Honduras Wants A New Public Prosecutor In the Worst Way Possible

Here's how:

Back on June 25, the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi, and his deputy Public Prosecutor, Roy Urtecho, resigned from office, to avoid impeachment.  A committee appointed by Congress to investigate the Public Prosecutor's lack of progress on cases had found that prosecutors were complicit with organized crime, taking payoffs, and that a significant part of their budget was spent without accounting records.

The committee reorganized the Prosecutor's office and dismissed a handful of prosecutors. That created a situation where Honduras needed a new Public Prosecutor and deputy Public Prosecutor.

There was a procedure for this, a law spelling out the composition of a nominating committee that involved members of civil society representing churches, universities, and lawyers group.

A few odd things happened on the way to composing the committee. First, Congress hastily revised the composition of the committee, to include a new group, the Alianza por la Paz y Justicia. Then, Roy Urtecho, who had been forced to resign as deputy Public Prosecutor, was appointed by the Lawyer's Association (CAH) as their representative.

Urtecho's appointment gave some committee members pause, but they continued. Rather than debate names and select candidates proposed by members of the committee, they opened the process for self-nomination.  They established a procedure to review nominees that included a lie detector test and psychological evaluation, with failure of either test explicitly supposed to disqualify a candidate. In the end, fifty-one people nominated themselves for the two positions.

Things started to fall apart as soon as the nominations closed. Try to follow the timeline here:

The nominating committee met and disqualified candidates who were not licensed lawyers in Honduras, as well as those who lacked some legal qualification (such as age) to be considered, or whose application was incomplete.

With the announcement that candidates would have to submit to lie detector and psychological tests (the same being used to evaluate police), reportedly many candidates withdrew their names.

Oscar Fernando Chinchilla (Supreme Court Justice) was named as among those failing the psychological test, along with Doris Imelda Madrid, and Lino Tomás Mendoza.  Others signaled by the press as having failed one or the other of the tests include Manuuel Enrique Alvarado, Marco Antonio Zelaya, and Guillermo Escobar Montalván

Only 13 candidates passed both tests and the review of their application:

     1-Ivis Discua Barillas.
     2-María Antonia Navarro.
     3-Gina González.
     4-José Arturo Duarte.
     5-AnÍbal Izaguirre.
     6-Eugenio Edgardo Rivera.
     7-Rolando Argueta.
     8-Jair López.
     9-Mario Salinas.
    10-Rigoberto Cuéllar.
    11-Marcelino Vargas.
    12-Lisandro Sánchez.
    13-German Enamorado.


So the final candidates must be on this list, right?

Not so fast.

Julieta Castellanos, rector of the public university, complains that when Luis Evalin, representative of the private universities, came back after a week out of the country he sought to change the rules agreed to by the other six members of the committee. Evalin missed the meetings where candidates' education was being evaluated.  He also missed all the interviews

When the nominating committee reconvened last Tuesday, after the first round of tests had been administered, to see who had passed and who had failed, Evalin demanded a change in the way candidates were evaluated. He put forward a motion that called for  polygraph evaluations of the twenty candidates who had been eliminated either during review of their resumes, or by failing the psychological tests.

Roy Urtecho seconded the motion, and the nominating committee, perhaps overwhelmed by the small number of individuals remaining in the pool, agreed. Evalin's side prevailed, on a 4-3 vote.

So by Wednesday those who had failed one of the confidence tests were allowed to take the other test, rather than be eliminated. That put Oscar Fernando Chinchilla back into the running, despite having failed the psychological test.

Evalin later told the press, "I represent the 19 private universities, respect them."  Though Evalin was not present and therefore could not know what went on in his absence, he told the press that university faculty with international reputations had been rejected just for faults in their paperwork, and that there had been no interviews.  Evelin argued for using experience rather than the results of tests to evaluate the candidates.

Also on Wednesday, Mauricio Villeda, Liberal Party candidate for president, called on Liberal Party Congressmen to abstain from voting for any candidate coming out of the nominating committee, arguing that the election would be illegal, and should be held after the new Congress is seated next January. If the Liberal Party had followed him, it would have denied the National Party sufficient votes to approve any candidate.  PINU, another minority party in Congress, agreed with his position, as did Libre, which has no congress members currently.

Thursday the Alianza por la Paz y Justicia pulled out of the nominating committee.  Its representative, Carlos Hernandez, said that

"We are not going to participate in a process where they break the rules at the last minute, I don't know what their motivations are, but the rules were established and unfortunately they changed, and if this isn't undone, we won't participate."

Everything was transparent and agreed to up until Monday, according to Hernandez.

The same day, Ramon Custodio, Human Rights Ombudsman,  also pulled out, saying that he would not sully his good name.  Julieta Castellanos also withdrew, echoing Hernandez's call for transparency.  She continued:

"Everything that happened from Tuesday onward, that's the responsibility of four members...We cannot in conditions where there isn't a transparent explanation, of what has happened, continue the participation of the University"

So Thursday, the nominating committee met with three of its members missing (Hernandez, Custodio, and Castellanos).  Present were Jorge Rivera Aviles, Roy Urtecho, Luis Evalin, and Edith Maria Lopez Rivera. They agreed to consider 27 candidates and whittle the list down to 5 names.

Candidates began withdrawing their names from consideration.  Three candidates who had passed both tests withdrew early in the day: Jair Lopez, Jose Arturo Duarte, and Rigoberto Cuellar. Rivera Aviles later told the press that the nominating committee chose to ignore the withdrawal of candidates on Thursday.

By Friday morning, Rivera Aviles, as committee chairman, made it known that the nominating committee had settled on a list of five candidates, but was not releasing the names until later in the day in case any of the committee members who had withdrawn wished to vote their positions, possibly changing the outcome.

Nonetheless the list was leaked to the press from Rivera Aviles' Supreme Court staff:

     Oscar Fernando Chinchilla
     Maria Antonia Navarro
     Rigoberto Cuellar Cruz
     Ivan Discua Barillas
     Rafael Argueta


At that point it became obvious that Chinchilla, Rivera Avile's hand-picked candidate to control the Constitutional branch of the Supreme Court, was going to get the nomination.

The members of the committee who had withdrawn refused to legitimate the procedures used by the rest of the nominating committee. The five candidates selected by the remaining committee members were proposed to Congress on Friday night.  Interviews began the next day.

Saturday, while being presented to Congress for his inverview, Ivan Discua Barillas withdrew his candidacy, saying there was already a "fix" in for Chinchilla.  Addressing Congress, he said to their faces

"I don't have godfathers and I don't want them because I value my abilities; I want to tell you legislators that are here and don't bear the blame.  The decision over who will be Public Prosecutor was taken last night (Friday) at 9 pm by the [National] party leadership; and I tell you with conviction that to that class, Honduras isn't important."

Porfirio Lobo Sosa called Discua's reaction "logical" but dismissed it as political.

To the surprise of no one, Honduras awoke Sunday morning to the announcement that Oscar Fernando Chinchilla had been elected the new Public Prosecutor for a term of five years.

