Honduran Opposition Leaders Being Murdered While US Pours in Money to
Repressive Government and Military
Published on
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
by
The Hill
Honduran Opposition Leaders Being Murdered While US Pours in Money to
Repressive Government and Military
by
Mark Weisbrot
Hondurans people protest the military coup against Manuel Zelaya outside the
presidential palace in June 2009. (Photo: AFP)
Since a 2009 military coup against the democratic government of President
Mel Zelaya, Honduras has become the most dangerous country in the world for
environmental and human rights activists.
On Oct. 17, two more prominent rural organizers, José Ángel Flores and
Silmer Dionisio George, were assassinated in Colón. Flores was the president
of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the Aguán Valley (MUCA), and George
was a well-known leader from the same organization.
This follows the Oct. 9 assassination attempts against Tomás Gómez Membreño,
the general coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous
Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and COPINH community leader Alexander
García Sorto.
Unfortunately, this continuing wave of political violence has a lot to do
not only with the corrupt, repressive government that rules Honduras, but
also with the U.S. government.
Washington played a major role in consolidating the 2009 military coup and
continues to supply tens of millions of dollars of military and security aid
annually to the government.
On March 2, Berta Cáceres, the former general coordinator of COPINH and
winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, was murdered. She had been
organizing, with some success, against a number of environmentally
destructive projects that proliferated after the 2009 coup.
One of them was the Agua Zarca dam, which threatens the environment and
rights of the indigenous Lenca community. The movement that she helped
organize forced the largest dam producer in the world to pull out of the
project, and has halted construction since last year.
A Honduran soldier subsequently told the media that Berta had been targeted
by the military for assassination.
The murder of Cáceres provoked so much international outrage that 42 members
of the US Congress have cosponsored the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in
Honduras Act (H.R. 5474).
It calls for the suspension of all U.S. military and security aid to
Honduras so long as the Honduran government fails to protect social
activists and so long as the country's security forces continue to
perpetrate human rights violations with impunity, among other conditions.
To the consternation of human rights advocates in Honduras and the U.S., on
Sept. 30, the State Department certified that Honduras had met the human
rights conditions attached to their 2016 military and security aid, against
all the violent evidence to the contrary. Without this certification,
Honduras would have lost half of this aid.
The Berta Cáceres Act probably cannot be passed at this time, given the
Republican-controlled Congress. A number of Republican leaders in Congress
openly supported the 2009 military coup; the Obama administration nominally
opposed it, but took other measures to help the coup succeed.
For example, former Secretary of State (and current Democratic nominee for
president) Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2014 book, "Hard Choices," that she
worked to prevent Zelaya, the deposed democratically elected president, from
returning to office.
Zelaya had succeeded in preventing the expansion of environmentally
destructive megaprojects; he had also presided over an economy that reduced
inequality, poverty and unemployment, and substantially increased the
minimum wage, before he was overthrown.
Notably, he also was working to resolve claims by campesinos (peasant
farmers) that their land holdings in areas like the Aguán Valley that had
been illegally seized by powerful land barons and plantation owners.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has refused to meet with Salil
Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International, which condemned the
murder of Flores and George.
On Oct. 20, Honduran security forces used excessive force to break up a
demonstration protesting the mishandling of the Cáceres murder investigation
by Honduran authorities. The social movements want the government to
identify the higher-ups who are responsible for the assassination, not just
the shooters.
In another sign that the rule of law does not apply to the murder of
indigenous leaders, the file for Cáceres's case was reportedly stolen from
the prosecutor on Sept. 29.
The terrible human rights situation in Honduras, including environmental
destruction of indigenous lands and the ongoing flood of refugees fleeing
violence, is a natural result of the overthrow of a democratically elected,
reform government, and its replacement with repression and militarization.
Unfortunately, at the highest levels of the U.S. "national security state,"
Honduras is seen as a pawn in a geopolitical Cold War II chess game. It
holds one of the U.S.'s few remaining Latin American military bases.
So the numerous calls from almost 100 members of Congress for a cutoff of
military and security aid until the government puts an end to impunity
have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
This will not necessarily change if the Democrats win the Senate on Nov. 8.
But, in any case, there is plenty that Congress can do even now.
Individual senators, for example, on committees such as Appropriations and
Foreign Relations, can make it enormously difficult, and maybe impossible,
for U.S. security aid to be disbursed to Honduras.
That kind of justified obstructionism could put tremendous pressure on the
Honduran government to respect human life and rights.
© 2016 The Hill
Mark Weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
(CEPR), in Washington, DC. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy. He
is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis. E-mail
Mark: weisbrot@xxxxxxxx
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Honduran Opposition Leaders Being Murdered While US Pours in Money to
Repressive Government and Military
Published on
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
by The Hill
Honduran Opposition Leaders Being Murdered While US Pours in Money to
Repressive Government and Military
by
Mark Weisbrot
8 Comments
Hondurans people protest the military coup against Manuel Zelaya
outside the presidential palace in June 2009. (Photo: AFP)
Since a 2009 military coup against the democratic government of
President Mel Zelaya, Honduras has become the most dangerous country in the
world for environmental and human rights activists.
