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.

Separation of Powers 2 (the sequel)

We wrote before how Porfirio Lobo Sosa doesn't understand the Honduran Constitution's separation of powers.

Today he made that even clearer: he said that he would be forming a commission of jurists to examine whether the recent decisions by the Supreme Court were based in the law, saying

"The only [state] power without anything over it is the Judicial power; whatever they do or decide is the last recourse, which doesn't seem fair to me in the balance of power".

Yes, the Judicial branch is the ultimate arbiter of the law under the Honduran constitution, just as it is under the US constitution.

Apparently that's news to Lobo Sosa, and he knows what he thinks he can do about it:

"There are things that are not fair, them perhaps it is adhering to the Constitution, but I have the right as well to put in place jurists who will analyze for me if the decision of [the Supreme Court] really adheres to the Constitution of the Republic".

The only saving grace here is that Lobo Sosa isn't saying what he will do after his selected commission reports on their opinion of the Supreme Court's recent opinions.

There is no question the Honduran judicial system, including the Supreme Court, is politicized. We've blogged about the problems with the selection process for the court before. Heather Berkman's scholarly article on the subject provides a good analysis.

But the problem is not that the Judicial Branch has no oversight; the problem is in how the justices are selected for the Supreme Court. The problem is that the judicial system is partitioned as "spoils" by the two major political parties. The process is heavily politicized.

The selection process is spelled out in Article 311 and 312 of the Honduran constitution. Nominations are made by a commission composed of seven members:

(1) one Supreme Court justice, elected by 2/3 of the justices on the Supreme Court
(2) one lawyer, from the Lawyer's Union, elected by the assembly.
(3) The Human Rights Commissioner
(4) one representative from the Honduran Council of Private Business (Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (COHEP)) elected in assembly
(5) one representative of the Law Professors, election run by the National Autonomous University
(6) one representative of Civil Society
(7) one representative of the Workers Unions

The law that governs the operation of this group is Decreto 140-2001.

It calls for these people to get together and propose at least 3 nominations for each of the 15 places in the Supreme Court.

Members of the nominating committee cannot themselves be candidates for the Supreme Court, nor related to a candidate. Each representative comes to the committee meeting with a slate of up to 20 candidates proposed by their organization, which cannot be modified once it is proposed. They then discuss each of the candidates and vote to arrive at a slate of no fewer than 45 total candidates which are then proposed to Congress.

At this point, the nominating committee dissolves itself. Congress winnows the list down to 15 members of the Supreme Court, each appointed to 7 year terms.

In theory, it's a law designed to incorporate the views of a large part, though not all, of Honduran society. Campesinos are not represented, nor are indigenous people, for example.

In practice, it ends up being dominated by the political parties that control government. The Misión de Observación del proceso de selección de los nuevos miembros de la Corte Suprema de Honduras reported in 2008 that there was much pressure by political parties to make bargains on the slate of candidates. They wrote:

They [the Mission] received information from multiple sources about alleged irregularities in the elaboration of certain lists, and information concerning alleged political influence, which if true, only serves to undermine the selection process. The Mission also verified a widespread distrust in the selection process, and more specifically, a belief that the candidate lists are a result of political and powerful interest groups interferences.

The Mission reported that the selection criteria were not transparent, but seemed to be limited to the candidate's educational background and work experience with no attempt to determine the candidate's legal skills, philosophy, ideology, or ethical positions.

In 2008 the Congress voted on slates of candidates from the pool proposed by the selection committee. Two slates were created, sponsored by the two main political parties in Honduras, the Liberal Party and the National Party.

As a result, the current Supreme Court consists of 8 Liberal Party members, and 7 National Party members. Each of the current justices is a member of a political faction in one of the two major parties. For example, Tomas Arita Valle, who issued the legal warrant that precipitated and sanctioned the coup, belongs to the Liberal Party faction headed by former president Carlos Flores Facussé.

So it may not be surprising that Porfirio Lobo Sosa does not understand separation of powers, and the place of the Supreme Court in that separation of powers.

He is certainly free to appoint a panel to give him an opinion about the current crop of Supreme Court decisions with which he disagrees.

And there have been a lot of them. His 1 percent security tax, model cities, and the Evangelical Church Law were all found unconstitutional. It is the last of these that seems to have roused him to greatest outrage.

In response, he said

"They declared the law unconstitutional, a Court, but not God and we'll move forward until that law is valid because it is the law that rules and what the Honduran people want so they can be with God".

The Supreme Court found the Evangelical Church Law unconstitutional because it mandates that to be a legal "church" in Honduras, you must belong to the Evangelical Confraternity of Churches.

Lobo Sosa's legal options to make good on his promise are few. Any revision of the form of government and separation of powers would require major constitutional surgery, which in turn, would need the tacit approval of this Supreme Court, to avoid triggering another constitutional crisis.

Lobo Sosa has, oddly, been citing as support for his position the official Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That group suggested Honduras create a Constitutional Court to review the determinations of the Supreme Court. What is unclear is why they think that will help at all.

How do you select members of the Constitutional Court in order to avoid the politicization of the selection of justices that created the current set of problems with the Supreme Court? Wouldn't it be easier, legislatively and structurally, to change the way Supreme Court justices are selected, rather than trying to shoehorn in an entirely new level of court?

Coincidentally, just when Lobo Sosa is airing his unusual theories of constitutional separation of powers, on Thursday a delegation of German judges left Honduras after reviewing its legal system.

Their conclusion: it's worse than they thought. They indicated that there was impunity and corruption in the judicial system and that the Honduran justices where not up to the fight.

A new Supreme Court will be selected on January 25, 2015. There is no particular reason to think that changes will happen by then that would fix the broken selection system.

Meanwhile, we have the spectacle of a Honduran president, faced with decisions he doesn't like, proposing to institute some sort of ad hoc oversight to decide which decisions he really has to accept.

Anyone who thinks Honduras has a functional form of government should probably pause to consider that.

Truth and Justice

We do not generally repost material written by others. If we don't have something to add to the discussion, we leave it to others to publicize such materials.

Today is one of those exceptional days, though. While we have nothing to add, we want to be sure readers are aware of a news item in The Huffington Post.

This is a note from Vincent Warren, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, reproducing a letter by Laura Raymond from CCR that was submitted to the Wall Street Journal, but not, Warren notes, published there.

