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.

Honduran Authorities Lit the Match for the San Pedro Sula Fire

More than half of the 13 dead accounted for in San Pedro Sula's prison fire, 7 people, had not been convicted of a crime.

Contrary to English-language press reports, they did not all die from the effects of the fire set during the uprising.

The victim of the death that apparently started the incident was not simply involved in a gang dispute, but was conveying changes ordered by the prison administration.

And as of today, Honduran papers tell us, the facility is still under the control of the prisoners.

We are used to bad reporting, we are used to stereotypes, but given the context for this latest disaster provided by the horror of the Comayagua prison fire, we expected a bit more care on the part of English language media, a bit more digging below the surface.

Contrary to the AP story reproduced in many English newspapers, the cause of death of all thirteen victims was not simply "a fire started by rioters" or "burns or asphyxiation". This was a claim made by government officials, before any bodies had been examined by forensic specialists.

Now, Honduran news outlets report that about half of the dead died as a result of gunshot wounds suffered in the early morning.

While Honduran authorities claimed to have regained control of the prison by late Thursday, Honduran reporting noted that the prisoners retain control of the facility. They turned away human rights officials, and said they wanted to be left in peace.

The English language press described the arrival at the prison on Thursday of the bishop of San Pedro Sula, Romulo Emiliani, as a mediator. Yet none of these stories cited his statements, reported in the Honduran press, telling the authorities that the inmates required a two day cooling off period before the authorities should try to re-enter the facility.

Not all of the reporting is better in the Spanish language press. Accounts of the cause of the unrest continue to be fragmentary, contradictory, and often give no source for information. Prensa Latina on Friday described the person who was decapitated (according to Honduran reports, post-mortem) as what in the US would be called a trustee, but one who in the Honduran prison system apparently had much more of a role in prison administration:

The incident sparked off when Mario Alvarez, an inmate appointed coordinator by the prison authorities to impose discipline, informed about some changes in the cells, and some inmates decapitated him, threw his head in front of the prison entrance and confronted those that accompanied him.

This is in marked contrast to the Honduran press reports, which described Alvarez as a coordinator for a group of prisoners who were unaligned with the two main identified factions in the prison population, implying that the reason he was targeted was a conflict among the factions, rather than for conveying prison administrative orders to the general prison population.

Like the previous disaster, this one was entirely predictable-- indeed, it was predicted, by those who know best what conditions are like in Honduras' prisons and enough freedom to speak: the families of the incarcerated.

As the AP reported,

at the time of the deadly blaze in Comayagua, relatives of inmates at the San Pedro Sula prison warned that it had far worse overcrowding and security conditions.

The suspension of the national head of prisons, Danilo Orellana, was the main action Porfirio Lobo Sosa took after the Comayagua disaster. As Amnesty International noted in a statement following the San Pedro Sula disaster, the government has taken no substantive steps to alleviate the conditions present in Honduran prisons:

"Inmates in Honduras's prisons are being denied their basic human rights and this latest horrific incident shows how precarious their situation continues to be – despite the repeated government promises that no more such incidents will occur," said Esther Major, Amnesty International's Central American Researcher.

“Many of those currently languishing in Honduras’s overcrowded jails have been there for years awaiting trial and have not even been convicted of any crime."

Just this week, the AP reported,

Honduras Attorney General Ethel Deras appeared before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights on Monday and said the San Pedro Sula prison was housing more than 2,200 inmates even though it had only 800 beds. Nationwide, 24 prisons built for a total capacity of 8,000 inmates are housing about 12,500, he said.

Put those numbers together with Prensa Latina's report that Mario Alvarez had been sent to the inmates to explain some (undefined) changes in the management of the cells-- the crowded spaces to which a prison population that mixed the as-yet untried and the convicted-- and while neither English language press nor Honduran press are likely to ever completely clarify events, we have a suggestion that this incident was started by administrative actions.

They may not have started the fire. But with the conditions they tolerated, Honduran prison authorities lit the match.

Congressional Letter Provokes Response

How do you know when you are making a difference?

How about when the entire Honduran government mobilizes to refute you.

At Porfirio Lobo Sosa's meeting today with his cabinet, they determined to send Foreign Minister Arturo Corrales to Washington, D.C. to see what he can do to refute a letter authored by Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky and signed by 94 US Congressmen.

