The Silenced Human Rights Violations in Honduras

by Arbol | July 20, 2009 at 12:16 pm

556 views | 13 Recommendations | 8 comments

While analysts, diplomats, politicians and the general population are discussing whether the coup suffered in Honduras on June the 28th was Hugo Chávez's fault or not, Human Rights Organizations are calling out to the world to turn its head on more important matters: abuse of power and human rights violations.

Just recently, the Committee of Families of those Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (Comité de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos de Honduras, COFADEH) issued a report in which they denounce many cases of serious human rights violations by the new imposed government of Micheletti.

The report describes 1,161 cases of human rights violations, including violent detentions, excessive use of force, brutal repressions, abductions, threats, grave lesions and attacks, coercion of the media and executions.

Micheletti has imposed two curfews so far, and suspended constitutional and individual guarantees temporarily by Executive Decree 011-2009 (against the protocol specified in art. 187 of the Constitution), persuading the population to regain calmness and bring the country back to the stability it greatly lost after June 28th.

COFADEH has also reported that a diversity of testimonies by local authorities and community leaders state that people are defenseless against the military forces in the zone, who are constantly detaining protesters (including underage citizens) and undermining them.

Local majors have also been threatened with death and are facing persecution and house raids, and some have handled their major’s seat to the military. More over, non-official news media has suffered censorship and even expulsion from the country, as happened to South American news media TeleSur in recent days. Other news media that have faced censorship, threats, power outages or even complete shut-downs are Honduran Radio Globo, Cholusat Sur, Radio Juticalpa, Radio Progreso, Radio Marcala, Canal 36, and Associated Press.

As the coup was taking place on late June, Honduran population too went through telephone cuts, internet cuts and blackouts, followed by national television chains filled with propaganda, misinformation and psychological manipulation.

Hondutel, a telecommunications company, was banned for three days; the Empresa Estatal de Comunicaciones suffered the same fate; control towers were militarized, as were all transmissions. The congress, Public Ministry and the Supreme Court were all taken by the military too.

Then on July the 5th, a protest held in Toncontin Airport against the de facto government ended in dozens of injured and one dead, which prompted the golpistas to announce a change in the curfew deadline to 6.30pm, while the protesters were still inside the airport.

Isis Obed Murillo

The 19-year-old man was killed by the military, which randomly fired at people to end the protest. He, as were some 100.000 protesters that day, was demanding the return of Manuel Zelaya, but instead received a bullet in his head. Four days later his father, José David Murillo, was seized by agents of the DNIC (Dirección Nacional de Investigación Criminal). Why? Because there was a pending case against him for “being a rebel”. Murillo, an environmental activist, was detained just minutes after he testified in front of the Fiscalía de Derechos Humanos in relation to his son’s death.

He is currently in jail.

Journalist Gabriel Fino Noriega was also killed by unknown men on July the 3rd. He was known for denouncing suspicious massacres and informing about the failed survey which was to take place on June the 28th, the day of the coup. Other journalists, such as Rommel Gómez Mejía, Jorge Orlando Anderson, César Silva, Nahúm Palacios, Carlos Lara and many others have been silenced and threatened by the military.

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bayislandman (not verified)

at 10:46 on July 21st, 2009

Why don't you try to report the truth.. and stop the propaganda about "unrest" in Honduras. As an ex-pat living here almost 12 years.. I've seen and heard it all. There is little truth to your article, but it makes for sensationalism and great reading. You want to talk about oppression, why not look at the Chavez administration and his "silencing" of the media and those opposed to his narcissistic activities in Venezuela... the same activities Zelaya was preaching and doing here. Honduras says NO to communism in any form. Those who are "paid" to hate and stir up the masses have no place here. In recent days, 1200 foreigners with fake passports/documentation, most from Venezuela and Nicaragua have been arrested. These are paid militants by the Chavez government. Hondurans are happy Zelaya is gone, and his crimes he committed against his own people. Viva Democracy!

Arbol

at 14:19 on July 21st, 2009

As much as I respect your opinion, I must say, as I stated at the start of this article, that human rights violations have nothing to do with communism or the free market, or if Chávez and Ortega are the reincarnation of evil (luckily for the world the Cold War is long gone).

Regarding your assertion about the "1200 foreigners with fake passports/documentation", please tell us your source so we can be enlightened by your knowledge. On my part, this article is backed by not only COFADEH, but many respected and well-known international Human Rights Organizations that have little interest in setting a communist agenda, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, not to mention dozens of Honduran organizations whose members also happen to be living in Honduras for a longer time than you, and do have seen and heard it all.

And as I once commented here on NowPublic to someone who praised the coup with a "Viva la Democracia". Do you have any idea of what democracy means? It means people's power, so it is completely ironic to support a military coup as a democratic action. You were never asked if you wanted it or not, and your permission, your best interest, and your well-being were the least important to those who perpetrated the coup.

Lauram (not verified)

at 15:06 on August 19th, 2009

Thank you, Arbol. These people wouldn't believe a thing even if they witnessed personally what the army and the de facto government are doing to our fellow Hondurans. Luckily, now Amnesty International accused this government of brutal abuse of Human Rights, as will the Interamerican Commission of Human Rights. But well, even the UN are commuist conspirors to their paranoid and poor thinking.

