Honduras coup anniversiary

5 years after the coup in Honduras

Today, June 28, 2014, on the 5th anniversary of the military coup d’état in Honduras that was tacitly supported by our own government, U.S.–El Salvador Sister Cities, SHARE El Salvador, and CISPES reaffirm our solidarity with the Honduran people and pay tribute to the martyrs of the Honduran resistance movement who have offered their lives to defend theright to a free and sovereign country with justice for all.

 

Since the military coup in 2009, executed by forces trained in the United States, the Honduran people have suffered continuous violations of human rights, including assassinations and forced disappearances, State repression, and theft of public funds in an environment of total impunity that has resulted in mass migration from the country. Today we express our support for the right of the Honduran people to organize and struggle against oppression and abuse, and we stand in solidarity with them to forcefully denounce these continued violations of their human rights.

Our organizations, based in the United States and in solidarity with the Salvadoran people, have worked in El Salvador since the armed conflict here in the 1980s. We remember the destructive role that our government played, which contributed to a similar context of violence, impunity, and human rights violations. Our Salvadoran partners see the similarity as well, and today we stand together with them in front of the Honduran Embassy in El Salvador representing our members in the United States and in El Salvador.

We share the many concerns of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, among them the numerous assassinations of journalists that have not been adequately investigated and targeted repression against human rights defenders, including members of the prominent Honduran human rights organization COFADEH, who have reported being the subject of surveillance and attacks in recent weeks. Since November 2009, the IACHR has called on the Honduran government to protect the members of COFADEH, but Honduran authorities have continuously failed to put effective measures in place.

We condemn the murders of members of the FNRP / LIBRE Party, the social movement and Honduran society in general, as well as the troubling political disenfranchisement of democratically elected officials. We especially condemn the targeted violence against peasant organizations in the Aguan Valley of Colon, who have mourned the assassinations of more than 90 members in the past four years.

We demand that the fraudulently elected Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez act responsibly in his position of authority and protect the rights of all Hondurans, especially children and those defenders of human rights who are the most vulnerable and visible targets of violence.

As US citizens and residents, we are indignant at the actions of our government that support this horrifying situation in Honduras. A significant body of evidence shows that much of the violence is carried out by mercenary groups in coordination with the Honduran military and police, who receive training and millions of dollars in aid from the US government. We condemn a US foreign policy that supports anti-people and anti-environment agendas in Central America, imposed with violence and corruption in coordination with foreign corporations, local oligarchies and, in the case of Honduras, a de facto dictatorship. We demand that the US governmentimmediately cease all military and police funding for the Hernandez regime. As 108 members of the US Congress recently demanded in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, the US government “must take a consistent and public stance supporting those threatened with human rights abuses, and strongly encourage the investigation and prosecution of those perpetuating crime, including state agents.”

 

Today, we stand together, people of El Salvador, the United States and Honduras to tell the Honduran government to respect its population’s human rights and the US government to cease all funding and support for the current Honduran regime.

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