The Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project has posted on social media:
“‘We’re ready to pack our bags. We’re not here because we want to be. As soon as we’re told that the trial is over and that our comrades are being returned to us, we’ll leave,’ says Miriam Miranda of #OFRANEH [the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras].
The #Garifuna community is demanding that the case for ‘usurpation’ in a territory recognized as part of the IACHR [the Inter-American Court of Human Rights] ruling be dismissed, and they point out that the recent transfer of the court file from San Pedro Sula to Tela ‘does not mean the case is closed’.
PBI continues to support the camp, where there are reports of the presence of national police, military police and armoured vehicles.”
This evening, HCH Televisión Digital posted on social media: “Garifuna leader Miriam Miranda denounced that members of the National Police notified the members of the ‘Viva Berta’ camp, set up near the Supreme Court of Justice, that they must vacate the premises. Miranda questioned what she considers a contradiction between the discourse on human rights and the actions against the protesters. ‘There they go saying outside the country that they respect human rights, and they send the Police against us,’ she stated.”
The day prior, PBI-Honduras had also posted on social media:
“One week into the protest outside the Supreme Court of Justice, OFRANEH is calling on civil society organizations to join the peaceful protest and support its demand: that the criminal case against the five people arrested during the eviction in Tela on charges of being ‘squatters’ be dropped.
‘We Garifuna do not invade; we are reclaiming our lands (…) we demand that they stop persecuting us, stop criminalizing us, and stop calling us criminals,’ says human rights defender Miriam Miranda from the camp, where PBI continues to provide support.”
Prensa Comunitaria has also explained: “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.”
Criterio.hn adds: “At the center of the conflict is the failure to comply with four judgments of the Inter-American Court, which held the State of Honduras responsible for failing to guarantee the protection of the Garifuna ancestral territory in the communities of Punta Piedra in Iriona, Colón; Triunfo de la Cruz and San Juan in Tela, Atlántida; and Cayos Cochinos, jurisdiction of the municipality of Roatán, Bay Islands. It is precisely in San Juan, Tela, Atlántida, – still pending the process of territorial sanitation ordered by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights – where the first eviction of a property was carried out on Monday, July 6, under the controversial Law for the Strengthening and Protection of the Agroindustrial Sector, Energy Projects, Tourism, Livestock, Small Agricultural Producers, approved by the National Congress presided over by the nationalist Tomás Zambrano.”
We continue to follow this.