Raymond was responding to an unbelievable (literally) editorial published by the WSJ, written by the wildly uninformed Mary Anastasia O'Grady, giving her weird spin of the report of the official Honduran "Truth Commission". Like all O'Grady's writing about Honduras since the coup, her editorial bears the same relation to reality as a bad drug trip-- with the drug here being the intoxication of Hugo Chavez-based fear mongering.

Raymond managed to do something I could not: find a way to use the insane WSJ editorial as an occasion to correct the historical record, writing that the official Truth Commission

was initiated by Honduran government officials who have been behind ongoing serious human rights abuses and without the input and involvement of civil society. Upon the Commission’s inauguration, Honduran and international human rights bodies sharply criticized it for lack of compliance with international standards for truth commissions. O’Grady states that Honduran social movements “didn’t quite get the condemnation they sought” from this Commission with the recent release of its report. The truth is, Honduran civil society never sought anything from this Commission; they knew it was doomed from the very beginning which is why a platform of the country’s leading human rights organizations established an alternative “Commission of Truth,” which has its own report coming out this fall.

In one simple paragraph, Raymond clarifies where progressives in Honduras stand with respect to the official Truth Commission.

The Center for Constitutional Rights describes its goal as

advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

CCR us doing an outstanding job following up on issues of violation of constitutionality in Honduras brought about by the 2009 coup.

Their Fact Sheet on the official Truth Commission and the independent "Commission of Truth" (or True Commission) is an excellent beginning point to understand these two different initiatives. CCR has engaged in US Freedom of Information Act requests in support of the work of the True Commission. CCR has also sued Roberto Micheletti in US court, on behalf of the parents of Isis Obed Murillo, who was killed early in the coup when President Zelaya attempted to land at Tegucigalpa.

Raymond did, in the end, have to repeat the crazy stuff O'Grady said in order to refute it. This was something we wanted to avoid (and clever readers will notice we did not repeat O'Grady's craziness here).

But what Raymond managed to do, that we could not, is find a useful thing to say that goes beyond simply trying to remind people that the sun actually does rise in the east.

Kudos to her, and to CCR, for truth and justice.

On the Wrong Side of the Truth

Members of the US Congress are trying to reconfigure US policy toward the authors of the coup in Honduras, again.

Not only is this not timely-- it is something that the principal actor involved has been criticized for by no less an authority than the official, US supported "Truth Commission".

In a letter dated July 19th of this year, US Representative Connie Mack wrote to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to ask that the US restore the visas of Roberto Micheletti Bain and others, revoked as part of US pressure on Honduras after the coup in Honduras in 2009.

Mack invited Micheletti to testify before Congress. Micheletti had to decline because his visa was revoked, testifying by video conference instead. So now he wants to reach back and remove the taint over Micheletti. But he does more: he argues in his letter that Micheletti and others whose visas were removed are patriots whose actions should be treated positively.

The letter is signed by Mack, 11 other Republican Congressmen, and one Democrat. It calls on the US to "immediately cease the political punishment of the Honduran visas taken in 2009."

"We believe that the United States should not continue penalizing Honduran citizens based on their efforts to support the constitution and and the law of Honduras,"

the letter states.

Really?

Even the official Truth Commission appointed by the successor government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa found the people whose visas were lifted acted illegally, and that they had legal means open to them. They chose to ignore the law, and caused a breach of constitutional order that is still affecting Hondurans today.

The Truth Commission report singled out the visits to Honduras in 2009 by US Congress members, including Connie Mack, as having prolonged the crisis, and as having muddied the perception of US government response to the coup in 2009.

Rep. Mack has a lot to answer for. Continuing to ignore the reality on the ground, a reality recognized even by a Truth Commission viewed as compromised by the Honduran resistance, doesn't suggest he understands what he did. He should try reading that report and stop trying to replay US policy moves from 2009. He has already done enough damage.

Lobo's Not So Supreme Court

Who judges the judges? Suddenly that's a serious question for Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

One of the recommendations of the official Truth Commission headed by Eduardo Stein was that the Supreme Court needed to submit to an examination of its actions during the coup by a group of magistrates. In particular, its actions with respect to human rights need to be examined, they concluded.

14. The Magistrates of the Supreme Court should submit their actions with regard to human rights violations derived from June 28, 2009, to a national consensus of the legislature to see if they acted against the right to judicial protection of article 25 of the American Human Rights Convention. The commissioners recommend that it be the national council of the Magistrates who should be responsible for an evaluation of all of their acts because it is the entity responsible for the naming of judges, their evaluation of job performance, and the oversight of the career.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa might have seemed to have this in mind when he suggested yesterday that the Supreme Court needs someone to oversee their decisions, their professionalism.

"The Judicial Powers can judge the President of the Republic, the president of Congress, and the representatives; who judges the Judicial Power, that's what's interesting.

Lobo goes on to suggest that there needs to be a Constitutional Court or other body where one can file complaints about judges, including the members of the Supreme Court, and have those complaints heard and evaluated. He came to this position, though, not because of the Truth Commission recommendation, but rather because a Judge in Comayagua released a number of suspects who were captured with more than 70 fragmentation grenades hidden in the door panels of their car. His Security Minister is livid.

Lobo Sosa had no answer when asked who would judge the actions of the Constitutional Court saying "its complicated".

Yes, it is complicated, but not so complicated that this isn't covered by rules.

Honduras, like all of Central America, has a legal code that is based on the Spanish legal code, classified by scholars as a form of the French Napoleonic code. All Central American countries have a legal system that has a court which renders a final, unappealable, decision, just as Honduras and the United States do. Judicial misconduct is handled through other procedures, and generally, the actions of judges in this high court are unregulated to preserve judicial independence. This is a fundamental principal of jurisprudence. The UN warns when government's write laws that degrade that independence (example: El Salvador ).

Porfirio Lobo Sosa's suggestions are a degradation of judicial independence, not a rebalancing of the powers as he suggests, and would likely be called into question by the UN were he to successfully sponsor legislation.

Truth Delayed?

The official government truth commission, headed by Eduardo Stein of Guatemala, announced yesterday that the commission's report would be delayed until the middle of June.

As recently as 11 February, Stein announced the report would be ready by mid-march.

On April 13, Stein told us report was to be delivered at the end of May, in time for review prior to the OAS General Assembly in June. At that time, he said it was specifically to be previewed to the OAS before it would be made public, in order to help them with their deliberations, so the change of timing now is odd.

