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".

The State Department and Human Rights

The United States State Department released its world wide human rights reports on Thursday with much fanfare.  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made a series of remarks.  After lauding her teams work on "advancing human rights in a twenty-first century landscape" she noted:

Now, every year that we issue this, we take stock of ourselves. We say: What more can we do? Where have we succeeded or are succeeding? Where are we falling short? And we know we have to recommit to the work of advancing universal rights, building the partnerships that will move us forward, helping every man, woman, and child live up to their God-given potential. And we know we have to be able to speak out and speak up for those unable to use their own voices.

It's that taking stock at the State Department that interests us. There's been a blind eye to certain kinds of human rights abuses in Honduras that happen, but don't seem to warrant action by the Secretary or her employees, including the Ambassador. So, we turned with some trepidation to the country report on Honduras

It emphasizes corruption within the national police force, an institutionally weak judiciary, and discrimination and violence against vulnerable populations as the greatest challenges to human rights in Honduras in 2011.

In the executive summary, which is all many people will read, it states:

Police and government agents committed unlawful killings. Vigilantes and former members of the security forces carried out arbitrary and summary killings. There continued to be reports of killings of agricultural workers, private security guards, and security forces related to a land dispute in the Bajo Aguan region. Other human rights problems included harsh prison conditions, violence against detainees, lengthy pretrial detentions and failure to provide legal due process, child prostitution and abuse, trafficking in persons, ineffective enforcement of labor laws, and child labor.

The government took important steps to strengthen respect for human rights and promote national reconciliation, as well as to prosecute and punish officials who committed abuses. However, corruption and impunity were serious problems that impeded the effectiveness of the National Police.

So that's the State Department's conclusion.  There are very few human rights triumphs recorded in the Honduran report, but they state "there were no acts of anti-semitism" in 2011.

Obviously, we would take issue with their statement that in 2011 the government took important steps to strengthen respect for human rights.

They didn't.

What Honduras did do was create a cabinet level position for a Minister of Justice and Human Rights, and appoint Ana Pineda to the post.  But it is at best a symbolic nod to human rights, without effect in the real world, and at worst-- as here-- serves as a kind of blind to serious assessment of the government's abysmal human rights record.  When Pineda has criticized Congress for proposing laws that tread on human rights, or criticized the police for their handling of protests, she's been ignored.  Congress extended the period in which an arrested person may be held without charges from 24 to 48 hours despite Pineda's criticism of the change, as they have ignored her every time she protests their actions.  Her position lacks any kind of authority to actually compel observance of human rights.

Pineda did manage to get a government statement that Ricky Martin should be admitted to the country and allowed to perform his show, after immigration authorities and the government censorship committee threatened to ban him.  The State Department report also credits her as instrumental in getting an LGBT crimes investigation squad created, though its actual accomplishments are small: according to the State Department, they have filed a couple of cases, although nothing about these has appeared in the Honduran media, and none have come to trial. So we think we can reserve judgment: neither of these are significant antidotes to the wave of killings of LGBT activists, the most recent, the murder of journalist Erick Martinez. 

We won't dwell in detail on the many human rights violations the State Department country report describes because as a reader of this blog, you're familiar with many of them, but we would like to linger on the mention of police harassment through arrests, especially in light of events that happened on Thursday, the same day that the State Department released its human rights reports.

The State Department report on Honduras gives a good summary of Honduras's arrest laws, what police can and cannot do:

The law provides that police can arrest a person only with a court order, unless the arrest is by order of a prosecutor or is made during the commission of a crime, when there is strong suspicion that a person has committed a crime and may try to evade criminal prosecution, or when the person is caught with evidence related to a crime. 

 They add, "but authorities at times failed to observe these prohibitions (against arbitrary arrest)."

That's what happened to yet another group of campesinos involved in the dispute over land in the Bajo Aguan yesterday.

The government still has not paid Miguel Facussé for the land it agreed to compensate him for in the Bajo Aguan. Facussé issued an ultimatum this last week, saying that he would go to court and get the campesinos thrown off the land if he was not paid by June 1.

Thursday, more than eighteen campesinos, both directors and rank-and-file members of Movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan (MUCA), were arrested in the Bajo Aguan and El Progreso, Yoro.  Their only apparent crime, being members of MUCA.

