Questioning the State Department: Human Rights "Progress" in Honduras?

UC Santa Cruz historian Dana Frank, in an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, strongly criticizes the US State Department for its recent affirmation that Honduras is making sufficient progress in correcting human rights abuses to allow disbursal of foreign aid funds sequestered by congressional mandate.


This finding recently received publicity, ironically, because of one small exception: the admission by the State Department that Porfirio Lobo Sosa's hand-picked police chief, Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, has a suspect history. As Frank writes:

the State Department did announce that it was withholding all U.S. funds to Juan Carlos (El Tigre) Bonilla, the national chief of police, or anyone under his direct supervision, until an investigation of his alleged death squad activity has concluded.

You would think that the fact that the president of Honduras appointed, and continues to support, someone with such a tainted history during a period when in theory the government is committed to clearing up corruption in the police would have raised questions about the Lobo Sosa administration, not just Bonilla. But apparently not: the vast majority of US funding that was subject to withholding has now been approved for release.

Why? Frank, in her final paragraph, reaches the same conclusion as most other observers of the situation; the US administration

is obsessed with an unwinnable, militarized drug war in Latin America, and as result appears to be willing to back almost any government that will allow it to expand its military presence in the region.

Frank cites the almost unbelievable numbers that have been tallied since 2009, when Honduran rule of law was disrupted by a coup, boundaries between military and policing began to be blurred, and the security forces were unleashed by the government to silence dissent:

• 10,000 human rights complaints against security forces
• 23 journalists killed
• multiple reports by international human rights groups about repeated abuses of due process, denial of constitutional rights, and violation of human rights.

Want to read more details? Start with the links provided by the UNHCR. Or those maintained by Reporters Without Borders.

Too internationalist for you? Then visit the website of Freedom House, generally considered a centrist organization. In a report dated July 4, 2012, Freedom House writes that in the past year,

Honduras continued to suffer from human rights violations, impunity, and corruption.

But none of this convinced the State Department to use the leverage provided by Congressional direction to withhold a small percentage of funding--"20% of a portion of U.S. police and military aid", to quote Frank-- to try to move the Honduran government away from its current posture.

What is that posture?

In June, Maria Antonieta Guillen represented the Honduran government in testimony to the UN.  She argued that the government had to walk a "fine line" to "avoid delinquency by minors" while "preserving the integrity of the diverse centers of rehabilitation". Deadly prison fires over the past year have exposed the reality: overcrowding, large numbers detained without charges, and the criminalization of practices of the young. As sociologist Leticia Salomon wrote, these fires are "evidence of the collapse of the system".

Guillen argued that, since human life is the fundamental human right, policing cannot be said to violate human rights, because it is the prevention of violent crime. Whenever accusations of human rights violations are raised, the Honduran government's response is either that the crimes were private (explaining away the systematic and unprecedented increases in crimes against activists and journalists); or that the security forces were acting to combat crime. These justifications betray a fundamental difference in how the Honduran government understands the role of security forces and the status of human rights.

It would be one thing for the State Department to admit that Honduras has not improved its record, and make a case-- however it might want-- that US national security interests outweigh this failure. That at least would not involve giving a blessing to a regime uninterested in improving actual human rights, and incompetent to do so in any event.

What is tragic is that, by certifying progress that no one else sees, the US State Department is lending support to assertions about what is needed for social order in Honduras that are directly at odds with values the US espouses.

War of Words Between Police Chiefs

Late yesterday Juan Carlos Bonilla, the police chief, revealed on Honduran TV that the police were linked both to the 2009 murder of General Julian Aristides Gonzalez and the 2011 murder of Alfredo Landaverde.

The former police chief, Ricardo Ramirez del Cid, seems to have taken that as a personal attack.   Ramirez del Cid told a local radio program:

If anyone has evidence against me they should present it but not send me subliminal messages in the media trying to blemish the image of retired officials, attacking from the inside will not resolve anything.

