A Congresswoman is pushing the State Department to answer questions about US support for high-ranking Honduran officials “linked to human rights abuses,” after the March 3 assassination of Berta Cáceres.
Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) this week asked Secretary of State John Kerry to respond to the pointed allegations, and to determine whether US aid to Honduras complies with the Leahy Law—a statute that, on paper, disqualifies repressive security forces from receiving assistance from Washington.
“The level of intimidation and violence, including murder, perpetrated on peaceful Honduran activists and the Honduran people requires a full review of US assistance to the government of President Juan Orlando Hernandez,” McCollum said in a letter to Kerry.
Last year, President Obama asked Congress for $163 million “to promote prosperity, security, and good governance in Honduras.”
Cáceres was best known around the world for winning the Goldman Environmental Prize. She was killed in her bedroom late at night by gunmen. It was witnessed by a Mexican journalist and activist named Gustavo Castro Soto, who, according to his supporters, is being detained incommunicado by the Honduran government.
Cáceres’ daughter on Thursday raised questions about the state’s involvement in her mother’s death, accusing authorities of making pronouncements about the killing without conducting any kind of inquiry whatsoever.
“Immediately after we heard that our mother was killed we went to the crime scene, and her body was still there,” Olivia Marcela Zuñiga told teleSUR. “Even before authorities analyzed the scene, Security Minister Julian Pacheco was already declaring publicly that they believed it was a crime of passion.”
In her March 8. letter, Rep. McCollum asked about US aid to specific high-ranking army and national police officials and former officials, entire law enforcement units, and unspecified members of the armed forces.
Names referenced by the lawmaker included Hector Ivan Mejia and Col. German Alfaro. The former is currently the General Commissioner of the National Police. The latter is presently the Honduran Army’s Director of the Department of Organization, Operations and Training.
McCollum also asked Kerry about the US relationship with Elder Madrid Guerra, the former Chief of Staff for the National Police who is now “an attache for the police with a foreign government, reportedly the United States.”
The allegations were initially sent to McCollum in February by academics and civil society observers.
“I have enclosed correspondence from prominent a group [sic] of US based human rights activists that documents human rights abuses in Honduras by individuals, along with specific details of very disturbing incidents,” McCollum noted.
Non-governmental organizations have long been decrying the state of civil society in Hondruas since 2009, after the country’s elected populist president, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown in a coup. According to Human Rights Watch, “rampant crime and impunity for human rights abuses remain the norm in Honduras.” Amnesty International currently notes that all manners of Honduran activists are “targeted with violence and intimidation by state and criminal actors in retaliation for their work.”
A number of McCollum’s fellow Democrats have also hit out at the Honduran government, including Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus chairs, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Raul Grijalva (R-Ariz.).
“Abuses by the armed forces and police, and by private enterprises that subvert the rule of law, have been tolerated and even encouraged,” Leahy said on Saturday, in a statement paying tribute to Cáceres. Grijalva and Ellison last August sent a letter to Kerry, calling on him to suspend aid to the Honduran government by citing the Leahy Law. It was signed by nineteen of their colleagues.
Honduras’ junta regime was legitimized, in part, by President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Instead of supporting the restoration of the populist Zelaya, the Obama administration backed the staging of elections under military rule.
In December 2014, Cáceres hit out Clinton for her role in the coup government’s consolidation of power.
“We warned that this would be very dangerous,” Cáceres said, specifically pointing to Clinton boasting of her approach to Hondruas, in her 2014 book, Hard Choices. “The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud.”
Clinton’s campaign responded to articles written by The Nation’s Greg Grandin about her Honduras policy, claiming that the link between it and Cáceres’ execution was “simply nonsense.”
“Hillary Clinton engaged in active diplomacy that resolved a constitutional crisis and paved the way for legitimate democratic elections,” a spokesperson told Grandin. Grandin noted, however, that Clinton appears to be quietly downplaying her role in the affair.
“Interestingly, Hillary Clinton removed the most damning sentences regarding her role in legitimating the Honduran coup from the paperback edition of Hard Choices,” Grandin noted.
“According to Belén Fernández, Clinton airbrushed out of her account exactly the passage Cáceres highlights for criticism: ‘We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately, which would render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own future.’”
