Meet the New Police, Same as the Old Police

Honduras has a new law establishing a military police force meant to police the civilian population.

Apparently Juan Orlando Hernandez, who championed this bill only after leaving the Congress to run for president, is pining for his teens and 20s because he's set Honduras to return to military control of part of the civilian police force that used to be the norm.

The military likes it because they get to appoint 5000 more troops, called up from the military reserves, and they get a bigger budget as a result as well.

General Rene Osorio Canales says the new force needs training and vetting, but will be ready in October.  (How much training can they get in a month?)

This proposal stirs up memories, and not good ones. Honduras used to have a militarized police force, called the Fuerza de Seguridad Publica. It had an awful reputation for human rights violations and corruption.  Its National Investigation Directorate [DNI in Spanish], responsible for "investigating" crimes, was useless.  They merely sat in the office and took crime reports (and solicited bribes) from victims.

It was actually worse than that.  Ineffectual in dealing with crime, the DNI was good at something: violence against the Honduran population.

Edmundo Orellano wrote in a report in 2004 that during the 1980s, the FUSEP:

Through its dependency known as the National Investigation Directorate, once the constitution [1982] was in effect, persecuted, tortured, and murdered hundreds of Honduras because they thought their ideas were dangerous for the stability of the regime.

Orellana continues:

A consequence of this conduct by the [millitary] police and the submissive attitude of the judiciary [towards that behavior] was that Honduras was condemned in the Corte Interamericana de los Derechos Humanos.

In 1993, the Honduran government took away investigative powers from its military police force and gave investigation over to the Public Prosecutor's office. Instead of hiring people who hadn't completed high school (the FUSEP model), the Public Prosecutor's office only hired those with at least a high school or college degree, to try and avoid the abuses of the past.

Orellana notes that they quickly found that it was in fact, a corrupt [millitary] police that was behind much of the crime.

This led to a political war between the military and the public prosecutor's office. 

Congress, in its political wisdom, then tried to reincorporate the investigative services back under military control, but public sentiment and some political will resulted in the investigative force being switched to reporting to the Minister of Security instead, under the direction of the Public Prosecutor.

In 1997 the national police force was formally separated from the military and put under civilian control for the first time since the 1940s. In 1998 the Honduran Congress passed a law creating and regulating the civilian national police force Honduras has today.

The new 5000 member strong police force proposed would be a military police force, not under civilian control, staffed by military reservists who are called up to serve.  They would be better paid and have better benefits than the national police according to analysts, who indicated that this will exacerbate the financial crisis in Honduras.

Jose Simon Azcona, a Liberal party congressman, says the idea for a new militarized police force came from the US Embassy, and that

the government of the United States had offered assistance, and were converting four batallions into military police under the previous administration. 

So that's 5000 new military police.

But that's not the only new police.

There also is a newly created community police force, brainchild of uber Secretary of Defense and Security Arturo Corrales.  This project, done by decree instead of by law, is to hire 4500 new civilian police starting in September of this year.

Corrales announced earlier this month that he had discovered in his first 100 days as uberMinister that there were 2,150 phantom police officers, people on the payroll collecting salaries, but who could not be located in two successive attempts at roll call.  He says they're fired, and he'll replace them in September.

The lawyers in the Public Prosecutor's office say he's wrong, and that it's more like 9000 phantom police officers.

Corrales says he's budgeted for 15, 655 positions, but there aren't that many police on the payroll.  In May there were 14,472 on the payroll, and in July there were only 12,800.  Only 9,350 police could actually be located at work in July and they weren't necessarily the same individuals as the 12,800 on the payroll. 

Adding it all up, over the next several months the Honduran government proposes to hire 9,500 new police. Paying for those police is another thing.

Corrales claims that he can hire the 4,500 new officers for the new community police from his existing budget, but that's only so if 9,350 number is the true number of police actually hired and working. 