Del Cid also said:

He left us guessing; he didn't mention anyone's name but he left us guessing.  That's not good because the same thing could happen to him (Bonilla) tomorrow.

He went on to complain that Bonilla knows that there are many police stations in such precarious conditions that they could not possibly be used to commit crimes!

Ramirez del Cid seems to have been referring to finances when he said "precarious conditions".  The only way I can make sense of this statement is as a reference to the motorcycle used to kill General Gonzalez, which Bonilla said left from, and returned to, a Tegucigalpa police station. The implication seems to be, hey, our motorcycles wouldn't be in good enough condition for a drive-by shooting.

Ramirez del Cid also denied that any acts of police corruption occurred during his six months as police chief.

We will simply point to the killing of Julieta Castellanos's son, which happened during Del Cid's time as police chief. It was his handling of the event for which he was ultimately fired. Thw implicated police officers were allowed to escape. This was the case that led to police corruption becoming a focus in Honduras.

There is nothing in Bonilla's comments that we can see to lead Ramirez del Cid to take then as a personal attack.

It may be a guilty conscience.

Ramirez del Cid is one of 11 high ranking police who failed to show up for their appointment for the process being employed to identify sources of corruption in the Honduran police. The group not complying with the law includes pretty much everyone in the police command before Bonilla was appointed. Ramirez del Cid was the man in charge.

Del Cid is still an active duty police officer despite having no duties.  He still receives a salary, and therefore must submit to the tests under the law passed by Congress. The process he is ducking involves drug tests, psychological tests, financial investigation, and answering standardized questions while connected to a lie detector. 

Instead, he says he's asked to retire. But that isn't stopping him from launching a war of words with his successor.

Police Suspected in Key Murders

Late yesterday Juan Carlos Bonilla, the Police Chief in Honduras, told the press that police were suspected in the killing of Alfredo Landaverde, an advisor to then Security Minister Oscar Alvarez.

La Tribuna quotes Bonilla:

I am saying that the suspects indicate that members of the National Police participated in these cases.

But that's not all. 

Bonilla also admitted that the police were suspected in the killing of the head of the anti-drug program in Honduras, Julian Aristides Gonzalez. 

Bonilla reportedly told the TV program Frente a Frente

The only thing I want to say to you is that there are suspects who have some connection with the police in this case, and that will be demonstrated in its time because we are checking the information and if there isn't a direct or indirect connection with the case, it will be discarded, but now there are suspects (police) that are linked by omission and if the investigation turns out that way we will proceed.

La Tribuna goes on to report that the motorcycle used in the Gonzalez killing left from and returned to the main police station in Tegucigalpa.

Julian Aristides Gonzalez, then Anti-Drug advisor to the Public Prosecutor, was murdered by armed men on a motorcycle in Tegucigalpa in 2009. 

Afredo Landaverde was a senior advisor to then Security Minister Oscar Alvarez when he was murdered by men on motorcycles in December, 2011, also in Tegucigalpa.

US State Department Blinks on Honduran Security

All across the US, the news from Honduras over the last day has been the same:

"US withholds funds to Honduran police"

Or, if you read the Washington Post, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, or a number of other papers, you might see the story under the headline

"US cites human rights concerns, withholds funds to Honduran National Police"

What is making the rounds is an AP story by Alberto Arce in Tegucigalpa, with Martha Mendoza in Santa Cruz. It says that funds are being withheld from

Honduran law enforcement units directly supervised by their new national police chief until the U.S. can investigate allegations that he ran a death squad a decade ago.

It's about time. The murky antecedents of Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares, El Tigre, were well aired back when he was appointed -- in late May, more than two months ago.

We noted at the time that the appointment gave insight into what Porfirio Lobo Sosa thought made a good top cop: getting results quickly, at any cost:

Bonilla Valladares definitely has a history of getting results. But that history shows that the "results" came from his exercise of extra-judicial power.

