U.S. foreign policy backs abusive Honduran state
U.S. foreign policy backs abusive Honduran state
Adrienne Pine
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Honduran prisons are overcrowded, but not because there are too many criminals, one of the explanations that has been given for the Valentine's Day prison fire in the city of Comayagua that killed 360 people- the worst prison fire in a century. They are overcrowded because a majority of prisoners have languished for years in prison without having gone to trial, and because of so-called "antigang" and "antiterrorist" laws passed by President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo that criminalize poverty and dissent.
In an attempt to bring a tidy end to the 2009 military coup that ousted President Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, Lobo was brought to power in a U.S.-funded election marred by military and police violence and deemed by all international election monitoring bodies to lack the conditions necessary to be free and fair. Lacking a mandate and derided by the left and right, Lobo has few friends outside the U.S. embassy in Honduras. Other than commending Lobo for his public statements following the fire, the embassy has remained relatively quiet about the Comayagua tragedy.
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Last year, the U.S. Department of Defense spent more than $50 million in Honduras. Most of that went to the Soto Cano Air Base, the U.S. military base within spitting distance of the Comayagua prison. Additional hundreds of millions of dollars are being channeled through the Central American Regional Security Initiative to support initiatives like Lobo's "Operation Lightning," which deputizes soldiers to act as police officers. In the two months they have been on the streets, these military police have already been accused of numerous human rights violations.
In a Jan. 26 New York Times op-ed, Dana Frank argued that "the coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression." Because of the coup - which Lobo supported and inherited - the homicide rate has shot up to 82 per 100,000, making Honduras the most dangerous country in the world. The solution, Frank concluded, lies not in funding repressive institutions, but in respecting proposals coming from Honduran human rights defenders who daily risk their lives in their fight for justice, dignity and life.
More:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/28/EDOV1NDFHK.DTL#ixzz1nnfNJjVD
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