Odder still is the announced reason for delaying again: to not influence the OAS member countries in their vote to return Honduras to full membership. In a complete reversal, Stein now says:

"We want to avoid it serving as an excuse or argument for anyone to contaminate the discussion over the return of Honduras."

But it seems that was precisely the point a few weeks ago, to influence the OAS discussion. So what's changed?

Stein himself has admitted the report is done, the list of recommendations finished.

He has a few questions he would like to ask Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who has refused to deal with the commission, but believes he has sufficient knowledge of events from other sources.

Stein told reporters:

"We would have liked to historically document his version of some of the topics, because it it impossible for us to speculate what the intentions of ex-president Zelaya were on taking up certain positions and making certain decision, things that only he can clarify.... For us the work is finished, save some questions that we would have liked to ask him [Zelaya], but it was his decision...."

One wonders why influencing the OAS was fine in April, but has become anathema in May.

And in either case, we wonder if it is appropriate for a so-called "Truth Commission" to be scheduling the release of its findings to advance a political goal of the people whose actions are supposed to be under scrutiny.

Of course, if you begin your hunt for "truth" having prejudged that the current political administration bears no responsibility for the actions that many of its members took to implement a coup and the repression that followed, maybe that kind of politicization doesn't seem at odds with truth at all.

But we continue to think that a truth commission that starts with conclusions, and that times its reports for political ends, has very little credibility.

Honduras has Two Truth Commissions

Honduras has two truth commissions: one set up and overseen by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, and one set up and overseen by Human Rights Platform, a confederation of human rights organizations, both Honduran and international.

Why is there a truth commission at all?

The establishment of a truth commission was one of the 12 points Oscar Arias proposed in the original San Jose Accord proposal. It survived in the Guaymuras (AKA Tegucigalpa-San Jose) Accord eventually signed by both Manuel Zelaya and Roberto Micheletti. It thus has its origins in the international community, not from Honduran aspirations.

The Tegucigalpa Accord was almost immediately violated by Micheletti, and declared no longer in effect by Zelaya, when Micheletti tried to unilaterally set up a government of reconciliation on his own. At the time, verification commission member Ricardo Lagos declared that these actions violated the accord. Nonetheless, the US has promoted what it calls full implementation of the Accord under the administration of Lobo Sosa, despite Lobo not being a party to the agreement which in any event was violated and declared dead by the two parties it attempted to reconcile.

And so Porfirio Lobo Sosa has established what he (and the US State Department) call a "government of reconciliation and unity", based on participation by representatives of opposing political parties. Just who this government unifies and reconciles is, of course, the question: it does not include participation by the Liberal party, and members of the UD party have disclaimed those party officials who agreed to serve in the government. Nor does it include what might be recognized as movements that actually opposed the de facto regime, such as the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP), or even supporters of Manuel Zelaya.

Not much unity there, and precious little reconciliation.

Nor was forming the "unity" government enough. Lobo Sosa has had to form the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called for in the Guaymuras Accords to address one of the requirements placed on Honduras as it seeks readmission to the OAS and the international community. But that brings us to why Honduras has two truth commissions.

The Official Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Eduardo Stein, a consultant at the time to the OAS, was commissioned by Lobo Sosa to write the charter of, and recommend foreign members for, this truth commission. Of the international candidates recommended, Lobo Sosa picked Michael Kergin and Maria Amadilla Zavala. To complement these, Lobo Sosa selected Honduran members: Julietta Castellanos and Jorge Omar Casco, with Sergio Membreño as secretary. This governmentally chartered truth commission is funded by countries including the United States and Spain, and staffed by the OAS.

According to his OAS biography Eduardo Stein got his doctorate in Communications Sciences from Northwestern University in 1978. He then taught Political Science and Communications at universities in Guatemala, El Salvador, and the United States. He served as an advisor to Panamanian President Aristides Royo (1980-82). In the 1990s he served as Panama's representative to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), and then as the IOM Regional Project Counselor for Central America. From 1996-2000, Stein was Foreign Minister for Guatemalan President Alvaro Arzu, a conservative who nonetheless signed a peace treaty with the Guatemalan URNG ending the civil war. In 2004-288 he was Vice President of Guatemala under President Oscar Berger Perdomo, another conservative president. More recently he has been a consultant to the OAS, and an OAS election observer/monitor. [The link to this biography could not be embedded as this was written.]

Michael Kergin is a Canadian career diplomat who entered foreign service in 1967. He served in the Canadian embassies in the United States, Cameroon, and Chile before becoming ambassador to Cuba in 1986. In the 1990s he held positions on political and international security affairs, and became the Canadian equivalent of the National Security Advisor. He became ambassador to the United States in 2000, serving until 2005. He is currently an adjunct professor in Political Science at the University of Ottawa, and a senior advisor at Bennett-Jones LLP.

Maria Amadilla Zavala is former President of the Supreme Court of Peru. She has also served as Peruvian Minister of Justice, and as Peru's representative to the OAS. She is reportedly close to the current conservative President of Peru, Alan Garcia.

Julieta Castellanos is currently Rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras. She has also served as a consultant to the UN Development Program

Jorge Omar Casco is a former Rector for the National Autonomous University and a lawyer.

Sergio Membreño, who serves as the commission's secretary, is a university professor and participant in Transformemos a Honduras.

The Alternative Truth Commission

The Honduran Human Rights Platform is made up of representatives from the Centro de Investigación, Prevención y Tratamiento de Víctimas de la Tortura (CIPTVT), the Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH), the Centro de Derechos de Mujer (CDM), the Centro de Investigación y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (CIPRODEH), and the international anti-hunger organization Food First Information and Interaction Network (FIAN).

The Human Rights Platform coalition, unconvinced of the impartiality and human rights mandate of the official truth commission, decided to set up and fund its own truth commission with international representatives Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Rigoberta Menchu, Francois Houtart, Mirna Antonieta Perla Jimenez, Nora Cortiñas, and Elsie Monje. Its Honduran representatives are Helen Umaña and the Father Fausto Milla. This truth commission is funded by donations from individuals and non-governmental organizations (to donate, see the link here).

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel is an Argentinian, trained as a sculptor and architect, who in 1974 relinquished a teaching post to devote full time to coordinating the activities of non-violent Latin American groups through a group which he helped found, Servicio, Paz, y Justicia. He initiated a successful campaign to create the United Nations human rights commission. The Argentinian junta imprisoned him in 1977 and released him in 1978 under restrictions. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1980 for his work on human rights.

