Spain has received around a hundred applications for asylum from Honduras

'I asked for asylum in Spain to stay alive  and not be silenced'

voselsoberano.com | Thursday June 17, 2010 16:15

Olga R. Sanmartín | Madrid

• The Honduran Jonathan P., 30, lives in a shelter in Merida.
• Some hitmen tortured and killed his boyfriend for opposing the coup.
•  He is also a sentenced to death for being a dissident and had to flee their country.
• He is requesting  the Spanish Government to grant him refugee status.

Jonathan P. still has nightmares about the image of the dead body of Renan, his boyfriend. The body was found bound and beaten up  to a pulp on the floor that the two shared in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

Soon after, Jonathan P.learned that the gunmen who killed Renan also had him on the blacklist. And all because of their political significance.

 

Jonathan P.  has had a hard time this morning to hold back his tears when he recalled how his life has changed in just one year. This activist from the movement of resistance against the coup that occurred in Honduras on June 28, 2009 has been in Madrid  telling how he went from opposing it through  protest songs against the new government of Honduras to catch a plane and land trembling with fear in Spain seeking asylum.

 

"I asked for asylum to stay alive and not be silenced," he says. Just having turned  30, he is one of about 100 Hondurans who have come to Spain to ask for protection since the military uprising occurred. The Government of Honduras has been sentenced him to death.

 

"I lived with my boyfriend in Tegucigalpa. Once the coup took place, we decided to march in the streets against the dictatorship. Before we had no political connections, we had a normal life. Gradually the streets  became organized, and I started singing making protest music. we demonstrated almost daily, "says Jonathan P.

 

And then the terror began. "We witnessed how people were killed  in these marches. The risk began. On December 23 last year, they sent some hitmen to the floor and killed Renan, my boyfriend. I was in my parents' house. He appeared bound hand and foot. His body was fractured  and he had a tourniquet on his neck. "

'People are being silenced'

Six months have passed and still no one has been arrested for the murder of Renan.  Jonathan P. points directly to the government of (de facto)President Roberto Micheletti, which was appointed in office by the military command to replace Manuel Zelaya.  "People who were involved in the coup are still in the state apparatus, they are advisers of Micheletti. They're still there and it is they who are attempting to silence the people."

 

Jonathan P. had to come to Spain because in Honduras  a time  came when human rights organizations could not guarantee his safety. On February 8  he arrived to Barajas  and applied for asylum and was turned over to the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR), whose members have stayed by his side  today in his meeting with the press.

 

The Spanish Interior Ministry has agreed to process his application, but has not yet decided whether to grant him refugee status.Jonathan P. is waiting at a shelter in the town of Mérida Extremadura and tries to rebuild his life and assimilate all that has happened in such little amount of time.

Nine killed friends

"I need the asylum because like this I can  detach a bit from the situation that exists in my country. With this new government there have been nine murders of my colleagues. The last, a journalist, which happened three days ago."

 

Jonathan P.  laments since not even he or Renan were leaders of the resistance movement.  "The visible figures are never touched. The rest are those who have to pay."

 

  Cear has released  this morning its annual report on the situation of refugees in Spain.  The figures are "worrying", according to the document, which claims that our country remains at the bottom of Europe in the protection of refugees. " Let's see if Jonathan P. becomes one of them.

Source: elmundo.es

Spain has received around a hundred applications for asylum from Honduras

voselsoberano.com | Thursday June 17, 2010 12:20

MADRID (AFP) - Spain has received a hundred applications for asylum of Honduran citizens after the coup a year ago and almost all have been declared admissible, according to  the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR).

"Almost all" of these one hundred applications were declared admissible and "at least two" have already obtained refugee status in an urgent procedure, said Thursday the president of CEAR, María Jesús Arsuaga, and the coordinator of the report 2009, Mauricio Valiente.

One of the applicants, Jonathan Ponce, recounted his case on Thursday at a press conference in which they presented the 2009 report of asylum in Spain.

Ponce, 30, left Honduras after his partner was killed, tortured and murdered in his home, and after participating actively in the movement against the  de facto government led by Roberto Micheletti, after the overthrow on June 28 2009 of President Manuel Zelaya.

The Honduran arrived in Spain in February after spending some time hidden by an NGO in his country and after knowing that he was "in the lists of death squads", and is in a shelter in the city of Merida (southwest .)

 "The asylum seekers are not economic migrants. We're involved in situations of injustice in our countries", "we have been traumatized by the situation of persecution," said Ponce, who reported that he left Honduras for having "dreams of justice" and because he had "his days numbered."

CEAR stood at 3,000 asylum seekers in Spain in 2009, "34% less than last year" and "the lowest figure in the history of asylum in Spain," according to the report.

 

 "These figures show, without doubt, the enormous and growing difficulties in accessing the asylum procedure in Spain" to which is added the European Union legislation, he said.

By countries which headed citizens applications Nigeria (459), followed by Ivory Coast (304) and Colombia, with 247 applications, of which 147 were declared in process.

 
http://www.tiempo.hn/web2/secciones/portada/17996-espana-ha-recibido-unas-cien-solicitudes-para-asilar-hondurenos.html http://www.tiempo.hn/web2/secciones/portada/17996-espana-ha-recibido-unas-cien-solicitudes-para-asilar-hondurenos.html