Rigoberto Cuellar was elected as deputy Public Prosecutor, despite having withdrawn his name from consideration on Thursday.

And we are sure that everyone who watched this sausage being made is reassured that the Public Prosecutor's office won't be corrupt this time around.

Its Legal Because I Said So: Porfirio Lobo Sosa Speaks

Porfirio Lobo Sosa is in denial.  He told the press yesterday:

What Congress did is constitutional and is legal.

This is proof by assertion in the face of objections from the legal profession, judges, and even his own Justice and Human Rights Minister, Ana Pineda, who believes that what happened is corrupt, and that the dismissed justices need to be reincorporated into the Supreme Court

But of course, Pineda's just there as window dressing.  No one in the Lobo Sosa government has ever bothered to pay attention to anything she says.

Then Lobo Sosa repeated his mantra of denial:

We should look ahead.

And presumably ignore the error ridden past that is his regime.

Then he dropped this gem:

With lawyers nothing ever is OK, some say one thing and others say something else; I respect lawyers because they exist for this, to make you see as truth what is not truth and the inverse.

Actually, Lobo Sosa will be hard pressed to find a lawyer (outside of Congress, that is) who is arguing anything except that Congress's actions in removing four Supreme Court justices were illegal and unconstitutional.

The consensus includes Human Rights Ombudsman, Ramon Custodio, who released his report on the events. He concludes that the four justices were dismissed in "an arbitrary, abusive, and defective act" by Congress.

But don't tell the President. He knows it was constitutional, because he said so.

Someone else in his administration, though, may have a better sense of law. Late Tuesday night, long after the original article was posted in El Heraldo's online edition, an edit was added at the beginning:

Lobo supports a reform of the Ley de Policía that would make the right to a defense prevail, the aspect on which was based the ruling of the fired magistrates concerning the purification decree.

So, now Lobo's position seems to be: it was entirely legal to fire the judges; and the law the judges found unconstitutional should be reformed to add back the missing constitutional protections, so the judges were right all along.

Perfectly coherent position. Almost like those lawyers who "make you see as truth what is not truth, and the inverse".

Supreme Recusal

When the US Embassy stated that a solution to the crisis about separation of powers would come from the Honduran Supreme Court, they endorsed a ludicrous legal process that got underway today.

To catch up: last week Chief Justice Rivera Aviles seated the four new de facto justices appointed by Congress, without comment. 

He did so despite his so-called statement of solidarity with the deposed justices, at least one of whom was sitting in her office in the Supreme Court building at the time.  No surprise since we surmised Rivera Aviles was actually in favor of the Congressional action.

In his role as Chief Justice he assigned the new judges to the Sala Constitucional, replacing the four deposed justices. He then asked them to determine if they could hear the appeal of unconstitutionality submitted on behalf of the four justices dismissed, and if they ruled they could, to issue their ruling on said appeal.

Let's be sure you understand this: the four justices whose appointment is at issue were asked by the Chief Justice of the Honduran Supreme Court to decide whether to hear an appeal of their appointment.

Today that group of four judges, plus Oscar Chinchilla, the lone justice in the Sala Constitucional not fired, took up the appeal of the four justices fired by Congress. They promptly recused themselves, sending the appeal back to Rivera Aviles for disposition.

Rivera Aviles' next step will either be to try and conform a special Sala Constitucional to hear just this appeal, selecting from the remaining justices, or he may turn to the list of 30 or so judges nominated by Congress as potential candidates for the court who were not chosen, to compose a special bench to hear this one appeal.

Since eight of the remaining justices on the Supreme Court wrote a letter supporting the fired justices, and therefore should recuse themselves from hearing this appeal, Rivera Aviles should be able to choose the judges he wants to hear the case from this judicial back bench, to craft the outcome he desires.

Meanwhile, Ramon Custodio, the Human Rights ombudsman, stated that if this case gets to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights at the OAS, it is given that the government of Honduras will lose the case and be condemned, yet again, by the court.  Custodio releases his own report on the incident tomorrow, so stay tuned.

Congress Votes to Dismiss Four Justices

At 4 am this morning the Honduran Congress voted to dismiss four justices of the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court, finding "administrative cause" for them to be dismissed.  

The cause?

The report of the congressional commission indicated that the decision of the Sala Constitucional of the Supreme Court that the law to cleanse the police was unconstitutional was "not in line with the the security plans of the Executive and Legislative Branches".

Thus does the principle of separation of powers suffer its next blow. If anyone is unaware of the imbalance in Honduran governance, where the Congress already claimed unconstitutional power to replace the president and now has claimed such power over the legislative branch, this should be the wake-up call.

In a floor speech congress member Jeffrey Flores called the actions of the four justices "negligent" and called their dismissal "patriotic".

As if that was not illegal enough,  Congress named German Vicente García, Silvia Trinidad Santos, Victor Lozano, and Elmer Lizardo as replacement justices and swore three of them in. Congress plans to swear the fourth in next Monday when he returns from his ranch in Olancho.

Supreme Court judges in Honduras are selected by Congress from a list of candidates put together by a nominating committee constructed to represent all sectors of society (in theory).

The four people named as replacement judges were reportedly on the initial list of 45 candidates proposed by the last nominating committee.

There is no reported reaction from the Supreme Court or the Executive Branch so far.  Ramón Custodio, the Human Rights Commissioner for Honduras, said

It is sad that the National Congress legislated this morning to break the constitutional order in the country.

Honduran Congress Moving to Dissmiss Supreme Court Justices

Rumors are flying tonight in Honduras. 

El Heraldo reports that the military have been called in by president of Congress Juan Orlando Hernandez to guard Congress in an extraordinary session this evening while it debates a report from the commission appointed yesterday to make recommendations about the Supreme Court in Honduras. 

El Heraldo reports that the commission recommended removing 4 to 7 of the justices.

Marvin Ponce, vice president of Congress, told the press that the removal of justices is the starting point of the discussion this evening. 

The decision to proceed, according to Ponce, comes from an imminent political crisis resulting from the primary elections carried out a month ago, combined with the Sala Constitucional's declaration that the Police Purification Law is unconstitutional.

Ponce's understanding is that "there is conflict at the highest levels...I understand that the vacant justice positions will be divided between Yani [Rosenthal] and the National Party.  In play is the subject of the recent elections, powerful groups that want to move pieces to stop the process." 

Ponce went on to tell El Heraldo that to not dismiss the justices would be to imperil the candidacy of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the head of Congress.

But wait a minute. Ponce has spread wild rumors before that had no basis in reality, so we need to take his information with a grain of salt.

First, Congress does not actually possess the power to remove a justice of the Supreme Court, who can only be removed for legal cause. 

Mauricio Villeda, newly elected presidential candidate of the Liberal Party, agrees that Congress hasn't got a legal leg to stand on. 

Roy Utrecho, of the Public Prosecutor's office, says what Congress is trying to do is an act of treason. 
Finally, Yani Rosenthal denies any involvement.

