The murder of Berta Cáceres illustrates a bleak state of affairs in Honduras. (photo: Orlando Sierra/Getty Images)
America's
Funding of Honduran Security Forces Puts Blood on Our Hands
By John James Conyers, Jr.,
Keith Ellison, Hank Johnson, Marcy Kaptur, Jan Schakowsky and Jose E Serrano,
Guardian UK
09 July 16
We should not work with Honduran police and military until the
government defends human rights and holds security forces responsible for their
crimes
On
2 March 2016, armed men burst into the home of Berta Cáceres, a prominent environmental and indigenous
activist in Honduras, and shot her to death. Earlier that day,
the government had rescinded Ms Cáceres’s meager security detail, leaving her
unprotected. Of the 33 threats against her, including death threats, none had
been investigated. Members of the Honduran military have been implicated in her
murder, and requests by the global community for an independent investigation
have been ignored.
Until
the Honduran government protects human rights and holds its security forces
responsible for their crimes, we should not be working with its police and
military. As long as the United States funds Honduran security forces without
demanding justice for those threatened, tortured and killed, we have blood on
our hands. It’s time to suspend all police and military aid to Honduras.
Ms
Cáceres’s murder fits an ongoing pattern of violence against organizers,
activists, and civilians since the 2009 coup deposed Honduras’ democratically
elected government. It’s even possible that US-trained forces were involved in
her death – one soldier alleges that Berta Cáceres’s name appeared on a hit
list distributed to an elite Honduran military police unit that
is part of the national interagency security force (Fusina). Fusina was trained last summer by
300 US military and civilian personnel, including Marines and FBI agents.
Despite
this dangerous track record, the United States continues to pour money into
Honduran security forces. The US has already allocated at least $18m to
Honduran police and military for 2016. Barack Obama’s 2017 budget request calls
for increased funding for the Honduran police and military. In addition, the
Inter-American Development Bank has lent $60m to the Honduran police, with US
approval.
The
Honduran police are widely documented to be corrupt. In August 2013, a
government commission charged with cleaning up the police admitted nearly
three-quarters of the police force were “beyond saving”. Human Rights Watch reports:
“The use of lethal force by the national police is a chronic problem.
Investigations into police abuses are marred by inefficiency and corruption …
and impunity is the rule.”
Leaked documents implicate
top Honduran police officials in the 2009 and 2011 assassinations of two police
investigators, Julian Aristídes Gonzales and Alfredo Landaverde. Those men were
investigating the connections between police leaders, drug traffickers, and
organized crime.
But
even the work of Gonzales and Landaverde may have been directed by the corrupt
Honduran government. A New York Times article suggests
the Honduran government may have fabricated elements of the police corruption
as an excuse to clean up the police by replacing them with the military.
President Juan Orlando Hernández’s personal commitment to cleaning up the
police is questionable. He reappointed Hétor Iván Mejía, an alleged human rights abuser, as
chief of operations for the national police, for example, and has a track
record of supporting the coup and undermining the rule of law on multiple fronts.
This
scandal is one of many with the alleged involvement of the Honduran military
and police. Over 100 small-farmer activists have been killed in the Aguán
Valley since 2009. In July 2013, Tomás García, a peaceful Lenca Indigenous
activist was killed. In December 2015, two Afro-Indigenous men were killed as
they attempted to push a car out of a sandbank. Despite documented involvement
of Honduran security forces, none of these crimes have been properly
investigated, and the cases remain in impunity.
President
Hernández’s response is misguided. He’s extended the military into domestic
policing, in violation of the Honduran constitution. The expanded military
police have killed unarmed men passing through checkpoints. They’ve tear gassed
and beaten members of opposition party Libre inside the main hall of Congress.
They’ve arrested and beaten a prominent advocate for children, Guadalupe
Ruelas, after he criticized the government. Creating a military police is
clearly not the solution.
The
murder of Berta Cáceres illustrates
a bleak state of affairs in Honduras. Corruption, impunity and judicial and
institutional weaknesses have created a human rights crisis in which no one is
safe – not even a world-famous recipient of the prestigious Goldman
Environmental Prize.
Recently,
five suspects were arrested in Ms Cáceres’ case – one suspect is a military
officer and two others are retired military officers. Given this information,
we are deeply concerned about the likely role of the Honduran military in her
assassination, including the military chain of command. Our colleague Senator
Patrick Leahy observed in the Senate that
the Honduran government was “complicit in condoning and encouraging the
lawlessness that Ms Caceres and her community faced every day”.
In
multiple letters to the secretary of state, stretching back to 2010, we have
joined with our colleagues in the House to call for an immediate suspension of
security aid to Honduras. Enough is enough – it’s past time to suspend the aid
and instruct the US Treasury department to vote no on all loans from
multilateral development banks to security forces in Honduras.
The Berta Cáceres Human Rights in
Honduras Act (HR 5474) would suspend those funds – and prohibit
international loans providing for security assistance – from being dispersed
unless Honduras makes serious inroads to addressing blatant human rights
violations by police and military forces.
Once
justice is restored and impunity for human rights abuses ends, we’ll
reconsider.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-323-1607; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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