Honduras

 

BREAKING NEWS

All out war on Bajo Aguán peasants

Wave of murders, torture and disappearances continues in Honduras

            

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).

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. 

 

 

From Managua, Giorgio Trucchi

Rel-UITA

May 18, 2011

 

 

 

 

 Photo: Giorgio Trucchi

     

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