Ramon Custodio, commissioner of Human Rights in Honduras, commented that

The abuses that they are committing in the name of the people of Honduras from the National Congress are a terrible example for Rule of Law where you have an independence of the powers and things are worked out within the framework of institutionality.

Wenceslao Lara, Congressman for the Department of Cortes said:

We are the most corrupt [country] in Central America right now and one of the most corrupt in Latin America.  They're the incompetent ones, they're the ones doing harm; they're putting us in a situation that the people of Honduras don't want......

I call on the President of the Republic to reflect, and on Congress to stop this diabolical attempt that they are making against Honduras.  They are the ones who are incapable of governing the country at this time.

As of midnight in Tegucigalpa Congress was still in session.

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.

Glacial Pace of Police Cleanup

More than a month ago, we discussed the lack of progress on cleaning up corruption in the Honduran Police.

Here's a (lack of) progress report.

The committee to oversee the police cleanup, formally known as the Comisión de Reforma de la Seguridad Pública, has only been partly appointed.

On March 12, Porfirio Lobo Sosa named the three Honduran members of the commission. They will be Matias Funes, Victor Meza, and Jorge Omar Casco. Victor Meza was Interior Minister in the Zelaya administration. Jorge Omar Casco is former rector of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras, and is a member of the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Matias Funes is a university professor and former presidential candidate.

However, the two international members of the Commission remain unappointed. Lobo Sosa has previously announced that the international members would come from Canada and Chile, and asked both governments for nominations, but only Chile has supplied a name, to date.

Ramon Custodio, the Honduran Human Rights Ombudsperson, told the press that the Honduran government is creating uncertainty in the minds of Hondurans by its slow pace at identifying and removing corrupt police officers. He said:

In Honduras there are good and bad police, but in the actual hierarchy, apparently the bad ones have more power than the good police.

Custodio compared the speed of this administration's response to police corruption to the reaction of the Callejas administration in 1993:

When the crisis in the police happened in 1993 they acted practically immediately and in a few days the ad-hoc commission determined to dissolve the Dirección Nacional de Investigaciones (DNI) and to create the Public Prosecutor and a new investigative police.

Compare that with the speed of response of the Lobo Sosa administration.

In the five and a half months since two university students, including the son of Julieta Castellanos, were killed, the Lobo Sosa administration created but failed to fund a police oversight commission, the Dirección de Investigación y Evaluación de la Carrera Policial (DIEP). The DIEP was created in December, and its members appointed that month. However, since then, the committee has done nothing, awaiting a budget. This spring its chairman quit over the lack of funding.

The Lobo Sosa administration announced it would create a security commission to oversee the cleanup of the police, the public prosecutor's office, and the judiciary, but it took until February for them to solicit nominations for the Honduran members, and it took until mid-March to appoint those members. It has not yet managed to appoint the two international members.

On March 24, the Security Minister, Pompeyo Bonilla turned over to the Public Prosecutor's office the investigative files on 18 police officers. Eighteen, when more than 100 police officers have been dismissed for alleged corruption since October. The Public Prosecutor's office has repeatedly called for all the files to be turned over, but as of now, only those 18 have left the Ministry of Security.

Here we are five and a half months after the promises began, waiting for something other than talk to happen.

Wiretapping

Despite rampant police corruption in Honduras, for which Porfirio Lobo Sosa just approved a law to give the Armed Forces policing powers, now Juan Orlando Hernandez wants to give the police permission to wiretap.

Not only does he want a law to let them wiretap, but he wants it now.

Hernandez says they're wiretapping anyway, so the government might as well give them a legal way of doing it.

In other words, solve the illegality by making it nice and legal.

Some in Congress think this is a bad idea. PINU party member German Leitzelar said:

"It would be a delicate thing to put into the hands of agents in the judicial branch infiltrated by organized crime a weapon so powerful as wiretapping."

Analysts pointed out that such laws have failed in other Central American countries, where they've been used for political blackmail more than they've been used against organized crime.

The Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Ana Pineda, has come out against this law as unconstitutional because it violates the right to privacy.

Even the Commissioner of Human Rights, Ramon Custodio, who sees crime as the most serious human rights issue in Honduras, has come out against the proposed new law.

Still, Hernandez intends to fast-track it.

There already is a law in Honduras that governs wiretapping. Article 223 of the Codigo Procesal Penal spells out the conditions that must be fulfilled to authorize the interception of communications. It reads, in full:

A Judge, at the petition of the Public Prosecutor or other lawyer in his office, may order via a well founded resolution, the recording of the telephone, computer, or other kinds of analogous signals made by the accused or any other person directly or indirectly related to the crime being investigated.

The Judge should weigh in his resolution the gravity of the crime being investigated, the utility and proportionality of the measure.

The intervention in communications treated in this Article might be the identification and recording of the origin, the destination, or both or in the knowing and recording of the content.

In the act which authorizes the intervention, the Judge shall determine who carries out the intervention.

The intervention may not last more than 15 days, but may be extended by the Judge, at the request of the Public Prosecutor or lawyer in his office, for additional 15 day periods, by founded acts, as long as the conditions which initially justified the adoption of the measure remain true.

The recordings, once made, will be given only to the Judge who ordered them, within five days of the termination of the intervention, and every one of the successive extensions. In the case of extensions, the recordings will be turned over to the Judge within sufficient time for the Judge to consider them before reaching a conclusion about extension. Only the Judge may know the contents of the recordings. If they are related to the crime under investigation, the Judge may order transcripts prepared so they can be used in the legal process.

The people charged with making the recordings or the transcriptions must keep secret the contents of the recordings and if they leak the information, will incur legal responsibility.

The recording of a communication by one of the parties without fulfilling the requirements outlined in this Article will lack all probative value.

Juan Orlando Hernandez argues that, because this Article lacks specific procedures for how the recording will be made, his new law is necessary.

In fact, the current law contains what Hernandez's law lacks: judicial protection of the Honduran populace's right to privacy under the constitution. Currently, no wiretapping intercepts can legally occur without a judge's review and approval. Hernandez's law would eliminate judicial review.

Mario Perez, the Congress member Hernandez commissioned to write the new law, says that it will create a Unit for Communications Interception which will both determine when intercepts are necessary and authorize them.

Let me emphasize that this leaves judges out of the loop. The new wiretapping Unit will both determine an intercept is necessary and carry it out, all without the review of a judge, according to Perez.

Mario Perez is getting into a pattern here. He was also part of the committee that wrote the unconstitutional interpretation of Article 274 of the constitution, twisting it to grant full policing powers to the military. Constitutional guarantees seems to mean little to him, other than being obstacles.

Meanwhile, the legislators are ignoring the objections of both the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Ana Pineda, and the Commissioner of Human Rights, Ramon Custodio. As with the departed Sandra Ponce, events like these make it clear that human rights positions are simply there to satisfy international organizations: the Honduran legislature sees no need to pay attention when these individuals tell them they are acting unconstitutionally.

Honduras has a Police Problem

And, contrary to English-language media-- including the usually more critical BBC-- it is not taking effective steps to solve it.

