Thank you very much for allowing me to be here with you to talk about the human rights situation in my country, Honduras. My name is Bertha Oliva, and I represent the committee of family members of the detained and disappeared, COFADEH, which is an organization that has been around for 30 years.
Right now, unfortunately, Honduras is the most violent country in Latin America. I am saying this with concern.
Up until December 2013, 79 murders for every 100,000 inhabitants was the tally. That means that 19 people were murdered daily. In the first few months of 2014, there has been a total of 18 massacres in which at least three people have died in each massacre. This, to us, is an epidemic. Logically, our greatest concern is that there is a trend toward privatizing public security. The privatization of public security without sufficient control by the state does not in any way improve the situation.
There is also a lack of interest in creating a more professional police force, and what we can see on the streets of our country and in our country as a whole is the military working on civilian security. That is very worrisome. That makes Honduras a completely militarized country, just like in the olden days in the 1980s, for example, when COFADEH was born.
There were seven armies at the time, six of which were not Honduran. That is what led to the severe human rights violations, with an outcome of over 200 disappeared persons recognized by the state of Honduras at the time. But with regard to disappearances, we know the numbers were higher than 200.
That is what is happening in Honduras, and we have seen a trend that has gone from selective killings to massacres. There's been a shift from public persecution to persecution in prisons. Last year, I'm sure that you know, there was an incident in a prison. There was a fire in which 376 people were burned.
So far the Honduran state has done nothing to investigate the causes for that fire in the prison or to make reparations. More and more, we see the privatization of public security with private security firms. There are from 75,000 to 120,000 private security guards, and this is worrisome for us because it is an army with very little control on the part of the Honduran state. This private security force has been responsible for horrible human rights violations in the Bajo Aguán region. Over 100 peasants have been murdered in recent times and there has been no investigation to find those who are guilty.
In that same region once again we see that there have been forced disappearances of people, and COFADEH has been working on ensuring that there would never be forced disappearances again, but we see them once again in the Aguán sector or zone.
We also know that practices there are a test run and that those practices are spreading throughout Honduras. It concerns us to see that human rights violations are being generalized throughout the country. It is not because there is a lack of security, necessarily, because we are told that it is drug trafficking and related crime and organized crime that create insecurity, but that's not what we're saying. What we are saying is that there is a policy that is being put into practice by the state to annihilate political dissidents.
The results of our pre-electoral monitoring before the recent elections on November 24, 2013, from May to November a number of people were murdered and when you hear that figure you may say, “Well, it's an acceptable number” but we're talking about 45 people who were murdered because they were political opponents, because they were members of the popular resistance front, or simply because they were part of the new political party, Libre. It is the party with the most seats in the national congress.
But that's not all with regard to human rights violations. That was before the election and since the election there has been continued political persecution of dissidents. There are well-known leaders in their communities who have been murdered; they had made their demands and had made their claims to human rights organizations and with COFADEH before they were murdered. We helped them to present their claims to investigative agencies and in some cases there have been some investigations, but the results of those investigations have not been provided. Meanwhile, the people involved have been murdered.
So we are now in a situation that we have not seen in years. Often for people who made their demands and explained their cases to COFADEH, that was a way of saving their own lives because we could go ahead and ensure investigations that would have saved their lives. But today the cases that we see are completely different and there is a different pattern. The denunciation is made to the state that is in charge of investigating them, and then a few days later those same people are murdered and then the investigation simply dies. The public security ministry must represent victims in the investigation, and must ensure that prosecution requirements are met so that cases can go to court, but in fact it's doing something else. The authorities are not doing their job; therefore, when it comes to human rights the Honduran population has absolutely no defence.
That is a source of concern for us because there has been a criminalization and a stigmatization of unions and labour movements. In recent times trade unionists have been the object of all kinds of persecution.
Their children have been murdered in some cases. Others have had their children kidnapped temporarily. Their families have been threatened because after the coup in Honduras, we managed to ensure some measures to protect some of the precautionary measures issued by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. But the leaders of trade unions are not necessarily being persecuted, but their families are being attacked. That is what we want to speak out against loudly and clearly because there is no political role on the part of the Honduran government to guarantee the full exercise of citizens' right to publicly demand respect for their rights or even privately demand respect for their rights.
The right to information is not available either. The information that is disseminated through the media is filtered, and the right to information and the right to free expression is being violated in Honduras, and as a necessary corollary, human rights violations continue.
This creates an obstacle to the access to information on the part of social advocates and the press. What concerns us even more is after the coup, there have been two very serious reports. One is the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that the Government of Honduras encouraged...so there could be an international perception that the government was concerned with the human rights situation in Honduras. There's also the report of the truth commission that was created by the victims themselves, and that second commission, an alternate commission, is the one that is making recommendations that must be taken seriously so that human rights can be respected.
We believe the state authorities have an obligation to provide reparations for human rights violations. It is a debt of the Honduran state, but rather than pay that debt the state is creating strategies to continue violating human rights. There are no functional institutions set up. There are formal institutions, but the undermining of state institutions is truly regrettable.
The fact that state powers have been concentrated means that in Honduras we cannot improve living conditions and security of everyday people. I would like to repeat what I have been saying in recent days. Honduras does live in incredible insecurity. The statistics by the Violence Observatory and Alliance House, which provides statistics on violent deaths for young people between the ages of 14 to 20, are terrible. But the Violence Observatory has caused concern to ask because we see there is no interest in investigating murders.
There is, however, an interest in justifying the violence and the crimes by saying they are the result of drug trafficking, drug-related activity, gangs, and organized crime. But we are convinced there is a government state policy because we have found patterns that are extremely clear. There is political persecution of political dissidents. Of the over 30 journalists who have been murdered in recent times, two were investigated and in those cases they were not murdered because of what they were doing.
In the case of teachers, over 40 teachers have been murdered in recent days, and none of those cases has been investigated—quite the contrary. The teachers' union has had its reputation actively tarnished, and we are concerned because we have never seen so many concentrated violations of human rights against women before. Over 624 women have been murdered, and no investigations have taken place.
We thought that now at least we would have the opportunity to trust in a government entity in Honduras and that a national commissioner of human rights would be appointed to defend the people. An ombudsman, a trustworthy, credible person for the population—that's what we wanted. We made proposals to the national congress to appoint such an ombudsman, but the result has been that the appointee is a lawyer and—I'll provide you this context—a diplomat. Yes, he is diplomatic. He defends the mining industry and mining companies, and the greatest conflicts in our country are caused by mining companies. The reason for that is because there is no prior consultation and the rights of the communities near mines are not being respected. So it's logical that when people are faced with mining companies that are expropriating their lands, they will protest. So the situation in the country in that regard is lamentable.
We are here to tell you about it so that you can help us find a way toward not necessarily a solution that will please everyone but a solution that respects and supports human rights.
When you see that there are over 3,000 peasants facing court cases in our country because they have demanded their right to land ownership, they are being persecuted actually not only by being killed, but they also are being persecuted in the courts. And for us, when we see that happening, we feel there is very little that human rights organizations can do other than document and support those cases, but actually the results that we can achieve to strengthen the rule of law are very few.
Thank you very much.
