HRW, Where Are You? Coup Protestor Gang-Raped by Honduran Police

If the women's husbands, or brothers, cousins, fathers attempt to protect them, there's the implication the police will simply kill them, and then the women will not only be harmed, but they will also have lost their loved one(s), or watched as their loved ones were harmed, as well.

It's a situation which has a lot of appeal for sadistic trash. What a shame the coup government has unleashed this barbarity upon helpless citizens.

Thank you for posting this.

HRW is outing itself big time.

about a mother and father who find out what their son and his buddies did in Iraq. It is a true story, and it is simply mind-boggling the unsuspected psychosis that can erupt in completely unlikely individuals, not only when the dogs of war are unleashed, but especially when the "dogs" at the very top are themselves psychopaths and send every signal imaginable to the youngsters whom they recruit as cannon fodder that there are no rules.

Honduras is not yet Iraq, or Colombia, but the people at the very top are similar to Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and their narco-fascists pals in Colombia, and Honduras itself certainly has a history of horrendous brutality by the fascists. No rule of law. That is the Bush Junta legacy. it is so pitiful and tragic when that leering evil that these type of leaders--usurpers--project throughout the populace infects otherwise sane people, especially the young, and unleashes such horror upon the innocent.

The performances in "In the Valley of Elah" are spectacular. You can SEE the psychosis in the glimpse of an eye, or the momentary confusion, in the face of an otherwise sane young soldier. You SEE it, like catching a glimpse of Lucifer's tail as the Evil One slips around a corner out of view. It is an amazing thing to watch an actor reveal. It is subtle and soul-freezing. This role is acted by Wes Chatham, who should have gotten an Academy Award for his performance. Jones and Sarandon--mostly Jones--are really just witnesses to this phenomenon, gaping at it in mind-boggled stupefaction. WHAT have we become? Jones plays a former soldier--a sergeant--in the army of a different era, when there were rules. His character has no comprehension (or there is no hint of it in the film) of the political catastrophe that has brought this on. He just suffers it--as only Tommy Lee Jones can portray--as he sees the truth unfold. But it is enough for the film to follow him through his fact-finding journey to its awful conclusion. No political commentary in necessary. These youngsters have had their souls sucked out of them by Bushwhacks. They are no longer who they were before. They are the walking dead. And that crime, by our political establishment, is beyond describing. It is unspeakable.

The coupsters in Honduras, who send their military officers to be trained at the "School of the Americas," and who have established that there are "no rules" in Honduras by their kidnapping of the president at gunpoint (that's how you settle political/legal disputes?), their use of live ammunition on the president's supporters, their murderous displays, their defiance of the rule of law, and their more subtle signals--dubbing peasant farmers who oppose the coup regime as "armed foreigners," accusing the striking teachers of being "funded by Hugo Chavez," and other such McCarthyite tactics, are unleashing this same Beast, that prompts otherwise sane and civilized people to commit atrocities for the regime or for no reason at all. The same workings of the mind, in response to this kind of propaganda, caused young soldiers to commit horrendous torture and casual death-dealing in Iraq for no reason at all. They were placed in "hell," to be sure, and were in a lot of danger, but their acts of violence make no sense. It is truly as if they were "seized by the Devil." And when they return to a safer, and apparently saner, environment, their minds start cracking down the middle, at the unbearable contradiction between who they were and who they have become.

I don't think we should ever entirely excuse such crimes. Individual responsibility and accountability need to be restored, if we are to overcome this evil political climate of "no rule of law." And those who don't commit atrocities, especially under great pressure with the highest "authorities" unleashing the Beast, deserve immense credit, and it is unfair to them--and to the victims--to fully exonerate those who yield to this unnatural, induced psychosis of unjust war.

Published on Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Coup Protestor Gang-Raped by Honduran Police
by Robert Naiman

On Friday, Latin America scholars sent an urgent letter to Human Rights Watch, urging HRW to speak out on violations of human rights under the coup regime in Honduras and to conduct its own investigation. HRW hasn't made any statement about Honduras since July 8.

One of the things Human Rights Watch should be investigating is allegations by Honduran feminists and human rights groups that Honduran police are using rape and other sexual violence as weapons of intimidation against Hondurans nonviolently protesting the coup regime.

The Spanish news agency EFE reports:

The group Feministas de Honduras en Resistencia said Thursday that is has documented 19 instances of rape by police officers since the June 28 coup that ousted President Mel Zelaya. There have been many other cases of rape, but the women have not reported them out of fear of reprisals, Gilda Rivera, the executive coordinator of the Honduran Center for Women's Rights and head of Feministas, told Efe.

The activists say that women taking part in the resistance to the coup are being targeted. "We've obtained testimonials from women who've been sexually abused, beaten with cudgels on different parts of their bodies, especially the breasts and buttocks," adds the report presented Thursday at a press conference in Tegucigalpa.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/25-2