- This topic has 22 replies, 5 voices, and was last updated 12 years, 2 months ago by
.
- Posts
They did this when we lived down there. It didn’t seem to stop any crime, we’ll see if they have better luck this time.
Honduran army to help combat violent crime wave
By FREDDY CUEVAS, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 at 4:10 p.m.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Troops will be sent into Honduras’ streets to help police combat a wave of violent crime, the government said Tuesday.
Defense Minister Marlon Pascua told reporters that soldiers will be assigned to search vehicles and pedestrians and pursue criminal suspects. He did not specify when the troops would be deployed.
He said the decision was announced by President Porfirio Lobo at a Cabinet meeting.
This Central American country of 7.7 million people suffered more than 5,300 homicides in 2009 while grappling with a political crisis touched off by a coup.
The country’s army was harshly criticized after soldiers hustled then-President Manuel Zelaya out of the country aboard an airplane last June.
All six members of the military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff were charged with abuse of power in January, but all were later cleared by a Supreme Court judge. Lawmakers approved amnesty for both Zelaya and all those involved in his removal.
On Monday, Lobo’s administration announced it was sending more than 2,000 soldiers and police officers to the Atlantic coast region around the Aguan River to seize drugs and illegal weapons. Drug cartels are increasingly using the coasts of Central America to move drugs toward the U.S. market.
Zelaya’s supporters expressed fear the security buildup might be used in a crackdown on a peasant squatter movement in the area.
Just before the coup, about 3,000 farm workers seized almost 10,000 acres (4,000 hectares) in commercial plantations used to grow African palms.
The pro-Zelaya National Popular Resistance Front said the Aguan deployment posed a serious threat of raids to clear the squatters.
Lobo’s administration is negotiating with the squatters and has offered them each about 5 acres (2 hectares) of land elsewhere and some financial assistance if they agree to leave. The squatters are demanding greater amounts of land.
Of course Battalion 316 never left. “Former” members were reportedly among the organisers of the coup that ousted Zelaya:
Roland Valenzuela, a former minister in Zelaya’s government, claimed in an interview broadcast on 20 June that he had papers which named a businesswoman, Jacqueline Foglia Sandoval, as the ‘manageress’ of the coup plot, which had been hatched in a hotel in Dubai. […]
Among the other alleged plotters in Dubai were various businessmen who, it is said, were former members of the army death squad known as Battalion 316. The papers, handed over by a bartender who thought Valenzuela was part of the group, supposedly included the draft decree that would be used to destitute Zelaya, and according to Valenzuela was going to be taken to the US ambassador in Honduras for his comments. Valenzuela also said he knew who forged the president’s signature on Zelaya’s ‘letter of resignation’. […]
Unfortunately, Valenzuela is unable to elaborate as, shortly before the recorded interview was broadcast, he was shot.John Perry, London Review of Books: http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2010/07/27/john-perry/after-the-coup/
And of course they’re back doing what they do best, killing anyone who raises their voice against despotism, including journalists:
Honduran journalist critical of police, wealthy ranchers, killed outside his home
By Associated Press, Published: May 12
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Two gunmen on a motorcycle shot and killed a journalist outside his home in a city in northern Honduras, officials said Wednesday.
Francisco Medina, a 35-year-old television reporter, was ambushed Tuesday night in the city of Morazan, 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Honduras’ capital, said Santos Galvez, a member of Honduras’ College of Journalists press group.
Galvez called Medina’s slaying work-related and said he had received death threats.
In his reporting, Medina was critical of the Honduran national police and of private security firms contracted by ranchers in the area, where drug traffickers operate.
Medina became the 11th journalist to be killed in the past 18 months in Honduras. Two of these murders have been solved.
A recent report by an independent advocacy group documented a significant decline in press freedom in Honduras as well as in Mexico. Honduras is a violent country with 50 homicides per 100,000 people.
“Every day Honduran journalists are in greater danger of being killed,” said Galvez.
A committee of missing persons in Honduras said Medina was followed by two men on a motorcycle after his evening show. They shot him three times in the back and once in his arm as he was about to enter his home.
Relatives of Medina called an ambulance, which took him to a hospital. He later died.
Medina’s brother, Carlos Medina, said police officers refused to escort the journalist in the ambulance.
For the record:
I was not banned for death threats from the BFC. I was banned for exposing a “hero” moderator for portraying himself as a CIA operative who could move “hundreds of soldiers at a moments notice.”
I did put crosshairs on Pentas avatar and think it was hilarious and still do.
