[HNA] [Presente-Honduras] Urgent Alert from Aguan

[Chuck Kaufman]

Alerts have action items. There is nothing telling people what to do. We
will forward alerts to our 6,000 subscribers, but what are we supposed to do
with this?
Chuck Kaufman

On Sat, Apr 3, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Tom Loudon <toml at quixote.org> wrote:

> Original alert from the MOVIMENTO UNIFICADO CAMPESINO DEL AGUAN (MUCA)
> in Spanish is below this article by Annie Bird
>
>
> CAMEPSINO FARMER KILLED ON APRIL 1 IN COLON, HONDURAS POLICE TRAINED TO
> COMMIT ILLEGAL ACTS WHILE BILLY JOYA TRAINING PARAMILITARIES IN COLON
> April 2, 2010 By Annie Bird, Rights Action
>
> An extremely dangerous situation is developing in the municipality of
> Tocoa, department of Colon in the region known as the Aguan in Honduras.
>
> In the days leading up to yesterday’s murder of a young campesino
> farmer, the preparation of an operation intended to (falsely) confirm
> the existence of an armed resistance movement in Honduras was exposed.
> Reports claim that a renowned death squad member from the 1980’s is
> training paramilitary forces, while a select police unit is being
> prepared to “combat guerillas.”
>
> This extremely high level of violence, repression and impunity threatens
> the lives of campesino families organized in the Movimiento Unificado
> Campesino de Aguan (MUCA) who are immersed in land conflicts with some
> of Honduras’ most powerful businessmen. It also threatens to present a
> justification for greater repression of the non violent resistance
> movement in Honduras (the Frente), who along with many nations in the
> world do not recognize the legitimacy of the Pepe Lobo government, and
> who are calling for a new constitution.
>
> ATTACKS ON MUCA MEMBERS
> On April 1, 2010, 22 year old Miguel Alonso Oliva was fatally shot in
> the back during the occupation of the Boleros farm. This killing comes
> after the steady escalation of the presence of military, police and
> private security forces in the area.
>
> The morning of Lobo’s inauguration, January 27, 2010, a group of police,
> military and private security forces entered a MUCA community, where
> they opened fire and gravely injured four young men. The timing of acts
> of extreme repression during significant moments appears to be a pattern
> meant to send messages to the Frente.
>
> In addition to the violence, disinformation is being published in the
> Honduran press stating that the MUCA families are an armed guerrilla
> movement tied to the national Resistance movement, financed by
> international drug traffickers, tied to the Colombian guerrilla movement
> the FARC and with the backing of Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua.
>
> Though blatantly false this fabrication is disturbingly similar to
> narratives being promoted in the United States Congress by lobbyists and
> right wing congress people. The objective of the manipulation of
> Honduran press may not only be to manipulate the Honduran population,
> but apparently to substantiate a false narrative presented to the
> “international community.”
>
> Hondurans have been very savvy and capable in avoiding an armed or
> violent response to the coup and the provocations of the anti-democratic
> forces. They know that an armed resistance movement would provide
> justification for even greater repression and even more pervasive
> de-legitimation of their political demands.
>
> POLICE WIFE DENOUNCES OFFICERS DETENTION FOR ILLEGAL ACTS
> In a communiqué dated April 1, 2010, the Committee for Defense of Human
> Rights in Honduras (CODEH), explains that on Friday, March 26, 2010 it
> received a phone call from a woman who stated:
> "I speak for more than thirty police officers who have been locked up
> for over two weeks, in the premises of the Regional Police Command of
> Tocoa, Colon, I am the wife of one of them…these officers were brought
> from various regions of the country such as La Paz, Comayagua,
> Choluteca, among others, having been told they were being recruited for
> a mission to Tegucigalpa. From Tegucigalpa they were sent to Colon… they
> are being trained to commit acts that are against the law, they are
> offering better pay and that if something happens to implicate them they
> will immediately be transferred to places they came from, they are told
> they will confront guerrillas and that was why they were paid well; they
> make them go hungry while they claim it is because of those people who
> they soon are going to fight."
>
> Following CODEH’s denouncement on national television of the situation,
> the Human Rights procurator from the city of Tocoa, Colon attempted to
> visit the named police station in Tocoa but was denied entry, apparently
> confirming the report.
>
> CODEH concludes that “the thirty policemen selected from various sectors
> of the country, can be used to make a false belief in the media that
> they died in combat in the area, confirming the existence of an armed
> resistance, with this justify the eviction with the death of dozens of
> farmers and gain control of land.”
>
> The psychological preparation for the material authors of gross human
> rights violation, such as massacres, that is suggested in the
> denouncement of the officers being denied food and being told their
> hunger is caused by the ‘guerillas’ they will combat is a well
> documented process widely employed during the 1980s in Latin America.
> So called “False Flag” operations were also a tactic widely used and
> well documented in the 1980s.
>
> BILLY JOYA, RENOWNED TORTURER AND DEATH SQUAD COMMANDER
>
> The same CODEH communiqué continues, “CODEH members who are in the area
> [Aguan], received the following information "that the area is Mr. Billy
> Joya Amendola, hired by businessmen to coordinate operations in the
> area, he is currently in the facilities of the Fourth Battalion Infantry
> based in the city of La Ceiba, Atlántida, where is there is a group
> training for paramilitary actions… another group is being trained in a
> in the Fifteenth Infantry Battalion based in the town of Rio Claro,
> jurisdiction of the municipality of Trujillo in the department of Colón.”
>
> The Fifteenth Battalion has been consistently implicated in providing
