HONDURAS-HUMAN RIGHTS: A Deal on Transfer of Police Power?

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 13 1997 (IPS) - Honduran lawmakers are thinking of a “deal” with the army over the proposed transfer of police power from the military to civilian authority, a forum on human rights heard here last week.

The forum on “The Transfer of Police Activity to Civilian Control: the Transitional Phase” was organized by the government’s Human Rights Commission and the Friederich Ebert Foundation of Germany. The idea that a “deal” may be in the offing came after an exchange between two participants at the seminar.

Leo Valladares, a representative of the Honduran Human Rights Commission said that “if we really want to remove the police force from military control” the new force must be led by a civilian. But Raul Pineda, of the opposition National Party, said there was consensus in Congress that the new national civilian police should be directed by a career military man.

Pineda declared legislators were not interested in creating a commission to evaluate prospective police officials with the aim of purging the new force and prevent employment of people accused of human rights violations.

“We believe that the newly constituted Police Force should establish its own internal protocols for insuring the quality of personnel,” Pineda said. “Our job in Congress is to guarantee that the new police force is a professional body which avoids excesses of violence and brutality.”

Recent revelations that several police officials were implacted in the “disappearance” of people along with other human rights violations, there have been demands from civil groups that any reconstituted police force be examined to insure that such abuses do not occur in the future.

Currently, the police force is a branch of the Armed Forces, but, according to Constitutional reforms signed by Congress in 1996, the police force will be placed in civilian control.

Passage of control to civilian management is scheduled for completion by year’s end when new operating procedures will be in place, along with a new budget. According to last year’s Congressional reform, the new police force could either become part of the Interior Ministry or it could be constituted as a brand-new State organism for public safety.

Nevertheless, the Forum underscored how a number of legal loopholes in last year’s Constitutional reform measures made it possible to maintain a structures whereby the police force would remain subordinate to the Army.

Jurist German Leitzelar, a member of the Police Transfer Commission, has fought hard to purge the body of abuse. However, he said that “according to loopholes in the law, the passage of police control will be a mechanical formality without any corresponding substance.”

As an illustration, Leitzelar pointed to the fact that the new budget – according to Congressional legislation – will always depend on the Armed Forces’ payroll office.

“we can’t tolerate this sort of aberration, “he said and asked, “If we let a career military official run the new Police Force, what will the civilian population have gained?”

Leitzelar said that transfer of police control “can’t be dealt with over a few drinks among political cronies,” – a reference to a recent gala event attended by military brass and the upper echelons of Honduran society.

A high official from the Police Command, Col. Manuel Antonio Urbina, however, declared it was “unheard of” that bodies outside the police force be authorized to evaluate the agency. According to Urbina, the right of evaluation remained the exclusive prerogative of the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces.

Urbina said that the new police force would be formed from a highly professional corps of applicants, all of whom must first pass preliminarily screening to purge anyone with an “unsavory past.”

In Urbina’s opinion, the newly constituted police force should l not be carried away by “rumors circulated in the press.”

While the forum showed the divergent views on the transition of the police force, the situation in Honduras is complicated by the fact of widespread civilian insecurity in a country where there are only 6,000 police operatives to look after the interests of 5.5 million citizens, political observers noted.