Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse

Source: New York Times

Honduran Security Forces Accused of Abuse
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: October 5, 2009

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Rosamaria Valeriano Flores was returning home from a visit to a public health clinic and found herself in a crowd of people dispersing from a demonstration in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya. As she crossed the central square of the Honduran capital, a group of soldiers and police officers pushed her to the ground and beat her with their truncheons. She said the men kicked out most of her top teeth, broke her ribs and split open her head. “A policeman spit in my face and said, ‘you will die,’ ” she said, adding that the attack stopped when a police officer shouted at the men that they would kill her.

Ms. Valeriano, 39, was sitting in the office of a Tegucigalpa human rights group last week, speaking about the Aug. 12 assault. As she told her story, mumbling to hide her missing teeth, she pointed to a scar on her scalp and to her still-sore left ribs.

Since Mr. Zelaya was removed at gunpoint in a June 28 coup, security forces have attempted to halt opposition with beatings and mass arrests, human rights groups say. Eleven people have been killed since the coup, according to the Committee for Families of the Disappeared and Detainees in Honduras, or Cofadeh. The number of violations and their intensity have increased since Mr. Zelaya secretly returned to Honduras two weeks ago, taking refuge at the Brazilian Embassy, human rights groups say.

The groups describe an atmosphere of growing impunity, one in which security forces act unhindered by legal constraints. Their free hand has been strengthened by an emergency decree allowing the police to detain anyone suspected of posing a threat. “In the 1980s, there were political assassinations, torture and disappearances,” said Bertha Oliva, Cofadeh’s general coordinator, in an interview last week, recalling the political repression of the country’s Dirty War. “They were selective and hidden. But now there is massive repression and defiance of the whole world. They do it in broad daylight, without any scruples, with nothing to stop them.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/world/americas/06honduras.html?_r=1&ref=americas