In the Department of La Paz, sixteen or more members of Consejo Civico de Organizaciones Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH) were arrested while out working on their communal lands. Children who were part of this group were forced to perform yard work and clean out the latrines of the police post before being freed.

So, yeah, "authorities at times failed to observe the prohibition" against arbitrary arrest.

And that's just some of the evidence that Honduras has a long way to go, and why it will be interesting to see what changes in US policy towards Honduras come out of the State Department's process of "taking stock" of what's in their own country report on human rights in Honduras.

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.

And So It Begins

Late December 5, the Honduran Cabinet, in a session without the participation of Porfirio Lobo Sosa, approved a decree declaring an emergency of public security for 90 days, enabling the Honduran military to officially assume police powers as soon as La Gaceta publishes the decree.

The initial 90 day period can be extended.

Ana Pineda, the Minister of Justice and Human Rights, argued against the 90 day period, urging that the public security emergency last no more than 30 days. Pineda stated that the measure might have repercussions for Honduras in the international community. She expressed concern that the military still have no actual training on policing or human rights.

In response to Pineda, the Security Minister, Pompeyo Bonilla, said:

"We live in reality; we need the presence of the armed forces in the streets if we think about the human rights of the most poor of Honduras....the first thing we give a soldier who is going onto the streets is a brochure (cartilla) on human rights."

And what if the soldier cannot read the booklet, as many are functionally illiterate?

Lobo Sosa did not participated in the Cabinet meeting, because he was in Mexico, but he approved of the outcome.

He also approved of the new wiretapping law, stating December 6 that

"We want to explain that the law is totally constitutional."

and that the new law

"will be a powerful instrument against organized crime."

He also pointed out that there were already people in the country with wiretapping capabilities (not legal ones) and argued that the new law will strengthen sanctions against them.

In a meeting the same morning called by Juan Orlando Hernandez, president of Congress, that most notably did not include the Minister of Justice and Human Rights Ana Pineda, he reported that participants unanimously thought the wiretapping law was a good idea. Pineda, of course, came out against the specific revisions to the law as potential human rights violations, but she was ignored yet again.

International news coverage, in a predictable repetition of their failure to understand the context for everything happening in Honduras, publicized the militarization of policing as an essentially positive move. The BBC wrote that "opinion polls suggest people feel safer with soldiers on patrol", ignoring the human rights issues raised.

The only voice mentioned against the move was UD member of Congress Sergio Castellanos, not identified by role or title, who said

We have serious doubts about the implications of sending the army to do police work... They are not prepared to deal with civilians and this will only strengthen their position in society after the coup.

As the Eurasia Review explains in an analysis published December 11, the coup is the context not just for this surge in involvement by the military in domestic affairs: it also has led to a drop in Hondurans' support for democracy as a political system. They note that the population in places like Honduras seems "willing to overlook an administration’s democratic lapses to achieve domestic security."

Eurasia Review cited a Latinobarómetro poll discussed in The Economist in late October that found that the number of Hondurans who agree that democracy is the preferable form of government fell from 57% in 2001 to 43% today, falling a full 10 points just from last year's proportion of 53%. Explicit support for authoritarian government rose from just 8% in 2001 to 16% in 2010, and is now at 27%.

None of this context seems to make it into the mainstream English-language media. Public opinion in Honduras should be treated as a sign of the erosion of a free society-- not an acceptable mandate for militarization.

Not-so-Special Justice

Last Friday, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Jorge Rivera Áviles, rescinded his order of August 8 prohibiting the naming of police officers as court officers in relation to cases that involve raids and the dislodging of campesinos from land.

His reversal followed his participation Tuesday in a meeting between representatives of the Supreme Court, Military Command, the Police, and the Ministers of Defense and Security.

Previously the appointment of police officers to oversee the proper legal actions in police operations of these types was seen as a bad thing. Now its not seen by the Chief Justice as a problem.

At the meeting on Tuesday it was decided that the judiciary and security forces would no longer rely on local judges for court orders in their operations in the Bajo Aguan. Instead they will use special court officers, jueces ejecutores ("distrainor" in English, defined as the legal officer who seizes goods for debts, apparently used with a slightly wider meaning in this instance).

With no local connection, these jueces ejecutores will be flown in to the area, then escorted back to where they came from.

