PBI-Honduras observes press conference that calls on Honduran Council of Private Enterprise to apologize for comments
On May 26, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted on Facebook: “[On May 19] we observed a press conference called by the Land and Territory of Common Goods Table of the Coalition Against Impunity Honduras before the Institution of the National Commissioner for Human Rights (CONADEH).”
PBI-Honduras adds: “In their pronouncement, they demanded the Honduran Council of Private Enterprise (COHEP) offer a public apology for their recent statement that calls for the defense of ‘private property’ and ‘for the repressive forces to undertake evictions, criminalization, persecution and prosecution of people defenders’.”
That post adds that the pronouncement says: “[COHEP] is responsible for ‘the violence that may develop in the territories’ and demands from the State ‘a comprehensive process of equitable distribution of land and territory with a gender perspective’.”
On May 19, this statement by the organizations of the Coalition Against Impunity Honduras was communicated to national and international opinion:
– “We emphasize that the peasant sectors and native peoples are not land invaders, we are defenders of territory and the environment in the face of the extractivist and concessionary policy that has been implemented forcefully by the administration of Juan Orlando Hernández, a government that has executed a vision of development in the country’s business sector.”
– “We reiterate that neoliberal policies implemented over the past 30 years have privatized major public goods and prioritized an agricultural policy focused on agri-export that has benefited, in particular, the business sectors. Official data indicate that these agricultural policies have increased the recentration of land in the hands and benefits for landowners and agribusiness sectors.”
– “[We demand] COHEP publicly apologize to peasant, indigenous and Garífuna organizations that have undertaken land and territory recovery processes, while developing conflict resolution processes, in which territorial organizations can participate on an equal footing. If COHEP continues to make statements disconnected from reality, it will be guilty of the actions of violence that are unleashed in the territories currently fighting for access to land, and will be directly responsible for the attack on the physical and psychological integrity of the defenders of the territory.”
Their full statement is here.
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