By Thelma Mejía
TEGUCIGALPA, Dec 5 1996 (IPS)

Defending human rights in Honduras is a high risk profession, for impunity is still the name of the game much as it was in the eighties, said Honduran Attorney General Edmundo Orellana Thursday.

Orellana said the most recent death threats and attempts to plant two bombs in the headquarters he leads, show the State “is up against organised groups that want to destroy justice.”

“But let me tell these people we are not afraid of them, we will keep fighting corruption and impunity, because we cannot continue to live with left-overs from the past, when threats and extrajudicial executions were the calling cards of the organised groups,” he said.

This Tuesday, the Attorney General’s Office security forces deactivated two C-4 bombs – exclusive military devices – planted within the building.

Orellana said the presence of the artefacts showed there were “infiltrators in the institution,” as they somehow got round the security measures.

He described those who had made Honduras “the paradise of impunity” as “mischievous,” adding he would not back down on his efforts to bring the corrupt agents and those responsible for human rights violations to trial.

His declarations coincided with the publication of a Human Rights Watch/Americas report in the local press, which warned of the dangers run by people and institutions working for human rights in Honduras.

According to this organisation, the quest for truth and justice is the worst danger facing the defenders of human rights in the Central American nation, and their lives are in constant danger.

Human Rights Watch said the defence of human rights in Honduras is a “high risk” profession, and provided lists of death threats, bombings and assassination attempts on these activists.

Some of the most notorious cases are those of the murder of public attorney, Marlen Zepeda, on Jun. 17 this year, by unknown assassins who fired on her as she dined in a restaurant in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.

Zepeda was investigating vehicle robberies allegedly involving police chiefs of the area.

The report also mentioned the death of Mercedes Emilia Custodio, daughter of the most well-known defender of human rights in Honduras, Ramon Custodio, whose murder was also attributed to efforts to dissuade campaigners.

When the police discovered the girl’s body in a street in Tegucigalpa, they classed it as murder, but the family have refused to accept this explanation.

The last six months in Honduras have been lived under a cloud of citizen insecurity characterised by robberies, assaults, kidnappings, extrajudicial executions and reports of action by paramilitary groups, similar to those of the eighties.

During that decade, the Central American nation suffered the massive violation of human rights, with the military making 184 people “disappear” for political motives, according to an official report.

As a result, the Attorney General’s office and human rights groups have begun the first legal processes against army members accused of human rights violations, who currently live as fugitives from justice in open defiance of the law.

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