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PBI-Honduras accompanies actions in La Ceiba and Tegucigalpa against Economic Development and Employment Zones (ZEDES)

By
Brent Patterson
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On June 22, the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project posted: “Last Saturday [June 19] we were watching the Cabildo Abierto in which the population of La Ceiba said ‘no’ to ZEDES. They argue that ‘it is a surrender of territory, even though national authorities paint it as a beautiful and prosperous project’.”

PBI-Honduras adds in their Facebook post: “Likewise, today [Tuesday June 22] we see in Tegucigalpa a stand before the Supreme Court Justice in which Honduran civil society organizations ratifies their right to ‘be and exist on these lands’ and reaffirm their ‘historic commitment to bring down the ZEDE’.”

What is a ZEDE?

ZEDE refers to an Economic Development and Employment Zone.

NACLA has provided the context that: “Hondurans are facing a sudden onslaught of these new jurisdictions which international promoters refer to as charter cities, startup cities or free private cities. …Honduran politicians from the National Party proposed the zones shortly after the 2009 military coup, which made the country a ripe location for experimentation with extreme neoliberal policies.”

That article adds: “The 2013 ZEDE law provided unprecedented legislative, administrative, judicial, and financial autonomy to investors for a wide range of territorial ventures, including urban development and resource extraction.”

As of February 2021, there have been two ZEDEs officially launched: Honduras Próspera and Ciudad Morazán. NACLA notes that the founders of Próspera have referenced a third site in La Ceiba (which PBI-Honduras notes above).

Town Hall in La Ceiba

Residents of La Ceiba held an open town hall meeting on Saturday June 19.

The day prior to this town hall, PBI-Honduras tweeted: “We echo the concerns of civil society for this installation by ‘promoting a logic of large-scale dispossession, increasing the violation of human rights’.”

Radio Progreso reports: “When asked if they agreed to declare the municipality free of ZEDES, the Ceiba population made it clear that they are not willing to surrender their territory, despite the fact that national authorities paint it as a beautiful and prosperous project.”

Supreme Court ruling on ZEDE

On June 14, El Heraldo reported: “The Supreme Court of Justice approved by a majority of votes the establishment of the Special Jurisdiction of the Zones of Employment and Economic Development.”

Yesterday, the Spanish news agency EFE reported: “The National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) announced on Monday [June 20] that it will file legal actions against the Employment and Economic Development Zones (ZEDE) promoted by the government presided over by Juan Orlando Hernández.”

CNTC-Progreso: “The ZEDES suppose to put a state in another state where we do not fit the poor or the peasants.” PBI-Honduras began accompanying the National Union of Rural Workers (CNTC) in May 2018.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies Maya Q’eqchi’ defender Bernardo Caal Xol at Supreme Court of Justice cassation hearing

By
Brent Patterson
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Twitter photo by PDH Guatemala.

On June 20, the Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project posted: “Tomorrow Monday PBI accompanies Bernardo Caal Xol audience. Meet Bernardo and his fight as well as his criminalization: We share an ACERCATE program-with English subtitles-that we recorded three months ago at Cobán Jail, Alta Verapaz.”

That interview with English subtitles can be seen here.

La Hora further explains: “This Monday, June 21, the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) will hear in public hearing an appeal in cassation for the case of environmental leader Bernardo Caal Xol. The hearing is scheduled for 2 p.m.”

That article adds: “Cassation is defined as an extraordinary remedy seeking the total review of decisions, and if appropriate, their annulment and subsequent issuance subject to the law.”

Late that afternoon, Prensa Comunitaria reported: “At the end of the cassation hearing, to review the conviction against Bernardo Caal, lawyer Édgar Pérez reported that he expects the Criminal Chamber to resolve within 15 days.”

Calls for Bernard to be released

La Hora adds: “On June 4, dozens of residents of Alta Verapaz organized a demonstration to demand the release of Bernardo Caal. From four different aspects, social organizations were also added that at the end of the tour concentrated in the central park of Cobán.”

PBI-Guatemala accompanied that march.

Bernardo’s partner Isabel Matzir has commented: “It has been more than 3 years and 4 months of prison torture for Bernardo, a process with an obvious malicious delay. We hope that the CSJ [Supreme Court of Justice] will read the three Amicus Curiae that the defense presented to have more elements to resolve the case.”

