Over 90 Experts Call on Human Rights Watch to Speak Out on Honduras Abuses

August 21, 2009
10:49 AM

Over 90 Experts Call on Human Rights Watch to Speak Out on Honduras Abuses

WASHINGTON - August 21 - 93 scholars and Latin America experts from institutions such as Yale, Harvard, and New York University sent an open letter to Human Rights Watch today urging the organization to highlight various human rights violations in Honduras under the coup regime, and to conduct its own investigation. The signers, who include well-known experts on Latin America such as Eric Hershberg, John Womack, Jr., and Greg Grandin, Honduras experts such as Dana Frank and Adrienne Pine, and well-known authors including Noam Chomsky, John Pilger, and Naomi Klein, note that Human Rights Watch could help force the Obama administration to denounce the abuses and put greater pressure on the regime. Highlighting "politically-motivated killings, hundreds of arbitrary detentions, the violent repression of unarmed demonstrators, mass arrests of political opposition, and other violations of basic human rights," the letter notes that Human Rights Watch has not issued a statement or release on the situation in Honduras since July 8, a little over a week following the June 28 coup d'etat.

The signers write, "...the coup could easily be overturned, if the Obama administration sought to do so, by taking more decisive measures, such as canceling all U.S. visas and freezing U.S. bank accounts of leaders of the coup regime."

The letter comes just a day after Amnesty International issued a new report on the coup regime's violations of human rights in cracking down on protests, and as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (part of the Organization of American States) wraps up a fact-finding delegation to Honduras. The author of the Amnesty International report, Esther Major, has stated that the report was released to call on the international community to take action to "prevent a human rights crisis occurring in Honduras."

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/08/21

We probably shouldn't hold our breath, either.

Glad you mentioned him. He's AWOL.

against an ALBA country.

Who do they think they are? They even think they should be allowed to elect their own leaders. What next? Good thing Vivanco's on the job.

http://cache.daylife.com.nyud.net:8090/imageserve/0d4F65ldL63cC/340x.jpg

Academics, experts call for probe on post-coup Honduras situation
Americas News
Aug 21, 2009, 16:56 GMT

New York - More than 90 US academics and Latin American experts on Friday urged an investigation into alleged target killings, arbitrary detention and attacks on the press in Honduras following the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya in June.

The complainants asked the New York-based Human Rights Watch to launch an investigation of the de facto government of Roberto Micheletti, who was installed as president on June 28 after Zelaya was toppled and sent into exile in Costa Rica.

Human Rights Watch was called to investigate extra-judicial killings, arbitrary detention, physical assaults and attacks on the press that have allegedly occurred in Honduras since the military coup.

The military and judiciary in Honduras charged Zelaya with trying to usurp power and amend the constitution so he could run for a second, four-year term, prompting his ouster. Zelaya denied the charge and said he had no plan of running for re-election.

The academics and experts said most cases of human rights violations have been directed at 'supporters of the democratic and constitutional government of Manuel Zelaya.'

'The coup regime's violent repression in Honduras has not stopped,' they said in a letter to Human Rights Watch's executive director Kenneth Roth.

More:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/americas/news/article_1496718.php/Academics-experts-call-for-probe-on-post-coup-Honduras-situation