October 2, 2006

HONDURAS: government official threats against Garifuna people

Over the past few years, Rights Action has supported the efforts of the
Garifuna people (in Honduras) in defense of their development, environment
and territories. We have been reporting on the systemic repression
(including killings) they have suffered.

Below is a translation of a communique from the Garifuna community of San
Juan, concerning more (and more) threats to community leaders and the
community's struggle for their ancestral lands.

Please re-distribute this info to your own friends, networks and
organizations. If you want on-off this elist: info@rightsaction.org. WHAT
TO DO: see below.

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HONDURAN GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE THREATENS SAN JUAN COMMUNITY PRESIDENT

The Patronato of the community of San Juan Tela (Durugubuty) and the
community Lands Defense Committee denounce the intervention of Vice Minister
of Culture Salvador Suazo the evening of Wednesday the 13th, when he arrived
in our community, asking to meet with Jessica García, President of the
Patronato and Wilfredo Guerrero of the Lands Defense Committee.

The objective of the visit was to warn us of the supposed danger to the
community leaders who are at the forefront of our community’s struggle for
our territory.

Vice Minister Suazo arrived in the evening at the house of Jessica García,
where the President was speaking with Yolanda Lambert, another member of the
community Patronato. Suazo pointed out that only a few days before he had
spoken with members of the Rosenthal family, who had expressed the need to
come to an agreement in private with members of the Patronato, so that the
community cease to reclaim Nuevo San Juan, part of the community’s ancestral
lands being claimed by powerful businessman and politician Jaime Rosenthal.

He also stated that the community’s struggle is getting in the way of the
development of a tourism mega-proyecto in the region.

When the two Patronato representatives explained that they could not reach
an agreement without the participation of the entire community, Suazo
responded that if he were a politician and had plans to carry out a
mega-project, the easy solution would be to eliminate one or two key
opponents in order to complete the project without obstacles. Furthermore,
he wondered aloud – if there are already two dead, how many more will there
be?

The threats uttered by Suazo, a governmental representative in the current
administration, have created great unease and tension in the community. Two
weeks before the current government was even inaugurated, the community was
already under pressure from the Rosenthal family attempting to take over the
sector known as Nuevo San Juan, home to some 300 families, around 1500 San
Juan community members. The community Patronato President has formally
denounced Vice Minister Suazo’s visit and threats to the local authorities.

It confuses us that under the so-called Government of Citizens’ Power, the
situation begins to replicate that of the massacre of 1937. Over the past
few months, we have lived through the February 26 murder of community youth
Epson Andrés Castillo and Yino Eligio López by agents of the armed forces
assigned to protect the planned construction site of the Los Micos Beach &
Golf Resort, numerous threats to our Patronato president Jessica García, and
the recent murder of young Mirna Isabel Santos.

These grave violations caused the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR) to order protective measures both for our community leaders and for
our community’s ancestral lands; however, national and local government
authorities have ignored these measures. Despite several meetings with the
corresponding government bodies – Ministries and Secretariats of the
Interior and Justice, Security, Finances, Foreign Relations, Supreme Court
of Justice, among others – measures have still not been taken to defend the
lives and safety of those threatened nor to halt the negative actions of the
Municipality of Tela affecting our territory.

It is lamentable that Vice Minister Suazo, considered a prestigious Garifuna
intellectual by many, has allowed himself to become a spokesperson for the
most reactionary wing of the Liberal Party instead of defending the
interests of his People. But it is not the first time that he has
represented the interests of the Honduran oligarchy. The land titling
process carried out by his NGO CEDEC in the communities of Iriona in the
1990s served to exclude the functional habitat of the communities from the
community land titles, ignoring the fact that the communities’ ancestral
lands extend southward up to the Sico river, limits previously identified in
ejidal titles. We understand that there exist Afro-decendant NGOs who
struggle for inclusion at the expense of the Garifuna people’s rights.

We alert national and international public opinion to the campaign that
exists against the rights of our community and our leaders and to the
complicity of Vice Minister Suazo in the economic interests that threaten
the lives of those of us who defend the territorial rights of the Garifuna
people.

San Juan Tela, September 18, 2006.

Jessica García, San Juan community Patronato President
Wilfredo Guerrero, San Juan community Lands Defense Committee

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WHAT TO DO:

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* Get involved in education and activism work in your home community
concerning the negative impacts of North American economic and military
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rights of local populations in Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Chiapas, El
Salvador;
* Consider coming to these counties on an educational-activist delegation;
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