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Honduras: denunciation of “foreign military occupation”

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Consequences of the Military Occupation in Honduras
by Defensores en Linea

Tuesday, 15 May 2012

Source: Defensores en Linea


TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS–Although we have not read the official reaction of the U.S. Embassy about the tragic military actions of the Drug Enforcement Agency in detriment of the civilian population of the municipality of Ahuas in La Mosquitia, we can draw three preliminary conclusions.

— The first one is that the operation launched at night against suspected drug dealers early Friday, was led by U.S. military uniformed agents of the DEA.

Mayor Baquedano from Ahuas confirmed it, and Commissioner Ramirez del Cid, a former liaison between the US Embassy and Casamata, admitted it.

— The second conclusion is, then, that a foreign army protected under the new hegemonic concept of the “war on drugs”, legalized with reforms to the 1953 Military Treaty, violates our territorial sovereignty and kills civilians as if it was in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya or Syria.

Two pregnant women, two children and two adult males were killed by shots fired from helicopter gunships piloted by U.S. soldiers on a boat on River Patuca returning to their community. They were workers in the local lobster and shellfish diving industry.

— The third conclusion drawn from the above is that the “failed state” of Honduras gave way to the foreign military occupation under the script of the “war against the drug cartels”, similar to what has happened in the past eight years in Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala.

And this reality, from the perspective of a human rights organization, is unacceptable and reprehensible.

In a country under military occupation, as it occurred between 1979 and 1990, as part of the strategy of low intensity warfare against armed insurgencies in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, the main victims were civilians.

The so called Honduran authorities have the ethical and political duty to demand from the US Department of State an explanation and a public apology, and to punish those responsible for the Ahuas massacre.

To keep an act of terror covered up in the midst of media confusion was always a strategy of psychological warfare, a special chapter of state terrorism.

We should not accept this. We demand an official statement immediately!

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