If you read the Washington Post, you will be told that 176 cops were arrested "for alleged connections to kidnappings, extortion plots and drug trafficking". Quoting the highest level Honduran source, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the Post said

the mass arrest is part of a nationwide crackdown on corrupt police.

A spokesman for the National police, Silvio Inestroza, went further, claiming these officers had "links with drug gangs".

Drug violence is the one narrative about Honduras that US media seem to understand, so it is no surprise that Honduran authorities repeat it, and while disappointing, not even surprising that the US media parrot it back.

But in this instance, that is not in fact what is going on. To understand what is really happening, you need to ask, "Why 176 officers, and not others? Why those 176 police officers?"

As CNN International correctly notes, the 176 are the complement assigned to one police outpost in Tegucigalpa. So, not quite so sweeping a "nationwide crackdown" of the Honduran police force-- which totals around 11,000 members.

CNN's lead paragraph falls into the trap, describing the action as part of a "a campaign to cleanse its national police."

Buried far down in their story is the fact that this station is where four police officers worked who are suspected in the murder of two university students, including the son of university rector Julieta Castellanos.

The Washington Post managed to blur that one-to-one correspondence entirely, writing only that

The detentions late Wednesday came three days after the president fired six high-ranking officers following the release by police of four policemen who allegedly killed the son of a university chancellor.

The "detentions" not only came three days after-- the detained were the colleagues who worked with the suspected killers, and who let them walk out.

Castellanos, of course, was a member of the official "Truth Commission" on which the US State Department placed much of its hopes for national reconciliation, despite Honduran skepticism. So the murder of her son is international news.

Castellanos herself used the opportunity to point out that her son's murder is part of a pattern of police complicity in violence that extends beyond the children of the socially- and politically- prominent.

This is a pattern that English-language media have not covered particularly well. And the present stories are simply additional examples of what goes wrong in the reporting process.

CNN International presents the story exactly as the Honduran authorities would like. It takes the specific, and quite limited, investigations of 176 officers at one post as evidence of a commitment to cleaning up the police force, calling it "the latest of a series of steps" taken for that purpose.

CNN described the removal of police command officers as if the impetus for this originated from within, saying "Days after the incident, the national police shook up its top ranks". But the removal of officers came from outside the police force, as a product of political calculation in the Lobo Sosa government.

CNN writes approvingly that the Honduran Congress

rewrote the country's policing laws, stripping the national police of its internal affairs department, and handing over such investigations to a new, independent force.

This claim advances the argument that there are just a few "rotten apples" in the Honduran police, and adding more, separate, police units will somehow solve what in fact is a problem rooted of abuse of power, in impunity.

If you read these stories, you would think the police killing of the two university students was an anomaly, a product of police involvement in drug trafficking.

But Honduran reports suggest the killing was an arbitrary and unconstrained abuse of power: having wounded one of the students, the officers decided not to bring them in for medical attention, which would have triggered an investigation of the circumstances of the original shooting.

It is up to Fox News Latino to give a more credible account, in a story covering the protest following the police bungling of the case. It opens with quotes from Julieta Castellanos:

"There has been a process of tampering with evidence, there has been a process of obstructing the investigation. The police have engaged in double-talk."

"they intimidate the prosecutors, the investigators and the medical examiners."

Unlike the other English media, this story goes on to report fully on the skepticism about government actions. On the changes in officers, they note

critics said the move amounted to no more than "rotations" of officers between posts.

Most astonishing are the final few paragraphs of this story, unparalleled in other US media:

Lobo, who was elected in November 2009 in a process marred by violence, media censorship and low turnout, has so far failed on his promise to improve public safety.

Few murders are ever solved and Honduran authorities routinely ascribe violent acts to "score-settling" within and among the country's youth gangs and criminal outfits.

At the same time, many of the killings since Zelaya's ouster appear to be politically motivated, as victims are often associated with the resistance movement that sprang up in the wake of the coup.

The deposed head of state returned to Honduras five months ago under a pact brokered by regional leaders, but violence against his supporters and other activists continues.

So what actually happened in the recent events? Should we see any of it as even a tiny ray of light, set against this sobering-- and entirely accurate-- account by Fox News Latino?

The Honduran National Police released the four officers under investigation for the murder of the two university students, who promptly failed to turn up for further investigation. The Lobo Sosa government shuffled appointments of officials with oversight authority for the police, and used the opportunity-- again-- to use the Armed Forces in civilian policing, in violation of Honduran constitutional separation of the missions of these forces.

When outrage continued, the remaining police officers from the post where those responsible for this one crime were assigned were ordered to report to a different post, to be individually investigated. Detained for investigation, not arrested, as was reported in the English-language media. But arrested sounds so much more effective, doesn't it?

La Prensa Latina reports comments by the pro-coup Human Rights commissioner Ramón Custodio, and by Andrés Pavón of the Comité Nacional de los Derechos Humanos, who has often been opposed to Custodio since the 2009 coup, that demonstrate how widespread Honduran distrust of the police forces actually is.

Custodio said that

"the agents of the police have license to rob, kill, extort, and we cannot do anything, because the high command practices impunity, cover-ups and other crimes."

Pavón, in turn, said that

"there are so many extra-judicial deaths and by their characteristics it is known that the Police participate everyday in those horrendous crimes".

From both sides of the spectrum, it is clear to Hondurans that the problem of the police is a problem of impunity, and that it is not limited to one bad apple.

Or even 176 bad apples in a single barrel.

Human Rights Commissioner: Give the Police Impunity

Ramon Custodio wants impunity for the Police.

A police officer who commits an illicit act in the line of duty should not even be charged, let alone tried for the crime; so says Honduran Human Rights Commissioner Ramon Custodio in his latest detailed assessment of the police in Honduras. They are defending society, Custodio asserts.

Custodio even gives the example of an officer who, in the process of defending the honest citizen against delinquents, shoots some people with his government-issued gun. He doesn't say whether it's bystanders or actual criminals that get shot. It doesn't matter. There should be no review of the police officer's actions, administrative or judicial, according to Custodio.

Custodio has previously defined impunity:

"impunity consists in letting go unpunished and without penalty someone who commits a crime against the public or private order."

So what he advocates is impunity for the police.

To be fair he's responding to a real problem; it's just that his solution is ludicrous.

The problem is, there are no police regulations, no administrative rules that guide an officer in the proper use of force in Honduras. They pretty much can use their gun as they see fit. However, they may be charged with a crime if they injure or kill someone, although it can take three or more years for such a case to be resolved in the Honduran courts.

In the US, situations like this are covered by rules on the proper use of force, and training that emphasizes the use of proportional force. Bystanders are not to be endangered by police actions. Any use of their weapons is reviewed administratively, and potentially turned over for prosecution. None of this happens in Honduras.

But Custodio says Honduran police should just be allowed to do it, no consequences.

Ironic, since in May, Custodio told Proceso Digital that "impunity destroys the public order."

Human Rights Loses Again

The security forces in Honduras continue to be in denial about their trampling on the human rights of Hondurans. For the second week in a row, Ana Pineda, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, called on the Police and Military to change their procedures to comply with UN protocols and observe human rights to no avail.