Background

Caal Xol is a leader of the Peaceful Resistance of Cahabón, a collective of 38 Maya Q’eqchi communities, that was formed to oppose the construction of the Oxec and Renace dams on the Cahabón River and its tributaries.

PBI-United Kingdom has noted: “In August 2017, PBI provided security support to the good-faith consultation in which the 195 communities of the Cahabón River overwhelmingly rejected the Oxec hydroelectric projects.”

The Guatemalan Human Rights Commission (GHRC) highlights: “A few months later [in December 2017], Bernardo was arrested [in] a clear act of retribution for the defense of his community’s water rights.”

In November 2018, Bernardo was sentenced to seven years and four months in jail.

In July 2020, Amnesty International declared that Caal Xol is a prisoner of conscience who has been wrongfully imprisoned.

The Peace Brigades International-Guatemala Project has accompanied Bernardo and the Peaceful Resistance Cahabón since 2017.

“Residents of Santa María Cahabón, Alta Verapaz, traveled to Guatemala City to participate in the Public Hearing for the challenge to the sentence of Bernardo Caal, a community leader sentenced to 7 years in prison. In the rain they demand that he be released.”

PBI-Mexico observes consultation on the Morelos gas pipeline in Puebla, highlights UNDRIP requirement for consent

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo by the People’s Front in Defence of the Land and Water.

On June 21, the Peace Brigades International-Mexico tweeted: “We observed the consultation in San Isidro Huilotepec promoted by @SENER_mx [Secretary of Energy] on the Morelos gas pipeline. The UN declaration on Indigenous peoples establishes that they must be consulted and give their consent.”

PBI-Mexico also posted on Facebook: “On Sunday, June 20, PBI accompanied the Frente De Pueblos Morelos Puebla Tlaxcala to a consultation conducted in the community of San Isidro Huilotepec, Atlixco municipality, Puebla. This consultation was given in the context of the construction of a pipeline in its territory, part of the Comprehensive Morelos Project. From PBI, we call on the Mexican authorities to ensure the right of indigenous communities to free, prior, informed, culturally appropriate and in good faith consultation.”

The People’s Front in Defence of the Land and Water of Morelos, Puebla and Tlaxcala (FPDTA-MPT) tweeted: “We appreciate the accompaniment of @PBI_Mexico.”

No consent for the Morelos gas pipeline

La Jornada de Oriente provides the further context that: “Residents of the community of San Isidro Huilotepec, located in the municipality of Atlixco, reported that the Federal Energy Secretariat (Sener) is trying to get the town up early with the holding of a citizen consultation for this Sunday [June 20] on the Morelos gas pipeline, without prior information on the scope of the so-called ‘death project’.”

“Huilotepec and Santa María Cosamaloapan are the only two indigenous peoples in the state of Puebla that keep the operation of the pipeline slowed down, after winning the amparo with file number 402/2015.”

That article adds: “The lawsuit of guarantees that the people of Hilotepec won was due to the fact that two years ago the authority carried out a popular consultation by force to the inhabitants, with the presence of the National Guard and without carrying out the protocol of informing the inhabitants beforehand.”

Morelos Integral Project (PIM)

The PIM megaproject consists of the 171-kilometre gas pipeline across the states of Tlaxcala, Puebla and Morelos; a gas-fuelled thermoelectric plant in the town of Huexca, Morelos; and a 12-kilometre aqueduct to divert water from the Cuautla River near Huexca to cool the turbines at the thermoelectric plant.

The FPDTA-MPT has previously stated: “[President] Lopez Obrador’s [support for the PIM] betrays the peasant and the promise of change of his government, to favour transnational corporations [including] Canadian miners like Alamos Gold.”

Toronto-based Alamos Gold has reactivated work on their Esperanza open-pit gold mine near the community of Tetlama (60 kilometres west of Huexca). Their statement suggests that this mine could draw energy from the plant.

Indigenous Náhuatl activist Samir Flores, a member of the FPDTA-MPT, was killed in February 2019 after receiving death threats for his role in protests against this megaproject.

PBI-Mexico began to accompany the FPDTA-MPT in 2020.

PBI-Guatemala accompanies Indigenous Mayan organization at commemoration of victims of the internal armed conflict

By
Brent Patterson
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On June 19, PBI-Guatemala posted: “PBI accompanies Conavigua Guatemala in commemoration of the 3rd anniversary of the ‘Land of Memory’ memorial in Comalapa, Chimaltenango for the victims of the internal armed conflict.”

