Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I am very pleased to be here with you today.
I'm going to continue this brief testimony in English.
In my work as an analyst for the Center for Economic and Policy Research, I focus primarily on political, economic, and social developments in Latin America and the Caribbean. For the past five years I have been closely following developments in Honduras and have had frequent interaction with human rights defenders, academics, journalists, and officials located in that country.
As you're all well aware, on June 28, 2009, a coup d’état led to the forced removal of democratically elected president José Manuel Zelaya. The coup was followed by widespread repression, media closures and censorship, and a prolonged political crisis. Elections held under the coup government of Roberto Micheletti in late 2009 were boycotted by opposition groups and were recognized by only a small number of the region’s governments, among them the U.S. and Canada.
Honduras has long been plagued by poverty, high levels of crime, and weak civilian institutions. The 2009 coup dramatically escalated these problems and has sparked significant regression in other areas. Following the coup, the Honduran government’s democratic legitimacy was severely compromised. Targeted killings, violent attacks, and threats targeting members of at-risk sectors of society escalated; impunity reached record levels; and law enforcement became increasingly militarized.
In November of 2013, new elections were held. Opposition parties participated this time. The European Union and the Organization of American States sent electoral monitors, and human rights groups expressed hope that the elections would allow the country to begin turning the page on the coup and its aftermath. This hope, however, was dampened by political violence and reports of irregularities and fraud.
My presentation today will focus on the 12 months that have transpired since these elections. I'll offer my assessment of whether the country’s negative trends in the area of human rights and democracy have begun to reverse course under the government of the contested winner of the 2013 elections, Juan Orlando Hernandez.
First, I'd like to discuss the issue of targeted groups and individuals who have been subjected to human rights violations. As you all know, Honduras has, for a few years now, been sadly notorious for having the world’s highest murder rate. Less attention has been paid to a disturbing pattern of killings, attacks, and threats targeting individuals and groups that may pose a threat to powerful interests. Though police and judicial officials are often quick to attribute these incidents to gang activity and common crime, their frequency and the available anecdotal and circumstantial evidence suggest that the victims are often targeted because of the work they do. Among the targeted groups are media workers, human rights defenders, lawyers and other justice sector workers, campesino groups, and political opposition activists.
In early December of 2014, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights stated that an astounding 46 media workers were murdered in Honduras between 2009 and 2013, compared with a total of three during the preceding six years.
After a lull in the number of killings of journalists in 2013, the pace of homicides in this sector has unfortunately picked up considerably, with at least eight killed in the last twelve months, including the chief correspondent of a TV news program, a TV presenter who had investigated local corruption, and the host of a satirical political radio show. A number of other journalists have received death threats.
The situation has also deteriorated for human rights defenders. Honduran human rights NGO, ACI-Participa, reported in late September that at least five human rights defenders were killed between January 1 and September 17 of this year. Many of the victims were supporting communities opposed to plans for large-scale private ventures, such as hydroelectric dams, mining, logging, or large agricultural projects that threatened to displace these communities or damage their habitats.
Many human rights defenders have been attacked in recent months. On August 22, gunmen blocked the car of CIPRODEH director Wilfredo Méndez, pointed guns at him and his colleagues, and threatened to kill them. Similarly, a member of the staff of human rights group COFADEH was kidnapped on June 4 for several hours, beaten on the face with the butt of a gun, and stabbed repeatedly with a pencil. Many other similar incidents have occurred in the course of 2014.
Violent attacks against lawyers and other justice workers have continued at a steady rate. Early in the year, the Association of Judges for Democracy estimated that 67 lawyers had been murdered between 2010 and 2013. Since the beginning of the year, at least eight more have been killed, including a judge and a lawyer killed in separate incidents on March 14, and a justice of the peace who was ambushed and shot dead on his motorbike on June 23.
Other sectors that have suffered disproportionate numbers of attacks are campesino groups, indigenous and Afro-Honduran community leaders, and political party activists.
Two points regarding these targeted attacks are worth emphasizing. First, in a large number of cases, state security forces are alleged to have played a role in the attacks, and second, the vast majority of cases are characterized by impunity. It's the second point I'd like to address quickly.
The overall rate of impunity surrounding human rights abuses, whether perpetrated by state or private actors, is stunningly high and estimated at between 95% and 98%. There is no indication that the situation has genuinely improved under the administration of Juan Orlando Hernandez.
While over the last several years prosecutions have been made in a small number of emblematic homicide cases, including in the murder cases of four members of the LGBTI community and the killing of two journalists, the majority of killings and attacks of members of at-risk sectors remain in impunity.