We  cited an interview by the Salvadoran media outlet, El Faro, which included this chilling exchange with Bonilla:

—Have you killed anyone outside legal proceedings?-- I asked him, while we left behind El Paraíso.

—There are things that one carries to the grave. What I can say is that I love my country and I am disposed to defend it at any cost, and I have done things to defend it. That is all that I will say.

As we noted at the time, State Department documents from 2004 acknowledged the accusations against Bonilla Valladares. 

Now, according to the AP, the State Department has produced a new report (which we could not locate) that

says the State Department "is aware of allegations of human rights violations related to Police Chief Juan Carlos Bonilla's service" and that the U.S. government has established a working group to investigate.

This story is worth the coverage it is getting. But there are some subtleties here that are worth further comment. The AP report goes to say

Under the new guidelines, the U.S. is limiting assistance so that it only goes to special Honduran law enforcement units, staffed by Honduran personnel "who receive training, guidance, and advice directly from U.S. law enforcement and are not under Bonilla's direct supervision," according to the report.

"Direct supervision" is the operative phrase here, since Bonilla Valladares, as national police chief, is the commander of all the Honduran police. Does it really matter if there is an interposed subordinate officer between him and the units the US is still funding?

Or is the significant difference here that the US will still fund US trained, guided, and advised units which, while technically part of the Honduran police forces, would be expected not to follow orders from the national police chief?

Some Honduran drug enforcement agents already have direct connections to US FAST teams, although their training wasn't enough to stop a still-disputed massacre in the Mosquitia.

The most obvious candidate for funding under this exclusion is the new unit, named the Tigres, that Honduras has proposed to create to offer policing while in theory continuing to purge the national police of corrupt officers.

According to reports in Honduran press, by September Tigres (Tropas de Inteligencia y Grupos de Respuesta Especial de Seguridad, "Intelligence and Special Security Response Groups Unit") will be deployed independent of the National Police. 

Juan Orlando Hernández, head of Congress (and presidential primary candidate in the right-wing Nacional party) is quoted as saying the Tigres would be

“a highly trained elite force that will have hi-tech equipment for fighting common and organised crime... This is not at all a force parallel to the police or the army. What we want is a rapid response team to tackle the insecurity in our country. Regardless of whether they like it, it will strengthen the response capacity to crime, because the Tigres will attack everything”.

La Prensa offers this characterization of the expected progress of the law that would authorize the Tigres, and their recruitment and training:

The law will be approved next week, in August the first stage of training and selection will come to an end since that process is already advanced, and in September the first contingent will appear.

That does not seem to allow much time for the purported training in human rights that, it is claimed, will keep this new force from committing the kinds of violations so common in existing Honduran security forces.

We have previously noted that selection and training of officers should legally follow approval of the law, which in a real democracy would not be taken as a fait accompli, but then, this is policing in Honduras today. Initial funding for the new unit will reportedly come from the Interamerican Development Bank.  

This unit, with its novel reporting line (in times of peace, the Ministry of Security; and in times of emergency, the Ministry of Defense), is the one Honduran "police" force that could be characterized as outside the direct control of the impeached police chief, Bonilla Valladares.

Writing on the IPS news website, Thelma Mejía provides a thoughtful summary of what we know about the proposed Tigre unit, and its contribution to continuing to blur the line between policing and military actions. She cites Honduran sociologist Mirna Flores and social commentator Eugenio Sosa, reminding readers that

similar forces created in the 1980s ended in grave violations of human rights, the most recent example being the so-called "Red Car Gang", a paramilitary corps that carried out operations of "social cleansing" against young men in gangs from 2003 to 2005, and acted from within the police, according to humanitarian groups.

In other words, there is a history here of abusive action by such "elite" police groups given sweeping mandates to combat "violence". 

