HONDURAS: The Disappeared, a Never Ending Story

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Jan 29 1997 (IPS) - The issue of the disappeared in Honduras returned to the headlines when fragments of a US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) torture manual supplied to the nation’s military became public knowledge.

The Honduran press covered news from the US Baltimore newpaper, “The Sun,” this week revealing documented information on the torture of political activists in Central America during the eighties.

“The Sun” said the CIA had trained the Honduran military in modern methods of physical and psychological torture presented in the “Training Manual for the Exploitation of Human Resources,” written in 1983.

The manual, based on techniques practiced by the United States during the Vietnam war (1960-1975), explained how to make political prisoners talk by applying electric shocks, threats and physical abuse.

It recommends that the “interrogator” should discover the fears of the “subject” or political prisoner and make use of them, for instance, if an inmate is known to have a fear of cockroaches their cell should be filled with the insects in order to force them into speaking.

Another suggestion is to hang the subjects on a wall, applying electric shocks, providing neither light nor water to the cell, and keeping it isolated from any sound.

Information from the CIA – which is currently going through one of its worst political moments as the counterinsurgency and psychological war tactics used in Central America are coming to light – is considered a key element in clearing up the forced disappearances in the country.

The revelations on the CIA torture manual “only show what we were saying was the truth,” Bertha Oliva, of the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) told IPS.

“The complicity, not only of the CIA and the Honduran military, but also of civilian doctors who participated in the interrogations and kept the disappeared from dying in order to torture them longer, can be clearly seen,” said Oliva.

COFADEH already has the names of the doctors who participated in the torture sessions, and “we will be bringing them to trial in the near future,” she said.

However, Army spokesman Mario Villanueva said the mere fact that a CIA torture manual existed did not imply these methods had been applied in Honduras.

“In any case, we would also have to talk of the manual the left-wingers prepared in Cuba and Moscow on how to build bombs, carry out attacks and other forms of action from the Cold War,” he added.

The official said it was unfair to give the military the role of the baddie in the history of human rights violations in Honduras in the eighties.

For in this period there was a war between two groups with different ideological concepts, he said. It would be better to “raise an amnesty on the issue, because in this war, which was imposed on us, all the people of Honduras were the losers,” he added.

Instead of the amnesty “wanted by the military leaders, we must procede to carry out justice because it is obvious they are not as innocent as they wish to appear,” said Ramon Custodio, president of the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH).

During the eighties, at least 184 people disappeared for political or ideological reasons. The army were the main perpetrators of the events and “the families of those executed have a right to know where their bodies are,” Custodio told IPS.

Last week, the State Human Rights Commission announced that US President Bill Clinton had committed himself to declassifying documents on the disappearances in Honduras and the participation of the military and the CIA soon.

Clinton’s decision was taken in response to a request lodged by 38 US legislators interested in working out just exactly what was the role of the CIA in Central America and the various civil wars in the region.

Honduras is currently preparing for the first trials against members of the military accused of human rights abuses.

Thirteen of the accused are currently fugitives from the law – a baker’s dozen seen as key witnesses in the operations of the 3- 16 death squad, an elite army group specialising in torture.