In 2018, a memorial that holds the bones of 172 unidentified victims of the internal armed conflict was established at a former military camp in the village of San Juan Comalapa, about 80 kilometers west of Guatemala City.

CONAVIGUA is a women’s organization that fights for the individual and collective rights of Mayan women and indigenous peoples.

The internal armed conflict killed an estimated 200,000 people and displaced more than one million people between 1960 and 1996.

45,000 people are still unaccounted, including 5,000 children.

The conflict between state military forces and guerilla combatants was underpinned by the poverty, marginalization and racism against Indigenous peoples.

The United Nations-backed Commission for Historical Clarification determined that the Guatemalan military was responsible for 93 per cent of the atrocities – including forced disappearances, massacres and torture – and that 83 per cent of the victims were Indigenous Maya peoples.

The Commission concluded that acts of genocide occurred during the war.

PBI-Guatemala adds that the gathering in Comalapa comes on the eve of the National Day Against Forced Disappearance on June 21.

The National Day against Forced Disappearance commemorates the 27 trade unionists from the National Central of Workers (CNT) who went missing on June 21, 1980, and all the victims of enforced disappearance.

#PaisajesdelaMemoria (Land of memory)

PBI and PRODERCHOS express concern to UN Human Rights Council on lack of implementation of Guiding Principles in Honduras

By
Brent Patterson
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On June 29, Peace Brigades International and PRODERECHOS (comprised of Oxfam, Lawyers Without Borders-Canada and CEHPRODEC) presented to the UN Human Rights Council on the implementation of the Guiding Principles in Honduras.

The presentation was made by Carlos Padilla Roiz of the PBI-Honduras accompanied Honduran Centre for the Promotion of Community Development (CEHPRODEC) during the interactive dialogue with the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises.

Joint statement

The joint statement highlighted:

“A year ago, the Working Group presented its mission report on Honduras to this Council, with consistent recommendations for the implementation of the Guiding Principles in the country. To date, they identify little progress, persisting the impact on human rights.

Eight human rights defenders, three of them women, and mainly linked to the defense of the territory, were assassinated in 2020.

According to OHCHR, so far in 2021, they register at least 40 assaults.

These events lead us to share today the concern and deep disappointment expressed by the Working Group in their report Tenth Anniversary of the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

It is urgent that the State of Honduras reinforce its commitment to comply with the principles governing bodies and adopt the regulatory, political and administrative measures necessary to comply with the recommendations of the working group.”

Working group report on Honduras

The Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises conducted a visit to Honduras from August 19-28, 2019.

The Working Group stated: “The State must act now to put an end to recurring attacks, harassment and intimidation of human rights defenders, union leaders, indigenous peoples and community representatives who speak out against business-related human rights abuse and large-scale development projects.”

Tenth anniversary and Binding Treaty

The Guiding Principles were endorsed by the Human Rights Council through resolution 17/4 on June 16, 2011.

Peace Brigades International has long supported a Binding Treaty on transnational corporations and human rights as an instrument that would offer more leverage and protection to human rights defenders, notably land and environmental rights defenders.

The 7th session of negotiations on the Binding Treaty will take place this October.

The video of the PBI and PRODERECHOS statement to the UN Human Rights Council can be seen at the 49 :17 mark here.

Inter-American Court finds Honduran state responsible for the murder of trans woman on the night of the June 2009 coup

By
Brent Patterson
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Photo of Vicky Hernandez by Red Lésbica Cattrachas.

On June 29, The Guardian reported: “In a landmark ruling for transgender rights, the Honduras government has been found responsible for the 2009 murder of the trans woman and activist Vicky Hernández.”

“The ruling, at the inter-American court of human rights, was published on [June 28] the 12th anniversary of Hernández’s death, and marks the first time the highest regional human rights court has held a state accountable for failing to prevent, investigate and prosecute the death of a trans person.”

“The court has ordered Honduras, which has the world’s highest rate of murders of trans people, to pay reparations to Hernández’s family and implement a sweeping range of measures designed to protect trans people, including anti-discrimination training for security forces and state collection of data on violence against LGBTQ+ people.”

“Several indications of the participation of state agents” in Vicky’s death

The article adds: “Hernández was killed on the first night of the June 2009 coup d’état, in which the Honduran military ousted President Manuel Zelaya and enforced night-time curfews across the country.”

