Action Alert:Three students were tortured and killed in Honduras between August 30 and September 1 in a shocking development following student demonstrations against the governmental status quo.
Peace House watches carefully the escalating repression underway in Honduras with grave concern for those in the Human Rights community who are being targeted and terrorized. The recent execution of three students who were part of demonstrations against the government are a huge shock. Full information at https://peacehouse.net/canadian-jesuits-international-shares-concerns-about-padre-melo-and-radio-progreso-staff/. We are grateful to Senator Merkley for keeping an awareness of these violations of human rights in the public eye of Washington, DC. Peace House is asking that our community members write to thank Senator Merkley for keeping the concerns of the Honduran people in his sights as he advocates for their human rights and freedom of speech under an increasingly repressive government. Please send your letters of concern and appreciation for Senator Merkley to info@peacehouse.net and we will send them to his office. This is time sensitive, so please send your letters to us as soon as possible. We will present them as a series of requests to Senator Merkley’s office. Thank you, Elizabeth V. Hallett Program Manager Peace House News from Honduras Peace House is watching the escalating repression underway in Honduras carefully, with grave concern for those in their communities who are being targeted and terrorized. The recent execution of three young students has been particularly disturbing, because two of them were recorded as being arrested on video August 30th. Their tortured bodies were then found south of the capital, Tegucigalpa the next day, at a notorious body dump, that was used for extra-judicial killings in the 1980’s. These two young men were arrested on the International Day of the Disappeared. This seemed like a message. The two were initially identified as students from the Technology Institute, a high school in Tegucigalpa. It is unclear whether or not that identification has been confirmed. The following day, the body of a student at the public university in San Pedro Sula, in the north of the country, was found shot to death and dumped along a highway. Journalist Giorgio Trucchi shows, in a new article (see link below) (1) that this killing continues even though it has left the headlines. According to numbers tracked by by Casa Alianza, some 60 youths are murdered every month in Honduras. Berta Olivas, head of COFADEH or Committee of the Families of the Disappeared in Honduras, believes that there is a deliberate campaign to silence the youth of the country in particular. “We are immensely preoccupied. The arrest and execution of the boys happened right after the successful demonstration organized by the Convergencia against the Continuation (of the current government). It seems to me that they are escalating a campaign to end hope and instill fear in the people, especially attacking the youth for rebelling.” Oliva explained that “They don’t want the youth to raise their heads, or question the political or economic system; or organize, or put forward innovative proposals.” In her view: “Those who are running their strategies of horror and terror with a broad logistical reach, are Death Squads. When we are talking about Death Squads, and summary, arbitrary executions, we are talking about structures that operate at the margins of the law, but with the complicity of the authorities of the State… We live in a State that is for sale, that has been losing its sovereignty and its identity with an institutionalized strategy that is against our young people.”(3) Meanwhile, the trial of the men charged with carrying out the murder of famed environmentalist Bertha Cáceres, on March 2, 2016, will go on trial in Tegucigalpa. The trial of eight men accused of carrying out the murder has been postponed again. Scheduled to begin this week, it has been postponed again as of today. No new date is available. Directed threats have escalated in recent weeks against journalists at Radio Progreso and the station’s director, Honduran Jesuit Ismael Moreno, known popularly as Padre Melo.  Photo left: Padre Melo with Indigenous leader Berta Cáceres in 2013. Cáceres was murdered in March, 2016, at her home in La Esperanza, Honduras. Her family and community continue to call for a broader investigation to bring to justice the intellectual authors of her murder. 2) Full information at https://peacehouse.net/canadian-jesuits-international-shares-concerns-about-padre-melo-and-radio-progreso-staff/. Press release from: United Nations, Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner Honduras. OACNUDH is concerned about smear campaign against Father Ismael Moreno. Canadian Jesuits International shares the concern of the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner in Honduras over the safety of our partner Radio Progreso and its staff, as expressed in the press release of 3 September 2018 at our website as indicated in the link above. The number of immigrants in the United States from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras rose by 25% from 2007 to 2015, in contrast to more modest growth of the country’s overall foreign-born population and a decline from neighboring Mexico. Please urge Senator Merkley to call attention to the terror and murder as well as the smear campaign against Padre Moreno in Honduras and to question the de facto endorsement of these activities by the United States government.
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