HONDURAS: Human Rights Groups Denounce Indigenous Murders

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, May 22 1997 (IPS) - Representatives of human rights groups in Honduras claim a plan is afoot to oppress the indigenous people, following the murders of two Garifuna and Lenca ethnic leaders.

Bertha Oliva, of the Committee of the Families of the Detained- Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), said, “two indigenous brothers were killed in cold blood” barely a week after a peaceful mass indigenous march to Tegucigalpa.

“This only proves we are seeing a plan to intimidate the indigenous people, but we want to tell these murderers they are not going to gain anything, because all the bodies working to defend human rights will join together to clear up the truth and punish those responsible,” she said.

On Tuesday, the Committee of Popular Indigenous Organisations (COPIN) from the Western department of Intibuca denouounced the murder of the Lenca leader, Jorge Manueles, in a land dispute.

Manueles, according to the Copin communique, was murdered on May 14 in the community of El Pelon de San Juan, Intibuca, one of the poorest areas of the country and mostly populated by Lenca indigenous people.

His death was a particularly brutal affair, for after being shot dead, his attackers ran him through with an iron bar and burned the body to prevent him from being recognised by his family.

Manueles had been in charge of organising the people of the community of El Pelon de San Juan to defend their land which is being claimed by private groups and landowners.

“COPIN expressed the indignation of the Lenca people strongly condemning those responsible and blaming this crime on the sectors of the zone who want to destroy us,” said the communique.

The death of Manueles, is yet another on top of the killing of the Garifuna leader, Jesus Alvarez Rochez, in El Triunfo de la Cruz, in Tela, the northern department of Colon, 450 km from Tegucigalpa.

The Fraternal Black Organisation of Honduras (OFRANEH) said Rochez died as the result of bullets fired by an unknown assailant on May 11. He was with his son at the time, and he was also injured.

The Garifuna leader was taken to hospital, but despite emergency surgery he died this weekend, said OFRANEH.

At the time of his death, Rochez was working on the legalisation of land lived on by black and Garifuna people, who have had heated confrontations with groups of private landowners and investors who would like to evict them from the beaches around Triunfo de la Cruz.

The murder of the indigenous leaders occurred just one week after three thousand indigenous people had marched from their lands in the countryside to Tegucigalpa in a quest for land and justice.

The march also aimed to clear up the murder of two Chorti leaders in mid-April, in the Western department of Copan, where the land issue is particularly sensitive.

During the march, the indigenous people managed to achieve substantial commitments from the government in relation to the issue of land, investigations of the crimes and the revision of the cases of at least 40 indigenous people imprisoned in relation to the land problems.

Just as with the Lenca leader Manueles, the two Chorti leaders, Candido Amador and Ovidio Perez, were murdered in machete attacks in Rincon del Buey, Copan, they were scalped and their blood left spread accross a highway as a sign to other activists.

Ethnic ombudsman, Eduardo Villanueva, said Wednesday a “barbarity” was being carried out against the indigenous people “where we can see a deliberate attempt to destabilise them.”

“There is a whole tendency towards destroying the organisation of ethnic groups today, a sort of popular repression which is worrying because it has taken four lives this year,” he said.

There are some 500,000 indigenous people making up the Lenca, Pech, Chorti, Sicaque, Garifuna, Misquito and Tawanka groups, spread over all the country except for the east.