“The curfews were brought in to contain demonstrations against the coup, but were part of wider crackdown in which journalists, teachers, students and LGBTQ+ people were targeted.”

“Hernández, who relied on sex work to survive, had been on the streets with two other trans women when they saw a police car coming towards them. Fearing violence, they ran in different directions. The next morning, Hernández was found dead.”

“Lawyers working on Hernández’s case argued that state agents actually committed the murder. …The court ruling, which ordered Honduras to restart its investigation into Hernández’s death, found ‘several indications of the participation of state agents.’”

Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights more categorically states: “The case was the first before the Court involving the death of a trans woman, activist Vicky Hernández, who was shot and killed by Honduran security forces during the country’s coup d’état in June 2009. The Court not only ruled that the Honduran government had discriminated against Vicky because of her gender identity, failing to properly investigate and prosecute her case for years, but that it was ultimately responsible for her state-sanctioned murder.”

No comment yet from Honduran government

The BBC adds: “The ruling, made on the anniversary of Ms. Hernández’s death, will set a legal precedent in Latin America, however the Honduran government has not yet commented on the court’s decision, and it is not clear how or when it will enact the court order.”

PBI-Honduras accompanies Arcoiris

On November 11, 2020, PBI-Honduras posted about the Inter-American Court for Human Rights public hearing into the murder of Hernandez.

PBI-Honduras commented: “Vicky’s case being evaluated today before the Inter-American Court for Human Rights represents a unique precedent for the rights of LGBTI+ people, not just in Honduras, but for throughout Latin America.”

PBI-Honduras has accompanied Arcoíris, the LGTB Association of Honduras, since July 2015.

Arcoiris coordinator Donny Reyes has stated: “The biggest problem that we face is the violence of the state security forces towards the LGBT+ community: the armed forces, the police, the criminal investigation police, military police, municipal police.”

Reyes adds: “The research studies that Arcoiris and other organizations have done reflect the same pattern — more than 60 per cent of hate crimes have been committed against us by those forces who should be guaranteeing our safety.”

For more, please see the Peace Brigades International and Mundubat report: En Peligro Constante [In Constant Danger].

Police paid by Calgary-based Enbridge block access to Namewag water protectors camp in Minnesota

By
Brent Patterson
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Video by Garrison Davis.

The Giniw Collective has tweeted: “Hubbard County has escalated their repression — this is the roadway to our private property and our driveway. We’ve now constructed a barricade in front of our private land, police are everywhere. Police paid by Enbridge.”

The Intercept further explains: “A Minnesota Sheriff’s office blocked access Monday morning to one of the protest encampments set up to resist the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline.”

“In a notice delivered at 6 a.m. to pipeline opponents, who own the property, the Hubbard County Sheriff’s Office stated that it would no longer be allowing vehicular traffic on the small strip of county-owned land between the driveway and the road.”

“Water protectors see the road blockade as another example of local sheriff’s offices working to protect the interests of Enbridge, the Canadian tar sands pipeline company.”

That article adds: “The Namewag camp has been used as a jumping-off point for water protectors conducting direct-action protests.”

Canadian company pays for the police

This past March, Emily Atkin reported in Heated: “Enbridge established a financial relationship with Minnesota law enforcement in May 2020, when the state Public Utilities Commission approved Line 3’s route permit. That permit required the oil giant to set up a special fund that would reimburse police responding to anything pipeline-related.”

The Line 3 pipeline financed by Canadian banks

The Calgary-based Enbridge Inc. 760,000 barrel per day Line 3 tar sands pipeline would run from Hardisty, Alberta to Superior, Wisconsin. It would be 1,659 kilometres in length, of which about 585 kilometres would be in the United States.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau approved the construction of the Line 3 pipeline in Canada in November 2016. Enbridge has reported that the Canadian portion of the pipeline is complete and began commercial service in December 2019.

The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has documented that the top five financiers of Enbridge are Canadian banks: TD Bank, Bank of Montreal, Scotiabank, RBC and CIBC. Collectively they have provided billions of dollars in financing to Enbridge.

Current status of pipeline

RAN has noted: “The [542 kilometre] Minnesota stretch of the pipeline is all that remains to be built. In November 2020, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency approved the final permits for the pipeline.” Work on that portion of the pipeline began on December 1, 2020.