Why do they need special justices?

The military believes there is a problem getting court orders to dislodge campesinos who have invaded the plantations of the large land owners in the Bajo Aguan. They claim that local judges are reluctant to issue the orders because they fear for their lives.

The judges issuing the orders must physically be present during the operations by the military. According to at least one story in La Tribuna, they have been not showing up, causing operations to be canceled. By bringing in legal officers from other areas, this presumably will be avoided.

But these will not be just any legal officers: they will be police officers, overseeing the actions of other police officers.

This is a bad idea.

Its a bad idea because it makes the Police both Judge and Executioner. The legal system is designed as a series of checks and balances; this removes one of the checks.

Ana Pineda, the Minister of Human Rights, was not included in the Tuesday meeting that led Rivera Aviles to reverse his original decision. Pineda was supposedly consulted by phone about the appointments and gave her approval. We can only assume she didn't know that Rivera Áviles was going to rescind his order against having police officers appointed to these positions.

Powerless

The Minister of Human Rights and Justice, Ana Pineda, recommended against changing the Honduran constitution to allow detention of possible criminals for 72 hours rather than the 24 hours the constitution currently allows. This is the period of time Police can hold a suspect without bringing them before a judge. Pineda said the reforms

"contravene and consequently regress the enjoyment of rights and fundamental liberties of the Honduran population."

She notes that the proposal does not advance Honduras with respect to Honduran human rights, but rather is a backward step.

One hundred and twenty eight Congress members heard her arguments, then 108 of them, as Proceso Digital put it, "ignored it" and voted to approve the constitutional change, allowing 48 hours detention before being presented before a judge, and adds a new ruling a judge can issue that orders you held if there exists evidence you are the author or accomplice in a crime.

As we've noted since the appointment of this new cabinet position, the proof of its value is in the actions it can take, not the words that it says. Apparently she is powerless to affect the national discourse on human rights, which by her own admission, with this change, took a step backwards.

What can she do?

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.

Intransigence

Intransigence is a terrible thing in managers, presidents, heads of security. It means an unwillingness to listen, to reconsider your position. It's a sign of a bad manager, bad president, bad cop.

Honduras has intransigent leadership. Porfirio Lobo is intransigent; Oscar Alvarez is intransigent. Intransigence will not resolve the strike or the human rights problem it reveals; it's an unwillingness to resolve; it is a child's tantrum. Porfirio Lobo Sosa said, "I won't talk to them until they go back to work" and then ordered the police to shut down the protests. That's not good government, that's a tantrum.

Today's La Tribuna carries a story of a split in the Tuesday cabinet meeting allegedly between those who support the teachers and those who support the security services. That sounds like a mischaracterization from the rest of the story. It sounds like the split is between those who believe the security forces are violating the protester's human rights, and those who believe the police can do no wrong.

On the side of the police is Oscar Alvarez, who asserts that he leads a force that is among the most professional police forces in the world. Really? Hands up anybody who believes that.

Alvarez says all the police actions were carried out under the constitution, citing Articles 78 and 58. He says Article 78 guarantees the right of free assembly, but also the right to freely walk around, for everyone. He then cites (according to the article in La Tribuna) Article 58 as allowing all people free transit (the right to walk around) anywhere in the country and that the Police have the obligation to support that right.

Article 78 does in fact allow for freedom of assembly and association provided it does not contravene the public order. Article 58 however, says that ordinary courts, regardless of privilege, will know all electoral crimes and misdemeanors. Oh my. Perhaps he meant Article 81, which does say that everyone has the right to circulate freely.

So Alvarez isn't so good at his constitution. Furthermore he ignores the rights of the teachers to assemble and protest peacefully. He ignores good police procedure, which is to negotiate with protesters to guarantee everyone's rights are observed. He needs a remedial police work course on crowd control, and his police force needs one as well.

On the other side of the argument is Ana Pineda, says La Tribuna. She apparently pointed out the negative effects of the death of Ilse Ivania Velásquez for the efforts of the government to establish a good human rights record. After all, they'd just finished earlier in the week whitewashing Honduras's human rights record before the UN (see our previous post where the government admits to only investigating 3.8 percent of crimes).

