Twenty one House Democrats this week called on the Obama Administration to suspend US assistance to law enforcement and state security forces in Honduras.
The lawmakers said in an Aug. 19 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry that the aid should be frozen “until human rights abuses are adequately addressed by the Honduran government.”
Signed by Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chairs, Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and House Foreign Affairs Committee member Karen Bass (D-Calif.) among others, the letter detailed widespread government repression in the Central American country that proliferated in the wake of a right-wing 2009 coup d’etat.
The letter cited reports of “assassinations and intimidation of opposition leaders, land activists and peaceful demonstrators” that have been compiled by human rights organizations, Al-Jazeera, the Associated Press, Amnesty International and local media.
The legislators expressed particular concerns about stories published in May by Honduran outlets purporting to expose how 300 federal officials “including US marines and the FBI” worked with a controversial Honduran inter-agency task force.
“This ministry merged civilian and military security institutions under the direction of Julian Pacheco Tinoco…who only resigned his commission in January 2015 after objections were raised by several local and international actors, including human right [sic] defenders,” they stated.
The organization, known as FUSINA, has been the recipient of US “rapid response” training for 500 troops, according to the May reports “despite allegations regarding the agency’s repeated involvement in human rights violations.”
According to a federal statute nicknamed the Leahy Law (after its author, the incumbent Democratic senior senator from Vermont), the US government is forbidden from aiding “any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
There are exemptions if authorities overseeing those forces seek to address abuses through due process. But while the Honduran legislature in February rejected a constitutional amendment that would have regularized the use of soldiers in law enforcement, cooperation between military and police units has only deepened throughout the year. FUSINA, the lawmakers noted, “currently controls the police, the immigration agency, the merchant marine, and the civil aeronautics agency, among other key government institutions.”
The Democrats called on their former legislative branch colleague Kerry to provide them with the “metrics” that State uses to ensure Honduras’ Leahy Law compliance. They also asked for “a full itemized report on the use of funds allocated for US security assistance to Honduras” in this and next fiscal years’ budgets.
It is unlikely that State will comply. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier this month decided to launch an investigation of the department after one of its witness refused in open hearing to discuss the deliberative process that informs its annual Trafficking in Persons Report. This year’s report led to a highly-disputed upgrade for Malaysia in a move that paves the way for the country to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
In 2009, the Honduran military seized power from a democratically-elected populist named Manuel Zelaya. In late 2013, the conservative ruling party that took over in the aftermath won a poll described by The Nation as being marred by “election fraud and ongoing murders of opposition supporters.”
The Honduran government has been supported in Congress by members of both parties who have been critical of the Obama administration’s Cuba outreach on human rights grounds. Lending their support to the Central American junta have been Castro critics Sens. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), Mario Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.).
In her memoir, Democratic presidential candidate and former Secretary Of State Hillary Clinton boasted of helping the post-coup government “ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately” in a bid to “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
In recent months, protests have gripped Honduras in response to a corruption scandal that has implicated President Juan Orlando Hernandez’s authoritarian ruling party.
According to an article published last week by The Guardian, David Romero, a journalist who detailed ties between Hernandez’s party and a major fraud scheme “was accused of defamation—a criminal offense here—by the wife of one of the people implicated in the scandal.”
“On a recent day when a public had been scheduled for his trial at the supreme court building, military police surrounded the building in full riot gear,” the paper reported. “’We haven’t seen this kind of security even when top drug traffickers have been on trial,’ said Romero.”
President Obama’s budget for next year includes a request for a minimum of $163 million “to promote prosperity, security, and good governance in Honduras.”