Rigoberta Menchu, a Quiche Maya activist from Guatemala began work on women's rights in Guatemala as a teenager. Her father, mother, and brother were arrested, tortured, and killed by the Guatemalan government. She joined the Committee of the Peasant Union (CUC) and participated in strikes to improve farm worker conditions on the Pacific Coast of Guatemala in 1981. She joined the 31 of January Popular Front and taught resistance to military oppression. By the end of 1981 she fled Guatemala to Mexico and began working to organize resistance to oppression from abroad, in addition to working for peasant rights. She was part of the founding of the United Representation of the Guatemalan Opposition in 1983. In 1986 she became part of the National Coordinating Council of the CUC. She won a Nobel Prize in 1992 for her work on indigenous peoples' rights. She is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador promoting a culture of peace.

Francois Houtart is a Belgian sociologist and Catholic Priest. He served as a consultant to the ecumenical council of Vatican II. He serves as an advisor to the Centre Tricontinental (CETRI) which he founded in 1976 to promote dialogue and cooperation between third world social groups. In 2009 he won the UNESCO-Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence.

Mirna Antonieta Perla Jimenez is a justice of the Supreme Court of El Salvador. She testified before the Inter American Commission on Human Rights in 1988 and 1992, and testified before the UN in 1988, 89, 90, and 1992. She was Vice President of the International Federation of Human Rights in Paris (1988-90). She served as Vice President of the Comision para la Defensa de Derechos Humanos en Centroamerica (CODEHUCA) 1988-92 and a member of the Human Rights commission in El Salvador (1992-93).

Nora Morales de Cortiñas is a defender of human rights and member of the Asociacion de Madres de Plaza de Mayo, an Argentinian human rights organization that was formed initially by mothers whose children were disappeared by the Argentinian dictatorship of 1976-1983. She is a social psychologist and professor at the Universidad de Buenos Aires.

Sister Elsie Monge is a Maryknoll nun who is known for her efforts for human rights in Ecuador. She has taught grade school in Guatemala, and high school in Panama before returning to her native Ecuador. In 1981 she served on the Ecumenical Commission for Human Rights (CEDHU) in Ecuador, becoming its Director in 1994. In 1996 she become president of the Federation of Human Rights in Ecuador. In 2004 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Ecumenical Commission for Human Rights.

Helen Umaña is a professor of literature at the National Autonomous University of Honduras-Sula Valley. She was raised in Guatemala, where her family lived in exile. She both graduated from, and taught at, the University of San Carlos in Guatemala. She received the 1989 Honduran National Literature Prize for her literary criticism about Honduran writing.

Father Fausto Milla Nuñez, a native of Guarita, Lempira, Honduras, is diocesan priest of the church of San Martin de Porres, Santa Rosa de Copan, Honduras. He was educated in El Salvador and Colombia. He taught school for 17 years in Popoyan, Colombia. In 1963 he was called to the priesthood, and was ordained in 1964. In 1969 the then Bishop of Santa Rosa, Monseñor Carranza Chévez, posted him to the church in Guarita, which a few months later bore the brunt of the so-called Soccer War of 1969 between El Salvador and Honduras. He was transferred to the church in Cerquin in 1970 where he began his work in human rights. This assignment also began his interest in Lenca culture and foodways. He was jailed in 1981 by the Honduran military junta and went into exile in Mexico. In 1985, he returned to Honduras assigned to Santa Rosa de Copan, where he returned to the community organizing and human rights work he had been doing since before his exile in Mexico.

These are the kinds and quality of people selected by Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the Human Rights Platform to form their respective truth commissions, to look into the events surrounding the coup d'etat of June 28, 2009, the de facto regime that seized power, and the human rights abuses that resulted. The government's truth commission began work in May. The Human Rights Platform's truth commission will begin work on June 28.

I know which group I think is more qualified. Which group seems more qualified to you?

More semantic juggling by Eduardo Stein

Pity poor Eduardo Stein, former Guatemalan Vice President saddled with leadership of the "Truth" Commission that no one in Honduras really believes will arrive at any truth.

As we previously noted, in his efforts to bend over backwards to please right-wing forces in Honduras that know they have everything to lose if even a shred of light is cast on the events leading up to and following the coup, Stein decided not to use the word "coup". Which is absurd on the face of it, as it begs the question: what is the event that triggered the need for a Truth Commission?

Now, courtesy of another excellent article by Marc Lacey in the New York Times, we have Eduardo Stein's own answer:

“In our minds and in the evidence we’ve gathered, it is clear that it was a forced expulsion of a president who had been elected by popular vote,” he said by telephone from Tegucigalpa. “What do you call that?”

Well, obviously-- coup. Or if you prefer the original Spanish, golpe de estado.

And that can be translated back into English as: irrelevancy. Which is what the Truth Commission has accomplished by not adopting the forthright term for the events of June 28, 2009.

This Week in Honduras: Money or Human Rights?

The most significant news leads in Honduran papers this weekend concern the impending visit of a delegation from the IMF this coming week.

William Chong Wong, Minister of Finances, is quoted as saying that Honduras does not intend to cover up the real grim financial news simply to give a good impression. Reportedly, Honduras stands to receive $300 million if the visit by the IMF goes well.

The business community, represented by the head of the Asociación Nacional de Industriales (ANDI), Adolfo Facussé, and Aline Flores, director of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Tegucigalpa (CCIT), is reported to be behind the government's efforts to convince the IMF to release funding to Honduras.

FOSDEH, the Foro Social de la Deuda Externa de Honduras (Social Forum on the External Debt of Honduras), publicly called for the government not to cover up the real numbers. Mauricio Díaz Burdeth, coordinator of the forum, is quoted as saying "All the macroeconomic indicators are in the red and it will be very difficult to find a favorable one, owing to the grave financial situation."

Díaz Burdeth added that the visit by IMF, the second this year, is without doubt an important point in the economic agenda of the country.

But that is not, we would argue, the most important visit Honduras is hosting this week.

Instead, we draw attention to the unsigned lead editorial in El Tiempo on Saturday May 15, headlined "The CIDH in Honduras".

The editorial comments on the reported return to Honduras this coming week of a delegation from the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, "due to the grave and continued violations since the 28th of June 2009 based upon the coup d'Etat." It is a reminder that there is a consciousness in Honduras of the real continuing urgency of confronting the social, legal, and human rights effects of the coup d'Etat:

To prepare its report on Honduras the CIDH made an exhaustive investigation on the ground, which was introduced at its opportunity to the de facto government and the international community.

