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[Proyecto Hondureño]

             HONDURASS OLIDARITY
Network
www.hondurassolidaritynetwork.org
honsolnetwork at gmail.com
July 14, 2014

Honduras Solidarity Groups Demand Justice for Child Refugees from
Central America
The Honduras Solidarity Network, a network of over 30 US solidarity
organizations, and Department
19, a network of Hondurans living in the US and Canada, members of the
FNRP/LIBRE Party, are
appalled and saddened by the refugee crisis on the US border. Children
fleeing military and police,
drug cartel, corporate violence and extreme poverty in Central America, to
reunite with family
members in the United States, cannot and must not be viewed through a
nativist lens as illegal
aliens, but rather as the refugees that they are.
We are ashamed that the response of our political class and the Obama
administration to this crisis
is to call for yet more militarization of the border and quicker
deportation processes with a
complete lack of acknowledgement of the responsibility of the US government
for creating this
crisis over both the long and short term.
The problem of the child refugees is in part blowback from US policy in the
1980s when our
government trained and funded Salvadoran and Guatemalan military and police
to prevent popular
revolutions, and more recently when the US supported the coup against
President Manuel Zelaya in
Honduras.
US foreign policy, anchored in the militarized Drug War and pursued by both
the
Democratic and Republican administrations, has only empowered brutal and
corrupt armies and
police forces, particularly in Honduras and Guatemala.
US so-called free trade and structural adjustment policies have required
the countries of Central
America and Mexico to cut social services and credit to small farmers while
wiping out local
producers with a flood of low-cost, US taxpayer-subsidized products from US
agribusiness. These
policies have increased poverty and desperation in Central America and
Mexico and created a fertile
recruiting ground for drug cartels and criminal gangs.
The Obama administration bears particular responsibility for the influx of
refugees from Honduras.
The US turned a blind eye to the military coup of June 28, 2009 which
overthrew the democratically
elected government. After a brief suspension of aid, the Obama
administration devoted its full
diplomatic weight to return Honduras, under its coup-spawned government, to
the OAS and UN
despite opposition from most countries in Latin America. US Ambassador Lisa
Kubiske was quick to
recognize current defacto President Juan Orlando Hernandez’ election last
November while credible
complaints of massive fraud were still coming in. The Obama Administration
has spent millions of
dollars since the coup to equip and train Honduras’ murderous and corrupt
military and police with
the result that massacres of small farmers and political assassinations of
reporters, Libre Party
activists, human rights defenders, indigenous, labor, women, campesinos and
LGBTI activists have
skyrocketed.
We are especially saddened and incensed that President Obama’s $3.7 billion
request to Congress
for emergency funds to deal with the refugee crisis contains almost $2
billion for more incarceration
and removal of minors and refugees, without regard to their due process
rights or the root causes of
their desperate flight from their home countries. Indeed, in order to speed
their deportation, he
has called for suspending a 2008 law which requires minors to be
transferred out of detention to
centers where they can locate family members to care for them.
We call on the Obama administration and all elected officials to stop
playing politics with the lives
of children, and we demand:
1.
That the Obama administration abide by international treaties and US laws
concerning the
treatment and due process rights of refugees claiming asylum and of minor
children; and
2.
Stop all deportations until a comprehensive immigration reform bill, based
on human rights
and family reunification, not militarization of the border, is passed by
Congress, and
3.
Thoroughly revise our trade and economic, drug and military policies so
that they respect
the right of self-determination of the peoples of Central America and
Mexico to create
alternatives to displacement and migration with living wage jobs,
prosperous communities
and accountable and democratic governments.
!
!
Honduras Solidarity Network (HSN)
www.hondurassolidarity.org/
July 14, 2014
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