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News Release Archive | Honduras | Accuracy.Org

Another journalist killed in Honduras, the “deadliest place in the world to do journalism”

March 15, 2012

Felix Molina

CNN reported Wednesday that: “Ninety-four members of Congress signed a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Monday, proposing a cutoff to all military and police aid until the issue of human rights violations in Honduras are addressed.”

The latest journalist to be killed was 54-year-old Fausto Elio Hernández Arteaga of Radio Alegre in the Aguan Valley region. He was found Sunday hacked to death with 18 machete wounds, none of his personal belongings were stolen. He is the 19th journalist to be killed since Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo took power in the aftermath of a 2009 military coup. The UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, Frank La Rue, recently declared Honduras the as “per capita, the deadliest place in the world to do journalism.”

FELIX MOLINA, lvargas at sjc-cjs.org
Molina is host and producer of the nightly news and analysis program for Radio Globo, a chain of 17 stations across Honduras. Radio Globo has been shut down by the military on two occasions since the 2009 coup, and Molina says he receives regular death threats by way of text message. He is currently in Ottawa to denounce the Canadian government’s recent signing of a free-trade agreement with the Lobo regime.

Regarding the killing of Fausto Elio Hernández Arteaga, Molina says: “Another journalist killed in a post-coup situation where none of the previous 18 assassinations have been investigated, much less solved. The responsibility for that impunity lies with the regime that took power by force. It’s also significant that this newest killing took place in the Aguán Valley, the region of the country that has seen the highest degree of political violence since the coup. In the two years since Lobo took power, more than 50 landless farmers have been killed in this one valley, simply for demanding their right to land.”

JESSE FREESTON, jfreeston at gmail.com
Freeston is a video-journalist and filmmaker. He released a 25-minute documentary on journalism in Honduras for The Real News Network in late 2011. He is currently finishing a feature documentary, Resistencia, on the land conflict in the Aguán Valley, where Fausto Elio Hernández Arteaga was killed. (see trailer at www.resistenciathefilm.com)

Freeston says: “We still don’t have the details on the most recent death, but the last journalist that was killed in the Aguán, Nahúm Palacios, was shot dead just one week after doing a TV report sympathetic to the landless farmer movement in the valley. Most international coverage of the journalist deaths neglects to mention that at least 17 of the 19 murdered journalists had been critical of the coup regime, and zero of the 19 worked for any of Honduras’ major media conglomerates that backed the coup (conglomerates that are, by far, the largest employers of journalists). In other words, what we’re seeing is a cleansing of journalists critical of what many Hondurans call the ‘ongoing coup’.”

Tagged With: Felix Monlina, Honduras, Jesse Freeston, Latin America,

Honduras Fire: Government Complicity?

February 15, 2012

ADRIENNE PINE, pine at american.edu
Pine is an assistant professor at American University who has been researching violence in Honduras for 15 years. She is the author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras.

She said today: “The fire that killed over 300 prisoners early Wednesday morning in the Honduran city of Comayagua occurs in a context of police militarization which has been posited by the post-coup government and U.S. State Department as a solution to ‘security’ problems in Honduras, despite strong opposition from Honduran citizens. Honduras is currently the most dangerous country in the world, with a murder rate of 82 per 100,000 residents, a position to which it plunged following the unresolved 2009 military coup. Prisoners trapped by this morning’s fire were killed when firefighters were unable to rescue them, although the fire occurred close to the U.S. military base Soto Cano, which houses a large, fully-equipped firefighting squad.”

OSCAR ESTRADA, oscarlestrada at gmail.com
Estrada is a Honduran journalist, lawyer, and documentary filmmaker. His film “El Porvenir” traces the murder of 69 gang members in a prison in the city of Ceiba. He said today: “Today’s prison fire also appears to share many characteristics with the Honduran prison fires of 2003 and 2004, which killed 69 and 104 prisoners, respectively. In previous fires, police complicity was proven to be a primary cause of prisoners’ death; prisoners interviewed today have stated that rather than opening the gates, police shot into them. Numerous Honduran media have also reported that police and military have fired bullets and tear gas into a crowd of grieving family members outside the Comayagua prison. Overcrowding, a problem President Lobo resolved to fix in 2004 as president of Congress following the two fires, was also a factor: 900 prisoners were housed in the prison, which had a capacity of 400. This fire can be seen as a reinvigorated post-coup effort at social cleansing; the killing off the most vulnerable members of society in the context of a weak, undemocratic state with an increasingly powerful and unchecked military.”