> direct support to the businessmen implicated in the illegal acquisition
> of cooperative land. The commander of the military
> battalion is reported to hire reservists and paramilitaries, and
> supervise the private security forces on the African Palm plantations.
> Witness claim the Fifteenth Battalion illegally detained two young
> members of the MUCA as they rode on their bicycles on January 13, 2009 .
>
> On January 27, at 8 am, families living in the Left Margin of the Aguan
> River, in Trujillo, were subject to an unprovoked attack by elements of
> the Tocoa Police, the Fifteen Battalion and private
> security forces. Four campesinos were seriously wounded. Police and
> military attempted to delay their transport to a hospital.
>
> Billy Joya is a Honduran widely rumored to have close ties with, or to
> work for, the Central Intelligence Agency, and to principally reside in
> the United States. He is renowned in Honduras for his
> participation in the “Battalion 316” death squad, responsible for the
> kidnapping and torture in the 1980s. Since the 1980’s, Billy Joya is
> reportedly the owner of major private security firms in Honduras and has
> consistently held security advising in government cabinets charged with
> overseeing policing and security.
>
> THE STRUGGLE OF THE COOPERATIVES IN THE BAJO AGUA
> Early in the 1990s, while Central America was still immersed in “peace
> processes,” a wave of legislation across Latin America destroyed legal
> mechanisms to insure the possibility of securely held collectively owned
> land; its impact resonated the loudest in Mexico where the reform of
> Article 26 of the constitution destroyed the Ejido system; this was an
> important factor in the formation of the Zapatista movement.
>
> In Honduras, that same international land agenda hit hard. In 1992
> changes to Honduras’ agrarian reform legislation made it possible for
> land acquired through the agrarian reform program to be resold. This
> allowed the incredibly politically powerful Honduran businessmen, Miguel
> Facusse, Rene Morales and Reinaldo Canales, beginning in 1998,
> to destroy 29 African Palm oil producing cooperatives of the Aguan
> region through the use of paramilitary violence to intimidate
> cooperatives into selling and other illegal mechanisms. These methods
> are very similar to methods being employed throughout the region by drug
> traffickers to acquire land. In this way these men have become some of
> largest landholders in Central America. They have also received
> significant financing from the private sector funding arm of the Inter
> American Development Bank.
>
> In 2001, the now landless families from the cooperatives destroyed in
> this process formed the MUCA, through which they continued to
> investigate the illegalities in the manner in which the Aguan
> cooperatives had been acquired. In 2004 they presented the first of many
> law suits. Unfortunately as is the standard practice in Honduran justice
> administration, the suits simply have not been expedited, this kind of
> corruption is what inspired hunger strikes by Honduran justice operators
> in 2008.
>
> This forced the farmers, beginning in 2006, to undertake a series of
> peaceful protests, which culminated in a negotiation process. The
> negotiations had advanced to the point of signing an important agreement
> with then president Manuel Zelaya on June 12, 2009. The agreement would
> have allowed the farmers to acquire land title to the contested farms,
> as they provided sufficient proof of their land rights.
>
> However, the June 28, 2009 military coup forced an end to the land
> titling process. Thus, on December 9, 2009, during the de facto regime
> headed by Roberto Mitcheletti, the MUCA began occupying the farms to
> which they hold legal rights but which were illegally in the possession
> of Facusse, Morales and Canales. The immediate response was an attempt
> to portray the land rights movement as an armed guerrilla movement
> connected to international terrorism and drug trafficking.
>
> _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
>
>
> . ALERTA …Campesinos del aguan en la zona norte de Honduras, serán
> reprimidos en las próximas horas.
> El movimiento Unificado Campesino del Aguan, ante el pueblo Hondureño y
> las organizaciones de derechos humanos nacionales e internacionales
> denuncia:
> 1.-El asesinato de nuestro compañero campesino Miguel Ángel Alonso forma
> parte de la nueva estrategia de exterminio del MUCA por parte de los
> terratenientes Miguel Facusse, Reinaldo Canales y René Morales, con la
> participación del ejército, la policía nacional preventiva y la base
> naval de Puerto Castilla.
> 2.-Grupos de paramilitares, militares, y policías son entrenados en el
> cuarto batallón de infantería de la Ceiba Atlántida bajo el mando de
> Billi joya, en las instalaciones de la fábrica de exportadora del
> atlántico en la comunidad de quebrada de agua en el municipio de Tocoa y
> en las instalaciones de xv batallón en la comunidad de Rio Claro
> municipio de Trujillo departamento de Colon.
> 3.-A partir del martes 6 de abril intervendrán militarmente de forma
> violenta y sangrienta donde se prevé la militarización de las tierras
> que actualmente ocupamos con instalación de minas destructivas y trampas
> caza bobos, toda esta represión se denomina OPERACIÓN TRUENO, aplicando
> medidas como la detención y el asesinato de dirigentes del MUCA y del
> Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular, así como la detención masiva de
> campesinos y campesinos.
> 4.-La policía y el ejercito de colon operan con vehículos de los
> empresarios terratenientes con placas particulares, armados de ak47, con
> pasamontañas y junto a paramilitares realizan diariamente operaciones en
> contra del MUCA.
> 5.-Responsabilizamos a los empresarios terratenientes, al ejército
> nacional , a la policía nacional preventiva y al actual gobierno por las
> muertes que ya ocurrieron y por la sangre inocente que pueda correr con
> el desarrollo de la operación trueno.
> POR LA TIERRA, POR LA PATRIA,POR NUESTROS HIJOS, SEGUIREMOS EN LA LUCHA
> HASTA VENCER.
> Tocoa colon Honduras 2 de abril de 2010
> MOVIMENTO UNIFICADO CAMPESINO DEL AGUAN (MUCA)
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