Honduras: Ongoing Attacks Foster Climate of Intimidation

[cory777]

Source: Human Rights Watch

(Washington DC) - Six months after President Porfirio Lobo took office, Honduras has made little progress toward addressing the serious human rights abuses since the 2009 coup, Human Rights Watch said today. Threats and attacks against journalists and the political opposition have fostered a climate of intimidation, while impunity for abuses remains the norm.

"Violent attacks on journalists and political opponents have had a profound chilling effect on basic freedoms in Honduras," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "When journalists stop reporting, citizens abandon political activities, and judges fear being fired for their rulings, the building blocks of democratic society are at grave risk."

Human Rights Watch called on the Honduran government to provide protection to journalists and members of the political opposition, prosecute people responsible for human rights abuses, and restore the independence of the judiciary.

A Climate of Intimidation

At least eight journalists and ten members of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP)-a political group that opposed the 2009 coup and advocated the reinstatement of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya-have been killed since President Lobo assumed power on January 27, 2010.

Read more: http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/07/29/honduras-ongoing-attacks-foster-climate-intimidation

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Activist News! http://activistnews.blogspot.com The Truth Hurts!

[defendandprotect]

1. K&R --

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. Where are all those posters concerned with human right violations in Latin America?

I guess it's a-OK when right-wingers do it.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

3. Heh. There they are. I recommended and it stayed at the same number.

Yeah, I canceled your unrec, righto. Show yourself.

[David__77]

4. Honduras is a case where there is no unarmed path to change.

The entrenched ruling class and its institutions, including the military, forms a bulwark weighing of the majority of the people.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. Kick

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Judi Lynn]

7. Under fire: Journalists in Honduras work amid a scene of intimidation and death threats

Under fire
Journalists in Honduras work amid a scene of intimidation and death threats
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Aug. 8, 2010, 9:07PM

In an alarming development over the past few months, a near neighbor of the U.S. has become one of the deadliest nations in the world for journalists.

As documented in a special report for the Committee to Protect Journalists authored by Mike O'Connor, unidentified killers shot seven Honduran broadcast journalists to death in a bloody spree beginning in March. Six occurred in a span of seven weeks.

The CPJ investigation found evidence indicating at least three, and possibly more, of the murders were motivated by the journalists' work. That would make Honduras the second most dangerous place to practice journalism in 2010, exceeded only by Pakistan.

After the military coup last year that ousted leftist president Manuel Zelaya, critics of the regime installed by the military were targeted by uniformed police and anonymous assailants. A U.S. State Department report referred to accounts of arbitrary killings by agents of the de facto regime following the June coup.

Elections last November put conservative Porfirio Lobo in power, but Honduran journalists told CPJ they fear the murders have been conducted with tacit approval of authorities. One of the victims, Channel 5 anchorman Nahúm Palacios, a coup opponent, was slain after the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered the Honduran government to protect his life because of death threats.

As disturbing as the journalists' deaths has been the Honduran government's swift dismissal of the possibility that the victims were killed because of their line of work. Minister of Security Óscar Álvarez told reporters that they were probably street crimes. Adding to the suspicion of government complicity is the fact Álvarez made his statement without providing any supporting evidence and investigators have not apprehended any suspects in the murders.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/7145121.html

[Judi Lynn]

8. For readers' benefit, a letter to the NY Times from the Honduran gov't, regarding these killings:

Killings in Honduras
Published: August 8, 2010

To the Editor:

“Honduras Faces Criticism Over Journalist Killings After a Coup” (news article, July 27) cites a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists accusing the government of Honduras of failing to investigate the murders of seven journalists this year.

According to the National Prosecutors Office, all the cases have been fully investigated, and in four of the cases, orders of arrest have been issued against those allegedly responsible. In one of the cases, there is a formal criminal trial under way against the accused. The investigations have not concluded in the rest of the cases and continue at a standard pace. Therefore, one should not talk about killing with “impunity” in any of these cases, as the report does.

The results of the investigations at this point place the deaths of the journalists within the context of the climate of insecurity created by organized crime and common crime in Central America, including Honduras. In none of the cases has it been established that the government pursues a policy of restrictions on freedom of expression or press persecution, or that the crimes have been politically motivated.

The government of Honduras has requested international assistance, from the United States, Colombia and Spain, to make the investigation procedures more effective and transparent, to provide technical assistance and to help design a public policy on human rights.

Ana Pineda
Minister of Human Rights
Government of Honduras
Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Aug. 3, 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/opinion/lweb09honduras.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[Judi Lynn]

9. Honduras Down the Memory Hole: U.S. media ignore the aftermath of dubious elections they praised

August 2010
Honduras Down the Memory Hole
U.S. media ignore the aftermath of dubious elections they praised
By Alyssa Figueroa

A year after a military coup removed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya from office, Hondurans are still living under a repressive government—but the U.S. is pushing Latin American countries to join it in normalizing relations with the regionally ostracized nation.

Reporting from a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS), the New York Times (6/8/10) dutifully relayed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s assertion that “we saw the free and fair election of President Lobo,’’ noting on the other hand that “several foreign ministers inveighed against Mr. Lobo’s government, which they said had violated human rights.” The Times left it up to readers to guess who might have been right. The Washington Post (6/8/10) reported that this debate is simply an indication of “how difficult it is to bridge regional divisions.”

Such coverage is no surprise, given the media’s enthusiastic response to Lobo’s election in January. After the June 28, 2009, coup, the U.S. and many Latin American countries said they would refuse to recognize the elections in November if Zelaya wasn’t restored to office to finish out his term (Washington Post, 9/4/09). Given that the elections would be held under the auspices of a coup regime, the UN, the OAS, the EU and the Carter Center didn’t send observers (Real News Network, 4/08/10).

Before the election was held, however, the U.S. backed off this position—a reversal cheered in the U.S. press. Washington Post columnist Edward Schumacher-Matos (11/27/09) declared that Obama was “alone, and right, on Honduras,” because the election “will come off favorably enough.” A Post editorial (11/28/09) agreed, arguing that Hondurans were eager for the election because they “have little taste for Mr. Zelaya, who embraced the leftist populism of Hugo Chavez.” (See FAIR Action Alert, 9/24/09.) Yet an August 2009 poll by the Honduran polling company COIMER & OP found that 52 percent supported Zelaya’s return to presidency, while 33 percent opposed it. In the same poll, those who expressed an opinion came out 3-to-1 against the coup (Narcosphere, 10/7/09).

The election went on, with many publications (e.g., Washington Post, L.A. Times, both 11/30/09) deeming it “peaceful,” while at the same time reporting that 500 protesters were targeted with tear gas. There was little coverage of the beatings and arrests leading up to the election, or of the nearly 5,000 soldiers dispersed throughout the country to enforce a state of emergency (Guardian, 11/28/09).

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=4129