"With these events, (Mr.) President, our country is exposed, not only nationally and internationally, but it weakens our level of credibility which we had obtained in front of the members of the UN and other forums of human rights."

Oops. She said the Police and Armed Forces need an operational norm that regulates their operation so that they respect the human rights established in the constitution, international treaties, and Honduran law. She said that the indiscriminate use of explosives, guns, and other things in protests, which have been seen in the videos and still photos available, can wound and even kill. She said that before resorting to force, the security forces need to exhaust all possibility of dialogue with the protesters. She noted that the Channel 36 reporter had been attacked without justification. In short, she acknowledged that the security forces are violating human rights, something the international press already knows.

Pineda is right; there's a training issue which Alvarez refuses to recognize. The police aren't trained to respect the human rights of anyone; they're trained to use force to solve any problem. Training police cadets to sing "...we will bathe in a swimming pool full of blood..." is not a sign that they know to protect human rights. It glorifies the bloodshed they cause. Until Alvarez can recognize, and address this problem, Honduras will be deficient in human rights protection.

At the end of the discussion, Porfirio Lobo Sosa said:

"I maintain my position: street taken; I will dislodge them."

Intransigence.

Damning Statistics on the Police

The Honduran government held a press conference this weekend and gave out copies of the Human Rights report that Honduras filed with the UN this week. It has some damning statistics about how little crime is investigated in Honduras, and therefore why no criminals ever get caught. Remember that these are supposedly the numbers Honduras submitted; they are government sanctioned.

The government report said first that 80% of all crimes are never reported in Honduras. They then said that of those 20% of crimes that are reported, a further 81% are not investigated by the police. That means that only 3.8% of all of the crimes that happen in Honduras are even investigated by the police! The report goes on to state that the police also fail to carry out arrest warrants, that 80% of the arrest warrants issued are never executed by the police! One wonders what they are so busily doing that they can't do their job.

The same report asserts that Honduras has made progress or completed all 129 items in the November, 2010 as part of its Universal Periodic Exam. This includes resolving the case of the dismissed judges mentioned in the previous post. Amnesty International called them on obfuscating their position on the judges in their presentation to the UN this week (at about 18:30 into the video of the session). Almost every comment on the Honduran government's position paper mentioned the lack of any proposal to deal with the incredible level of impunity demonstrated above.

Today, Tiempo reports that the Asociación de Jueces por la Democracia demands Ana Pineda, Honduras's Human Rights minister, step down because she's been ineffective since she assumed office last November. She has not been able to moderate the human rights violations that continue to occur in Honduras.

"Minister Pineda should resign if she has dignity. The death of the teacher (on Friday in Tegucigalpa) is caused by the repression ordered by the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.....Minister Pineda is not being realistic. There are serious indications that the government of Honduras has done nothing,"

said the AJD spokesperson.

What it boils down to, is that Ana Pineda talks a good line when it comes to human rights. She's pushed changes in laws, supposedly established a hate crimes investigative unit in the police, and called on Honduran society to be more tolerant of gays, lesbians, and transvestites after the US Embassy issued a statement warning Honduras on its continued ignoring of these hate crimes.

But nothing has changed in Honduras, as the above crime statistics demonstrate. There has been no improvement in the actual lived experience of Hondurans when it comes to the human rights situations that Pineda claims to have resolved. There's still no investigation of hate crimes against the press, or LGBT people. She hasn't even spoken about the problem with paramilitary mercenaries imported by the land owners in Honduras, widely acknowledged as responsible for the majority of the deaths in the Bajo Aguan.

Its all talk; there's no action; Honduras may as well not have an human rights minister for all the effect her office has had on Hondurans.

Those statistics represent lawlessness, impunity. Until that situation begins to improve, all the fine words of the Honduran Human Rights minister mean nothing.

Failure

Honduras has a violent crimes problem and is struggling to find ways of combating it. Unfortunately, the imagination of the current government runs to authoritarian solutions which require changes in the law or the constitution to be legal. The proposed solutions fail to address the fundamental problem. Alvarez told the press

"We're not trying to throw out the Penal Code, rather to find a way to make it more efficient by reforming it as necessary, and with the support of Congress, we can make it happen."

Here's what's broken.

