Karen House Catholic Worker
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Karen House Catholic Worker |
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Witness for Peace in Honduras Virginia Druhe September 17, 2009 I was in Honduras the week of September 5-12 with a ten-person Witness For Peace delegation. Witness For Peace has a 25 year history of living among the people of Latin America and documenting human rights violations. I worked with them in 1985-86 when I was living in Nicargua. |
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Our trip was in response to accusations of grave human rights violations on the part of the de facto regime installed a military coup on June 28, 2009, and to direct requests for international observers from civil society groups being targeted in the attacks. Through July and August there had been credible reports of mass arbitrary arrests, disappearances, political assassinations, torture, rape and death threats. Men known to have implemented such tactics in Honduras in the 1980’s had security roles in the new government. The situation was all too familiar and too real. |
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Goals As U.S. citizens we also wanted to hear Hondurans’ view of our government’s possible role in, and responses to, the coup. President Obama immediately condemned the coup and recognized it as an illegal transfer of power. At the same time, 75 days later, the State Department is still studying whether this is a “military coup.” Under U.S. law, that designation requires immediate and severe responses. Every other government in the hemisphere has broken diplomatic relations with the coup government, but the U.S. claims it can negotiate more effectively by staying. They have blocked most aid to Honduras and last week finally revoked the visas of more than 1,000 of the coup plotters. |
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Activities We were fortunate that in just one week we were able to accompany daily protest marches as international observers on three days and witness the marchers’ commitment to nonviolence and their skill in implementing it. Overall, the police were also disciplined and seemed mostly focused on protecting property on the march routes. They may have sought to provoke confrontation one day by blocking the march route, but march leaders were able to re-route the crowd with no major incidents. We spent the rest of our time meeting with university professors and students, lawyers, medical professionals, members of the Catholic Church, media correspondents, women’s organizations, union representatives and government representatives and employees and a representative of the U.S. embassy. Findings Interestingly, the focus of resistance to the coup is not on the person of President Zelaya, whose term in office ends in January in any even, but on the prompt restoration of constitutional government, holding legitimate national elections in late November, and ultimately for the country to hold a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution. They feel that is the only way they can break the hold of the traditional 15 families on political, military and economic power. Zelaya’s support for an Assembly seems to be the final straw that resulted in the coup on the day of a non-binding referendum on the issue. In terms of the human rights situation, the reports of Amnesty International and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission do a good job of summarizing the violations of the early weeks including:
Honduran governmental institutions and individuals including the Public Ministry and Attorney General have failed to recognize and document these abuses. While the mass and public violations have decreased in recent weeks, they have been replaced by much more personal and targeted threats to leaders of the resistance organizations. One man’s wife and 2 year old child had a gun held to their heads and were told they would be killed if his work continued. He had already been detained and tortured himself. Many people report receiving threatening calls on their cell phones and being followed by military or police. There is great fear that the regime is biding its time until the November elections and that intense repression will follow then. The U.S. government has taken steps to put pressure on the coup regime, especially revoking of the visas of coup-plotters and participants and announcing that the elections scheduled for November 29th will not be recognized under current conditions. However, these actions were taken weeks after the Organization of American States – crucial weeks for the people of Honduras. In fact, the U.S. response has not been clear or energetic. The verbal condemnations would be much more effective if paired with cancellation of diplomatic relations with the current government,
There are also persistent reports of meetings before the coup between U.S. officials and citizens and those responsible for the coup and resulting abuses and violations. Our own officials – military, diplomatic and economic – who were involved in Honduras in the 1980’s have been seen in all the wrong places. In the name of decency and transparency, citizens of both our countries deserve a full accounting of any United States involvement to protect United States in the period leading up to the coup and extending to the present moment. Finally, we personally felt the importance people in Honduras place on the continued presence of international human rights delegations and observers in Honduras, both as a possible limitation on repression, and as a way to get factual information out around the world. If you have the opportunity to participate in a delegation to Honduras in the coming months, I encourage you to do so. This is clearly a time when our presence matters. Considering the documented repression and violations of human rights on the part of the de facto regime, we ask that the Inter-American Human Rights Commission and the United Nations provide permanent fact-finding teams on the ground while blatant violations continue. |
