28 de June de 2018 Press Release

The Historic debt of Honduras 9 years after the coup d’etat

 

In Honduras, the coup d’etat of June 28th, 2009 fractured the social fabric, debilitated democracy, strengthened corruption and instigated corruption in the country. The consequences were felt before and are lived today.

This point of inflection in Honduran history, that is evidenced by the organization of various diverse manifestations, where thousands of people were violently repressed. Thousands more were arbitrarily detained and hundreds of people were victims of torture and cruel treatment.Furthermore, its firmest detractors, were victims of threats, beatings, harassment, and criminalization. 

Three views on the Coup d’Etat

On this 9th anniversary of the coup d’etat, their words of its protagonists and of those who fight to reconstruct their country remember the aftermath of the coup and the threats that honduran society face today; and they reclaim the obligation of the state to investigate and sanction those responsible for grave violations of human rights and to stop corruption and impunity. 

 

Bertha Zúñiga – Consejo Cívico de Organización Populares e Indígenas de Honduras (COPINH)

“The coup d’etat of 2009 abruptly changed Honduras’ destiny with the increasing presence of security forces that attack people practicing resistance; with more territories being taken from people, and the intolerance of resistance from the people.”

With this fragile democracy the integrity and the rights of those who fight for a just and dignified life have been expose. 

Today, the coup has grand consequences that, in the taxing project, have made it difficult to think of a tranquil future, of justice, of popular participation, and freedom from corruption where we do not fear for our own existence. 

 

 

Joaquín Mejía – Equipo de Reflexión, Investigación y Comunicación (ERIC)

“In 2009, the hope that the construction of an authentic rule of law and of a democratic regime shattered with the coup d’etat

The continuance of this rupture of constitutional order is having a huge impact on the guarantee of human rights , whose situation is worsening and has led to extreme violence, the disappearances of people, arbitrary detentions, tortures, and cruel and inhumane treatments, as well as in a dangerous environment for those who defend human rights. 

Up until this moment, the grave violations of human rights committed during the coup d’etat have remained under impunity and add to the historic debt that the justice system has with the victims of the cases of the 184 disappeared people’s, the abuses committed by the military in the 1980’s, and the documented crimes in the context of the post-electoral crisis. Like the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights said, this situation will probably continue to deteriorate, unless “reforms are adopted to address the profound social and political polarization in the country”.

The Honduran state must investigate and sanction those responsible for the intellectual and material violations of human rights, pay reparations to the victims, and stop the vicious cycle of impunity that promotes the chronic repetition of the abuse of human rights. The international community cannot continue to consider what happens in Honduras as a “second class crisis” among other crises like Venezuela’s, Mexico’s, or Nicaragua’s”.

 

 

Guillermo López Lone – Coalición Contra la Impunidad

“The coup left us with a confronted country, its society broken (…) two Honduras that exist in the same territory. And that, sooner or later, the historic Honduras, the wounded Honduras, will rise up to democratically fix and reconstruct institutions. 

There is no doubt that the coup continues to hurt us. For the constant violations of human rights, for the cooptation of institutions, for the long list of defenders who have been assassinated; for the attack on freedom of expression, the assassinated journalists.

But they have not defeated us. Each day social discontent grows, and the influence of the opposition grows and strengthens with the youths that were born into a political life marked by constitutional rupture. The coup also robbed them of opportunities and hopes to prosper in their own country and even then, they have dedicated themselves to saving Honduras.”