He still has to identify and get rid of the phantom payroll.  To date he's only identified and fired some 2,000 phantom officers.

The only proposal for how to pay, equip, and house military reservists called up to take over civilian policing put forward so far is to take the cost from the security tax fund, which was put in place to provide equipment, not pay people.

But neither the bad history nor the bad economics is standing in the way of these increases. Honduran politicians want more officers on the streets. What do the Honduran people want? Why would that matter?

The Rest of the Story

The Honduran press is charming in what it does not report.

Yesterday the OAS human rights commission, known in Spanish as the CIDH, issued its annual report for 2011 on human rights in the Americas. That report chose to highlight the human rights situations in four countries: Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, and Venezuela. El Heraldo reported on the release, but emphasized the human rights situations in the other three countries, omitting or badly summarizing the Honduran case. Of the 19 paragraphs in the Heraldo article, two are devoted to Honduras, two to Cuba, three to Colombia, and nine to Venezuela.

The article notes that Honduras is again on the list of countries with situations which gravely affect the enjoyment of fundamental rights. It tells us that the CIDH reports that problems in justice, security, marginalization and discrimination have worsened since the coup of June 28, 2009, and that over 2011 the fallout from the coup and its aftermath has continued. El Heraldo summarizes the content of the 33 page report on Honduras in one sentence:

Honduras is generally called out for the death of journalists, the murders of LGBT citizens, and threats against human rights activists.

But the CIDH report covers much more. And these aren't even its main complaints.

So here is some of what El Heraldo left out.

First of all, the CIDH first chose to add Honduras to the Chapter 4 detailed discussions in the 2009 Annual report. During 2011, the Commission reports it continued to observe the human rights situation in Honduras with a special emphasis on the consequences of the 2009 coup.

In beginning a discussion of 2011, it writes

290. As you can see all through the present report, respect and the state guarantee of the right to life, liberty, and personal safety during 2011, the CIDH received worrying information about the condition of journalists, human rights defenders, campesinos in the Bajo Aguan, indigenous people, and LGBT people, all in a context of a a high rate of murder and impunity.

291. During the present year (2011) we have continued to receive information that indicates that the Police and the military have used disproportional force against opposition protesters, which has resulted in serious episodes of violence and repression against the protesters.

A footnote indicates that Ramon Custodio told the CIDH that fewer than 19% of the human rights cases reported through his office are investigated and returned by the Dirección Nacional de Investigacíon (DNIC) with 81% of the cases either remaining perpetually under investigation or not acted upon, a situation which Custodio calls "absolute impunity".

On November 22, 2011 the CIDH sent a preliminary copy of this report to Honduras for a reply. The Honduran government replied twice, on December 16 and 21, 2011. The CIDH incorporated the Honduran government's responses to the material points the report makes to create a final version of the chapter for Honduras in the 2011 Annual Report.

Footnotes indicate that Honduras's reply was in part something like (paraphrasing here, see footnotes 442 and 443 for a discussion of the Honduran response) 'you've already discussed the issues surrounding the coup in your 2010 and 2011 reports; we hope that in 2012 this will not be included'. That is consistent with the Lobo Sosa government's refrain that they are the product of "reconciliation". The pointed refusal of the CIDH to ignore the link between the coup and the continuing erosion of human rights and hardening of impunity makes it clear that whatever "reconciliation" means to the government of Honduras, the rule of law, respect for constitutional, civil, and human rights, and institutional rejection of the exercise of raw power have not recovered since that episode.

The report looks at a large number of topics, some stemming from the 2009 coup, like "amnesty", and others that have nothing directly to do with the events of 2009, like "children's rights". Overall, it paints a bleak picture of Honduras's response to what CIDH recognizes as violations of human rights.

In fairness, the report also contains a several page section on what Honduras is doing right, from a legal and institutional framework. It cites no actual concrete positive actions, echoing other observers who note that setting up human rights offices without giving them support to follow through does not actually work.

