US Supports Bloody Regime in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

US Supports Bloody Regime in Honduras
Tuesday 28 June 2011
by: Andrew Kennis, Truthout | News Analysis

Editor's Note: June 28, 2011 is the two-year anniversary of the coup in Honduras.

It was a typically balmy and rainy Sunday on June 5 in the Finca San Isidro farming lands of the fertile Bajo Aguán area in Honduras. José Recinos, Genaro Cuestas and Joel Santamaría were off to an early start to buy some farming materials with some other campesinos. None of them ever arrived at their destination: they were ambushed by a sea of bullets resulting in the deaths of Recinos, Cuestas and Santamaría and severe injuries to three of their companions.

"All three of my compañeros were soft-spoken and modest farmers, dedicated to the social struggle here in Aguán and beyond," said Cesar Rodriguez, a close friend and, like his fallen comrades, a member of the Autonomous Farmers Movement to Reclaim Aguán (MARCA). The three farmers were young, aged between 25 and 35 years old.

Killings such as these are far from unusual in Honduras, which has been described by leading human rights organizations as a country besieged by state-sponsored violence and repression. Further, many critics have pointed fingers at flawed US policies for exacerbating the deteriorating situation in a Central American nation long plagued by poverty and foreign resource extraction.

The three campesinos have backgrounds similar to many other victims, as not only farmers, but also teachers, journalists and activists in the opposition movement have been frequent targets of abuse. Politically motivated state-sponsored assassinations, however, are only one of many types of human rights violations occurring since the Honduran military executed a coup d'état in June 2009. Plaguing Honduras since that time has been a litany of abuses: excessive use of police and military force, individuals' disappearances with governmental culpability, death threats at gunpoint against judges and sexual violence, especially against the LGBT community. These abuses have attracted condemnations from both Honduran-based and leading international organizations, including Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Foodfirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) and a number of popular organizations based in Aguán.

More:
http://www.truth-out.org/us-supports-bloody-regime-honduras/1309292418

[Judi Lynn]

1. Community radio stations still denied access to air-waves

Community radio stations still denied access to air-waves
Published on Tuesday 28 June 2011.

Did Honduras’ readmission to the Organization of American States mark the end of the sinister interlude that began with the coup d’état exactly two years ago, on 28 June 2009, and its disastrous impact on civil liberties and human rights?

That was the question that the Latin America and Caribbean division of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC-ALC) and Reporters Without Borders jointly posed when Honduras was formally readmitted to OAS at the start of this month.

The fight against impunity and for real media diversity is certainly as important as ever, according to members La Voz de Zacate Grande, a community radio station in the far south of the country that is banned from the air-waves.

A Reporters Without Borders special representative was in the Zacate Grande peninsula for the community radio station’s first anniversary, on 14 April, and produced a long audio report of her visit. For the time being, it is available only in Spanish and can be downloaded at this link. A summary follows.

Most of the Honduran community radios affiliated to AMARC attended the 14 April event, which served to highlight the fact that defence of land rights was the main reason for the creation of most of these stations. La Voz de Zacate Grande is a particularly good example.

More:
http://en.rsf.org/honduras-community-radio-stations-still-28-06-2011,40537.html