In the council of ministers meeting yesterday Pineda pointed out that the security forces are using teargas "irrationally". They are, she asserted, violating UN protocols on how to use teargas on several fronts; foremost by launching the teargas canisters directly at people instead of into the air, which also makes the teargas less effective overall and is an improper use of force. She also noted that security forces were shooting teargas into enclosed spaces like offices and the interior of cars, causing more harm and damage than necessary. She noted that the security forces were violating UN protocols because they failed to initiate any form of dialogue with the protesters before resorting to force. The UN protocol states that force should only be a last resort after all attempts at dialogue are exhausted. Finally she noted that proper arrest procedures were ignored in the detention yesterday of Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda in Tela. Miranda was held 9 hours and her rights were violated numerous times during that detention.

Last week it was Oscar Alvarez, the security minister, who was in denial. It was Marlon Pascua who was in denial of the problems this time. Pascua, the defense minister and nominally in charge of the military asserted that it was the police and military whose human rights were being violated.

"Unfortunately human rights only work in one direction,"

said Pascua, ignoring the power differential between an unarmed public and the armed security forces. Pascua went on to remind the ministers of the three soldiers hospitalized with burns from Molotov cocktails. Perhaps not fully realizing the irony of his statements, Pascua noted that so far the international human rights organizations had not ruled in favor of the security forces. Gee, I wonder why?

Armando Caledonio, vice minister of Security read a letter written by Ramon Custodio, the Human Rights commissioner, to the security agency noting that the police use of wooden clubs (toletes y garrotes in Honduran Spanish) violated the UN conventions on the use of force and asked them to cease using them immediately. One wonders where this concern about the use of wooden clubs was during the de facto regime, but better late than never.

La Tribuna notes that Porfirio Lobo Sosa asked both sides to meet and work out their differences, perhaps appoint an ombudsperson and review the security force procedures in light of UN protocols. He called on the ministers to put aside their differences and work as a team. This is much the same thing he told them last week, so obviously it is working well as a plan.

Until there is a recognition on the part of the police and military that they are violating the human rights of the Honduran people, the problem will persist. The problem, caused by poor training, cannot be addressed until it is recognized as a problem by those who lead, and so far they are in denial. Until then, Honduras will continue to be called to task by the international community.

"State of Emergency" in the schools (K-12 only)

Vos el Soberano has posted the complete text of Decree PCM-016-2011, dated March 18, in which Porfirio Lobo Sosa grants himself extraordinary powers to fire, hire, and generally run the school system.

This is only the latest in a string of sweeping declarations of "emergency" by Lobo Sosa, that echo the state of emergency decrees through which Roberto Micheletti asserted control by his de facto regime.

This decree cites Article 9 of the Ley de Contratación del Estado as allowing for such declarations when "continuity of, or the opportune offering of, State services" is affected. One thing we learned from Roberto Micheletti is to always check the original to see what the claimed authority actually says, so here is Article 9 in its entirety (see end of post for Spanish original)

ARTICULO 9.-Emergency situations.
The declaration of a state of emergency will be made through a Decree by the President of the Republic in the Council of Ministers or by vote of two-thirds of the respective Municipal Corporation.

The contracts that are agreed to in situations of emergency, will require later approval, by agreement of the President of the Republic, emitted by means of the corresponding Cabinet Minister, or of the Directing Junta or Council of the respective Decentralized Institution or of the Municipal Corporation, if it is relevant.

In whichever of the cases the result should be communicated to the control bodies, within 10 working days following, provided that the celebration of contracts is foreseen.

When situations of emergency occur due to natural disasters, epidemics, public calamity, necessities of defence or related to states of emergency, or other exceptional circumstances that substantially affect the continuity or opportune and efficient provision of public services, the construction of public works, the purveyance of goods or services or the lending of consulting servces that might be strictly necessary, without subjecting them to the requirements of solicitation of bids and the remaining regulatory dispositions, without prejudice to the functions of auditory control.

It is an ambituous stretch to use a law intended to absolve government from the need to submit contracts for competitive bids in the case of natural disasters, epidemics, of defense emergencies to allow the government to arbitrarily suspend teachers and replace them. But this is a now-familiar pattern: laws in Honduras seem to exist to be mined for phrases that can be taken out of the context for which they were intended, to underwrite impunity.

This is actually what dictatorship looks like when it is cloaked in the guise of representational government.

And while constraints of time prevent me from translating and commenting on this whole document now, it is worth noting that the preamble-- always the most creative and revealing thing in these documents-- recycles the arguments made by the discredited Ombudsman, Ramón Custodio, against teachers' unions, portraying retaliation against unions as required by international human rights conventions that guarantee a right to education.

Perversity seems to be the rhetorical mode of Honduran government in the post-coup era. How better to slough off the stench of human rights violations deserved for causing the death of your own citizens by releasing the army on them, then to claim that the protests you are suppressing are themselves a violation of human rights?

*****
ARTICULO 9.-Situaciones de emergencia.

La declaración del estado de emergencia se hará mediante Decreto del Presidente de la República en Consejo de Ministros o por el voto de las dos terceras partes de la respectiva Corporación Municipal.

Los contratos que se suscriben en situaciones de emergencia, requerirán de aprobación posterior, por acuerdo del Presidente de la República, emitido por medio de la Secretaría de Estado que corresponda, o de la Junta o Consejo Directivo de la respectiva Institución Descentralizada o de la Corporación Municipal, si es el caso.

En cualquiera de los casos deberá comunicarse lo resuelto a los órganos contralores, dentro de los diez (10) días hábiles siguientes, siempre que se prevea la celebración de contratos.

Cuando ocurran situaciones de emergencia ocasionados por desastres naturales, epidemias, calamidad pública, necesidades de la defensa o relacionadas con estados de excepción, u otras circunstancias excepcionales que afectaren sustancialmente la continuidad o la prestación oportuna y eficiente de los servicios públicos, podrá contratarse la construcción de obras públicas, el suministro de bienes o de servicios o la prestación de servicios de consultoría que fueren estrictamente necesarios, sin sujetarse a los requisitos de licitación y demás disposiciones reglamentarias, sin perjuicio de las funciones de fiscalización.

Golpistas Are Nervous

The golpistas in Honduras are nervous after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued the announcement that it would proceed to investigate if it had jurisdiction over human rights crimes allegedly committed by those who carried out the coup and formed the de facto regime in 2009.

The ICC is an independent organization, not part of the UN, located in The Hague, Netherlands. It is governed by the Rome Statute, a UN treaty that establishes the court and the rules under which it operates. The court, funded by individual country governments, was established to "help end impunity for the perpetrators of the most serious crimes of concern to the international community."

The complain was lodged by the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH for its name in French). FIDH sent an evaluation mission to Honduras in late July, 2009, and at that time confirmed serious human rights violations had and were taking place. They outlined their findings and concerns in a press release on July 30, 2009. At that time they called on the ICC to remind Honduras it was a member and if the situation continued it could come under the jurisdiction of the ICC. The de facto regime, through its human rights commissioner, Ramon Custodio Lopez, denied at the time that human rights abuses had taken place.

