4 Farmworkers, 4 Children Slain in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

4 Farmworkers, 4 Children Slain in Honduras
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras January 12, 2012 (AP)

Officials in Honduras say men armed with AK-47 rifles and machetes killed four adults and four children in a part of the country torn by a land dispute between workers and landowners.

Police Chief Osmin Bardales says the farm workers were taken from their homes Tuesday night, hacked with machetes and shot at close range by four men in the village of Regaderos on Honduras' Atlantic coast.

Among the victims were a 1-year-old boy and three girls ages 7, 12 and 15. The other victims were two men and two women.

Bardales says the ears were severed on some of the bodies.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/farmworkers-children-slain-honduras-15342937

[itsrobert]

1. Locking

Post the latest news from mainstream news websites and blogs. Important news of national interest only. No analysis or opinion pieces. No duplicates. News stories must have been published within the last 12 hours. Use the published title of the story as the title of the discussion thread.

[itsrobert]

2. I guess I am wrong, unlock

Is it news?
- Is it current? Yes
- Is it trustworthy? Yes
- Is it of interest to our members? Yes

[EFerrari]

5. Thank you, itsrobert.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Kids among eight hacked to death in Honduras

Kids among eight hacked to death in Honduras

Tegucigalpa, Jan 12 : Eight people, four of them children, were murdered in the Caribbean province of Colon, the Honduran government said.

The victims, residents of the village of El Regadero, were hacked to death by four men who arrived at the scene in a single vehicle, Security Ministry spokesman Hector Ivan Mejia told reporters in Tegucigalpa.

~snip~
Some 50 people have died in Colon during the last three years in a conflict pitting landless peasants against private security guards employed by the palm-oil barons.

An accord signed almost a year ago by the Honduran government, the plantation owners and an organization representing the peasants called for more than 4,000 hectares of land to be distributed among landless families.

More:
http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-143379.html

[Judi Lynn]

4. These are the latest victims in an endless chain of massacres, murders, torture of farmers

From 5 months ago:

Honduras: Aguán Massacres Continue to Support Production of Biodiesel
Written by Annie Bird, Rights Action
Sunday, 28 August 2011 19:19
Campesinos Killed, August 20th and 21st, Following on Massacre of 11 People, August 14th and 15th

~snip~
According to reports, around noon on Saturday, August 20, 2011 Secundino Ruiz Vallecillo, vice president of the Movimiento Campesion Unificado del Aguan del a Margen Derecha (MUCA-MD), and president of the San Isidro Empresa Campesina Cooperative, was shot and killed while in a taxi in the town of Tocoa by a masked gunman aboard a passing motorcycle.

That afternoon Arnoldo Portillo, member of the 5 de Enero Empresa Campesino Cooperative, of the La Concepcion community, left his home, and did not return. His neighbors began a search early the morning of August 21, 2011. His badly brutalized body was found in the dump of the La Lempira campesino community; he had been killed by machete strikes and gunfire.

Later on August 21, 2011, at approximately 8pm, Pedro Salgado, the president of the 5 de Enero cooperative and his wife, Irene Licona, were murdered in their home by machetes and gunfire. Salgado, like the presidents of all the cooperatives claiming rights to land used by African palm oil businessmen in the Aguan, had been subject to constant death threats. Salgado had recently met with the commander of the Xatruch operation, asking for protection.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/3198-honduras-aguan-massacres-continue-to-support-production-of-biodiesel