RIGHTS-HONDURAS: Activists Blame Murders on Death Squads

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 6 1998 (IPS) - Human rights groups in Honduras blame 70 murders so far this year, reportedly of common criminals, on security forces.

The Committee of Relatives of Detained-Disappeared persons (Cofadeh) – mainly the mothers, widows and other family members of the victims of political repression in the 1980s – fear they are witnessing a “silent and systematic” campaign of human rights violations.

Cofadeh has logged 211 cases of human rights abuses in the first quarter of the year.

The activists, who gather outside the legislature on the first Friday of every month, complain of a growing contempt for life in Honduras, especially the lives of the young. The methods used in the murders “are similar to those seen in the 1980s,” a member of Cofadeh, who preferred not to be identified, told IPS.

Paramilitary groups are carrying out a “social cleansing” of alleged criminals and young gangmembers, according to the human rights group.

A report released three years ago by the governmental Human Rights Commission recognised that 184 people were “disappeared” by security forces for political reasons in the 1980s.

Death squads, paramilitary groups largely made up of “off- duty” members of security forces, operated in a number of Latin American countries in the 1970s and 1980s. The phenomenon was particularly prevalent in Central America, where thousands of “disappearances” and deaths of individuals deemed “subversive” have been attributed to such groups.

A few years ago, Cofadeh warned of the emergence of “civil committees” that supported police work – which the group called a ruse to reactivate death squads.

Rights groups in neighbouring Guatemala have also blamed a recent wave of summary executions of young men with criminal records on paramilitary groups with ties to the security forces.

Last week, the Runujel Junam Council of Ethnic Communities reported that dozens of summary executions were committed last year, mainly of young men with police records, whose bodies turned up in empty lots with hands and feet tied and point-blank bullet holes in the temples.

Mery Agurcia, with Cofadeh’s centre of documentation and analysis, said that aside from the summary executions, there had been 11 attacks on public figures and other Hondurans.

Unknown gunmen recently opened fire on the car belonging to the vice-president of the Central American Commission against Drug Trafficking, Carlos Sosa, and the home of Comptroller-General Vera Rubi, and director of prisons and former judge Rafael Castro Avila escaped unscathed from a similar attack.

Agurcia pointed out that Castro had headed an investigation of politicians and former public officials accused of corruption.

Wilfredo Alvarado, the head of the civilian police’s Criminal Investigation Office, told IPS that the probes into the incidents “indicate that they were designed to intimidate, and were part of a common pattern that we have identified.”

Although he refused to provide details on the attacks, he said that “I can ensure that they came from sectors interested in destabilising democracy, creating confusion and blocking important investigations.”

Rubi reported that she had received threats after launching an investigation into reports of corruption in several public institutions.

Reporters, meanwhile, accuse President Carlos Flores of curbing freedom of expression. Two weeks ago, a group of journalists demonstrated with their mouths taped shut to protest the refusal of local authorities to provide information on the state of the economy.

Agurcia said Cofadeh files contained the testimony of several journalists who were threatened for not giving into pressure from authorities. “We are concerned with what is happening with freedom of expression in our country,” said the activist.