More Assassinations and Bloodshed in Honduras Land Occupation

[Judi Lynn]

More Assassinations and Bloodshed in Honduras Land Occupation
Thursday
Aug 25, 2011
10:24 am By Kari Lydersen

In Honduras, an increasingly violent campesino land struggle against one of the country’s largest private landowners has turned into a mini-civil war, with the murder of two prominent campesino leaders and several other campesinos in the past two weeks. The right-wing post-coup government has stationed 600 soldiers and 400 police in the Bajo Aguan area.

Campesino resistance leader Secundino Ruiz was shot dead by masked gunmen on motorbikes on August 20 as he left a bank with about $10,000. The treasurer of his group, Marca, was also wounded. The next day Pedro Salgado, a leader of the Unified Movement of Campesinos of Aguan (MUCA), and his wife were killed in their home.

As is often the case with apparently political killings in the ongoing repression and violence that has wracked the country since the coup against populist President Manuel Zelaya two years ago, government officials described Ruiz’s murder as a simple robbery.

On August 14, six private security guards working for landowner Miguel Facusse were killed in Bajo Aguan, where hundreds of campesinos have for several years been occupying land claimed by the oligarch family for industrial oil palm plantations. The next day, three deliverymen and two women with them were killed, apparently in retribution by guards who erroneously believed they were part of the campesino movement. (It is not clear if the six guards were in fact killed by campesinos).

Several other campesinos were also killed, attacked and falsely arrested in connection to the palm plantation land occupations in recent days.

More:
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/11860/more_assassinations_and_bloodshed_in_honduras_land_occupation/