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

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x610609