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While U.S.
diplomacy steps up pressure to normalize Honduras’ situation in the
international community and bring the country back into the OAS, organized
peasants in Bajo Aguán are being gunned downed by paramilitary groups who act
with absolute impunity and with the complicit silence of the authorities of a
failed state.
On the morning
of May 18, Sixto Ramos,
a member of the Aguán Peasant Movement (MCA) company Nueva Suyapa, was
killed. Sixto was 45 years old.
According to
the initial reconstruction of the crime, Ramos was driving to work in his
car when he was cut off by another car driven by armed strangers who shot and
killed him.
“Repression
against people who, like us, are supporting the struggle for access to land in
Bajo Aguán continues,”
José
Santos Cruz,
MCA member told SIREL. Cruz was also one of the
participants of the March 2011 International Mission that
investigated the human rights situation in Bajo Aguán.
“Sixto Ramos
was a member of the Nueva Suyapa company and he had been a steadfast supporter
of MCA’s struggle. We believe that this new murder is directly linked to
the conflict our organization has with the palm producers and large landowners
of the area,” Cruz said.
War bulletin
Last week,
José Paulino Lemus Cruz and Henry Roney Díaz were brutally murdered.
These two peasants were respectively members of MCA and the Authentic
Movement for the Rights of Aguán Peasants (MARCA).
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With Sixto Ramos’
violent death, a total of 28 members of peasant organizations have been murdered
in the last 15 months. Despite this violence, there is increasing international
pressure to readmit Honduras into the OAS. |
On May 10,
Alejandro Gómez, of MARCA’s La Trinidad plantation, was
kidnapped by private guards hired by local landowners. He was only set free
after being interrogated and savagely tortured for almost three days. He has
since gone into hiding for fear of being killed.
On May 15,
38-year-old peasant
Francisco Pascual López
went missing. The last people who saw him reported they heard shots, rushed to
where they had just left him and found that Francisco Pascual had
disappeared.
With Sixto
Ramos’ violent death, a total of 28 members of peasant organizations have
been murdered in the last 15 months. Despite this violence, there is increasing
international pressure to readmit Honduras into the OAS.
“They couldn’t
defeat us with the massive deployment of army and police forces, so now they’re
attacking us selectively. They want to destroy us by killing us off one by one.
MCA will meet to determine what actions need to be taken, because just
denouncing these crimes is proving not to be enough.”
“The government
is projecting a false image of Honduras. The country is not at peace and
people are still dying. It would be outrageous if all these deaths and human
rights abuses were overlooked.”
“Honduras
cannot be readmitted into the OAS,”
Cruz concluded.
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