The problem they recognize facing is organized crime, by which they mean drug traffickers and gangs. The unacknowledged problem they face is the police lack credibility. This is not to say there are not good honest police officers in Honduras; there are. But there are also corrupt ones, and that's where the problem begins.

How do you identify a police officer in Honduras? Until last week the government kept no information on the individuals hired as police, except that required to pay them. There were no photo id cards, no fingerprints kept, no signatures even. Your uniform is the only indication a civilian had that you were a police officer, and uniforms are easily obtained by criminals. Only now is Alvarez starting a program to identify the motorcycle police by collecting this basic information.

Nor do the police always wear their uniforms. Various police groups involved in checkpoints are often in plain clothes, as anyone who looks at the photographs in the Honduran newspapers will have noticed. Its been this way for more than 30 years. You know they're police and you have to stop because they have rifles and machine guns, or at least, I assume that's how you're supposed to recognize them. They don't wear uniforms; they don't have identification (and don't bother asking them for it unless you want abuse).

Then there's the question of police corruption. Mordidas to get out of traffic fines, avoid arrests, the petty cost of living in Honduras is contrasted with really corrupt police who are criminals. Members of the anti-kidnapping unit have been arrested heading up kidnapping rings in the San Pedro area. Police have in the past six months been caught robbing banks and businesses. Police have been caught running extortion and blackmail rackets against businesses.

Without a systematic purging of the ranks of these corrupt individuals, it does not matter how many police there are. Alvarez needs to address police corruption before hiring more police.

Then there's the fact that there is no investigation of crimes. Only 2 percent of murders ever result in charges being filed. Robberies almost never get solved. The crime statistics are bleak. Alvarez would say its a lack of manpower, but really, its a lack of training. There is no investigative unit, at least, not one that can investigate crime in Honduras. Even the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi, noted that fewer than 48 percent of the cases he remands for investigation ever come back to him. Until Honduran police can effectively investigate crimes, the crimes will go unpunished. This will require training, manpower, and technology.

To investigate crimes, you need citizen confidence in the police. Papa Elvin Santos argued Thursday that you can't purge the police because they'll just go out and become criminals. Wrong. Without doing this, you have no public confidence in the police; and without public confidence, no information about criminals; you cannot investigate crimes. As Jorge Ortega, a member of the Alianza Democratica Nacional put it

"So for us to addrdess the violence first we have to have confidence in the Police and later, when that confidence exists, the citizens may go peacefully to denounce the actions."

Yesterday Porfirio Lobo Sosa held a meeting, on his return from visiting model cities in Asia, with Juan Orlando Hernandez, Jorge Rivera Avilés, Ricardo Maduro, Oscar Alvarez, Luis Rubi, Áfrico Madrid, Ana Pineda and Jose Luis Muñoz Licona to decide what to do about an ongoing problem that is the primary cause of dissatisfaction with his regime, street crimes.

Coming out of the meeting, Lobo Sosa ordered the military to resume joint patrols with the police, ignoring the fact that soldiers, especially Honduran soldiers, are not trained in policing. Note to Embassy: this should be the highest priority military aid for Honduras, training in military policing. If they're going to be out on the streets, train those units in how to be effective at it.

Instead of vowing to clean up and professionalize the existing police force, Alvarez has asked for budget authority to double the number of police under his command. This likely will lead to an increase in crime, as a percentage of the new officers become corrupt.

At the meeting they also discussed the problem of judges who don't apply the law (the assumption is that they're either too scared or corrupt themselves), and of establishing more severe penalties for violent crimes, 50 years or even life for violent criminals. They spoke of increasing the penalties for criminals who attack judges, police, and prosecutors. They spoke about changing the law so that raids can happen any time of day, not just after 6 am as current law allows. They talked about changing the law to allow for holding of individuals for 72 hours without charges instead of the current 24 hours. Teodoro Bonilla, head of the Association of Judges requested that judges get not 6 days, but 12 days after charges are filed to decide whether to release the person on bail or remand them to jail for trial.

As El Heraldo notes, the changes discussed involve changing the law, changing the Constitution, and even abandoning some international treaties. Ana Pineda's voice is missing from any of the press coverage. Was she silenced, or did she have no concerns about the proposed changes?

In any case, Alvarez needs to clean up the police before he can address organized crime head on. Failure to clean up the police means failure, regardless of what else Alvarez does.

