Tegucigalpa, 19 January 2011
The National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP) denounced today that, in Honduras, grave human rights violations persist under the Porfirio Lobo Sosa administration.
According to Berta Oliva, Coordinator of the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), her organization documented 1,071 human rights violations in just the first three months of the Lobo Sosa administration.
For example, early this year, José Ricardo Rodríguez Hernández and Edy Gabriel Betancourt were murdered, and their families are afraid to even talk about the issue because they may get assaulted.
According to COFADEH, there have been 64 documented cases of political assassinations under the government of Lobo Sosa.
“Those officials who say that there is no policy of state-sponsored crime are lying, for the numbers say otherwise,” Oliva said firmly.
Oliva participated in a press conference convened by the FNRP, to clarify its position on the constitutional reforms and disseminate information about the human rights situation in Honduras.
She reported that one of the murder victims this year, Rodríguez Hernández, was granted precautionary measures by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which COFADEH was helping implement.
Oliva stated that, from 28 June 2009 to December 2009, COFADEH documented 4,234 violations of human rights, to which the government has made no response.
She emphasized that in the first three months of 2010 there were 119 cases of grave human rights violations against women.
According to Oliva, the persecution of women is due to the “state policy and practice,” because those who are the driving force of the search for justice are women, not only in Honduras but throughout Latin America.
The human rights defender said that the violation of human rights in Honduras knows no end.
The original article “Continúan las violaciones graves a derechos humanos en Honduras” was published on the Web site of the National Front of Popular Resistance on 19 January 2011. Translation by Yoshie Furuhashi (@yoshiefuruhashi | yoshie.furuhashi [at] gmail.com).
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