Nonetheless, this work, of high legal quality in its specialty, did not have, it appears, influence to restrain the abuses and violations of public power against the opposition to the coup d'Etat and their tremendous collateral consequences, as evidenced by the series of assassinations of journalists under the current regime.

Thanks to this lamentable situation, the CIDH included Honduras in the ominous "black list" of the countries in which human rights are disrespected in an aggressive manner, an odious position that never before had stained the history of our country.

To have an idea of the importance of the presence of the CIDH at this time, it is enough to take into account the composition of this delegation, headed by its president Felipe González, in which participates his vice president Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the general secretary Santiago Cantón, and the special secretary for liberty of expression, Catalina Botero.

The investigation by the CIDH about the situation of human rights in Honduras is key in relation to the work assigned to the Truth Commission, a consequence, at the time, of the diplomatic process orchestrated by the Organization of American States to create an exit from the political crisis derived from the coup d'Etat.

In the same way, this investigation is part of the process for the reinsertion of Honduras in the continental and world community, since to succeed in such a purpose it is indispensable to establish the responsibilities for the offences committed through violation of human rights and political rights, something that, apparently, does not figure in the intentions of the Truth Commission.

Because of the way that political events in Honduras have been developing, in the framework of the political crisis that still remains insoluble, the reticence of the international community to normalize relations with the actual regime, ignoring the breaking of constitutional order, will not disappear nor will it be mediated, except on the part of a few governments inclined-- for their own convenience-- to excuse coups at the hands of oligarchs.

The return of the CIDH to our country in the present circumstances also has the virtue of refreshing the spirit for the defense of human rights, and, very particularly, for the validity of liberty of expression, that needs constant international support in societies, like ours, where the anti-culture of forced silence and of self-censorship is an everyday practice.

Human rights, or international monetary support. Which is, in the end, more important for Honduras at this juncture?

"Are you deliberately avoiding the word 'coup'?"

Our headline comes from a question the Los Angeles Times asked in a Q/A with Eduardo Stein today.

His response?

"That is precisely what we want to clarify. ... There are people here who argue it was a constitutional succession, with minor mishaps along the way. I went on record [shortly after the coup] saying that a forced expulsion of a popularly elected president, taken by military people and thrown out of the country, is a coup. ... Here, I have been reprimanded for taking sides. So now we are calling it an alteration of political institutionality, and we will examine whether there was a constitutional framework and if rights were respected." [emphasis added]

"Here" is Honduras, where Stein was in Tegucigalpa while being interviewed.

If anyone is in doubt as to why members of the Frente de Resistencia doubt the potential for this "Truth Commission" to help resolve the conflict that continues in Honduras, let this be a moment of clarification.

Holding open the possibility of supporting the spurious argument that the coup d'etat that occurred was actually a "constitutional succession" means starting by having already yielded to the faction that was responsible for disrupting constitutional government in Honduras.

And there is more to sustain the suspicions of opponents to the coup:

"there are some things that happened that have antecedents of not just weeks but maybe months or years. Eruption was a date and time, but it took a long time to cook."

Through the repressive rule of the de facto regime, a repeated claim was that the world-wide repudiation of the coup d'etat was unfair because international agencies would not listen to their interpretation of events throughout the term of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales as evidence justifying the coup. Well, it sounds like they will get their way on this one as well.

Not that Stein actually cares that progressives in Honduras will not cooperate with him:

"Among the Zelayistas and the resistance, they see us as just an extension of the coup, only window-dressing."

I suppose that we should be grateful that Stein at least differentiates between personal supporters of Zelaya and the broader resistance. But on the downside, he equates progressives and the extreme right, and thinks that by refusing to acknowledge those with the most at stake in the conflict, the Truth Commission will somehow be able to make a difference:

"We are not worried about the extremes. We have found enough interest among groups who want to come forward. And we have to be surgically careful not to allow ourselves to be sucked into the political squabbles."

Well, I hate to tell him, but the Truth Commission has already been sucked into "political squabbles". That should be the whole point, surely: to clarify the issues that surround differences in power and the exercise of authority about which stake-holders disagree.

And when you think you are avoiding being drawn in, you actually are in danger of accepting the premises offered by one side or another. Such as that it may not actually have been a coup, and the "causes" (read: justifications) may have developed long before the decision was made to kidnap the legally elected president, expatriate him unconstitutionally, and appoint a member of Congress as "president" without legal justification.

Hunger strike at National University becomes serious

Today in El Tiempo there is a report on an ongoing hunger strike by employees and one student at the national university in Tegucigalpa (UNAH). Four of the eleven employees on hunger strike were reportedly treated for medical problems on Thursday including cramps, faintness, strong headaches, and loss of vision.

Tiempo reports that students who are members of the Movimiento de Resistencia Patriótica (MRP) started a drive to collect food for the dismissed employees this past Thursday.

The hunger strike began on April 27 to demand the rehiring of 186 employees who were fired, the article says, "supposedly for taking over the UNAH." La Tribuna gives a more detailed report that describes the situation as beginning on February 23, when members of the UNAH union took over a building to put pressure on the university administration to negotiate a new contract, and then

extended to all the University City [campus] by taking in progressive form the remaining buildings, which impeded classes being able to be held during almost two weeks.

This led directly to the arrest of University union leaders on charges of, among other things, charges of sedition, as we previously described. On May 3, the judge hearing the case issued a dismissal for the remaining union members whose charges were still pending.

The Tiempo article notes that

uncertainty is growing for the university workers, since their calls still have not been heard by the university rector, Julieta Castellanos

According to coverage in La Tribuna, the initial hunger strikers, David Montoya Velásquez, Víctor Rodríguez, María Juvencia Alvarez, Katy Marlen Pereira, Josué David Reyes and Dilier Herrera, were joined on April 30 by a philosophy student Marvin Amílcar Pérez, and workers Nora Valladares, Jorge Rafael Durón Flores, Gustavo Adolfo Salinas, María Lucila Miranda and Anderson Flores. Finally, a few days later, Samuel Elías Sánchez Flores and Abelardo Antonio Alvarado joined the protest.