What is a Universal Periodic Review

November 4th.

That's the day that the UN conducts hearings as part of its Universal Periodic Review of the state framework for human rights in Honduras.

The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a once every four years dialogue between the 47 members sitting on the Human Rights Council and the national government of the country under review, plus any registered non-governmental organizations that ask to participate. The result, no sooner than 2 days after the hearing, is a report which contains a summary of the discussion plus a series of recommendations for the national government. It is up to the national government to carry those recommendations out. It is up to the UN to hold the governments accountable for non-compliance.

In the case of Honduras, the submissions can be found at the UN Office of the High Commissioner website here. The submissions include the government's report to the Human Rights Council, in every UN official language, a compilation of UN agency comments on conditions that arose since the last review, a summary of comments by third parties, and a series of questions submitted in advance by governments who are part of the Human Rights Council.

Honduras's own report was submitted on August 23, 2010. The report Honduras submitted is about the government structures, rules, and regulations that support the various areas of human rights that Honduras must report on in its periodic review. A quick review of the recent submissions by other Central American countries suggests that this is the correct content. The entire report consists of 134 paragraphs.

Paragraph 4 of Honduras's submission states

"The approach adopted in the universal periodic review involved the various Government agencies and branches of the State, all of which provided input to this report in their own areas of competence."

Except, of course, when they did not provide input.

A Tiempo article from Saturday noted that according to sources in the Executive branch, the report was completed without the collaboration of the Ministry of Security or the Supreme Court.

After a brief introduction, paragraphs 7-13, on the current political situation in Honduras, contain just about the only references to the coup of June 28, 2009 and the subsequent human rights violations that continue through the present. Paragraph 8 notes that Porfirio Lobo Sosa has complied with the terms of the Guaymuras Accords. Paragraph 9 identifies the official truth commission and its mission statement. Paragraph 12 lumps all human rights violations, from any time period, together and notes that investigations are either ongoing, or the cases have been determined to be common crimes.

Paragraphs 14-37 discuss political and civil rights, including the right to life, integrity of person, eradication of torture, prisons, access to justice, and freedom of expression.

Paragraphs 38-74 are concerned with economic and social rights, such as health, education, culture, ethnic groups, work, housing, and food.

Paragraphs 75-125 are concerned with the rights of vulnerable groups, such as some ethnic minorities, women, children, migrants, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgendered people, the old, disabled, and the right of everyone to a healthy environment.

The remaining paragraphs contain the report's conclusions.

The UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (UNOHCR) conducted its own review on each of the above topics over the last year. For example, there is a report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, another Special Rapporteur's report on extrajudicial killings, another on the independence of judges, and so forth. Each of these reports presents the UN's own take on the topic in question, and was available to the government of Honduras in crafting its own report. In addition, collectively the reports are summarized in a UN document included in the paperwork of the UPR for Honduras.

The UN paperwork notes that sixteen stakeholders submitted comments on the report, and provides a 14 page summary of those comments. You'll need to read Spanish, English, and French to take in the whole document, since not everything has been translated. The ten page Amnesty International submission from April, 2010 is located here on the UN website. Article 19, a group interested in freedom of the press, published their comment on their own website, located here. The other comments are probably filed in the same document archive as the Amnesty report, but I did not take the time to locate them.

Finally, there are a series of questions that the countries that make up the Human Rights Council have compiled. The countries who submitted questions include the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, and Switzerland. Their questions primarily focus on human rights violations arising out of the events of June 28, 2009, the de facto regime, and that of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

A group of three representatives from the Human Rights Council, representatives of Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the Russian Federation, will compile a summary of the discussion and a series of recommendations for Honduras after the meeting. Honduras will then have a chance to respond to this document, and then it will be adopted in a subsequent meeting.

Honduras will be represented in the hearing by several cabinet ministers and presidential advisers, including Maria Antonietta Guillén, Áfrico Madrid, and Ana Pineda. Also representing Honduras will be the head of the legislative committee concerned with human rights, Orle Solis, and the Special Prosecutor for Human Rights, Sandra Ponce. The hearing will last 3 hours on the morning of November 4.

The UN may broadcast a webcast of the hearing. Currently only webcasts for November 1 are listed. Technical note, the webcast requires Real Player be installed.

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.

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.