The situation of violence in Aguán is a result of an unresolved structural problem in Honduras, an expression of the necessity for profound changes in this country so that the majority of its people may enjoy their human rights fully and effectively.
Since the politico-economic-military coup d’état perpetrated on 28 June 2009 against the established government of Honduras, murders, persecutions, threats, and intimidations of some 3,500 peasant families who are demanding lands so they can live in dignity have increased.
Over the last several months, repression through various means has intensified: low-altitude flights of helicopters and airplanes; armed commandos who menacingly crisscross defenseless villages; capture, torture, and four murders of campesinos affiliated with the United Peasant Movement of Aguán (MUCA). And an inevitable confrontation has led to the deaths of security guards of landowners, according to police reports.
This armed aggression is accompanied by a systematic campaign on the part of the media controlled by the groups in power, designed to justify violent raids on peasant settlements and discredit the MUCA’s struggle for campesinos’ rights.
The Human Rights Platform, in the face of this conflict between campesinos and landowners in the Bajo Aguán area, urges the international community and international human rights organizations to pressure the current regime headed by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, to put an end to violence and find immediate solutions to the root cause of the crisis.
The malicious disinformation campaign unleashed by entrepreneurs Miguel Facussé, René Morales, and Reynaldo Canales — apologists of hate, who endanger the lives and physical integrity of peasant families settled in this region and members of organizations who stand in solidarity with the struggle launched by MUCA — must stop.
We demand a definitive solution to the conflict which has to be one that solves the problem of inequality in land distribution and other productive resources.
Tegucigalpa, MDC
15 March 2010
The original article “Posicionamiento de la Plataforma de Derechos Humanos ante el conflicto del Bajo Aguán” was published on the MUCA Web site on 16 March 2010 Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).
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