Tagged With: Adrienne Pine, Honduras, Latin America, Oscar Estrada,

Ousted Honduran President to Return Tomorrow

May 27, 2011

Ousted President Manuel Zelaya is widely reported to be returning to Honduras Saturday.

DANA FRANK, danafrank at ucsc.edu
Frank is professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the author of Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America, which focuses on Honduras. She said today: “President Zelaya’s return offers a brief glimmer of hope, but the ongoing repression by current President Porfirio Lobo’s military regime — now even worse than immediately after the coup — remains undiminished, as state security forces now routinely use tear gas canisters as lethal weapons, and teachers, trade unionists and campesinos in the opposition are still being assassinated with complete impunity. Lobo and Secretary of State Clinton insist that democracy has been restored to Honduras. But the reality on the ground remains terrifying, which is why over 75 Congress members are calling for a suspension of U.S. military and police aid to Honduras.” Frank just wrote a piece titled “Ousted president’s return to Honduras doesn’t mean repression is over.”

ADRIENNE PINE, [in Houduras] pine at american.edu
Pine is assistant professor of anthropology at American University specializing in Latin America. She is the author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras and has been writing about Honduras and other issues at: quotha.net.

JESSE FREESTON, [in Houduras] jesse at therealnews.com
Freeston is a reporter for The Real News who has produced several segments on Honduras since the June 2009 coup. He is currently in Honduras. He said yesterday: “On Saturday, the last person ever elected to lead the Honduran people will step back on Honduran soil. In the 23 months since Mel Zelaya was overthrown, the country has witnessed dozens of farmers killed for land, teachers being teargassed, beaten, and imprisoned for demanding their stolen pensions back, LGBT community suffering dozens of hate killings, 11 of the country’s most critical journalists assassinated, and the perpetrators of the coup rewarded with key positions in the current regime. And to top off the tragic nature of Zelaya’s arrival, he signed an agreement to both recognize the regime and support Honduras’ return to the OAS in return for the regime’s permission for him to come home.” See The Real News’ pieces on the Honduran coup and its aftermath here.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 421-6858; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Tagged With: Coup, Honduras, Real News, Zelaya,

Repression in Honduras “Worse than After Coup”

May 9, 2011

Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras reports a dramatic increase in the ongoing violent repression of human rights in Honduras. This includes government attacks against protests at a “Honduras is Open for Business” conference this weekend, which attracted Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico, among others.

DANA FRANK, dlfrank at ucsc.edu
Frank is a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz specializing in Honduras. She recently wrote a piece for the Nation titled “Open Season on Teachers in Honduras,” which states: “In Honduras, it’s come to this: when 90 percent of the city’s 68,000 public schoolteachers went out on strike in March to protest the privatization of the entire public school system, the government tear-gassed their demonstrations for almost three solid weeks, then suspended 305 teachers for two to six months as punishment for demonstrating, and then, when negotiations broke down, threatened to suspend another 5,000 public schoolteachers. The level of repression in Honduras, after a nationwide wave of attacks on the opposition in March and early April, now exceeds that of the weeks immediately following the June 28, 2009 military coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya, as current President Porfirio ‘Pepe’ Lobo Sosa wages war on entire swaths of the Honduran population.”

Frank’s books include Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America.

See a pair of recent reports from The Real News by Jesse Freeston:

“Special Report: Honduran Teachers Get Shock Treatment: Post-coup regime in Honduras carrying out unprecedented assault on the most organized sector of the resistance, the teachers”

“Report from Land Occupations in Post-Coup Honduras: Poor farmers are taking land from agribusiness that supported the 2009 military coup — and paying with their lives”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Filed Under: Tagged With: Honduras,