Bonilla Valladares is part of that history; but his selection as police chief was not an error, that the US can simply avoid reinforcing. It was deliberate, despite this known history. The reaction of the Honduran government to the US withholding aid shows that: the AP story cites a Lobo Sosa spokesman Saturday supporting Bonilla Valladares, saying

the administration has repeatedly pledged full support for the police chief and that under his leadership "there has been a real improvement in the security situation."

There is one final subtlety worth underlining: the AP story gives credit for this modest reversal of the US support for militarization of civilian policing in Honduras to "a series of letters from Honduran and U.S. academics, activists and members of Congress". It quotes a June 7 letter "signed by hundreds of academics" that read, in part

Combatting drug trafficking is not a legitimate justification for the U.S. to fund and train security forces that usurp democratic governments and violently repress our people. 

This letter was the culmination of the frustrated cry from the heart of scholars in Honduras, the US, and 28 other countries asking the US government to stop ignoring the on the ground reality in Honduras. Cautiously, we might conclude that finally this outcry is getting heard.

What Makes a Good Chief of Police?

Honduras' president, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, isn't saying. At least not in words.

But we now have plenty of actions on which to reach some conclusions about his criteria.

Way back in October 2011, Lobo Sosa bid goodbye to then-chief José Luis Muñoz Licona after the four police officers suspected of killing a group of university students (including the son of Julieta Castellanos) went missing. His minister of security, Pompeyo Bonilla, reshuffled all the top security officers, bringing us Ricardo Ramírez del Cid.

Then just a little over a week ago, Lobo Sosa-- newly returned from consultation in the US with unnamed representatives of the US government-- removed Ramírez del Cid, replacing him with Juan Carlos "el Tigre" Bonilla Valladares.

The apparent pressure for the change came from the recent murder of prominent radio broadcaster (on the national HRN) Alfredo Villatoro, whose body was recovered dressed in a police uniform. Villatoro's death brings to 24 the number of Honduran journalists killed since the 2009 coup.

Press reports yesterday say that, unlike the preceding 23 cases-- including the immediately preceding, and still under-reported death of LGBT and Libre party primary candidate Erick Martinez Avila-- there have now been already multiple arrests in the Villatoro case. At least one of those arrested is reputed to be a police officer.

So it seems like Lobo Sosa finally has what he wants in a police chief: someone who gets results quickly.

Which should give everyone pause. Bonilla Valladares definitely has a history of getting results. But that history shows that the "results" came from his exercise of extra-judicial power.

New coverage by the AP has explored this history, which led to Bonilla being tried for a 2002 murder. As the AP article correctly notes, he was acquitted in 2004, a decision that was ultimately reaffirmed by the Honduran Supreme Court in 2009. But being acquitted is not the same thing as being innocent. In Honduras, the rule of law fails because the entire system is corrupt: original evidence is not collected, contaminated, or lost, investigators are prevented from completing their work or are threatened if they do so honestly, evidence is lost, witnesses flee or die.

The victims in the cases where Bonilla was accused of involvement were young men, targets of murder in Honduras under the ideology of mano dura for their known or suspected involvement in gangs.

The AP story includes crucial information from Maria Luisa Borjas, the head of internal affairs in the Honduran police who was charged with investigating that case, and who was suspended when she went public with complaints about interference in her investigation.

An investigative story on a Salvadoran news site,  El Faro, published in August of 2011, gives a first-hand view of Bonilla Valladares, based on shadowing and interviewing him, that adds to the testimony of Borjas:

In 2002, the Internal Affairs Unit of the Police accused El Tigre [Bonilla Valladares] of participating in a death squad for supposed delinquents in San Pedro Sula... This included having a witness that said he had been present at one of the executions by this death squad formed, supposedly, by police and called "Los Magníficos". El Tigre had to pay a 100,000 lempiras (more than $5,000) bail for his liberty during the trial. Afterward, in proceedings that many paint as rigged, where the principal promoter of the denunciation, the ex-chief of the Internal Affairs unit [Borjas] was removed from her job in the middle of the case, Bonilla was exonerated.

