Human rights in Honduras: State Department looks the other way

Human rights in Honduras: State Department looks the other way

Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the U.S. State Department says the Honduran government is taking adequate measures to address congressional concerns about human rights.

By Dana Frank
August 24, 2012

Honduras is under siege. Its judicial system is almost completely dysfunctional, and more than 10,000 complaints of human rights abuses by state security forces have been filed in the last three years, according to the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras. At least 23 journalists have been killed since 2009. The United Nations, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have all raised grave concerns about the country's dire situation.

But despite all of this overwhelming evidence, the U.S. State Department this month reported that the Honduran government is taking adequate measures to address congressional concerns about human rights. This clears the way for U.S. funds to flow to the repressive government of President Porfirio Lobo, who came to power in 2009 in a military coup that deposed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya.

In its 2012 appropriations bill, passed in December, Congress required that before 20% of a portion of U.S. police and military aid to Honduras can be released, the State Department has to report that the Honduran government is implementing policies to ensure freedom of expression, freedom of association (including labor rights) and due process of law, and to ensure that military and police personnel who have violated human rights are being investigated and prosecuted. According to an official statement just issued by the State Department, Honduras has met most of those criteria. Now more than $50 million in U.S. security and development aid can be released to Honduras.

What was the State Department thinking? The Lobo regime is corrupt from top to bottom, as even some of its own officials admit, interlaced with drug traffickers and organized crime. The police have been accused of criminal activity and have been implicated in prominent killings. The police, together with others that serve the country's elites — the military, paramilitaries and private security guards — continue to wage a vicious war on the political opposition.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-frank-honduras-human-rights-20120824,0,5575021.story