Sung to the theme of Rawhide:
Trolling, Trolling, Trolling,
Keep old Penta Trolling;
RAWHIDE!Need more talent on this. I am off key! LOL
And sorry to the moderators of PB that I did anything to encourage a response from Penta Gram.
Classic highlights from one of “she who speaks to herself” lines:
Among the other alleged plotters in Dubai were various businessmen who, it is said, were former members of the army death squad known as Battalion 316. The papers, handed over by a bartender who thought Valenzuela was part of the group, supposedly included the draft decree that would be used to destitute Zelaya, and according to Valenzuela was going to be taken to the US ambassador in Honduras for his comments. Valenzuela also said he knew who forged the president’s signature on Zelaya’s ‘letter of resignation’. […] Unfortunately, Valenzuela is unable to elaborate a
There you have it, the cold hard, uh, maybes, and well, a bartender thought, uh, but was unable to elaborate, that Fred said, Tony heard a guy who was drunk, who saw a muskrat, of course, all of this was according to an unknown person before the muskrat was run over by a car……
Yes, it was sketchy and hearsay. Because they shot the former minister before he could provide the evidence. Just as they shoot journalists who try to find out the truth. That’s what the “very helpful” death squads do.
I held off for 6 months on this, but you can’t leave it alone, can you?
@Jefe wrote:For the record:
I was not banned for death threats from the BFC. I was banned for exposing a “hero” moderator for portraying himself as a CIA operative who could move “hundreds of soldiers at a moments notice.”
I did put crosshairs on Pentas avatar and think it was hilarious and still do.
Had you forgotten that you threatened to string me up with razor wire too? Odd that the moderators didn’t see fit to penalize you for that.
I’m sure they’re delighted you’re still able to entrance them all over there with your wit and wisdom. But I’m told you haven’t yet managed to produce a new “hilarious” avatar.
I had tried reasonably hard to put your face avatar as the foreground and the old hammer and sycle you still cling to, but it took up too much bandwith. People dutifully offered to do it for me, but I moved on to a possible General Stroessner theme and am still thinking on an entire spectrum of options while occassionally viewing you post to yourself; trapped, like the criminals imprisoned by Jorel in the 2 dimensional hell in Superman, only to be freed by Lex Luthor or possibly Kurt in a drunken and irresponsible stupor.
Hopefully, there will be no kryptonite in the future or in Kurts drinks, and we can occassionally glimpse at you here, much as an ant colony or a hypnotized chicken on a South Carolina farm that draws amusement for a few seconds, then a yawn as people move along to the next episode of Swamp People or other more worthy pursuit.
So snuffle up to the edge of the cage, craving for a peanut or some form of attention; positive or otherwise and know that the True Son of the Golden Land declares you as an example to the children of Myanmar of why we shun the overstimulated housewife.
That is all. Move along children.
@Jefe wrote:
I had tried reasonably hard to put your face avatar as the foreground and the old hammer and sycle you still cling to, but it took up too much bandwith.
Shame. It would have further demonstrated your idiocy in being unable to distinguish between a communist, and a supporter of Soviet communism at that, from a social democrat. Still stuck in a Hooveresque/McCarthyite reds under the bed mindset, old man?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AylFqdxRMwE
Do you go in for the cross-dressing too? Perhaps you could use this as your avatar:
Hey Rob! Glad you like my cousins down there!
LOL, see kids, it would have shown my:
IN UH BILL A TEE 2 DIS TEENG WISH BEE TWEEN A COMMUNIST AND A SUPPORTER OF COMMUNISTS!
Don’t look at it in the eyes kids, lets go see the alligators now, they’re kind of cute and cuddly all things uh considered given the uh, current situation.
And that cross dressing thing? Uh, down here we have somehthing called cross burnings. Ya’ll grab yu’r comrades and come on down some time once you escape the fortress of solitude
But heres one for you that you could knit a nice Tie Dye Sweater out of after you take a nice healty hand full of PROZAC (TM) and cup of “Camo Meal”. Or is that Camel Meal?
I have to admit to the cross dressing. Just last week, I outgrew some Levis and gave them to my little brother and on the same week, raided my fathers dresser for some clean socks.
Now what exactly did you have in mind over in Londonistan or in the Fortress of Solitude?
And you’re right again about the girls lining up. My barber told me this one girl was out of my league, so I started bowling on Saturday nights instead of Thursdays nights (its a womans league on Saturday) and they all line up at 7PM sharp. I’d invite you to try it, but I don’t think anyone would like you to be honest with you. Don’t guess you can bowl in the 2 dimensional fortress anyways.