Funnily, they live in a country, where it's not communists, but it's a far-left minority who has all the country's wealth on their hands.

As a Honduran, I must say that I am very disappointed of my so-called friends and all those people supporting this government, and mind you, I'm not pro Zelaya, but I am completely against this abuse. This brutallity is not something new and if we let it go on, then we Hondurans have no future. It's very painful to see all this happening and everyone thinking it's a conspiracy,the worst is our people suffering very much.. I really hope there are no more deaths, but by the look of things, they intend to go as far as they can and everyone has turned their back on us, except Human Rights organisations, but the international media? they show nothing....

axerator (not verified)

at 15:07 on July 21st, 2009

Mel Zelaya executed his own coup the moment he ordered a referendum on an amendment to allow re-election. The Honduran Constitution, Article

>>On my part, this article is backed by not only COFADEH, but many respected and well-known international Human Rights Organizations that have little interest in setting a communist agenda, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, not to mention dozens of Honduran organizations whose members also happen to be living in Honduras for a longer time than you, and do have seen and heard it all.

**__Since you are demanded sources, maybe you could list for us these "dozens" of organizations. A dozen ghosts maybe.

You want to investigate human rights abuses, then go investigate what part the 15-year-old Mel Zelaya had in his father's massacre of at least 12 nuns and priests, apparently furious over the rejection of one nun of his advances.

And learn a little history. Amnesty International was founded by an IRA Communist, just like the ACLU was founded by an American "Wobbly" Communist, so their agenda has everything to do with establishing the worldwide hegemony of a few super-rich autocrats with the cover of a sheepskin. Their falsetto bleeping about the poor is a lame excuse to eliminate the competition and establish a new monopoly, ruling directly from the top.

Tyranny has taken a new fraudulent cover. The poor in Hondurans are not stupid idiots, they are marching against the golpista Mel Zelaya and his puppet master Chavez. They are not Vladimir Lenin's "useful idiots" like the poor in Venezuela, they don't want to wind up like the Venezuelans with another clown breathing threatenings all over. Mel tried but he's a bad actor too.

--axerator

axerator (not verified)

at 15:17 on July 21st, 2009

The first paragraph in my preceding comment should be:

"..Mel Zelaya executed his own coup the moment he ordered a referendum on an amendment to allow re-election. The Honduran Constitution, Article 239 says that when a person proposes, promotes, or even advocates, "directly or indirectly", the re-election of a president, he automatically and "immediately" ceases to be president or vice-president or whatever other government post he/she may occupy.

Article 42 says that anyone who advocates re-elections loses all rights to claim citizenship.

Article 2 says anyone who usurps the Constitution is guilty of "treason".

Article 3 says that no citizen is bound by any order of a usurper, and that they have the right to insurrection against a usurper. Meaning, even though it was the Supreme Court in Honduras that ordered him arrest to stop Zelaya's auto-coup, the Armed Forces had every right under the Constitution to remove Zelaya from office.

The United States has a right to impeach and remove the president, a duty that the US Congress has shown twice.

In Honduras, a president is not above the law, and they stood up for the Constitution.

-axerator

Arbol

at 09:26 on July 24th, 2009

And fyi, here's my real answer to this comment. :)

Arbol

at 09:28 on July 27th, 2009

1- You just need a dozen organizations?: Centro de Estudios de la Mujer (CEM-H), Centro de Estudios y Acción para el Desarrollo de Honduras (CESADEH), Plataforma Interamericana de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Desarrollo (PIDHDD), FIAN Internacional, Federación Internacional de Derechos Humanos (FIDH), Iniciativa de Copenhaguen para Centroamérica y México (CIFCA), Servicio Paz y Justicia (SERPAJ), Red Biregional Enlazando Alternativas, Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL), MESA de Articulación de Asociaciones Nacionales y Redes de ONGs de América Latina y el Caribe, Asociación Americana de Juristas (AAJ), Asociación Chilena de ONGs ACCIÓN (with over 60 member organizations)... there's a million you could choose from.

2- Regarding Los Horcones Massacre... you and I can only speculate about it. Whatever did or did not happen is not directly related to Manuel Zelaya the president, and has nothing to do with this article. Please, stick to the facts.

3- "Amnesty International was founded by an IRA Communist, just like the ACLU was founded by an American "Wobbly" Communist, so their agenda has everything to do with establishing the worldwide hegemony of a few super-rich autocrats with the cover of a sheepskin. Their falsetto bleeping about the poor is a lame excuse to eliminate the competition and establish a new monopoly, ruling directly from the top." Sounds like a nice Hollywood script. But if Sean MacBride was trying to 'take over the world' then the very-communist United Nations, the International Peace Bureau and Alfred Nobel must be behind him, and Amnesty International has an evil communist agenda on the oven. Lol.

Hondureño de Corazon (not verified)

at 21:28 on July 23rd, 2009

100,000. demonstrator = LIE army shot the poor guy = LIE please report the truth, you probably better off working for Hugo Chavez (you would say he a angel)