On Oct. 17, two more prominent rural organizers, José Ángel Flores
and Silmer Dionisio George, were assassinated in Colón. Flores was the
president of the Unified Campesinos Movement of the Aguán Valley (MUCA), and
George was a well-known leader from the same organization.
This follows the Oct. 9 assassination attempts against Tomás Gómez
Membreño, the general coordinator of the Civic Council of Popular and
Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), and COPINH community leader
Alexander García Sorto.
Unfortunately, this continuing wave of political violence has a lot
to do not only with the corrupt, repressive government that rules Honduras,
but also with the U.S. government.
Washington played a major role in consolidating the 2009 military coup and
continues to supply tens of millions of dollars of military and security aid
annually to the government.
http://commondreams.org/november-9http://commondreams.org/november-9
On March 2, Berta Cáceres, the former general coordinator of COPINH and
winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, was murdered. She had been
organizing, with some success, against a number of environmentally
destructive projects that proliferated after the 2009 coup.
One of them was the Agua Zarca dam, which threatens the environment and
rights of the indigenous Lenca community. The movement that she helped
organize forced the largest dam producer in the world to pull out of the
project, and has halted construction since last year.
A Honduran soldier subsequently told the media that Berta had been targeted
by the military for assassination.
The murder of Cáceres provoked so much international outrage that 42 members
of the US Congress have cosponsored the Berta Cáceres Human Rights in
Honduras Act (H.R. 5474).
It calls for the suspension of all U.S. military and security aid to
Honduras so long as the Honduran government fails to protect social
activists and so long as the country's security forces continue to
perpetrate human rights violations with impunity, among other conditions.
To the consternation of human rights advocates in Honduras and the U.S., on
Sept. 30, the State Department certified that Honduras had met the human
rights conditions attached to their 2016 military and security aid, against
all the violent evidence to the contrary. Without this certification,
Honduras would have lost half of this aid.
The Berta Cáceres Act probably cannot be passed at this time, given the
Republican-controlled Congress. A number of Republican leaders in Congress
openly supported the 2009 military coup; the Obama administration nominally
opposed it, but took other measures to help the coup succeed.
For example, former Secretary of State (and current Democratic nominee for
president) Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2014 book, "Hard Choices," that she
worked to prevent Zelaya, the deposed democratically elected president, from
returning to office.
Zelaya had succeeded in preventing the expansion of environmentally
destructive megaprojects; he had also presided over an economy that reduced
inequality, poverty and unemployment, and substantially increased the
minimum wage, before he was overthrown.
Notably, he also was working to resolve claims by campesinos (peasant
farmers) that their land holdings in areas like the Aguán Valley that had
been illegally seized by powerful land barons and plantation owners.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has refused to meet with Salil
Shetty, secretary general of Amnesty International, which condemned the
murder of Flores and George.
On Oct. 20, Honduran security forces used excessive force to break up a
demonstration protesting the mishandling of the Cáceres murder investigation
by Honduran authorities. The social movements want the government to
identify the higher-ups who are responsible for the assassination, not just
the shooters.
In another sign that the rule of law does not apply to the murder of
indigenous leaders, the file for Cáceres's case was reportedly stolen from
the prosecutor on Sept. 29.
The terrible human rights situation in Honduras, including environmental
destruction of indigenous lands and the ongoing flood of refugees fleeing
violence, is a natural result of the overthrow of a democratically elected,
reform government, and its replacement with repression and militarization.
Unfortunately, at the highest levels of the U.S. "national security state,"
Honduras is seen as a pawn in a geopolitical Cold War II chess game. It
holds one of the U.S.'s few remaining Latin American military bases.
So the numerous calls from almost 100 members of Congress for a cutoff of
military and security aid until the government puts an end to impunity
have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
This will not necessarily change if the Democrats win the Senate on Nov. 8.
But, in any case, there is plenty that Congress can do even now.
Individual senators, for example, on committees such as Appropriations and
Foreign Relations, can make it enormously difficult, and maybe impossible,
for U.S. security aid to be disbursed to Honduras.
That kind of justified obstructionism could put tremendous pressure on the
Honduran government to respect human life and rights.
© 2016 The Hill
/author/mark-weisbrot
/author/mark-weisbrot/author/mark-weisbrot
Mark Weisbrot is Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
(CEPR), in Washington, DC. He is also president of Just Foreign Policy. He
is co-author, with Dean Baker, of Social Security: The Phony Crisis. E-mail
Mark: weisbrot@xxxxxxxx
