Honduran Regime Martyrs LGBT Leader: Walter Trochez

[Duncan Grant]

Walter Trochez, a well-known 27-year-old queer democracy activist in Honduras, knew he was taking his life in his hands when he began a militant campaign to document and publicize 16 murders of LGBT Hondurans since the illegal June 28 coup d’etat that overthrew the country’s elected president and unleashed a reign of terror on civilian opponents.

And on the evening of Sunday, December 13, Trochez himself became the 17th victim of this post-coup wave of homo-hating murders, when drive-by gunmen, believed to be members of the state security forces, riddled his body with bullets and snuffed out his young life.

Trochez was not only beloved as an LGBT rights and AIDS activist, he was also a prominent active member of the National Resistance Front, the loose coalition of civil society organizations and citizen activists opposed to what Trochez called the “military-business-religious” coup d’etat, and his public insistence that the murders of queers were the responsibility of the same forces behind the coup cost him his life.

According to Adrienne Pine, an expert on Honduras who is assistant professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, DC, and a senior research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, and who is in daily contact with the Honduran resistance and queer community, “Walter’s death has impacted the resistance more than most of the other victims of the regime because he played a key role both as a member of the resistance against the coup d’etat, but also within the resistance, challenging members of the resistance movement to confront their own homophobia and recognize solidarity in their shared struggle against the military-religious dictatorship.”

Complete story @ gaycitynews.com

"It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."
-- James A. Baldwin

[EFerrari]

1. Gay activists in Honduras have been especially targeted.

I don't know what else to do or say. No one is paying attention.

[Goldstein1984]

2. Almost nobody is paying attention

I don't know what to say either.

Our Administration seems happy with how things are going on.

Obama specifically accused those asking for intervention in Honduras of being the same people complaining about intervention in the Middle East.

[Peace Patriot]

3. Obama has said a couple of smart-ass things that have really annoyed me.

One of them is his complaining about people asking him to intervene in Honduras.

Honduras is a client state of the U.S. Nothing happens there that is not dictated in Washington DC--as has become REALLY apparent over the last six months. The Pentagon clearly was involved--the Honduran military refueled the plane carrying the elected president out of the country at gunpoint, at the U.S. air base in Honduras! What were the U.S. commanders at that base DOING while this occurred? Playing video games, or what? It's their supposed job to interdict drug shipments and "terrorists." They didn't notice a mysterious plane with blackened windows passing through their airport? The U.S. embassy, which admitted knowing about the coup ahead of time, didn't notify the U.S. military base in Honduras? So, either Obama doesn't have control of the Pentagon, or he is lying. I toyed with the first possibility for a while--an insurrection in the "Southern Command." Also, considered the Bushwhack appointee in the US embassy, Clinton and others--for sabotaging Obama's stated policy of "peace, respect and cooperation" in Latin America. But I now think he was lying. The coup was "made in the USA" and he approved it. And his remark about intervention was pure hypocrisy.

(The other smartass remark was about prosecuting Bushwhack war criminals: "We need to look forward not backward." --Barack Obama. Except when it comes to little criminals. Then we, um, LOOK BACKWARD at what they DID, and put them in jail if they are convicted, for actions that occurred IN THE PAST. But if they're very rich and very powerful, nothing they did in the 'past' matters. So why doesn't President Obama issue an amnesty for all prisoners in the U.S., hm? Their judges and juries wrongfully "looked backward" in their trials, and this new jurisprudinal notion of President Obama's should correct that unfairness and let everyone convicted for actions they did IN THE PAST out of prison. Jeez, that pissed me off. If he made or agreed to some amnesty deal for Bushwhack criminals, he should just say so. Wouldn't that be refreshing?)

[tbyg52]

5. Money and power trump everything

And the accumulation of both at the very top is just about complete.

[Bluenorthwest]

4. There are no words. Well, actually, there are.

Every last person who stands in opposition to equal human rights helps create these horrors.

[mitchtv]

6. In solidarity with Walter

there are no words ...

[Meldread]

7. Evil. There is no other word.

To be bluntly truthful, I hadn't paid much attention to the Honduran coup d’etat. There was so much other stuff going on in the United States and around the world. This has grabbed my attention, and I've decided to better educate myself on what is exactly going on down there.

I hope Walter Trochez's life was not taken in vain. I hope his death galvanizes others within Honduras in the same way the martyrs in Iran galvanizes them against the Regime. I hope he is remembered and memorialized as a hero.

[dickthegrouch]

8. RIP Handsome, Courageous Man

Shit.
This made me cry.
I wish there was something more we could all do.
The US government is partly responsible for this with its VILE, justifications and excuses allowing discrimination to continue hanging out for all the world to see.
But *we* are the government.
It's time.