US Crew Runs Afoul of Honduran Gun Laws

US attitudes towards guns are notoriously different than those elsewhere in the world. And despite the well-promoted image of Honduras as inherently "violent", it is aligned with the rest of the world in restricting access to guns.

Now that difference has tripped up a ship's crew from Aqua Quest International, a self-described "Ocean Exploration and Archaeological Recovery Corporation " out of Tarpon Springs, Florida, that has landed itself in jail in Honduras by being ignorant of Honduran gun laws. Unfortunately, the news media in the US are not doing a very good job of understanding the actual laws involved, being too ready to accept another ready-made image: that of the corrupt foreign officials. While sometimes that definitely fits the Honduran case, this seems to be an exception: the Honduran legal system is working the way it is supposed to.

The Aqua Quest International crew was on its way to take a contract with the town of Ahuas, where a DEA supervised helicopter murdered 4 Honduran citizens including a pregnant woman in a botched drug interdiction.  The contract was to dredge the lower Patuca river, recovering sunken mahogany and ceder logs worth thousands of dollars.  Aqua Quest would get 30% of the sale price of the logs recovered.

It is not uncommon for ships sailing in US coastal waters, and even in the Caribbean, to have guns on board, but the Captain must be aware of local laws concerning guns before entering a port.  In many countries, Captains with guns have to sink a container with the guns onto the ocean floor, in international waters, marking the location, and retrieve them after leaving port.  This is a complicated, and not always successful project.  But local laws apply when a ship enters a port, and that includes gun laws.

But the captain and crew from Aqua Quest International entered Puerto Lempira not knowing Honduran law, and apparently not knowing that they were breaking it.  They declared their guns to the military vessel that checked them as they entered Honduran national waters, and were expecting the Port Captain to decide if they could keep their guns or needed to have them locked up.  Instead they were met by, and arrested by, the local police.

Their lawyer, Armida Lopez de Arguello claims this is a violation of maritime law.

It is not.

Honduran law is very clear. 

If you want to bring a gun into Honduras by sea, air, or land, you better already have a permit issued by Honduras.  Any attempt to bring a gun in without such a permit, aboard ship, via air, or overland, will get you arrested and thrown in jail.  Wikipedia mentions it, and cites a section of the US State Department website on Honduras. 

Under the heading "Firearms" the State Department website clearly states:

Firearms: No one may bring firearms into Honduras, except for diplomats or individuals participating in shooting or hunting sport events who have obtained a temporary firearm importation permit from the Honduran Ministry of Security prior to their travel to Honduras.

Firearms for personal safety or for purposes other than those mentioned above must be purchased locally through a store named “La Armería.” These stores are regulated by the Honduran Armed Forces and are located throughout Honduras.

It's even on the Honduran Embassy website, albeit in the Spanish language FAQ. 

A little research on the internet might have saved the ship's Captain and crew from its current predicament.

The ship had two shotguns, two handguns, and a semi-automatic "sports rifle" that resembles an AK-47.  Shotguns and hand guns can be easily permitted in Honduras, but that semi-automatic "sports rifle" cannot. Possession of such a rifle in Honduran territorial waters is itself a criminal act.

Despite easy access to the facts of Honduran law, most of the English-language media seem perplexed as to why the crew were arrested. 

Fox news used the phrase "trumped up changes", echoing the words of Stephen Mayne, the company's chief operating officer, brother of the ship's Captain, Robert Mayne, Jr., who is also the company's CEO. 

NPR covered the story this week without mentioning Honduran law. 

Stephen Mayne told the Macon Telegraph that:

“They shouldn’t be (in prison). (The crew) did everything by the book. They’ve been detained unlawfully by officials with suspect motives.”

Only a few media outlets got the facts right, and it makes for some strange bedfellows.

A New York Times article quotes a government prosecutor in Tegucigalpa as saying that the men should have had a permit for the guns because they had entered Honduran waters. The Voice of Russia reports that "the Honduran armed forces said the crew was arrested because they didn't have permits to possess guns in the country."

It's pretty clear that the actions of the US group were due to ignorance of Honduran law.  A Honduran appeals court will decide if they will continue to be held for trial, or can be released awaiting trial, later this week.