Among many topics, the report looks in depth at the human rights situation in the Bajo Aguan. Since September 2009, 42 people affiliated with campesino movements, plus a journalist and his wife, have been killed there. Another campesino activist was "disappeared" in 2011. A further 162 campesinos have been changed with crimes in connection with the agricultural conflict in the region. The CIDH notes that right after the military were deployed to the Bajo Aguan as part of Operation Xatruch II, 7 campesinos, including two movement leaders, were assassinated, 5 were wounded, and two tortured by the troops.

The Honduran government replied, noting that its not just campesinos, but also 12 guards, 4 workers, and 5 others died in violence in the Bajo Aguan in 2010, along with 20 campesinos or (in their words) "supposed campesinos". Of those, the Public Prosecutor reported that they have investigative advances on 4 cases.

The Honduran government has not investigated any of the allegations against its troops.

The CIDH also reviewed the official Truth Commission report and highlighted its recommendations regarding human rights.

It went through the cases of 14 journalists killed in 2010 and 2011 in Honduras as well. The Honduran government reply reported that it has opened 4 legal cases in these murders and issued arrest warrants. In Honduras, the police do not seek those for whom arrest warrants have been issued, so this is a largely symbolic move.

There's a lot more, documenting problems specific to 2011, and it would be well worth reading, especially for those who make policy about US relations to Honduras.

The report on Honduras ends with ten specific recommendations for the government of Honduras:

1. Assure that the justice system provides effective access to justice for all people.

2. Investigate, judge, and discipline those responsible for human rights violations.

3. Stop the illegal groups that act with impunity outside of the law. The state has the responsibility to dismantle the armed civilian groups that function outside the law and to punish the illegal actions they commit to prevent the recurrence of violence in the future.

4. To prevent the murders, threats, and intimidation against human rights defenders, journalists, radio reporters, and social leaders and to implement the protections authorized by the CIDH.

5. To carry out, urgently, investigations by independent groups to clarify and determine if the murder of human rights activists, social leaders, journalists, radio broadcasters and members of the Resistance are related to the exercise of their profession or in the context of the 2009 coup. Also to judge and condemn those responsible for those murders.

6. To make amends to the victims of human rights violations.

7. Guarantee conditions so that human rights defenders and labor rights defenders can freely carry out their duties, and to abstain from adopting legislation that limits or places obstacles on their work.

8. Improve the security of the citizens and order that the military and military intelligence do not participate in actions of citizen security, and when there are exceptional circumstances, that they subordinate themselves to civilian authority.

9. Make available the necessary measures so that women who are victims of violence have access to adequate judicial protection and adopt legal and judicial mechanisms to investigate, punish, and aid those reporting violence against women.

10. Make available the necessary measures to protect sectors of the Honduran population historically marginalized and highly vulnerable such as children, the LGBT community and the indigenous and Garifuna communities.

Most of these are points that should not need to be made; they are basic to human rights; yet the CIDH found it necessary to repeat them to the Honduran government.

The Honduran government wants credit for reforming the institutions of human rights, and the CIDH gives them credit for beginning institutional reforms that normally would lead to improved human rights if operationalized.

Unfortunately for Honduras, so far, these are only institutional reforms which have brought about no changes in the lived experience of everyday Hondurans.

That's why the CIDH report is important.

Dismissed Judges Get a Hearing

On Friday, March 25, the Honduran judges dismissed by the Supreme Court over coup related statements, will get a hearing before the Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos (CIDH), the OAS's human rights body. Giving testimony in the case will be the Asociación de Jueces por la Democracia (AJD) and the Centro por la Justicia y el Derecho Internacional (CEJIL) as well as representatives of the Lobo Sosa government.

The hearing is scheduled for 11:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M. local time in Washington, D.C. You can watch the hearings live on the OAS website here. Afterwards, the video of the hearing will be posted to their website here.