescue but were also attacked, with her son losing his ear. María Santos Domínguez has faced death threats on repeated occasions.

She is the co-ordinator of the Organización del Consejo Indígena del Río Blanco y del Sector Norte de Intibucá (Indigenous Coucil of Río Blanco and the North of Intibucá). The human rights defender is also a member of the Consejo Cívico de Organizaciones Indígenas y Populares de Honduras – COPINH (Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras) and an emblematic leader in the struggle for the defence of the Gualcarque river and the indigenous Lenca territory. Her husband, Mr Santos Roque Domínguez, is also a member of COPINH and a community activist.

On 5 March, just after noon, María Santos Domínguez was returning from preparing school lunches, on the route she normally uses. Santos Roque Domínguez phoned her several times due to the worry caused by the threats already made against the human rights defender. On the fourth call, María Santos Domínguez informed her husband that seven individuals, allegedly the same who had threatened her with death, and who had been waiting for her on her route, had her surrounded. In that moment, her husband and son left the house to search for her and found her, having already received deep machete wounds, being beaten with sticks and stones by the group. Santos Roque Domínguez tried to reason with them and pleaded with them not to kill his wife, meanwhile his son attempted to aid his mother. Immediately, one of the group slashed the child with the machete, chopping off his right ear and part of his face. Santos Roque Domínguez was also gravely injured. The attack against the three family members has left them in a serious state of health.

María Santos Domínguez, as well as her husband and son, have been the target of serious threats and attacks because of their work in opposition to the Agua Zarca hydroelectric plant. The same group who attacked them on 5 March also destroyed their crops on a previous occasion.

Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a human rights defender, owing to threats, defamation, judicial harassment, physical attacks, attempted killings and killings. Indigenous leader and member of COPINH, Mr Justo Sorto was killed on 21 January 2014. Human rights defender Mr Tomás García was killed on 15 July 2013, and the case has still not been properly investigated.

Front Line Defenders roundly condemns the attempt on the life of human rights defender María Santos Domínguez, as well as the attack on her husband and son. Front Line Defenders considers the attack to be directly related to the peaceful and legitimate work of María Santos Domínguez and the Organización del Consejo Indígena del Río Blanco y del Sector Norte de Intibucá.

http://protectionline.org/2014/03/09/attempted-killing-of-human-rights-defender-ms-maria-santos-dominguez/

Wealthy Land-owner Miguel Facussé, Bio-fuels, Repression: Wikileaks Reveals links to Narco-trafficking

Chapter 9 / The drug channel

By Suzanna.Reiss | Via Rights Action | September 19, 2011

It is not surprising to hear that representatives of the U.S. State Department stationed in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, believed since at least March 2004 [1] that the wealthiest man in Honduras, biofuel magnate and political powerhouse Miguel Facussé, was involved in the cocaine trade.

It is not surprising, but it is disturbing.

Facussé was a solid U.S. government ally [2] in the 2009 overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya, and he has also been accused of documented human rights abuses [3] against communities living on lands he sought to monopolize for an extractive biofuel export-oriented palm oil industry.

This is all detailed in the final cache of documents recently released by WikiLeaks.

Beyond the immediate scandalous implications of the revelations (a major player in the U.S.-backed overthrow of a democratically elected government had known ties to drug trafficking even while he helped negotiate the post-coup transition government [4] with U.S. representatives) are a number of other sobering phenomena.

The recently appointed U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, also an established advocate for the biofuel industry [5], recently demonized drug traffickers as terrorists [6] apparently unaware, or unmoved by these revelations implicating contacts at her diplomatic post. “Narco-traffickers and the gangs that support them are hardly different from terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda. They launch savage attacks on people to intimidate entire communities and instill fear in the public at large,” she said.

Biofuel, unlike bananas, is not destined for human consumption. But the mono-crop export economy was never geared toward sustaining the population. Today, in a world where food should be in abundance but is unnecessarily and selectively rare, the transition from bananas to fuel represents only the intensification of a capitalist logic that has increasingly valued fuel (whether destined to sustain the labour of humans or machines) at the expense of agricultural practices geared toward the sustenance of human life.

In fact, cultivating land for fuel rather than food has contributed to global food shortages [7] and has fostered widespread instability as profit motive trumps considerations of human or ecological justice.

What is happening in Honduras is a prime example.

Annie Bird for rightsaction.org [8] has documented [9] the massacres of people challenging the exploitative economic program advanced by biofuel magnates like Facussé and representatives of the U.S. government.

As Jesse Freeston of theRealNews.com [10] reports in “Battle for Land in Post-Coup Honduras” , the real terrorists in the countryside where biofuel power reigns are capitalism’s security forces. Private security, military, police, and paramilitary forces have all been responsible for the violent displacement of people [9] and communities, including dozens of political assassinations of indigenous organizers, labour leaders and reporters.

(The Real News: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1s29zCqVQE, & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe9pdsZM2MM)

It is commonplace for governments in the Americas to label their political opponents “drug traffickers.” It is more rare when their own blatant trafficking – and criminal impunity – is out there for everyone to see.

Read more of Suzanna Reiss’ blog, Traffick Jam [11], or check out the Jan/Feb issue of the NACLA Report on the Americas, “¡Golpistas! Coups and Democracy in the 21st Century [12].”

[1] www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=04TEGUCIGALPA672&q=facusse%20miguel
[2] www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09TEGUCIGALPA901&q=facusse%20miguel
[3] www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCIQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.kua.fi%2Ffilebank%2F3870-Honduras_FFM_Report_Bajo_Aguan.pdf&rct=j&q=HONDURAS%3A%20Human%20Rights%20Violations%20in%20Bajo%20Agu%C3%A1n&ei=XcVxTvWKEMTYiAKTxbyhCQ&usg=AFQjCNF9ovBLQh09f7SNU07_oKg2GWdIcg&cad=rja
[4] www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09TEGUCIGALPA900&q=facusse%20miguel
[5] http://quotha.net/node/1725
[6] http://honduras.usembassy.gov/sp-091111-eng.html
[7] http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/jun/01/biofuels-driving-food-prices-higher
[8] http://www.rightsaction.org/
[9] http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3198-honduras-aguan-massacres-continue-to-support-production-of-biodiesel
[10] www.therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=272
[11] https://nacla.org/blog/traffick-jam
[12] https://nacla.org/edition/6883

FOR MORE INFORMATION, INTERVIEWS, QUESTIONS:

Annie Bird, annie@rightsaction.org
Grahame Russell, info@rightsaction.org