The ICC has assigned Prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo to the case. Moreno Ocampo is an Argentinian who successfully prosecuted the Generals in Argentina in 1984 for human rights abuses. He announced that he would shortly conduct preliminary investigations in Honduras.

Sandra Ponce, the Honduran Human Rights Prosecutor, told El Tiempo that the ICC had not communicated with the current Honduran Government. She noted that

"The process of opening an investigation implies the prosecutor (of the ICC) wants to verify the information, and if it has merit, he will have to ask the permission of the Pre-Trial division of the ICC to open a case."

Among those accused of committing human rights violations are Roberto Micheletti Bain, Luis Rubí Avila, Jorge Rivera Avilez, José Alfredo Saavedra, and the military high command, command of the National Police, 18 people in all.

El Tiempo reported that one of the first things that happened after the announcement of the ICC was published in the press, was that the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubí Avila asked the Human Rights Commissioner, Ramon Custodio Lopez, to come to his office and discuss the announcement. Both Rubí Avila and Custodio Lopez are named in the complaint.

While neither Rubí nor Custodio spoke with the press, a judicial advisor to Rubi, Rigoberto Espinal Irías dismissed the human rights charges alleged by FIDH, claiming that many were "questionable" or "never happened", as documented in a report by his office to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights.

"You cannot have an assassination where there wasn't one; its easy to put something on paper and build on top of it."

The attitude of that part of the Public Prosecutor's office is in sharp contrast with that of its Human Rights Prosecutor. Sandra Ponce told La Tribuna the visit of Moreno Ocampo was historic since it was the first visit ever by an ICC prosecutor to perform an investigation of Honduras. She pointed out that the government was obligated to cooperate with Moreno Ocampo and the ICC. She also explained that if any of the charges of political persecution were found to have merit, the ICC would have jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, El Heraldo spread the disinformation, sourced to the Colombian Ambassador to Honduras, Sonia Portillo, that the ICC doesn't prosecute individuals, just governments and institutions and used this to make fun of Ángel Edmundo Orellana. However the ICC website states specifically,

"The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes..."

Hmm, nothing there about trying governments or institutions, just persons. So much for the Colombian Ambassador's knowledge and the journalistic integrity of El Heraldo, which didn't bother to do even simple fact checking.

The repression that happened after the coup, the extrajudicial killings by the police and military (indivisible since the coup) that continue to the present, the illegal revocation of constitutional rights, all of these charges deserve an impartial thorough investigation. It will have to be started by the ICC, since there is no reason to believe it will ever happen Honduras.

The OAS Made Us Do It

News from Honduras: the Lobo Sosa government is moving rapidly to create a Secretariat of Human Rights and Justice.

Which is not going down well in Honduras with a group of people who continually criticize Lobo Sosa.

No, we don't mean the resistance (although we expect no one in resistance will believe such a move will lead to improved enforcement of human rights legislation or treaties). The criticism coming for Lobo is from members of congress and the government.

They are outraged that this new position has been imposed from outside, as a requirement for the OAS to reconsider Honduras as a member. Except that is kind of not true.

The allegation is made repeatedly by those opposed to the new cabinet post, like Nationalist Party and Choluteca Congressional Representative Francisco Argeña.

According to La Tribuna, when the Nationalist Party caucused on Thursday, they were told by their leadership that the establishment of this Secretariat was a condition for Honduras's return to the OAS. The Nationalists came out of the caucus affirming they would support the creation of the Secretariat, assuring its passage. But that doesn't mean they are happy about it.

Nora de Melgar, Vice President of Congress, told La Prensa

"We have already started the debate; it's one of the conditions of the Organization of American States for re-entry in the Organization; it's not something invented by the President of the country, nor the National Party, it's a mandate from them [the OAS] and as a poor country we have to do it to get the aid."

While the Nationalists agreed to support this for pragmatic reasons, without any notable dedication to the supposed goals of the new cabinet post, other voices were particularly critical of Lobo Sosa for agreeing to what they see as more outside interference.

Ramon Custodio, Honduras' disfunctional Human Rights Commissioner, accuses the Lobo government of taking away his independence, and of violating his constitutional mandate with the law to create the new Secretariat.

Elvin Santos Lozano, head of the Liberal Party Central Committee, feels that Honduras is the victim

"of a gang of so-called Latin American leaders who want us under their fascist boot; and this is bringing a horrible anarchy, but unfortunately we are a country that has not jumped the Third World barrier and we will continue under their control."

Roberto Micheletti called it unconstitutional and said that it represents an abuse of power by Lobo Sosa. He reiterated that it is the ALBA countries causing the OAS to impose this on Honduras.

"Chavez will never stop insisting in the possibility to attract this country to his criteria, to his services."

But the claims that the Human Rights cabinet post is being developed because of foreign pressure are counterfactual.

It was the suggestion of Ana Pineda, Lobo Sosa's Minister/Advisor on Human Rights, who in a letter to the OAS High Commission on Honduras this summer, suggested that Honduras would consider founding a Secretariat of Human Rights and Justice. Her letter, dated the 23 of July, was included in the OAS report as annex 7.

She wrote

"The President, in the framework of the transformation of the State, has taken the decision to seek a better institutional development and not an interim space for response, in this regard, he will create a Minister of Justice and Human Rights, with the legal mandate and budget necessary so that in especially it can plan, coordinate, facilitate and implement all the actions that will be required on the national and international level in regard to Human Rights."

So the outrage about international fascist imposition on Honduras is, in the end, more posturing. But it brings out in the open what should be self-evident: there is no real commitment in the Honduran government to the mission defined for this new cabinet minister. This is just going through the motions as far as Lobo Sosa's own party is concerned. For the main opposing party, it provides a way to make some political gains against him at home, playing off the jingoistic nationalism that has been assiduously cultivated since the coup d'etat.

Only Ramon Custodio thinks this new ministry will have any real effect. And his worry is that someone else will notice that he is not doing his job.

Impunity on Impunity

Porfirio Lobo Sosa announced last Friday that he has invited the members of the UN Commission Against Impunity to come to Honduras.

But the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubí says not so fast. "Nobody from outside can tell us what we have to do," Rubí told reporters on Monday.

"When you bring a commission, you are having doubts and really, this country is not for having doubts; we who believe in its institutions; we who believe in its functionaries, we who believe in the country; we have to believe in ourselves, the Hondurans."

So what is this thing that Rubí finds so threatening, so un-Honduran?

The immediate precedent is the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG). It was established in 2008 to investigate the existence of clandestine security apparatus in Guatemala and facilitate dismantling it. It assists the Public Prosecutor's office, and may participate as a complementary prosecutor, but always in conformity with the Code of Criminal Procedures in Guatemala, as part of its mandate. It makes recommendations about new public policies and procedures that would help with the eradication of these clandestine security organizations, and that will help strengthen Guatemala's capacity to protect the basic human rights of its citizens.

