Honduran Scholars on Militarizing Policing

Was a letter from Honduran and international scholars the inspiration for the US to place tighter controls (or suspend) some funding for Honduran police agencies?

No one can really say.

What we can demonstrate is that Honduran scholars have been unstinting in their critical analyses of what is happening in their country. Unfortunately, those voices do not get a hearing in the English language press. They should.

Consider an interview with Leticia Salomón, noted Honduran sociologist and scholar of policing. 

Headlined "Soldiers in the streets are a grave menace for citizenship", the interview includes Salomón's pointed comments on the proposed "elite" Tigres unit that, we have noted, is immune to the limitations on US funding sparked by the admission that the Chief of Police has a suspected history of extra-judicial killing.

Salomón expresses grave reservations about the participation of the military in civilian policing:

Notice that each time we are seeing with more frequency the military undertaking tasks of civilian security, which means that the soldiers in the streets, like the police, prosecutors and judges are converted into a grave menace to citizenship, and more serious yet because they carry arms and are prepared to shoot those who they consider their enemies.

It is this, fundamentally, that the US State Department needs to face: with US aid, the Honduran government has undermined the constitutional separation of civilian and military security, creating a situation in which the military can classify the people as the enemy.

The proposal to create an elite unit that deliberately blurs those lines even more preoccupies Salomón. In response to the question, "What do you think about the possible creation of the Tigres?", she responded

It is a dangerous return to the past, it signifies reaffirmation by the State of the linking of the military with public security. It is forming intelligence troops with operational units. Intelligence is thinking about, analyzing, and sensing tendencies, data, possible threats and what capacity of response we have, whereas the operational is going out into the street for which the information from intelligence serves to get results, in this proposal they want to do these two things at the same time, this is very dangerous.

Salomón is calling for a separation of intelligence gathering and analysis from operations-- a division she argues lowers the risk of intelligence being distorted by operational aims. She goes on to talk about the Honduran government's interests in creating this new ambiguous unit:

They are thinking of confronting society that dares to dissent, to question and to demand that the State satisfy its basic needs more immediately. This is evidence of a political decision totally removed from the major challenges that are presumed now to face security forces.

Salomón, like other Honduran intellectuals, sees the State turning against the people since the 2009 coup. She is most pessimistic about the institutions responsible for justice in Honduras:

We are talking in the first place of the police, but also the prosecutors and the judges whose instances are not at the level of the dimension of the insecurity that the country is living through, presenting serious signals of institutional deterioration, of involvement in criminal acts and of high levels of corruption...that is, now the delinquents are not just in the streets, they are also in the police, they are in the Public Prosecutor's office, and in the Judicial Branch, it is terrible for a society that still trusts in the order inherent in the State of Law.

It would be easy, from the US, to reduce what is happening with security in Honduras to US interests.

Salomón, in this interview, says she doesn't begrudge the US the pursuit of its own interests; but she does fault the Honduran government for its willingness to make concessions for US interests. What she and other Honduran scholars are calling for, here and in the letter they signed to appeal to the US government, is help in ensuring that the Honduran government puts Honduran interests-- in security in the exercise of civil rights, above all-- first.

The interview with Leticia Salomón, dated August 3, 2012, was published in A Mecate Corto, a product of the Jesuit Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación, ERIC-SJ, who also broadcast on Radio Progeso, one of Honduras' most remarkable independent broadcasters.

A cry of moral outrage over repression in San Pedro Sula

From Nuestra Palabra on September 16, by the Jesuit-run Radio Progreso:

On the evening news on the 15th of September on a radio station of national scope, the news presenter was precise: "In San Pedro Sula the so-called resistance did its thing [hizo de la suyas]". There was nothing missing from the press release: the leaders of the resistance, among them the youthful group of music with a social message, Café Guancasco, provoked the police, promoted disorder and violence. The police had no choice but to act in their defense. There was no mention of the death nor of the wounded, much less of the threats to journalist colleagues.

The media siege continues its course and its implacable format. There doesn't exist even the slightest shred of opening for a journalism of minimum ethics. And this is so because the behavior of the Honduran elites in relation to those who oppose their privileges continues unimpeachable. Their decision is invariable and implacable: to make use of that which they can, without concern for the human costs, with the goal of preserving their privileges. There is no possible road unless it is that of their earnings and using the State for the strict advantage of their interests.

