Honduras

Honduras: audit faults World Bank loan in Aguán

On Jan. 10 the World Bank's Office of the Compliance Adviser Ombudsman (CAO) released a report criticizing the process through which the bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) granted a $30 million loan in 2009 to the Honduran-based food-product company Corporación Dinant. An audit that the CAO started in April 2012 found that the IFC failed to apply its own ethical standards in issuing the loan, which is to be used in part for growing African oil palms in the Aguán Valley in northern Honduras. The Aguán's largest landowner is Dinant’s founder, the politically well-connected cooking oil magnate Miguel Facussé Barjum. Producing palm oil has become highly profitable, since the oil can be used both for food and as biofuel.

Honduras: another journalist killed; toll reaches 37

The body of Honduran journalist Juan Carlos Argeñal Medina was found on Dec. 7 at his home in Danlí in the southern department of El Paraíso; he had been shot dead. Argeñal was a correspondent for the independent Globo radio and television network and also owned Vida Televisión. He was at least the third Honduran journalist killed this year and the 37th since President Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa took office in January 2010, according to Globo. Another Globo journalist, Edgardo Castro, has announced that he plans to leave the country because of death threats. (Miami Herald, Dec. 9, from AP; Adital, Brazil, Dec. 11)

Honduras: two more opposition activists murdered

José Antonio Ardón, an activist in Honduras' center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was gunned down by unknown assailants in Tegucigalpa's Altos de la Sosa neighborhood the evening of Nov. 30. Ardón had been part of the motorcycle group that provided an escort for LIBRE presidential candidate Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, LIBRE's presidential candidate in the disputed Nov. 24 general elections. He was known as "Emo Dos" ("Emo Two") because he had inherited his motorcycle from another activist, Mahadeo ("Emo") Sadloo, who was murdered in eastern Tegucigalpa on Sept. 7, 2011. LIBRE supporters say more than 250 people active in the party and other opposition groups have been murdered since the June 2009 military coup d'état that overthrew former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), Xiomara Castro's husband. (El Libertador, Honduras, Nov. 30; La Tribuna, Tegucigalpa, Dec. 1)

Honduras: new party 'breaks chains' of old system

Honduras' Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) issued an official announcement on Nov. 30 declaring former Congress president Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the presidential candidate of the rightwing governing National Party (PN), the victor in general elections that were held on Nov. 24. According to the TSE, Hernández received 36.80% of the vote, while Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the candidate of the center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), received 28.79%. Results announced the day before showed Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with 20.28% of the vote and Salvador Nasralla of the Anticorruption Party (PAC) with 13.72%. The TSE didn’t announce final results for the 128 deputies in the unicameral National Congress, but earlier projections showed the PN winning 47 seats, followed by LIBRE with 39, the PL with 26 and the PAC with 13; each of three smaller parties is expected to have one seat.

Honduras: opposition charges fraud in election

With about 43% of the ballots counted in Honduras' Nov. 24 presidential election, Juan Orlando Hernández Alvarado, the candidate of the right-wing governing National Party (PN), was ahead with about 34% of the votes, according to electoral officials on Nov. 25. Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, running for the newly formed center-left Freedom and Refoundation Party (LIBRE), was second with 28.4%, followed by Mauricio Villeda of the center-right Liberal Party (PL) with about 21%. Both Castro and Hernández, previously the National Congress president, claimed victory. Castro's husband, former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), told reporters that there were "serious inconsistencies" in as many as 400,000 ballots. He said LIBRE supporters "are going to defend our triumph at the ballot box and if necessary will take to the streets." There is no runoff in the Honduran presidential election; the candidate with a plurality wins.

Honduras: pre-election repression continues

Unknown assailants shot Honduras video journalist Manuel Murillo Varela dead on Oct. 23; his body was found the next day in Tegucigalpa's Colonia Independencia. Murillo Varela had worked as a camera operator for Honduras' Globo TV and for the state television, Canal 8, and was also the official camera operator for former president José Manuel ("Mel") Zelaya Rosales (2006-2009), who was overthrown in a June 2009 military coup. Murillo Varela had been a victim of violence in the past: he and a colleague were abducted on Feb. 2, 2010, reportedly by police agents, and were tortured for over 24 hours. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish), an agency of the Organization of American States (OAS), responded to the incident by issuing a protection order for Murillo Varela. Both the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Inter American Press Association (SIP) condemned the Oct. 23 murder. More than 30 journalists have been killed in Honduras since 2010.

Honduras indigenous leader's detention challenged

The Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), a legal advocacy group with offices in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and the US, has requested a hearing before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR, or CIDH in Spanish) about the case of Honduran indigenous leader Berta Cáceres, who was ordered into preventive detention on Sept. 20. CEJIL director Marcia Aguiluz said the group has also raised the case with the United Nations. Cáceres, an indigenous Lenca, is the general coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH). The government has charged her with damaging property in connection with her support of protests by indigenous Lenca communities against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on and near their territory. Aguiluz said that the "criminalization of Berta Cáceres" is an "example of a new manner of persecution, since it's the use of the judicial apparatus to keep rights defenders from carrying out their work." (El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Sept. 26, from EFE)

Honduras: indigenous, labor leaders under attack

On Sept. 20 a judge in the southwestern Honduran department of Intibucá issued an order for the preventive detention of indigenous leader Berta Cáceres on charges of having broken into the property of a company constructing a hydroelectric project. Cáceres, the general coordinator of the Civic Council of Grassroots and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), was taken to the prison in La Esperanza, Intibucá. The charges stem from her support of indigenous Lenca communities in their protests against the construction of the Agua Zarca dam on and near their territory; the struggle against the project has already cost the life of Tomás García, an indigenous leader the protesters said was shot dead by soldiers on July 15. 

Syndicate content