Questions arise. Is the government implementing measures that may help improve this situation? Are its policies overall helping move things in a better direction? I'd like to look quickly at the government measures that we've seen over the last 12 months.
The government has claimed to have made great strides in weeding out corruption and organized crime from the ranks of both the police and the judiciary, but in both cases independent groups have expressed dismay regarding the seemingly arbitrary and superficial nature of these processes.
As of September 22, police chief Ramon Sabillon reported that around 1,400 police agents have been dismissed since 2012, allegedly for failing trustworthiness tests. The Honduran NGO, Alliance for Peace and Justice, has alleged that many dismissed officers include agents who passed tests and that few senior officers have been removed. Other organizations such as COFADEH have alleged that in cases where senior officers have been removed, other officers with records of alleged involvement in human rights abuses have replaced them.
A similar purge of judicial officials has been carried out by a recently created judiciary council, with 66 justice workers suspended from their posts as of July 2014. The judicial watchdog group Judges for Democracy has challenged many of the dismissals on both legal and procedural grounds, and has qualified the purging process as non-transparent and arbitrary.
The government has claimed to have made—excuse me, I'd like to touch on the issue of precautionary measures quickly.
In the years since the 2009 coup the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has granted an ever-growing number of precautionary measures to human rights defenders, journalists, justice workers, and other individuals deemed under threat of attack. The commission noted, in its recent report on Honduras, grave deficiencies and low or completely lacking efficiency in the implementation of these measures by the state.
I know the committee has an interest in the electoral process. Many Hondurans argue that the system is rigged in favour of the ruling party and the electoral system is characterized by important weaknesses identified by the National Lawyers Guild and other groups, which at the very least contribute to a biased and severely flawed electoral process.
The electoral authority of the country, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral, is considered to be highly partisan. The appointments that were made to this electoral authority were of individuals for the most part who had been recently elected to political positions and who are members of political parties. Another big issue is the practice of selling party members' electoral credentials within the scope of the elections, which can allow for fraud to occur more easily. The practice of indirect vote buying has also been highlighted. This occurred on a large scale in the last elections with the distribution of discount cards to voters right outside of voting centres. The fact that in the lead-up to these elections a significant number of candidates and party activists were killed in impunity created a climate of terror that undermines both campaigning and voting.
Finally, I would like to touch on the issue of militarization.
The 2009 coup marked the end of nearly two decades of progressive demilitarization of law enforcement in Honduras, following the transition from the country’s military dictatorship in the 1980s. Under the government of Porfirio Lobo, the military began assuming a permanent police role.
This remilitarization was reinforced by Juan Orlando Hernandez when, a few months before the November elections, he pushed a proposal for a military police force through the congress, which was part of his presidential campaign around a promise to put a soldier on every corner. Today he backs a constitutional reform that would enshrine the military police in the constitution as a part of the nation’s armed forces.
The public order military police has already faced allegations of serious human rights crimes. In the spring of last year, military police personnel attacked the well-known defender of children’s rights José Guadalupe Ruelas of Casa Alianza. He was beaten in the face, head, ribs and legs, and dragged face down and kicked. On November 21, a young woman waiting for a bus was allegedly picked up by a military police unit and raped by eight members of the unit. To date, no one has been apprehended in relation to the crime, although the woman went public immediately after the incident occurred and filed a report with the regular police force.
It's important to highlight that conventional military forces have been increasingly involved in a number of state-sponsored tasks that are normally in civilian hands, including educational activities.
In summary, the human rights situation in Honduras remains as dire as ever, and in many cases, targeted attacks against members of at-risk sectors including human rights defenders and journalists have recently increased in number. Meanwhile, impunity around these and other crimes remains appallingly high.
The government’s response to this situation over the last 12 months has been grossly inadequate, and in some areas, completely counterproductive. The processes by which the government claims to address corruption and criminality, within the security forces and the judiciary, are considered arbitrary and ineffective. Genuine police reform appears to be off the agenda, following the dissolution of a reform commission whose proposals were systematically ignored, despite the backing of the human rights community.
The government’s plans to further militarize law enforcement activities and to involve the military in other traditionally civilian tasks, including state-sponsored extracurricular activities for young people, is an alarming, negative trend that will further undermine human rights and democracy in Honduras.
In short, the government’s record over the last 12 months indicates that it has little real will to address the human rights crisis in Honduras.
I've prepared a longer statement. I realized quite late that I wouldn't have the time to read it all, so I've given you a very abridged version. If possible, I'd like it included in the record. It also includes a set of recommendations for the Government of Canada.
Thank you very much.