The case of the country continues intact. Here there is no commission of truth that is worthwhile, and if it has worth it is because it says things in such a way that it leaves intact all the case of the country. So yes, the spokespeople of these elites, in full tune with the tightrope walkers and the prudent, shout themselves hoarse speaking of reconciliation, of peace and of unity. And with pleasure they will accept and promote the embraces-- with all the photos for circulation-- of those opponents that guarantee that the case of the country will continue intact.

In the logic of these minorities, the good are the people who promote individual moral change without ever questioning the state of things that sustains and justifies exclusion and structural inequality. The ideal is to have the top businessmen and politicians whose goodness is expressed in donations to support works of charity in parishes or religious ministries of the prudent and the tightrope walkers, without upsetting anything deep that would place at risk the model producing inequalities.

But when the people and groups demand structural changes that break with exclusion, and when they demand a new structuring of the country that breaks with the control of the State and of the society by wealthy and privileged minorities, then to the fire with them, because they incarnate wickedness, attempt against democracy and the laws, they are servile to international slogans and enemies of reconciliation and peace.

In San Pedro Sula there was a repression with evident signs of premeditation and calculation, and an abusive use of force that only confirms the reality: the small wealth and power elite understands that what is happening in Honduras is a war, and from their privileged trench, they don't value compromises: the resistance is their enemy and only its extermination is worthwhile.

All the rest, call it reconciliation, dialogues, State of Law, respect for human rights, Truth Commission, unity, Plan for the Nation, are interesting themes to fill agendas that distract the unwary and entertain the prudent, the tightrope walkers and the international community. For them the case is more than clear: here we are at war, and the media siege is an essential part of the trench from which is launched the mortal attack against everything that promotes minimal consensus that would save the country from the galloping barbarism in which we are now trapped.

The difficulties of Lobo, Micheletti-ism without Micheletti

(This is a translation of a June 4 editorial on Radio Progreso, printed in the original Spanish on Vos el Soberano)

For a president who wanted to stay on the sidelines and neutral during the time that the coup lasted, it is complicating things and these months it signifies a heavy inheritance. This has been corroborated most recently in the gestures by President Porfirio Lobo Sosa for the return of Mel Zelaya and the the official firing from their jobs of the opposition judges by the Supreme Court. It gives the impression that Roberto Micheletti Bain continues in power, as both his approaches and the groups that made him "the de facto president" continue to dominate the political life of the country.

It is the case that in the exterior and interior Pepe Lobo is blocked. From the outside the pressure for international recognition hinges on the unconditional return of Mel Zelaya. And, from inside, the same forces and powers that were behind the coup, the businessmen and the Unión Cívica Democratica, among others, control and neutralize the national political life to the point that they impede our getting out of the "legalistic and constitutional" parameters which Roberto Micheletti pushed.

Its not a surprise that the president of the International Federation of Human Rights pressured that they maintain the political and diplomatic sanctions on Honduras; and this still has not reestablished democracy, the independence of the powers of state and respect for civil and political rights. It denounced the violations of human rights by those rendered immune, the military accused of participating in the coup, firing the opposition judges or the persecution of the press and citizens opposed to the new government.

According to the same institution, "with the arrival of Pepe Lobo, the promoters of the coup have incremented their power in the core of key institutions in addition to maintaining control of those which they had under Micheletti."

The businessmen, the organized civil society, the Unión Cívica Democratica and the Chamber of Commerce for Cortés by their declarations and paid advertisements have made their power felt to President Lobo Sosa, the judicial-democratic institutions of the country, and the National party. The message is very clear: it has the autonomy and independence of powers, adherence to the law, the Constitution....to prevent the return of Mel Zelaya to the country. "The ultra-right, as signaled by a national magazine, considers itself victorious with the expulsion of Mel Zelaya and control of public power; it also is afraid of a democracy which is not elections every four years under their proper rules and a public power exclusively at the service of big private business."

For all this, it is evident that the "difficulties of the president" signifies in this moment a paralysis of political life and on the first anniversary of the coup d'etat, we have, as a form of government, Micheletti-ism without Micheletti.