Lobo Sosa outlined similar tasks for such a commission in Honduras. He said the commission would investigate the clandestine security apparatus that's operating in Honduras, train prosecutors and police, and make recommendations about modifications to laws to help disarticulate such clandestine groups.

Proceso Digital expands on reasons to reject such a commission, in unsourced comments following their quotations of Rubí's reactions. According to them, it is all a Zelayista plot to get rid of Luis Rubí, the Supreme Court, the Human Rights Commissioner, and everyone in Congress who voted, twice, to remove Zelaya. Oh, and if that's not enough, it is also, according to them, Hugo Chavez's strategy which he's pushing through the ALBA countries in the OAS.

Hmm. Porfirio Lobo Sosa is a Zelayista? Who knew?

And if the Supreme Court is a target, why is the Supreme Court said to be in favor of it?

The actual inspiration seems somewhat more local. Alvaro Colom, President of Guatemala, told the press in Guatemala that both Honduras and El Salvador were preparing petitions to ask the UN for a Commission Against Impunity such as Guatemala already has.

Any such commission in Honduras will have a difficult task probing clandestine activities of the military, police, and politically powerful. Part of the challenge is that investigating impunity in the security forces is likely to lead directly to drug traffickers.

The Guatemalan commission has sparked push-back by elites who find themselves under investigation and prosecution. In June the head of its commission resigned, citing attacks by the powerful and lack of support for his work. This only months after giving press comments on the successes of the commission, which certainly seemed impressive: about 2,000 policemen (15 %) were removed from the force, an attorney-general and ten other prosecutors were fired, and three justices of the Guatemalan Supreme Court lost their office. The commission saw 130 individuals jailed following successful prosecution.

It is clear that uprooting impunity in the security forces cannot be done entirely from within the system in Honduras; it will need the backing of the international community to succeed.

But that's not going to happen if Rubí and the others who believe they gained impunity for the coup and its aftermath through congressional amnesty have anything to say about it.

Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle: The Community of Nations and Honduras, a Conjuncture

The "coup" of 28/6/2009 (so Obama himself called it before Lobo, although it was those who conspired who were deploring it) entailed a high and expansive level of involvement of the International Community, especially of the OAS, in Honduras. From the perspective of the Resistance, nonetheless, this involvement also was incoherent and ineffective and even misleading (1) in various meanings of the word. And it was increasingly doubtful that the international community could assist in finding a way out (it would be difficult to have a solution) because the determination of radical golpismo to overcome or ignore any external interference that would not be pleasing to them was understood, so that the questioning of the Europeans or Latin Americans, were of no interest for golpismo, and, in that measure, have ceased to be means of pressure. In a recent communication the ex-Minister of Tourism of Honduras Ricardo Martinez wrote lucidly to me:

Central America could not maintain the closure of frontiers after one week because of the economic pressures of their businessmen... partners of the Honduran golpistas. The OAS never succeeded in true commercial embargos or resolutions that would require... the golpistas to give in; on the contrary they dragged their feet (2) and now around 54 countries recognize the present government, including the USA that represents 70% of our economic activity. In Honduras there has been no scarcity of anything that had not already been lacking and despite the acute economic crisis, the lempira has not even been devalued and the interest rates increased. All the multilateral organizations are now in dialogue with the government of Lobo and have initiated payments and the SICA has already incorporated the Honduran ministers in the consultations of its ministers, even thought they have not changed the resolution that prohibited it.

Something that is patently illegal.

We should remember that the ex-Minister behind much of this debacle is the strong arm of the USA, but is a discreet man. On the other hand, the golpista press has questioned, and the forces of the right (that also were more able to hold together with their few external friends) have rejected, adverse pronouncements from outside the country, by the OAS and most recently the joint position of the so-called Group of 16 that-- recently-- repudiated the determination of the golpista Supreme Court of Justice to fire the judges and magistrate that have made statements against the coup and demanded attention and remedy to the continuing abuses of human rights and violence against the opposition, ignored by the Prosecutor. The so called "Institute for the Defense of Democracy", that is no more than a front for golpismo, has rejected in a communique the strong statement of the G16, imputing to them an interventionist spirit and a lack of respect for the institutionality of the country. The ambassador Ruperto Pérez, of the Kingdom of Spain, who belongs to that group, rejected that response and declared that the isolationist norm invoked was completely obsolete, recalling that around the world, the international community today is involved in problems of human rights which are conceived as universal and the responsibility of everyone.

In effect, the judge Garzón, who is now being punished for having dared so much, only had made a personal demonstration of a perception already generalized that we cannot be indifferent before the rights of the rest of the inhabitants of the planet without putting our own in danger. And this thesis has prevailed in the new international law. Consequently there exist international commissions of rights that have repudiated Ramón Custodio and international campaigns against flagrant violations, in Asia and the Pacific, and campaigns by the UN against mutilations by Muslims in Africa, treaties and conventions worldwide against torture that-- furthermore-- Honduras has ratified, which is why the International Court has been established, etc. The ideologues of golpismo such as Carlos López C. (ex Chancellor who was the favorite of the military since the time of his uncle, the dictator of the same name) and his favored ambassadors don't understand. They remain, as General McCrystal said not long ago, "stuck in the seventies". Certainly this is not going to stop this push of international law, nor is it going to resolve the confrontation in Honduras.

Perhaps the evolution of the situation since the coup has been converted into a case of the study of change generated, not in the bureaucratic field, that also keeps being short-sighted or obsolete, but in the very wide public effects on international politics of the powerful countries of the globe. These are democracies in the more genuine sense, where the citizens (that can inform themselves at the edge of the manipulated media) are determined to demand that their governments be consistent with international aid, and not waste it on dictatorships that, with it, make themselves ever more powerful. Self-determination can only prevail where the agreed-upon international norms are not violated. The problem continues being the dissonance or open contradiction between pragmatic interest, especially of the USA, and the more abstract and idealist doctrine of rights, otherwise easily manipulable if it is not defined in an integral way, as human rights, political as well as social.

Some pivotal institutions of the international community could be in danger if they do not demonstrate more effectiveness in the protection of those principles, but at the same time they are pressured not to move against the powerful. In particular the OAS, that is already warned by the published determination of a large majority of its members (that feel smothered within it) to create a different entity, that would leave out the USA and its twin.(3) So that, to the degree that the great power does not succeed in reconciling itself with the greater complexity of the community of nations of the Continent, the latter is disposed to create a space apart, that excludes it. The OAS as such therefore confronts a test. It will not be disposed to fail. And to have success it is necessary that it be capable of reconciling the imperatives of both factions and to obtain concessions from both parties that will give to the voice of the organization the coherency that it requires to be effective and to consolidate its new principles of international law. In so far as this goal advances it will gain respect and even recognition in all the factions, although some will remain more content than others and even though no one can demand that they resolve the internal problems of each one of their members.

Published Friday 25 June, 2010 on Vos el Soberano.

Notes:

(1) engañoso: deceitful, deceptive, illusory, fraudulent, phony, misleading. As Pastor Fasquelle references "various meanings of the word", any of these should be considered here.

