Jan 5 2010 Susan Fitzpatrick-Behrens On February 25, 2009, some 18,000 Guatemalans, mostly survivors or relatives of victims of the state-sponsored terror of the 1970s and 1980s, gathered in Guatemala City’s Plaza of the Constitution, to commemorate the “Day of Dignity for the Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict.” There, they heard President Alvaro Colom publicly accept the UN report that documented the terror. The report of the UN Commission for Historical Clarification (CEH), presented a decade earlier, engaged detailed testimony to analyze the historical causes for the terror that killed 200,000 people and disappeared 50,000 more. It defined the violence as a genocide perpetrated against the country’s Maya majority, and it attributed 95%...
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COFADEH (Committee of the Families of the Disappeared and Detained of Honduras) reports … (Translated by www.quixote.org) This week’s kidnapping, disappearance, torture and interrogation of journalist Cesar Omar Silva by a street patrol with military training confirms the existence of a pattern of systematic violations of human rights committed by the same structure that violated the constitutional order on June 28, 2009. This pattern is the responsibility of the “hard hand” of the coup regime that imposes state violence on a citizenry that resists through popular, non violent insurrection.
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On October 31, a delegation of U.S., European and Latin American citizens traveled to Colombia as part of an Ethical Commission, invited by the Movement of Victims of State Crimes in Colombia. As part of their visit, the delegation traveled to Palanquero Air Base in Puerto Salgar (Cundinamarca) to protest a military agreement signed the previous day between the governments of Colombia and the United States. In the midst of soldiers and military intelligence agents from the base, commission members called for an end to the presence of all U.S. military personnel-both soldiers and contractors-on Colombian territory.
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3 December 2009 At the end of a 10-day visit to Honduras during the country’s presidential elections, Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation to ensure all those responsible for human rights abuses are brought to justice and the victims given reparations. “The crisis in Honduras does not end with the election results, the authorities cannot return to business as usual without ensuring human rights safeguards,” said Javier Zúñiga, head of the Amnesty International delegation in Honduras.
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Center for Economic Policy Research Elections conducted in a climate of fear, human rights violations, and international non-recognition won’t resolve the political crisis in Honduras, said Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Only a few governments that the U.S. State Department can heavily influence will recognize these elections,” said Weisbrot. “The rest of the world recognizes that you cannot carry out free or fair elections under a dictatorship that has overthrown the elected President by force and used violence, repression, and media censorship against political opponents for the entire campaign period leading up the vote, including election day.”
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By Scott Wright Once again, thousands of people from all walks of life converged on the School of the Americas/WHINSEC to call for the closing of the U.S. military’s school to train Latin America’s armies. This year, too, marked the 20th anniversary of the assassination of the six Jesuit priests from El Salvador, their housekeeper and her daughter, all killed by graduates of the School of the Americas. This year also marks the first year of the protest under the new administration of President Barack Obama. If the last six months are any indication of an Obama foreign policy for Latin America, the signs are not very encouraging. It has been nearly five months...
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The Committee of Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH) expresses its concern to the national and international community regarding the deterioration of the human rights situation in Honduras which is deepening each day. A new wave of violence includes death threats, political persecution, illegal detentions, tortures and the militarization of sectors of principal cities. Of particular concern is the incursion of vehicles without license plates, darkened windows, driven by heavily armed agents with hooded faces into neighborhoods identified as allied with the Resistance against the coup and self declared as “free of political propaganda.” These actions follow the creation of lists profiling leaders of the resistance movement by order of the military and police.
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Quixote Center Delegation to Honduras August 18-25, 2009 We are the sixth international human rights delegation that has come to Honduras since the coup d’etat of June 28, 2009. We have come from Panama and the United States as people of faith – Catholic Christians – to accompany the pain of the Honduran people and to understand more clearly the reality they are living. We represent the Justice Team of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns and Pax Christi International. We have been in Honduras from August 18-25, visiting Tegucigalpa, Progreso, San Pedro Sula, Santa Rosa de Copan and Santa Barbara. What we have seen and...
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