Four are in critical condition. Anderson Flores was hospitalized on May 6. No progress appears to be happening on negotiating an end to their hunger strike. Julieta Castellanos met with the Secretary of Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Felicito Ávila a week ago to try to agree on a solution, without success.

Castellanos, of course, is busy in her recently adopted role of Honduran member of the highly contested "Truth Commission".

The business of the Truth Commission is business

What does it mean when the most accurate English language reports about the aftermath of the Honduran coup come from the business media?

Not for the first time, Bloomberg has a clear and accurate story, and it even includes new information: citing Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati, the economic impact of the coup was a reduction of 6.6 percent of gross domestic product, equivalent to $930.6 million.

Bloomberg also manages to actually cite a Honduran against the coup without describing him inaccurately as a "leftist", a "Zelaya supporter", or any of the other terms used to diminish the authority of those opposed to the Lobo Sosa administration and to the international movement to artificially impose closure on Honduran society:

Coup opponents such as Andres Pavon, head of the Honduran Human Rights Defense Committee, say they fear the truth commission, headed by former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, isn’t qualified and will whitewash the coup.

This is the crux of the matter. And it does matter: to the extent that a major constituency in Honduras sees the "truth commission" as illegitimate, it cannot be successful in bridging polarization among Hondurans.

But then, that is not what the commission is for: Bloomberg reports that Canahuati hopes it will help the country return to the Organization of American States and reduce investor concerns over political instability:

"We want to do what we can to leave behind the shock to our economy... Our intention is to have friends and alliances.”

Which is a far cry from working through the internal fractures exacerbated by the coup and the de facto regime, which were not healed by the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

Alternative truth, official truth, or honest disagreement?

An article published by IPS today, written by Thelma Mejía, attests to the widespread skepticism about the newly formed Honduran Truth Commission.

Composed of former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein; Michael Kergin, a Canadian diplomat; María Amadilia, former Peruvian minister of justice; and Honduran members Julieta Castellanos and Jorge Omar Casco, assisted by Sergio Membreño as technical secretary, the Commission will begin its work on May 4.

As Mejía points out, conservative forces in Honduras-- notably the Unión Cívica Democrática (UCD)-- are opposed to including Julieta Castellanos. In addition, Mejía points out, "human rights groups criticised the inclusion of Casco, whom they link with the most radical fringe of the political right". Meanwhile, the Human Rights Platform notes that the Truth Commission has been established without following international norms.

The selection of the international members of the commission appears to have been constrained by the need to avoid participants from countries that have been critical of the coup. Since few governments in the world refrained from expressing outrage about the de facto regime, and many governments have not yet recognized the Lobo Sosa administration, the range of candidates was restricted from the outset. While Mejía cites Minister of Foreign Relations Mario Canahuati as saying the selection was made from a group of 15 competitive candidates, she quotes Reina Rivera of the Human Rights Platform as saying that

We believe that the selection of the international members was made more on the basis of their nationalities than their competence and abilities. The representatives from Canada and Peru are not well looked upon in some sectors, which is why some reject the Commission, while others view it with reservations.

Among those skeptical others: pro-coup businessman and ANDI president Adolfo Facussé, who reportedly said

this Truth Commission is a demand of the international community and we already know what its findings will be.... [These] will be geared to what the world wants to hear, and not to what really happened in Honduras. I don't have very high expectations regarding this question. It won't contribution to reconciliation; on the contrary, it will create greater division.

Finally, something on which both sides can agree! But surely even if it doesn't heal the wounds, finding out the truth will help? well, not so fast:

As we previously pointed out, the fact that the commission will seal records for ten years suggests the search for truth in Honduras is premature, if the committee thinks the country cannot handle hearing what it expects to discover. The report that Stein suggests will be complete in eight months is hard to imagine, if it has to avoid sensitive topics.

On the positive side, Mejía reports plans for an "Alternative Truth Commission", reportedly with the backing of Amnesty International and other human rights organizations, to "monitor the process and the conduct of those who make up the Truth Commission".

So, while we may share the skepticism of the left, right, and pro-business sectors in Honduras about the official Truth Commission, there is a chance that opposition to the proposed whitewash will keep a focus on the actual events of the coup and its aftermath and give human rights groups a chance to call attention to ongoing repression.

"We'll know the truth in 10 years"

"A truth commission also aims to affect the way the public understands its national history and the conflict or violence of recent years. It is thus important that the conclusions of the report are made widely available throughout the country." -- Rule of law tools for Post-Conflict States -- Truth Commissions, United Nations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, page 31.

I know that the truth commission was forced on Honduras, and that no one in power there wants it, but we are left just scratching our head at the resultant truth commission that Honduras has come up with. Who does it serve, and to what purpose?

"We'll know the truth in ten years" was the headline in La Tribuna this morning. My jaw dropped; I did a double take, and then I laughed. I've read the UN manual on truth commissions; they literally wrote the book on them. Apparently no one at the State Department, which pushed for the truth commission in Honduras, or in Porfirio Lobo Sosa's government in Honduras, bothered to read the manual on what a truth commission is, or does, or why you have one, because this is a joke.

"We'll know the truth in ten years" according to La Tribuna, is a quote from Eduardo Stein, the Guatemalan to whom Porfirio Lobo Sosa subcontracted the organization and charter of the truth commission. La Tribuna tells us Stein says the final report of the truth commission will be deposited in the National Archives to be released to the public in 10 years.

Stein writes, "Collection of elements that help to clarify the facts are at all times the key to rebuilding and support these issues of national reconciliation" in the preamble of the charter of the truth commission; but what national reconciliation is being aided by hiding the truth for ten years, we are forced to ask? Is the whole exercise a farce? or is it that Honduras is not ready to have a truth commission? Stein assures us that the OAS is in favor of hiding the truth for 10 years.

Originally this commission was supposed to be formally organized on February 25, but that date slipped and next Stein announced it would be formally chartered on April 29, however, today he announced that "there is particular interest by some international organizations in participating," so the formal charter will be delayed again to give them time to be invited to participate.

"The impact of a final report may ultimately depend less on its content than on a variety of surrounding factors, including when and in what circumstances the report is released and publicized, how widely it is distributed, how much coverage it receives in the media, and, perhaps most importantly, how the political authorities treat the report and whether they have any interest in publicizing and implementing its conclusions and recommendations." Rule of law tools for Post-Conflict States -- Truth Commissions, page 31.