Meanwhile, we can hope that in the interim, more of the English language media can learn the facts, and begin to explain them to a US public that at times really doesn't understand that in other countries, being casual about firearms is not acceptable.

Honduran Media Emphasize Role of DEA in Miskitu Killings

A story credited to the Spanish news agency EFE, published in Honduras by the news website Proceso Digital late on August 14, raises again the question of the degree of involvement of US Drug Enforcement Agents in the deaths of Honduran indigenous civilians in early May near Ahuas, a community in the Honduran Mosquitia.

Headlined "The DEA had a 'central role' [in the] anti-drug operation in Honduras that left 4 dead", the news story cites a 60 page report by the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Rights Action, dated August 15.

Proceso Digital summarizes the report as

underlining that the DEA agents took a "significant role" and not simply a support role as the US State Department argued; that the US has not sufficiently assisted in the investigation".

What is at issue, Proceso Digital makes clear, is that a full investigation of the events in May cannot take place without more active US participation, for example, making available surveillance video and providing access to the guns in the US helicopter for ballistics.

The CEPR report painstakingly pieces together news reports and official statements, reviews what has been described of the content of the as-yet restricted surveillance video that has been reported on by the New York Times, and-- most important-- assembles the testimony of the surviving passengers in the boat that was attacked under the claim it was engaged in drug trafficking.

The CEPR notes that "most witnesses report never having been interviewed by investigators."

The CEPR describes the journey of Hilda Lezama's boat, loaded with passengers and cargo. It provides the names of the passengers traveling that day, where they were coming from, and when they joined the trip.

It draws a clear picture of a commercial boat caught up in a military operation.

Approaching the final landing around 2:30 AM, the pilot passed a drifting, unmanned boat. Shortly after, the commercial boat was fired on by helicopters that had already been heard by some passengers:

Candelaria Trapp called her sister Geraldina Trapp shortly after 2:00 a.m. stating that she was almost at Paptalaya because she saw the town’s cell phone towers, but she expressed anxiety about four helicopters flying low over the boat. Geraldina reported hearing the noise of the helicopters over the phone.

While matter-of-fact, the report includes poignant detail on the experiences of the families traveling together, many of whom were shot or had family members killed-- including two pregnant women:

Bera, who remained on the boat longer than most of the others, says that the helicopter shined a light on the boat only after having opened fire and that she believed that they may have stopped shooting because only after they had projected their search light could they then clearly see that she was a woman with two young children. The helicopter flew away but circled around, and at this point Bera’s 11 year-old child jumped into the water. Bera grabbed her 2 year-old child and followed. She felt that she was on the verge of drowning, but managed to grab onto brush along the edge of the river and pull herself and her child onto the shore. She stayed hidden among the brush until after dawn when the helicopters had left and she heard people searching the river.

The CEPR report emphasizes what the US and Honduras should do now, including calling for a cut off in US funding for similar operations under the Leahy act.

This isn't what the Honduran media source found most worthy of highlighting. Instead, it emphasizes the "central role" of the DEA in the incident.

For many Hondurans, the attempt to disclaim the deep level of involvement of US forces in the country, and especially in drug operations, is the most significant aspect of reaction to the Ahuas killings.

US diplomats may focus on establishing that no DEA agent fired a gun-- a claim disputed in this report-- but in Honduras, the key issue is that this operation would not have taken place without the funding, equipment, training, and leadership of the DEA.

[edited 1:09 PDT 8/15/12 to reflect co-sponsorship and clarify who has seen the surveillance videotape]

Collateral Damage

Usually the stories we cover about Honduras are invisible in the US press.

So it has been notable that the New York Times has over the last few weeks published a series of stories about Honduras. Such coverage, potentially, could give US readers much more insight into the conditions of a country that has been wracked by violence under the powerless government that was installed through flawed elections held in 2009 while the country was controlled by a de facto regime operating with impunity.

I hope you caught that "potentially". Because as all of us who actually work on Honduras have noted, the New York Times has used this opportunity to advance story-lines that are essentially propaganda, claims that the current Honduran government is cleaning up its police force, using the armed forces to protect its citizenry, moving rapidly and supposedly effectively to investigate the kidnapping of at least (some) journalists, and oh, yes, collaborating with the US Drug Enforcement Agency in ever-more effective drug interdiction.

