The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has posted on social media:
“‘We are not leaving here,’ states OFRANEH [the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras] from the Garifuna People’s Camp for Life, set up indefinitely outside the Supreme Court of Justice, to demand an end to the criminal proceedings against the five people prosecuted during the eviction of San Juan Tela; compliance with the rulings of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights; and the resolution of the appeals for constitutional protection against the ‘Agro-Industrial Law’.
With the support of civil society organisations, they are calling for justice and respect for their ancestral territory, stating that ‘there is a persistent refusal to recognize the ancestral rights of the Garifuna people’.
PBI will accompany OFRANEH for the duration of their camp and expresses concern over the criminalization, persecution and violence against defenders of the Garifuna community
LINK TO THE PUBLIC LETTER TO THE SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE SUBMITTED BY OFRANEH ON OUR PROFILE.”
That link is here.
Among the five requests noted in the OFRANEH letter: “Guarantee the immediate and definitive cessation of the illegal judicial persecution against the five defenders who are members of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH): Deinor Osmany Mejía Arzu, Irbin Rene López Cortes, Carlos Enrique Fernández Guzmán, Onil Rigoberto Hernández Zelaya, and Sara Abigail Acosta.”
Prensa Comunitaria further reports: “More than a hundred people set up a permanent camp in front of the Supreme Court of Justice, in the place known as Viva Berta Camp. Convened by the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Ofraneh), the mobilization included children, youth and sexual dissidents of the Garifuna people, from the Atlantic coasts. In this way, the demonstrators gave a forceful response to a month of indifference, judicial arbitrariness and systematic criminalization.”
That article adds: “On July 6, without an eviction order, the police violently dispossessed the community of San Juan, Tela. Five defenders of their ancestral territory were arrested while Judge Norma Fuentes declared her incompetence and transferred the case to the Court with National Jurisdiction in Organized Crime. In other words, land defenders were labeled as criminals, drug traffickers and members of a criminal structure after defending what belongs to them by history and by right.”
And it notes: “Defender Mabel Robledo, of Nueva Armenia, did not hold anything back when analyzing the role of the Judiciary. ‘We have a court that only looks after the interests of those who have economic power. Here we have the ex-convict who walks free as if nothing had happened, while those of us who defend life and the earth are persecuted and imprisoned. It is outrageous to have to demand justice, justice, justice, and that the court ignores it,’ Robledo said.”
Accompaniment
PBI-Honduras and PBI-Canada coordinator Brent Patterson met with Robledo in Nueva Armenia on October 31, 2024.
IM-Defensoras has noted: “Mabel Robledo is a member of the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) and president of the Armenia community board. …Mabel Robledo is a beneficiary of the Protection Mechanism because she has been the victim of continuous harassment, persecution and threats for her work as a woman defender of territory, the commons and ancestral cultures.”
We continue to follow this.