May I be the first to be wrong in predicting this report will have no impact, because the political authorities have no interest in knowing, publicizing, or implementing any of its future conclusions. Remind me again why they are going through this exercise? Oh, right, the State Department wanted it? Why again?

Corruption and Anticorruption in Honduras

Recent news, such as the Gacetazo scandal over a lucrative dam contract in Nacaome, highlights the perennial problem of government corruption in Honduras. In the "scorecard" for FY 2010 released by the Millenium Challenge Corporation in October of 2009, "control of corruption" was one of the few indicators where Honduras failed to meet the standard required. According to that source, Honduras scored in the 44th percentile among its peer group of countries, a decline from its previous position close to the median for the peer group.

Coincidentally, this past week saw the release of the latest report from the the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción (CNA), or National Anticorruption Council, on progress in government transparency and combatting corruption. As noted by Adrienne Pine, the report was publicly challenged by Isbella Orellana, a sociologist and professor at UNAH-VS, the campus of the national university located at San Pedro Sula. As reported in the original Tiempo article translated at quotha.net, Isbella Orellana questioned how the results reported were generated. The lack of definition of the population surveyed and method of sample selection identified by Isbella Orellana makes the report unreliable. The claims made are clearly biased and frankly unbelievable. And, Isbella Orellana argued, the commission mixes religion in a troubling way into what should be a secular activity, for example, claiming that the main reason for corruption is a decline in belief in God.

So what is the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción?

According to its website, the CNA was founded in 2001 under Liberal Party President Carlos Flores through Decreto Ejecutivo 015-2001. It was renewed under Nationalist Party President Ricardo Maduro in 2005 via Decreto Legislativo No 07-2005. So it is an officially chartered body owing its existence to the national government of Honduras.

Today, the CNA incorporates representatives of local government, the leadership of Catholic and Evangelical Christian groups, business, media, and labor. It thus makes a claim to speak for "civil society" generally. Of course, not every organization is part of this umbrella group, as is perhaps most obvious in the area critiqued by Isbella Orellana, the reliance on organized Christian leadership groups. Specifically included in CNA are the following organizations:

Business and labor interests:
Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (COHEP)
Asociación de Medios de Communicación (AMC)
Confederación de Trabajadores de Honduras (CTH)
Consejo Coordinador de Organizaciones Campesinas de Hondura (COCOCH)

Education leaders:
Consejo de Rectores de Universidades de Honduras
Federación de Colegios Profesionales Universitarios de Honduras (FECOPRUH)

Public service and municipal governance:
Asociación Nacional de Empleados Públicos de Honduras (ANDEPH)
Asociación de Municipios de Honduras (AHMON)

Organized religion:
Confraternidad Evangélica de Honduras (CEH)
Conferencia Episcopal de Honduras de la Iglesia Católica (CEH)

Development:
Federación de Organizaciones Privadas de Desarrollo de Honduras (FOPRIDEH)
Foro Nacional de Convergencia (FONAC), National Convergence Forum

CNA leadership has historically been dominated by the religious sector. Its first director (from 1997 to 2005) was Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez, notoriously outspoken defender of the coup d'etat of 2009. The current leader of the CNA is José Oswaldo Canales, a pastor whose support for the coup d'etat and the Micheletti regime was equally open. Canales represents the Confraternidad Evangélica de Honduras (CEH).

Canales took over the leadership of CNA in October of 2009, succeeding Juan Ferrera. Ferrera is currently listed on the CNA website as representing COHEP in its general assembly. In March 2005, Ferrera was cited as a consultant to the federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry, and Executive Secretary of FONAC, the Foro Nacional de Convergencia (National Convergence Forum) in a report on civil society consultation that paved the way for Honduras to receive Millenium Challenge Corporation support.

FONAC, one of the members of CNA today, was described in 2002 as an organization, again formed under President Carlos Flores,

whose mission is contributing to the adoption and execution of State policies that guarantee governability, participatory democracy and the integrated development of Honduras, as an expression of the consensus reached by participation and dialogue between civil society and the government,

At the time FONAC included

members of the Federation of University Professionals of Honduras, the School of Journalism, Teachers Associations, Workers Confederations, Farmers, Native ethnic groups, Cooperatives and the Association of Honduran Municipalities.

According to the CNA website, FONAC today represents

30 organizations of Civil Society, 5 representatives of the political parties, and 5 dependencies and institutions of the State.

This configuration raises some interesting questions about how far FONAC can represent itself as independent of the government and outside of politics, as would seem necessary for a truly independent watchdog on public corruption.

By June of 2007, when the CNA issued its first version of a "transparency" report, Juan Ferrera was its head. He was quoted shortly after that as saying that

corruption is creating such public disenchantment that Hondurans may even "put aside democratic options."

This seems eerily prophetic in retrospect, and it may therefore not be surprising that Ferrera has, like his predecessor Cardinal Rodriguez and his successor pastor Canales, voiced strong support for the coup d'etat. Ferrera was quoted on July 23 in La Tribuna describing one of the orchestrated marches in support of Micheletti as an

extraordinary manifestation of the people in support of democracy, justice, and liberty...While the ex-president Zelaya calls for discord, here we are united to seek the recovery of democracy.

Described as speaking for an "umbrella group of pro-business civic groups", which seems like a surprising way to characterize the CNA, on July 30 Ferrera was quoted as saying President Zelaya could only return

with some condition that guarantees that he doesn't turn over Honduras to people affiliated with Hugo Chavez.

So, the CNA clearly has in recent years been far from independent of Honduran politics. In the run-up to the coup and its aftermath, its religious and civic leadership has been aligned with the unconstitutional actions that led to the replacement of the legal government with a de facto regime.

Which brings us to Sergio Membreño Cedillo, named to the proposed Truth Commission. As we previously noted he was a director of CNA, preceding Juan Ferrera. After the coup d'etat, he posted a YouTube video as part of a series by people associated with the Association for a More Just Society of Honduras. In it he committed to being an agent of reconciliation and peace in a time of polarization, citing his position as a Christian leader, a role in which he contributed an article about confronting the global economic recession to a website in 2005.

Membreño was described as the representative of World Vision in an October 2009 article about a press conference given by a group of NGOs calling themselves Transformemos a Honduras (Let's Transform Honduras) that presented 15 proposals to transform Honduras, intended to outline a program for the next government that would have to pick up the pieces after the coup and government of the de facto regime. The Association for a More Just Society (AJS in Spanish) led the coalition, promulgating a rejection of both Zelaya and Micheletti and a commitment to building a more just Honduras. Other participating NGOs listed at the press conference included Caritas, Global Village Project, and the Confraternidad Evangélica de Honduras.