While the Honduran press suggests that the Congressional letter was motivated by the killing of yet another journalist in Olancho this week, in fact it was drafted and posted for signatures long before the journalist was killed.

The letter calls on the US government to suspend military and police aid to Honduras because of a lack of action on human rights issues.

The Congressional letter, addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, expresses grave concern over the human rights situation in the Bajo Aguan, where 45 campesinos and 7 security guards have been violently killed since 2009. They note the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) held hearings on the human rights violations in the Bajo Aguan in October, 2011. The letter cites testimony that private security guards, police, and members of the 15th Battalion have carried out violence against the campesinos there since the beginning of Operation Xatruch II, a deployment of some 1000 soldiers to Olancho supposedly to quell the violence there.

The Honduran government has failed to investigate any of the human rights complaints by residents of the region. So the Congressmen call on the State Department to engage with the Honduran government to get these complaints investigated and report back to Congress with a detailed status of each case. They ask for the suspension of military and police aid "given the credible allegations of widespread, serious violations of human rights attributed to the security forces." They urge that the State Department enforce the Leahy provision, which denies US foreign aid to military units that violate human rights with impunity.

After the Honduran cabinet met, Corrales announced the imminent departure of the mission to Washington, D.C. to try to reverse the bad image of Honduras with respect to human rights. Corrales said

it mentions the journalists, but what it does not mention are all the advances that Honduras has in these same points (security and human rights).

Accompanying Corrales will be the Instituto Nacional Agrario director, Cesar Ham, who helped negotiate a settlement to the most active land disputes in the Bajo Aguan.

Corrales said they don't intend to confront anyone, but will be in the US from Tuesday to Saturday to clarify the panorama in Honduras.

The problem is that Corrales has nothing to talk about.

Lobo Sosa has admitted that Honduras is incapable of investigating any crime, and pleaded repeatedly for international help. Rather than investigate crime, or human rights violations, the Honduran government does nothing.

During the past two years of Lobo Sosa's term, there have been 42 hate crimes against LGBT individuals in Honduras. During a similar period under the previous president, Manuel Zelaya, there were 7. (The increase started during the six months of the de facto administration of Micheletti, when there were 22 hate crimes against LGBT individuals.)

Yndra Mendoza of the Red Lésbica Catrachas explained that they were taking one of these cases to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR). In this case a transgendered person was murdered by three Tegucigalpa police officers:

It's a reliable case because they had everything they needed to prosecute them in Honduras, and they let them go free....the state needs to be held responsible for its actions.

In light of the murder a few days ago of yet another journalist, there's painfully little Corrales can show in the way of progress on investigating human rights abuses, and removing impunity.

IACHR Hearings on Honduras

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) will hold hearings this afternoon on two petitions brought by Honduran and international NGOs against the government of Honduras.

The first hearing, on the implementation by Honduras of precautionary protective measures, was brought by the Comté Familiares de Detenidos, Desaparecidos de Honduras (COFADEH), the Equipo Reflexión Investigación y Comunicación de la Compañia de Jesús (ERIC), the Centro de Investigación y Promoción de Derechos Humanos (CIPRODEH), and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL).

The protective measures in question were ordered by the IACHR for persons whose life was considered endangered after the coup in 2009. The petitioners allege that the government of Honduras was incapable of training the police in the importance of following these protection measures.

Approximately 600 people in Honduras have these protection measures for having protested against the coup. In its last visit to Honduras, the IACHR concluded that the government's efforts to carry out these protective orders were few, late, deficient, and in some cases, nonexistent.

This hearing will be broadcast live on the internet from approximately 3:15 - 4:15 pm EDT today. You can find the Council's schedule and agendas here, along with links for the internet streaming broadcasts in English and Spanish.

The second hearing, on the right to freedom of expression is scheduled for 4:30-5:30 pm EDT. This petition was brought by the Programa de Legislaciones y Derecho de la Comunicación (AMARC-ALC), the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), and Article 19, International Media Support (IMS).

The petitioners allege that the government of Honduras failed to carry out the orders of the IACHR with respect to protecting journalists and suggest some mechanisms for protecting the journalists in Honduras.

You can locate the links for the broadcasts of this session in English or Spanish along with the Commission's Agenda here.