On June 8, Winona LaDuke of Honor the Earth told Democracy Now! that the pipeline is “far from done” with “35 or 40 percent” completed and that Enbridge has many rivers to cross that they can’t begin to do until July.

We continue to follow this situation with great concern.

Seeking justice after the genocide of Indigenous peoples in Canada and Guatemala

By
Brent Patterson
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Image by Ojibwe artist Isaac Murdoch.

This past month, PBI-Guatemala has been accompanying the Human Rights Law Firm (BDH) at the hearings of a former military officer accused in the Dos Erres massacre and former officers accused in the Diario Militar killings. These hearings concluded in indictments for crimes that took place almost 40 years ago.

The Commission for Historical Clarification in Guatemala found that: “Agents of the state committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”

Findings of genocide have also been made in Canada.

Between 1883 and 1996, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their parents and sent to at least 139 “residential schools” as part of a campaign of forced assimilation. As many as 12,000 children may have died in those institutions.

That context has also contributed to the 1,181 murders and/or disappearances of Indigenous women and girls between 1980 and 2012. It is believed the number is more accurately 4,000 to 5,000 Indigenous women who have been killed or gone missing.

Truth and Reconciliation Commission – December 2015

University of Guelph Professor David MacDonald has commented: “There is ample evidence in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission [TRC] final report of state intentions, legislation, actions and legacies of genocide.”

MacDonald adds: “Senator Murray Sinclair [the Chair of the Commission] regularly discussed the Indian Residential Schools system as violating Article 2e and stated that he would have put this in the TRC’s Final Report, had it been permitted.”

Article 2e of the United Nations definition of genocide states: “Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

Sinclair says: “I had written a section for the report in which I very clearly called it genocide and then I submitted that to the legal team and I said, can I say this, or, can we say this? And the answer came back unanimously no, we can’t as per our mandate, because we can’t make a finding of culpability, and that’s very clear. So, we did the next best thing.”

MacDonald notes: “The TRC ultimately concluded that cultural genocide had been committed in the Indian Residential School system, while also making hints throughout the report that the government was culpable of more.”

National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls – June 2019

This Supplementary Report states: “The violence the National Inquiry heard about amounts to a race-based genocide of Indigenous Peoples, including First Nations, Inuit and Métis, which especially targets women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people.”

That report adds: “This genocide has been empowered by colonial structures, evidenced notably by the Indian Act, the Sixties Scoop, residential schools and breaches of human and Indigenous rights, leading directly to the current increased rates of violence, death, and suicide in Indigenous populations.”

Other statements

Additionally, in May 2015, Supreme Court of Canada Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin stated that Canada had committed “cultural genocide” against Indigenous peoples. And in April 2013, former Prime Minister Paul Martin stated: “Let us understand that what happened at the residential schools was the use of education for cultural genocide, and that the fact of the matter is — yes it was.”

Notably, the June 2008 apology from then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper for the Indian Residential School system did not use the word genocide, but rather framed this “policy of assimilation” as “a sad chapter in our history.”

Impunity and prosecution

Starting in 2005, the Canadian government began to locate 5,315 alleged abusers, both former employees and students. That effort was not to prosecute them, but to seek their participation in compensation hearings. Fewer than 50 people have been convicted for crimes committed at residential schools.

This past week the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) called for “charges be laid against people still living who are found to be the perpetrators of these crimes, including the members of the religious orders that ran the schools, as well as the governments and the churches that we know to be complicit.”

In Guatemala, a court found the former president of Guatemala, Efrain Rios Montt, guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. He was convicted in 2013 for ordering the deaths of 1,771 Ixil Maya peoples during his time in office in 1982 and 1983. That conviction was overturned by the Constitutional Court of Guatemala just ten days later.

There are many other perpetrators of genocide in Guatemala. More than 200,000 people were killed during the 1960 to 1996 internal armed conflict in Guatemala, 83% of those victims were Indigenous Mayan.

Dispossession from the land remains a key issue. In Canada, reserves account for just 0.2 per cent of the land. In Guatemala, a handful of powerful families still dominates the economy with the largest 2.5% of the forms occupying more than 65% of the land. There are presently at least 1,000 land conflicts happening in Guatemala.

Canada has recognized eight historical genocides, but not the one in Guatemala nor the one against Indigenous peoples in Canada.

We continue to follow this.

On June 25, a Judge ruled that former Guatemalan Defence Minister Marco Antonio González Taracena would stand trial for enforced disappearance, crimes against the duties of humanity, murder and attempted murder for his role in the disappearance of 183 people during the Guatemalan genocide.

