IRTF News

Former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who governed from 2014 to January this year, was arrested at his home in Tegucigalpa in February. He is accused of having been involved in a drug-trafficking ring which included his younger brother Tony Hernández, who last year was sentenced in the US to life in prison. Security Minister Ramón Sabillón said that "the extradition will happen next week (....) sometime between Wednesday and Friday".

Almost 1.5 million votes that were cast in Colombia’s congressional elections were omitted from the announced results, according to election observers. Vega has blamed the discrepancy on a design flaw in the senate vote form and irregularities committed by jurors. Alejandro Barrios, the director of the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE), disputed Vega’s explanations. "That does not explain why we are talking about a difference of around 6% or 7% between what was announced and actually counted, because in other electoral processes we talk about a 0.5% difference".

A three-day weekend of extreme gang violence in El Salvador, March 25 to March 27, ended with 87 people dead. The government of President Nayib Bukele responded by declaring a state of emergency on March 27, suspending various civil liberties for 30 days and expanding the armed forces’ enforcement powers. Civil liberties suspended by the emergency declaration include freedom of association, the right to legal counsel in case of detention and the right to remain silent if arrested. The emergency declaration allows the government to arrest citizens for 15 days without charging them, listen to private communications without a warrant and detain anyone suspected of belonging to a gang. The government also announced new restrictions in prisons that included limiting meals to two per day, locking inmates in their cells 24/7 and removing sleeping mats as a type of collective punishment.

The United Nations’s human rights body has urged Colombia to prosecute those responsible for a military raid that resulted in the deaths of 11 people, including four civilians that community members say were passed off as fighters. The Colombian military said last month that it had carried out an operation against Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents involved in drug trafficking. But human rights groups have reported that there were four civilians among the dead. The UN urged authorities to protect witnesses and journalists that have been threatened in recent days over their reports.

Some National Civilian Police commanders in El Salvador have been pressuring their officers to meet daily arrest quotas as part of the government’s crackdown on street gangs that have yielded more than 10,000 arrests, a police union said Tuesday. On March 26, authorities reported 62 killings across El Salvador that they attributed to the country’s powerful street gangs. President Nayib Bukele requested and received from congress a state of emergency that allows police to make arrests without explaining the reason, not provide access to a lawyer and hold suspects for 15 days without charge. The congress has since passed additional measures, including increasing prison sentences.

As part of the Unearthing the Real Root Causes of Mass Migration from Central America Delegation organized by solidarity organizations this spring, U.S. Congresspeople Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Cori Bush (MO-01), and Jamaal Bowman (NY-16) visited the Fraternal Black Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH). OFRANEH and the three members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus made connections about the impacts of the war on drugs, militarization, and state violence in Black communities in Honduras and in U.S. cities alike. Additionally, a delegation from the Miskitu people, who were victims of the May 2012 U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) killings in Ahuas, joined OFRANEH in addressing the delegation.

Countries in Latin America came under particularly harsh criticism in the U.S. State Department’s annual report on human rights, with allies such as Mexico and adversaries including Nicaragua facing similar opprobrium. The report zeroed in on many of the widely denounced human rights abuses, including the killing of journalists, discrimination against LGBTQ people, targeted murders of women, and widespread violence fueled by drug traffickers, but largely ignored by the government of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The annual reports examine actions from the previous year.