Panama
The June 2009 military coup that ousted the democratically elected government of Honduras brought to power the military-backed regime of President Pepe Lobo that favours the interests of the powerful economic sectors of Honduras ... and the interests of global companies and investors, while using repression against the Honduran people's pro-democracy movement and against members of the newly formed LIBRE political party.
Human rights advocates tell World Bank (WB) auditors that the WB is obligated to respect the rights of the "Panama" campesino community in Honduras, who were shot at while protesting the illegal and violent land usurpations that they are suffering at the hands of the Dinant Corporation, a WB loan recipient.
Please write to the President of the World Bank (with copies to your own elected politicians) to express your demand that the World Bank suspend its $30 million loan to the Dinant Corporation of Honduras, an African palm oil corporation that belongs to Miguel Facusse, one of Honduras' wealthiest persons and largest landowners, whose security forces, in collaboration with State security forces, are believed to be responsible for the murder of over 80 campesino land rights activists and their supporters in the Aguan region of northern Honduras.
On July 2, 2012, neighbors from the town of Panama found evidence that campesino Gregorio Chavez Arranda was kidnapped from his fields and taken by Dinant palm oil company private security forces onto the Panama Farm.
A delegation of academics, human rights and labor activists, visited the community of Ahuás in the Department of Gracias a Dios in a region known as La Moskitia. On May 11, 2012 four helicopters conducted an apparent drug interdiction near the town of Ahuas. At least one of the helicopters opened fire on a passenger boat killing two pregnant women, a 14-year-old boy and a 21-year-old man, while seriously injuring at least four more. The purpose of the visit was to inquire into this tragedy.
The Summits of the Americas began in 1994 as forums to promote free trade. In 2009 the Summit's focus shifted to demands for the inclusion of Cuba in regional political bodies and the end of the U.S. economic embargo, a debate which continued in this month's Sixth Summit in Cartagena.
"Militarization in Central America is less about controlling crime than ensuring access to natural resources" (Annie Bird)
As a Mexico Style "Drug War" is launched in Central America, US and US Allied Security Forces are increasing participating in police actions in Central America. On February 7, Oliver Garza, a high level State Department Security Advisor took up residence in the US embassy in Honduras. Garza comes to Honduras from the State Department agency most directly in charge of US security operations in Colombia and Mexico, and in 2002 his name was associated with a scandal in which 3,000 AK-47's were shipped from the Nicaraguan National Police to Colombian AUC paramilitaries.
The US is advancing a regional security strategy which apparently is oriented toward the militarization of Central America and the participation of private security contractors in policing, a strategy also being promoted for Central America by the IDB (Inter American Development Bank) and former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe.
(A billboard in Cuba [see http://www.flickr.com/photos/peterv/578993827/] reads, "What barbarians. They have liberated a terrorist". The billboard pre-dates Posada's April 2011 acquittal, and is more likely in reference to a 2004 pardon he received for the attempted assassination of Fidel Castro. The pardon was granted by former Panamanian president, Mireya Moscoso under pressure from the United States.)