(2) dio largas al asunto

(3) The reference is to the meeting of the Río Group earlier this year, resolving to form an association leaving out the US and Canada.

Blacklisted

The Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued its annual black list of countries that do not respect human rights. For the first time since 2006, a new country appears on the list, Honduras. The inclusion of Honduras is based on the report of the IACHR visit to the country last August. Chapter 4 of the report, which can be downloaded here, is an executive summary of the longer IACHR report on Human Rights and the Coup, issued in December, 2009. Compare that report with the rather sparse State Department report on Human Rights in Honduras.

The response in Honduras has been dismissive.Porfirio Lobo Sosa's newly minted Human Rights advisor, Ana Pineda, is quoted on Radio America's website as saying "this is not the time for Honduras to say whether it endorses the report of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights." She is reported to have said that the report of the IACHR, in general, reflects the problems of the country after the expulsion of Manuel Zelaya Rosales. In other words, she thinks this is old stuff.

"Now, Honduras is trying to take into account the recommendations of the IACHR and investigate specific cases of human rights violations."

Except querida Human Rights advisor, the Human Rights prosecutor, Sandra Ponce, has come forward recently to say that her office cannot investigate and file human rights cases because she has no budget to do so.

Apparently, the naming of Honduras to the list bothered President Lobo Sosa, who came out and said "Its not the policy of the state to violate human rights." He continued:

"The important thing for me is that it is not a state policy, I acknowledge that we have inherited a country with high crime and are doing our best ; there is no State policy of violating human rights."

State policy is not the issue, Mr. President, its are you prepared to stop the abuses that are undeniably being denounced daily. Denial is a step on the road to recovery, I'm told.

But moments ago the AP reported that Lobo Sosa had rejected the IACHR report. The same story quotes Human Rights Ombudsperson Ramón Custodio as calling the report "a form of manipulation with the goal of hurting Honduras. The IACHR has lost its ethics."

The Center for Justice and International Law told the UN that the Honduran government has taken no action to protect the majority 134 people named in IACHR demands for protective orders. It found this lack of action worrying.

At the same time, a motion introduced by the representatives of the UD party in the National Congress to replace Human Rights Ombudsperson Ramón Custodio Lopez because he has not properly carried out his functions was defeated by a 122-6 vote. La Tribuna calls this a "unanimous rejection" bringing new meaning to the word "unanimous". Lobo Sosa said that this is not the time for such a motion, rather that it is the time for reconciliation.

Unspeakable Truths

Ramon Custodio, the Human Rights Commissioner, sounded the alarm yesterday that the truth commission being formed by Eduardo Stein might be considering suggesting social and legal reforms as part of its mandate. Stein confirmed yesterday that it was possible the commission would look into suggesting reforms with the idea of preventing future crises.

Custodio's comments, and those of others, come following the announcement late this week that Stein would head a truth commission made up of 3 international representatives and two Honduran representatives, and that one of those Hondurans would be from the Frente de Resistencia with President Lobo selecting the other. Stein suggested the international representatives be ex-foreign ministers or jurists well versed in issues of human rights. While Stein suggested names in his report to Porfirio Lobo Sosa, he made it clear that President Lobo would be making the selection of representatives on the commission.

Maria de Bográn, presidential designate and advisor to President Lobo Sosa, said yesterday that Stein's report to the President

told us about making an analysis of some reforms, not precisely constitutional; it spoke of some reforms of social laws that needed to be made clearer or better.

She stated that the position of the President, and the Government, is that the commission has no mandate to suggest constitutional reforms.

Custodio, however, asked if this wasn't a continuation of the cuarta urna, the fourth ballot box whose proposal triggered this constitutional crisis. He inferred that the truth commission would be suggesting changes to the "written in stone" articles of the Constitution, including the prohibition on re-election of the president:

If what we removed with the cuarta urna they're going to impose on us with a yoke hidden in the truth commission, then Mr. Stein is presiding over and coordinating a constitutional commission.

Custodio went even further, accusing Stein of not being impartial:

Mr. Stein has in his background his bias about the Honduran crisis because he was part of the commission which declared that the Honduran elections were not legitimate and called at the time for the reincorporation of Mr. Zelaya as President of the Republic. So he is a person representing attributions that perhaps are not appropriate for the impartial, ethical carrying out (of the mandate of the truth commission) and could affect the relative stability that we've gained.

I think there is too much indulgence of the OAS. They're the cause of this problem...

Custodio's is not the only voice sounding the alarm. Federico Álvarez, an ex-president of the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (BCIE in Spanish) thinks things are moving much too fast, and that the truth commission needs commissioners who are questioned by no one:

We could have looked for investigators of international reputation, a group of constitutional law professors, who would be happy to be here with no interests and no links to anyone (involved in the crisis), and people would be more calm.

Álvarez suggested that there needs to be a separation between what Hondurans need to do to reform their constitution with the goal of strengthening their democracy, and what the truth commission might want to do with the constitution:

The only thing we know is what Stein said, and he said that it is necessary to revise the process by which a president is removed from office, ignorant of what article 239 of our constitution says.

Álvarez had already come out against Stein before recent reports about the nature of the proposed Truth Commission. In a February 6 editorial in La Tribuna he stated that Stein was disqualified by being a representative of a government (Guatemala) that had passed judgment on what happened in Honduras. This is not precisely true. While the government of Guatemala has expressed an opinion, it was not the government of which Stein was a part, since he was a member of a prior administration. Álvarez seems to be referring to Stein's membership in the Carter Center's mission to Honduras in October, 2009, to know the truth of the human rights violations and decide whether conditions were apt for an election.

So why this manifest anxiety over suggestions of reforms? How did Maria de Bográn's comment about the report suggesting the commission might consider suggesting reforms to social laws transform itself, in the representation of Custodio and Álvarez, into constitutional reforms and the suggestion that the truth commission was the feared "constituyente" that the cuarta urna might have initiated?

One possible cause of anxiety-- not openly alluded to by Federico Álvarez or Ramon Custodio-- could be Stein's proposal that one representative on the commission be from the Frente de Resistencia. That appears to be almost literally unspeakable: to date no Honduran press coverage of this part of Stein's proposal has appeared. On February 7, Juan Barahona, a leader of the Frente de Resistencia, rejected the Truth Commission itself as "pure show". But since the proposal by Stein that a representative of the Frente be included, there has been no further comment, and no official communication. Of course, since that selection is to be made by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, it is hard to imagine that he or she would be a legitimate representative of the popular resistance. The Honduran press and officials-- including Ramon Custodio in an interview with Spanish media-- continue to claim that the inclusion of former UD presidential candidate César Ham in Lobo Sosa's cabinet was equivalent to representation of the resistance, a position explicitly disclaimed by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular itself in a communique on January 26.

In this case, it seems, silence is golden. As with all monsters in closets, the fear has to be expressed somehow. So Custodio and others like him pass over in silence the real threat of having a Truth Commission actually hear from opponents of the coup and critics of the pretense that the present government is free of entanglements with it. But their imaginations run directly to where they fear listening to the people might take an independent commission: the absolute need for constitutional reform.