RIGHTS-HONDURAS: Activists Protest Execution in United States

By Thelma Mejía Reprint | | Print |

Thelma Mejia

TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 22 1998 (IPS) - Hundreds of indigenous and other activists demonstrated in front of the U.S. Embassy in Honduras, protesting the early Wednesday morning execution of a Honduran national in the state of Arizona.

Jose Roberto Villafuerte, the second Latin American submitted to the death penalty in the United States within the past week, was killed by lethal injection after serving 15 years on death row in Florence, Arizona for the 1983 murder of his live-in girlfriend, Amelia Choville.

Villafuerte did not claim to be innocent. But his defence lawyers argued that the United States violated the Vienna Convention on consular relations, which stipulates that foreign nationals suspected of a crime must be informed of their right to receive assistance from their consulates.

The U.S. State Department contended that Villafuerte was informed of his rights, and that if he was not offered access to representatives of his government, that was due to “mutual ignorance.”

“He did not ask for it and Arizona authorities did not know” he had that right, according to the State Department.

The death of Villafuerte – whose case had more than one point in common with that of Paraguayan national Angel Breard, executed Apr. 14 in the state of Virginia – moved Honduran society and the government, which through President Carlos Flores asked the state government of Arizona for clemency.

Pope John Paul II did the same in a letter to Arizona state authorities. But the state’s clemency board refused to grant a pardon, and ordered Villafuerte’s execution to be carried out as scheduled early Wednesday morning.

Members of the Coordinating Council of Peoples Organisations in Honduras and Lenca indigenous groups demonstrated outside the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa Wednesday morning against what they called the United States’ “racist and unfair” policy.

“We lament the unjust death of our fellow countryman, who did not enjoy all his rights to defence, and we ask U.S. citizens for greater solidarity against the racist policy implemented by their government,” Juan Almendares, the coordinator of the protest, told IPS.

“In the past four weeks, the United States has shown us the ‘solidarity’ it has towards an ally country like Honduras, punishing us not only with economic sanctions but with deportations, and now with the murder of our countryman,” he added.

The demonstration, accompanied by indigenous prayers invoking the spirits to bring peace to Villafuerte’s soul, forced the U.S. diplomatic corps to interrupt its work and ask for police protection.

Honduran Foreign Minister Fernando Martinez urged Hondurans not to “unleash their fury” in the protests, while calling on the United States to study the death sentences still hanging over three Hondurans.

The application of the death penalty in the United States has caused concern in the United Nations. A recent report by Bacre Waly Ndiaye, UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said “domestic laws appear de facto to prevail over international law” in the United States.

Ndiaye also reported “a generalised perception (in the United States) that human rights are a prerogative of international affairs, and not a domestic issue.

“The fact that only the Department of State has a Human Rights Division, as well as the low level of awareness of international human rights standards within the Department of Justice, are clear indications of this phenomenon.”

The special rapporteur added that “many factors, other than the crime itself, appear to influence the imposition of a death sentence,” citing “class, race and economic status, both of the victim and the defendant.”

Villafuerte’s defence attorneys argued that his sentence was unfair. And the only Latino sitting on the clemency board refused to approve the execution Tuesday, arguing a lack of legal “balance.”

Villafuerte was one of the many Latinos on death row in Alabama, Florida, Lousiana, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas, known as the “death penalty belt.”