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Honduras: News & Updates
Honduras did not experience civil war in the 1980s, but its geography (bordering El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua) made it a key location for US military operations: training Salvadoran soldiers, a base for Nicaraguan contras, military exercises for US troops. The notorious Honduran death squad Battalion 316 was created, funded and trained by the US. The state-sponsored terror resulted in the forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings of approximately 200 people during the 1980s. Many more were abducted and tortured. The 2009 military coup d’etat spawned a resurgence of state repression against the civilian population that continues today.
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News Article
August 20, 2019
The student movement is diverse, accommodating a range of ideologies and tactics. This year it has intensified as wider movements against President Hernández’s attempts to privatize the health and education sectors have grown. Massive street protests have been led by La Plataforma para la Defensa de la Salud y Educación (Platform for the Defense of Health and Education), made up of various unions with more than seventy thousand combined members. Despite attacks by the staunchly pro-regime media, La Plataforma achieved a huge victory in June when Hernández backed down and repealed the law. It was a watershed moment of popular power against a regime that needed to deploy the military, when the police alone could not repress the movement.
RRN Letter
August 14, 2019
recent death threats to COPINH finance coordinator Rosalina Domínguez, her family, and other members of the indigenous Lenca community at Río Blanco in Intíbuca Department. Seven individuals, one of whom was armed, intercepted Domínguez’s path and called her “a witch like Berta,” i.e., Berta Cáceres, the indigenous and environmental defender who was assassinated in 2016. This reference implied intention to cause physical harm to Rosalina Domínguez.
News Article
August 12, 2019
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Monday broadened his assault on the nation’s immigration system, issuing a new rule targeting legal immigrants who want to remain in the United States but whose lack of financial resources is judged likely to make them a burden on taxpayers.
News Article
August 10, 2019
On Friday, August 9, 2019, after more than 18 months of illegal and very abusive detention by the U.S. and Canadian-backed Honduran regime, political prisoners Edwin Espinal and Raul Martínez were let out of a maximum security military prison. They are out on bail pending their “trial” on trumped up charges filed by the regime.
News Article
August 9, 2019
Two days after the November 2016 elections that brought him to office, president-elect Donald Trump had a 90-minute meeting with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House. “We discussed a lot of different situations, some wonderful, some difficulties,” Trump told the media afterward. He later revealed that the major “difficulty” discussed was the North Korean nuclear threat.
News Article
August 8, 2019
BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Four LGBT+ people are murdered every day in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to “alarming” new research released on Thursday by a regional network of gay rights groups.
At least 1,300 LGBT+ people have been murdered in the region in the past five years, with Colombia, Mexico and Honduras accounting for nearly 90 percent of all deaths, according to data collected by the network of 10 groups.
News Article
August 7, 2019
Riot police have clashed with protesters in Honduras after thousands of people took to the streets of the capital on Tuesday to urge President Juan Orlando Hernández to step down, days after he was forced to deny taking money from drug gangs to secure his election in 2013.
The premises of at least three businesses in the city were set on fire after protests turned violent, officials said, and riot police clashed with demonstrators while attempting to disperse the crowd with teargas and water cannons.
News Article
August 7, 2019
At least five union activists were murdered in Guatemala in 2018, and union leaders and members in Guatemala and Honduras suffered dozens of incidents over the past year for standing up for worker rights, including restriction of union rights, intimidation, harassment, illegal detention, death threats and attempted murder, according to two new reports.
News Article
August 3, 2019
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández was identified on August 2 as a co-conspirator in a drug trafficking and money laundering case against his brother, according to document filed in U.S. district court. Prosecutors say $1.5 million in drug proceeds was used to help elect him in 2013. Hernández responds saying he is a foe of traffickers who are out for revenge against him.
News Article
July 30, 2019
The ACLU said that more than 900 parents and children, including babies, have been separated by U.S. border authorities since U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw, a George W. Bush appointee in San Diego, ordered the government to reunite more than 2,700 children with their parents more than a year ago. "It is shocking that the Trump administration continues to take babies from their parents," said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "The administration must not be allowed to circumvent the court order over infractions like minor traffic violations."