Well, thats all for now folks!
Even the NYT seems to have grasped (or at least be prepared to publish an article by someone who has) how foolish it was to go against the collective will of all the Americas and give cover to the government set up by the leaders of the coup.
In Honduras, a Mess Made in the U.S.
By DANA FRANK
Published: January 26, 2012Times Topic: Honduras
IT’S time to acknowledge the foreign policy disaster that American support for the Porfirio Lobo administration in Honduras has become. Ever since the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed Honduras’s democratically elected president, José Manuel Zelaya, the country has been descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss. That abyss is in good part the State Department’s making.The headlines have been full of horror stories about Honduras. According to the United Nations, it now has the world’s highest murder rate, and San Pedro Sula, its second city, is more dangerous than Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, a center for drug cartel violence.
Much of the press in the United States has attributed this violence solely to drug trafficking and gangs. But the coup was what threw open the doors to a huge increase in drug trafficking and violence, and it unleashed a continuing wave of state-sponsored repression.
The current government of President Lobo won power in a November 2009 election managed by the same figures who had initiated the coup. Most opposition candidates withdrew in protest, and all major international observers boycotted the election, except for the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute, which are financed by the United States.
President Obama quickly recognized Mr. Lobo’s victory, even when most of Latin America would not. Mr. Lobo’s government is, in fact, a child of the coup. It retains most of the military figures who perpetrated the coup, and no one has gone to jail for starting it.
This chain of events — a coup that the United States didn’t stop, a fraudulent election that it accepted — has now allowed corruption to mushroom. The judicial system hardly functions. Impunity reigns. At least 34 members of the opposition have disappeared or been killed, and more than 300 people have been killed by state security forces since the coup, according to the leading human rights organization Cofadeh. At least 13 journalists have been killed since Mr. Lobo took office, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
The police in Tegucigalpa, the capital, are believed to have killed the son of Julieta Castellanos, the rector of the country’s biggest university, along with a friend of his, on Oct. 22, 2011. Top police officials quickly admitted their suspects were police officers, but failed to immediately detain them. When prominent figures came forward to charge that the police are riddled with death squads and drug traffickers, the most famous accuser was a former police commissioner, Alfredo Landaverde. He was assassinated on Dec. 7. Only now has the government begun to make significant arrests of police officers.
State-sponsored repression continues. According to Cofadeh, at least 43 campesino activists participating in land struggles in the Aguán Valley have been killed in the past two and a half years at the hands of the police, the military and the private security army of Miguel Facussé. Mr. Facussé is mentioned in United States Embassy cables made public by WikiLeaks as the richest man in the country, a big supporter of the post-coup regime and owner of land used to transfer cocaine.
And yet, in early October, Mr. Obama praised Mr. Lobo at the White House for leadership in a “restoration of democratic practices.” Since the coup the United States has maintained and in some areas increased military and police financing for Honduras and has been enlarging its military bases there, according to an analysis by the Fellowship of Reconciliation. Congress, though, has finally begun to push back. Last May, 87 members signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling for a suspension of military and police aid to Honduras. Representative Howard L. Berman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to her on Nov. 28, asking whether the United States was arming a dangerous regime. And in December, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and others obtained conditions on a small portion of the 2012 police and military aid appropriated for Honduras.
Why has the State Department thrown itself behind the Lobo administration despite brutal evidence of the regime’s corruption? In part because it has caved in to the Cuban-American constituency of Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and her allies. They have been ferocious about Honduras as a first domino with which to push back against the line of center-left and leftist governments that have won elections in Latin America in the past 15 years. With its American air base, Honduras is also crucial to the United States’ military strategy in Latin America.
As Honduras plunges into a tragic abyss, it’s time to finally cut off all police and military aid. “Stop feeding the beast” is the way Ms. Castellanos, the academician whose son was killed, puts it. She, like other human rights advocates, insists that the Lobo government cannot reform itself.
The State Department is beginning to help address the situation behind the scenes. But Honduran human-rights activists, along with many of us in the United States who care about Honduras, do not believe that this administration can, or should, manage a cleanup of the very cesspool it helped to create by supporting a government that owes its power to a coup.
Instead, we need to respect proposals for alternative approaches that Honduran human-rights advocates and the opposition are beginning to formulate. These come from people who are still fighting against the coup and who continue to risk paying the price of being shot dead by state security forces.
They, not the State Department, have the right to lead their country forward.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.