Headlines, Human Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean

HONDURAS: Disputed Truth Commission to Investigate Coup

Thelma Mejía

TEGUCIGALPA, May 5 2010 (IPS) - With a warning by its members that it will not be a “decorative” body dedicated to merely “collecting stories about what happened,” the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up in Honduras to investigate events surrounding the June 2009 coup that overthrew the government of Manuel Zelaya began to operate Tuesday.

“Our work consists of getting to the bottom of the events that triggered the political crisis,” said the head of the commission, former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein (2004-2008).

“We want to make it clear that we have not come to form part of this commission in order to be mere chroniclers of history, because for that it would have been better to hire a historian,” he added.

The commission is to present its report in eight months, although some “sensitive” information will remain classified and will not be made available to the public for 10 years.

Stein said the commission’s mandate is to investigate “all kinds” of alleged crimes, including “corruption and human rights violations prior to, during and after the crisis.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created to comply with one of the agreements signed on Oct. 30, 2009 between delegations representing de facto president Roberto Micheletti and ousted president Zelaya.

It is also one of the prerequisites that the current Honduran government had to fulfil in order to gain full recognition from the international community. So far, only 51 countries have acknowledged President Porfirio Lobo’s government as legitimate.

During a summit Tuesday, the 12-member South American Union of Nations (UNASUR) once again refused to recognise the right-wing Lobo, who was elected in November in elections organised by the government that took power after Zelaya’s ouster.

Human rights groups and opponents of the coup are critical of the commission.

On Monday, the Platform of Human Rights umbrella announced the creation of an alternative truth commission, whose members will include Guatemalan indigenous activist Rigoberta Menchú and Argentine human rights activist Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, both of whom are Nobel Peace Prize-winners.

Juan Almendares, one of the driving forces behind the alternative truth commission, told IPS that the groups in the Platform do not believe in the official commission.

“We prefer another option, which would follow up on cases of human rights abuses,” he said.

In an article, Bertha Oliva, head of the Honduran Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared (COFADEH), writes that Honduras “desperately needs a truth commission,” because “there has been no real investigation or prosecution of those responsible for the coup and for the many killings, rapes, beatings and illegal detentions that occurred after June 28.

“In fact, targeted extrajudicial killings and attacks against coup opponents continue to regularly occur with complete impunity,” she maintained, reporting that her group had documented 47 murders of anti-coup activists, 14 of which have occurred since Lobo took office in January.

But, she adds, the “so-called Truth Commission has been given no mandate to examine the human rights violations that have taken place since the coup. The presidential decree that establishes the commission does not even recognise that a coup took place on June 28th and makes no mention of the victims of the subsequent repression.”

The prominent Honduran activist goes on to assert that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission apparently forms part of “the Honduran regime’s continued efforts to whitewash those responsible for the coup and its violent aftermath,” consistent with other measures, such as an amnesty for all political crimes surrounding the coup, and the naming of former de facto president Micheletti as a congressman for life.

Besides Stein, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is made up of two other international figures — former Peruvian justice minister María Amadilia and Michael Kergin, former Canadian ambassador to the United States — and two prominent Honduran academics — Julieta Castellanos, president of the public National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), and former UNAH president and jurist Jorge Omar Casco. Their technical secretary is Sergio Membreño, also an academic.

At Tuesday’s ceremony to officially launch the Truth Commission, Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General José Miguel Insulza said it was a fundamental step for Honduras’s return to the regional body, from which it was suspended after the coup.

But Insulza insisted that the Lobo administration would also have to ensure an investigation into reports of human rights abuses by the de facto government of Micheletti, and would have to provide guarantees that would allow Zelaya to return to Honduras.

Zelaya, who is in exile in the Dominican Republic, faces legal action in the courts here.

The head of the OAS said that although the government “has made worthy efforts” to pave the way for Honduras’s return to the regional body, it is the member countries who “will have the final word.”

“I believe things are moving in the right direction; we have to see what happens. We are presently involved in dialogue on Honduras’s reinsertion,” he said.

In his speech on Tuesday, Lobo addressed himself to the commission’s critics, saying “I want to tell the extremists not to be afraid.”

And referring to the call by anti-coup activists for a referendum to elect a constituent assembly to modify the constitution, the president said “we want you to know that we support a vote within the framework of our laws.

“And to those who do not want to change a single word in the constitution, I tell you that it is necessary to make room for other voices to express themselves, but it must be clear that it is the people who have the last word and not outside influences.”

The pretext for the coup was an attempt by Zelaya — a wealthy landowner who veered to the left during his presidency, alienating his own party and other conservative elites — to organise a Jun. 28 non-binding referendum on the election of a constituent assembly, which was ruled illegal by the Supreme Court and Congress.

The Lobo administration hopes Honduras will be readmitted to the OAS and to Central American integration bodies in June.

But at Tuesday’s UNASUR summit, presidents warned that they may boycott the May 18 European Union-Latin America/Caribbean summit in Spain because Honduras has been invited.