When the subject matter of these celebratory "we're helping the backward nation stop drugs before they reach your suburb" line was illustrated mainly by crowing about cutting the time it took to get helicopters in the air, this didn't even strike us as reporting about Honduras. Indeed, the NY Times actually used that opportunity to make a case that the US was employing "lessons" it "learned" in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, making it clear that Honduras was interchangeable with all the other threatening foreign places whose specificities we are being allowed to ignore in our new reality that construes the world in terms of friends, enemies, and potential enemies in the "war on terror".

But the latest New York Times coverage is indeed about Honduran reality: the reality that the US has assisted in the killing of innocent civilians, redefined as what once would have been clinically labeled "collateral damage": people in the wrong place at the wrong time, because their country was in our way, people who can be categorically suspect because they can be assumed to be guilty (in this case, of working for drug traffickers; in other times and places, of being terrorists or insurgents...).

The latest episode in this long and shameful history has led to demands by the Honduran people affected that the US cease operations that endanger innocent citizens of the country.

The BBC covered the story properly, titling its story Honduras protest over shootings, writing that

The leaders of several of the ethnic groups in the area said in a joint statement that "the people in that canoe were fishermen, not drug traffickers.

"For centuries we have been a peaceful people who live in harmony with nature, but today we declared these Americans to be persona non grata in our territory."

The ever-awful Washington Post titled its version of the story Angered by deadly drug operation, Honduran Indians burn offices, demand DEA leave. The stereotypes in that one sentence are horrifying, but the article at least specifies that the statement was issued by representatives of the Masta, Diunat, Rayaka, Batiasta and Bamiasta, a detail absent from the BBC story.

Unfortunately, no one at the Washington Post seems to understand what these names are: MASTA is described by David Dodds as "an indigenous federation...formed by a group of Moskito schoolteachers" that brings together village-level affiliates representing largely autonomous Moskito villages. Tanya Hayes identifies BAMIASTA as one of these chapters/affiliates of the larger group, centered in Ahuas, the village whose mayor Luis Baquedano has been quoted most widely as the source for the information about the murder of local people. Hayes identifies RAYAKA as the affiliate for Banaka, another village, and I assume that DIUNAT and BATIASTA are representative organizations of other local Miskito villages, not, as the Post described them, "ethnic groups".

As as recently as yesterday the New York Times coverage still emphasized the goodness of having DEA in security operations in Honduras: D.E.A.'s Agents Join Counternarcotics Efforts in Honduras. It would be hard from that title to predict what the actual lead was:

agents accompanied the Honduran counternarcotics police during two firefights with cocaine smugglers in the jungles of the Central American country this month, according to officials in both countries who were briefed on the matter. One of the fights, which occurred last week, left as many as four people dead and has set off a backlash against the American presence there

"Backlash"?  That's what's important here-- that the Honduran people have expressed their outrage at becoming targets for US-funded, equipped, and guided murder?

The murdered villagers from Ahuas, a small community in indigenous Miskito territory, included pregnant women.

The Times coverage includes that fact-- but it also trots out a lightly veiled smear that attempts to undermine the otherwise clearly acknowledged fact that the boat destroyed was not a boat of drug smugglers:

it is often difficult to distinguish insurgents from villagers when combating drugs in Central America. One official said it is a common practice for smugglers to pay thousands of dollars to a poor village if its people will help bring a shipment through the jungle to the coast.

The difference between our reaction and that of the Times is this: if you are likely to be shooting at people from a "poor village", you shouldn't be shooting. Period.

Honduran security forces are incapable on their own of discriminating between the citizens of the country engaged in lawful activities, and legitimate targets of policing efforts, as the history of violent repression of protests and murder by corrupt police has amply demonstrated.

A US-inspired policy of shooting at poorly identified targets in civilian areas makes a bad situation worse. While no one could have predicted the specific time and place that innocent people would be affected, that something like this would happen was inevitable.

It is time, and long past time, for the US to stop supporting the militarization of everyday life among the already suffering innocent people of Honduras.