—Have you killed anyone outside legal proceedings?-- I asked him, while we left behind El Paraíso.
—There are things that one carries to the grave. What I can say is that I love my country and I am disposed to defend it at any cost, and I have done things to defend it. That is all that I will say.

El Faro adds more from the statement by Borjas to Honduran media that got her suspended by then Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez. In those exchanges Borjas quoted Bonilla Valladares as saying

—If they want to send me to the courts as the sacrificial lamb this Police force is going to rumble, because I can tell the Minister of Security [Oscar Alvarez] to his face that I am the only one that complied with his instructions.

Oscar Alvarez, remember, was the author of mano dura in Honduras, the minister of security when the extrajudicial killing of young men became rampant, under whose watch such crimes were not prosecuted or prosecutions were interfered with so badly that the cases failed.

Lobo Sosa's solution for violence and police corruption in Honduras is a police chief with intimate experience with impunity, with a record of accusations of imposing his own view of morality through the use of force, and a self-righteous belief that what he does is good for the country.

Now we know what makes a good chief of police in the eyes of the Lobo Sosa administration.

And that seems to be just fine with the US government as well; the AP quotes Ambassador Lisa Kubiske as saying

"We definitely hope this change in leadership really leads to effective, lawful cleaning up of the police."

Which is, we are sure, exactly what she would say if a police officer who wouldn't deny having carried out extrajudicial executions were appointed to a jurisdiction in the US. As long as he was patriotic and willing to follow whatever orders his superior gave.

New Head of Police

Overnight, Porfirio Lobo Sosa fired his head of Police, Ricardo Ramirez del Cid, who had been in office about six months, and replaced him with Juan Carlos "el Tigre" Bonilla Valladares.  Ramirez del Cid will be assigned another job sometime in the future.  In the meantime, he'll still collect his salary.

What do we know about his successor?

Juan Carlos Bonilla Valladares is a graduate of the Carabineros police academy in Chile.  Back in 2002 he was accused by human rights organizations of violations of human rights, but was acquitted by the Honduran courts when the prosecutor quit, mid case.

He had been alleged to be a member of "Los Magnificos", a group composed of ex-police and current police that was carrying out an assassination campaign against the youth of Honduras. Los Magnificos arose out of the Maduro administration's get tough attitude towards gangs.  Even suspicion of being a gang member was the crime of "illicit association", punishable by a mandatory 30 year jail sentence. 

(This, by the way, is when Honduras began to experience the jail overcrowding that led to the current prison problems and inhumane conditions.)

Marta Borjas, then head of Internal Affairs of the Honduran Police, said that at least 20 police units operating under the name "Los Magnificos" were murdering suspected gang members in Honduras.

El Faro published a profile of Bonilla when he was commander of the Police in the Department of Copán in 2011, where the drug trade with Guatemala thrives. Three villages in Copan were described as under drug trafficker control: El Paraiso, La Jigua, and El Espiritu.

Bonilla filed complaints about the commander to whom he reported, Jorge Baralaga, for overruling him and allowing the police force in Copan to provide security for the drug-linked mayor of El Paraiso, saying

"Why are we leaving the whole department unguarded to guard one lost mayor?"

Each of the 60 police officers that made up the Copan Department police force, and 20 soldiers, were paid 1000 lempiras by the mayor for their participation in his inauguration.

This reported complaint seems to suggest that Bonilla was not content to work for the drug trafficking political elite.

This is consistent with his actions after his transfer from the department of Copán, to Olancho in October 2011. There, he also named police officers allied with the drug traffickers.

In a press conference this morning, Bonilla said he took away three lessons learned during Ramirez del Cid's tenure as head of the police:  that he needs to speed up the cleanup of the police, that he needs full control of the penitentiaries, and that he needs to reduce crime.