 

PBI notes concerns about about rule of law in Colombia, Honduras and Mexico at UN Human Right Council

By
Brent Patterson
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PBI-Switzerland advocacy coordinator Kim-Mai Vu

On June 28, Peace Brigades International spoke at the United Nations Human Rights Council during the Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the independence of Judges and Lawyers.

That presentation noted:

“We welcome the report of the rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers.

PBI has observed with concern an increase in attacks against the rule of law in Honduras, Mexico and Colombia during the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as an increase in attacks against justice operators.

Honduras

In Honduras, we are concerned that the Honduran state has not applied alternative precautionary measures in cases of defenders in preventive detention during the pandemic, despite habeas corpus, presented by various organizations such as COFADEH.

We also deplore the lack of transparency and publicity in paradigmatic cases such as the hearings for the review of precautionary measures of the defenders of Guapinol as well as during the preliminary hearings in the trial against David Castillo for the murder of Berta Cáceres.

Colombia

In Colombia, the repeated attacks by the Government on the Special Jurisdiction of Peace (JEP), such as the recent ones following the findings of extrajudicial executions committed by the forces military.

[We also note the] threats and attacks against lawyers representing victims of the conflict or who denounce police abuses in the framework of social protest, such as the recent ones against of members of the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective Corporation (CCAJAR), of DH Colombia and the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners (CSPP).

[And we note] the almost total impunity for the crimes against defenders who are committed to the implementation of the Agreement on Peace; and the lack of application of judgments issued by the Supreme Court, such as the judgment that intended to regulate the right to peaceful protest, are a sign of a worrying impact on the independence of justice and the rule of law.”

Mexico

In Mexico, the construction of megaprojects continued to be considered an essential activity, at the same time that the legal proceedings filed by the affected communities had come to a standstill. There is also concern about the lack of compliance with the injunctions that order the suspension of megaprojects. This is the case of the gas pipeline, an element of the Morelos Comprehensive Project, which has an order of suspension for an amparo filed by the Front of Peoples in Defense of the Land and Water.”

The video of the presentation can be seen here starting at 01:42:35.

PBI-Honduras accompanies Arcoiris, the LGTB Association of Honduras, who defend rights in conditions of extreme risk

By
Brent Patterson
-

The Spanish online newspaper Público reports: “Since 2009, nearly 400 LGBTIQ+ murders have been recorded in Honduras.”

It is in this context that the Peace Brigades International-Honduras Project accompanies Arcoíris, the LGTB Association of Honduras.

Today, PBI-Honduras has posted: “We support the work of the LGTBIQ+ rights advocates and the Rainbow Association commemorating the day of the #Pride, an organization that is born with a commitment to empower, inform and accompany the LGTB population.”

The Público article adds: “Collective discrimination is structural. It is born into families, continues in school and manifests itself in almost every scenario of daily life in the workplace, in health or in access to housing.”

“This is confirmed by dozens of reports from international organizations and NGOs, such as En Peligro Constante [In Constant Danger] carried out by the Peace Brigades and Mundubat International, or the most recent one by Human Rights Watch.”

“Between 2009, the year of the coup d’état in Honduras, to the present day, there have been 381 violent deaths: 217 of the gay population, 43 were lesbians and 121 trans.”

“92 percent of violent deaths go unpunished, according to the National Commissioner for Human Rights (CONADEH).”

“Arcoiris accuses the police of many of the threats and treatment they receive.”

The article includes quotes from Jlou Córdova, Donny Reyes and Esdra Sosa all of whom are with Arcoiris (the Rainbow Association of Honduras).

Reyes is the coordinator of Arcoiris.

He left for the United States when he was 15 years old because his parents didn’t accept his sexuality.

The article notes: “Reyes had to go into exile twice more. The first for six months to Nicaragua for a direct attack it suffered in 2012. The second to Germany in 2014 under a strong climate of threats, intimidation and persecution for his identity and the work he did in Rainbow. Still, he reiterates his decision to stay and work in Honduras.”

The article concludes: “In Rainbow they do not faint or lower their arms. They know that being an LGBTIQ+ activist is an almost heroic act that is done in conditions of extreme risk, but they are still fighting for their space and a gender identity law.”

The full article in Spanish is here.

En Peligro Constante [In Constant Danger]

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