As might be suggested by the nature of the participating groups, one principle of Transformemos a Honduras is that partners want to "do the will of God". Additional participating organizations mentioned on the group's website include Save the Children, Committee of Christian Leaders, and Compasión Internacional. The English-language website of the organization describes it as "an ecumenical Christian movement".

Unlike the CNA-- which was created by the government-- this new ad hoc coalition insists that it has no political ties. This does not mean that constituent members were neutral or objected to the coup d'etat and the actions of the de facto regime; notably, AJS published an editorial that, while stopping short of supporting the coup d'etat, presented an argument for dismissing President Zelaya as an "enemy" of the poor. [Update: see commentary below for other ASJ information that establishes their intent to maintain an unaligned position equally critical of both Micheletti and Zelaya.]

Speaking at the press conference in October, Membreño is quoted as saying the five key structural problems facing the country are

poverty, iniquity, corruption, violence and injustice. Beginning from those major problems five major components can be defined which are: employment and growth, education, health, transparency and anti-corruption policies, and finally a component of security and justice.

"Transparency and anti-corruption policies" defines what up until now have been the arenas of the CNA. Unlike that body, Membreño's new association does not incorporate media or business groups.

Among its fifteen proposals, Transformemos a Honduras does call for reform producing depoliticized and participatory elections for the Supreme Court, Attorney General, Supreme Tribunal of Accounts, Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and Solicitor General. Many of these -- the Supreme Court, Attorney General, Supreme Electoral Tribunal, and Solicitor General-- were directly implicated in the coup d'etat and its aftermath, tied politically to Roberto Micheletti by the corrupt processes of their nomination and appointment. So presumably, this initiative would address one of the contributing factors that allowed the coup to take place.

Corruption in Honduran politics knows no party loyalty, and has been no monopoly of any one administration or party: while rabid apologists for the 2009 coup d'etat tally corruption during the Zelaya administration, the US State Department country summary singles out the Nationalist Callejas administration (1990-1994), and Liberal President Carlos Flores is recognized as running a government in which international aid intended to support recovery from Hurricane Mitch in 1998 was directed instead to the pockets of the powerful.

A 2000 report on governance and anti-corruption by the World Bank, in the wake of Hurricane Mitch, found that a statistically representative sample of Hondurans ranked the judiciary (excluding the Supreme Court), SOPTRAVI (the ministry that authorizes lucrative road construction contracts), and the National Police as the three most corrupt government agencies.

Not far behind came the National University, municipal governments, Supreme Court, the Army, Fondo Hondureño de Inversion Social, labor unions, and the Congress.

The five least corrupt public institutions identified in that survey were the Banco Nacional de Desarrollo Agrícola, the Ministry of Security, the Central Bank, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Finance.

In other words: while there has been plenty of corruption to go around in Honduran politics, from the local to the national level, Congress and the judicial branch have been more intensive sites of corruption than the executive branch.

The CNA, tied to many of the same governmental branches seen as corrupt, may have spelled its own end by its explicit endorsement of the coup d'etat. Sergio Membreño, with his prominent position in the attempt to get beyond the effects of the coup d'etat, appears to be something else.

Honduran Members of Truth Commission Previewed

Radio America reported this afternoon, as did El Heraldo and La Prensa, that the Lobo Sosa government confirmed today the names of Hondurans who would be members of the truth commission.

Two of the announced members are the current and former rectors of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH in Spanish), Julietta Castellanos and Jorge Omar Casco. Casco has been working with Stein on setting forth the ground rules for the commission.

The third Honduran member of the commission will be Sergio Membreño, also an academic, who will be the technical secretary of the commission. Membreño was Deputy Chief of the Honduran diplomatic mission in Washington starting in 2003, having previously served the Honduran UN Development Program as an economist. Perhaps more intriguing, in 2007 he was the Executive Director of the Honduran National Anticorruption Council (CNA), and was quoted then as saying

Corruption [in Honduras] is closely related to a system of political favoritism, bi-partisan favoritism, and the way in which the operators of justice are named...There is a shortage of values in Honduras and it makes me sad to admit it, especially in front of the international community, but if we don't acknowledge this, it will be very difficult to find a solution [to corruption in politics]

Porfirio Lobo Sosa has already announced that Eduardo Stein will stay on as one of the three international representatives on the commission, but as yet, has not confirmed who the other two international members will be, only that the commission will be fully formed by the 25th of February. Stein said the process of organizing the commission is taking longer than he anticipated, and that it is no longer sure that the commission will be fully formed by February 25.

In reaction to the announcement of the Honduran members, the Unión Cívica Democrática (UCD), or at least one of its organizers, businessman Jimmy Dacarett, continues to call for a public consensus on who should be truth commission members. Dacarett said Porfirio Lobo

is placing his people how he wants, with people who are not qualified to be part of the truth commission.

Dacarett told La Tribuna that Julietta Castellanos, the rector of the University, has been singled out by businessmen as supporting the resistance. Stein, they allege, published articles in which he referred to events in Honduras as a military coup. In his view, this disqualifies both:

These are people who have deep beliefs about a position in this sense. As people, they are not qualified to be part of the commission. The commission has already failed because no one will accept their report as either true or false because they are not complying with the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord under a national consensus. Just like Manuel Zelaya did in his time, what Pepe Lobo is doing is going against the interests of the majority of Hondurans.

Meanwhile, the rabidly pro-coup El Heraldo spun it that Julieta Castellanos was pro-resistance because she has hired some of Zelaya's former cabinet members to be faculty and administrators at the University, and some of them had even supported the cuarta urna! They stopped short of actually saying that this disqualified her to serve on the commission, but that certainly would have been their position if they were voicing one.

La Prensa adds that Lobo responded to a question from a student later in the day, commenting on more than 3000 reports of human rights abuses in the country since June 28, saying

yes we are going to pay attention to those 3000 cases that you point out because....we want to respect those rights.

So perhaps human rights abuses might actually be on the agenda after all. Stay tuned.

Finally, Proceso Digital noted today that Lobo and Eduardo Stein would meet with the members of the committees that negotiated the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord for Micheletti and Zelaya on Thursday. The meeting is to understand what both parties intended a truth commission to do in including it as part of the Accord.

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.