HONDURAS
Rights Situation
Deteriorates
By Jim Lobe*
WASHINGTON (IPS) - Six months after the
inauguration of President Porfirio Lobo,
the human rights situation in Honduras
continues to deteriorate, according to
two major New York-based groups.
"Threats and attacks against journalists
and the political opposition have
fostered a climate of intimidation,
while impunity for abuses remains the
norm," according to a short report
released by Human Rights Watch Thursday.
Such attacks "have had a profound
chilling effect on basic freedoms in
Honduras," said HRW's Americas director,
Jose Miguel Vivanco.
"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,"
he added.
HRW's assessment came two days after the
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
issued a 13-page report detailing the
murders of seven journalists so far this
year.
The report, "Journalist Murders
Spotlight Honduran Government Failures",
accused the Lobo government of
"fostering a climate of lawlessness that
is allowing criminals to kill
journalists with impunity".
The two reports were published on the
eve of the release of an assessment by a
special commission of the Organisation
of American States (OAS) regarding the
possible end of Honduras's suspension
from the hemispheric group.
The OAS suspended Honduras immediately
after the Jun. 28, 2009 military coup
d'etat against then-President Manuel
Zelaya.
Knowledgeable sources told IPS the
report, while commending a number of
steps taken by the Lobo administration,
including the establishment in May of a
Truth Commission to investigate the
events surrounding the coup, would not
recommend Honduras's full re-instatement
at this time
The coup, which set off a protracted
political crisis that many had hoped
would end with Lobo's inauguration last
January, resulted, among other things,
in a sharp decline in aid from
Honduras's major donors, including the
United States, the European Union (EU),
multilateral financial institutions, and
Venezuela, which provided the country
with heavily subsidised supplies of oil.
Much of that assistance has since been
restored, but the Honduran economy
remains in dire straits, according to
experts here. The country's Labour
Ministry reported earlier this week that
more than 50,000 people had lost their
jobs during the first of 2010.
Altogether, about four million of the
country's working-age population are
either unemployed or earn their living
in the informal sector.
"The country is on the verge of an
economic collapse, largely as a result
of the coup's repercussions, but also
due to pervasive corruption," according
to Vicki Gass, a Honduras specialist at
the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA),
who noted that recent storms have also
created significant damage.
As a result, Lobo has focused much of
his efforts as president on restoring
aid flows and normalising Honduras'
international position, particularly in
the OAS.
The hemispheric body, however, has been
divided on Honduras's continued
suspension.
Led by the United States, some
countries, notably most of Honduras's
Central American neighbours, Colombia,
and Peru, have argued since Lobo's
election last November that the
suspension should be ended.
Led by Brazil, other members refused to
recognise the election as legitimate
because Zelaya had not been restored to
office before the vote, as had been
demanded by the OAS after the coup
consistent with the body's Democratic
Charter.
The latest human rights reports, which
also include an assessment by the
Inter-American Commission on Human
Rights (IACHR) issued Jul. 7, are likely
to bolster the case for those countries
that oppose Honduras' quick
re-instatement.
HRW said at least eight journalists and
10 members of the National Popular
Resistance Front (FNRP), a coalition
that opposed the coup and demanded
Zelaya's re-instatement, have been
killed since Lobo's inauguration.
It also reported what it called "a
significant increase in threats against
journalists and opposition members"
during the same six-month period.
It noted that the IACHR had issued 26
"precautionary measures" that urged the
government to take to ensure the
protection of specific individuals and
their families. Efforts to comply with
the Commission's appeals, however, have
been "few, late in coming, and in some
cases non- existent", the IACHR itself
reported last month.
In one case, Nahun Palacios, a
television station director in Tocoa
whose protection the IACHR had sought
after he had received numerous death
threats, was killed by unidentified
assailants as he drove home Mar. 14.
HRW stressed that not all of the attacks
were necessarily politically motivated.
Some victims, especially among the
journalists, had spoken out against
corruption and the activities of drug
cartels or other mafia whose power and
operations were on the rise even before
the coup.
"The political crisis has created a
vacuum and uncertainty in the
government, and that's been good for the
mafias," said Michael Shifter, president
of the Inter-American Dialogue, a
Washington-based hemispheric think tank.
"It's a mistake to see the current human
rights situation as the result of an
anti-democratic regime," he added. "It's
the result of a long-term deterioration
in the government's capacity to cope
with lots of stresses."
Shifter said he favoured Honduras's
re-instatement in the OAS for precisely
that reason. "Its harder to bring them
back in with a serious and deteriorating
human rights situation, but keeping them
marginalised can make things worse. They
obviously need a lot of help."
The climate of intimidation that
prevails in Honduras has been compounded
by the lack of accountability for abuses
committed after the coup, according to
HRW, which noted that there has not yet
been a single conviction of those
responsible for well-documented
violations. Moreover, a Jan. 27 amnesty
decree could make any prosecutions more
difficult, it added.
HRW also objected to the dismissals by
the Supreme Court in May of four
lower-court judges who had challenged
the legality of the 2009 coup. That
action, it said, will likely intimidate
other judges.
The administration of U.S. President
Barack Obama, which initially denounced
the coup but then unilaterally decided
to back the November elections without
insisting on Zelaya's re-instatement,
has publicly condemned abuses in
Honduras since Lobo took power.
"President Obama expressed his concern
to President Lobo regarding the human
rights situation in Honduras...," a
State Department spokesman told IPS
Thursday.
Undersecretary of State for Global
Issues, Maria Otero, and the deputy
assistant secretary of state for Central
America and the Dominican Republic,
Julissa Reynoso, are due to travel to
Honduras Aug. 3-4. They are scheduled to
meet, among others, with members of the
Resistance Front and human rights
groups.
"Human rights will be high on the
agenda," the spokesman added. It will be
the highest-level U.S. delegation to
travel to Honduras since the coup. The
Bolivian-born Otero lived for a number
of years in Honduras.
Lobo's adviser for human rights, Ana
Pineda, and the government's special
human rights prosecutor, Sandra Ponce,
spent three days meeting with U.S.
officials here last week, according to
the State Department.
*Jim Lobe's blog on U.S. foreign policy
can be read at http://www.lobelog.com. |
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