Honduras: State Department Visits Coordinate Military and Police Aid

BYRIGHTS ACTION

Honduras Coup Regime Watch
October 20, 2010 URGENT – CALL AND FAX

Today and tomorrow, David T. Johnson, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs visits Honduras to meet with de facto president Pepe Lobo and Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez.

According to a State Department press release, together, Johnston, Lobo and Alvarez will “convene the U.S.- Honduras Merida- CARSI Task Force.”   The Merida Initiative funds, equips and trains police and military forces in Mexico, Central America, the Dominican Republic and Haiti to combat drug trafficking.
 
It is of extreme concern that the State Department is focusing on generating the first institutionalized structures to support the Merida Initiative (CARSI) in Central America precisely in Honduras where escalating political repression, control of state security forces by organized crime and a dramatic increase in the role of the military in civilian governance has led human rights organizations to call for an end to U.S. military and police aid to Honduras.

Just last week a delegation of Honduran human rights organizations met with the White House’s National Security Council and members of congress, calling for an end to police and military assistance.

Please call and write Dan Restrepo, the Director of Western Hemisphere Affairs of in the National Security Council of the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to voice your outrage.

Below find:
 §  White House’s National Security Council and State Department phone numbers,
 §  a sample letter or fax, and
 §  an article that provides background information on the Merida Initiative and the current situation in Honduras and Central America.
 


WHITE HOUSE
Dan Restrepo
Director of Western Hemisphere Affairs
National Security Council
Old Executive Office Building,
Washington, DC
Telephone: 202 456-9491
Fax: 202 456-7111


 STATE DEPARTMENT
 Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State
State Department
2201 C Street NW
Washington, DC
Telephone: (202) 647-4000




SAMPLE LETTER


Dear [Secretary of State Clinton or Restrepo]:


I write to urge the United States to immediately suspend military and police assistance to Honduras.  It is unthinkable that Assistant Secretary of State Johnston is currently convening the CARSI Task Force in Honduras together with the acting Honduran President Pepe Lobo and acting Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez, implicated in grave human rights violations.


Currently Honduran State security forces are participating in grave human rights violations, and are articulated with paramilitary organizations and death squads.


The U.S. must respond to the demand of Honduran human rights organizations and suspend police and military aid to Honduras.  If not, the Obama Administration will go down in history for escorting Central America back to control by military governments and massive human rights violations.


Sincerely,


Your Name

BACKGROUND ARTICLE ON THE MERIDA INITIATIVE AND THE US ROLE IN FOSTERING ORGANIZED CRIME IN CENTRAL AMERICA

WHAT THE MERIDA INITIVE (CARSI AND CBSI) IS AND HOW IT WORKS

John Negroponte launched the Merida Initiative in 2008 when he served as Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere.  Initial coordination in Central America took place during Negroponte’s official tour of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in June of 2008 to promote the initiative.  Later CACRSI, the Central America Regional Security Initiative, and the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) were divided from the Merida Initiative, which now refers exclusively to the Mexican portion of the program.  In the 2008, 2009 and 2010 appropriations bills, a total of $258 million dollars were appropriated for Central America, $1,322 million for Mexico and $32 million for the Caribbean.

Merida Initiative funds are coordinated by the State Department via three bureaus within the State Department.  The Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs administer the majority of the funds, appropriated to the International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE) account.  The Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs administers funds appropriated as part of the Economic Support Fund, and funds appropriated to the Foreign Military Financing account are administered through the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.

However, the actual implementation of activities is carried out by other agencies such as U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).  Significant coordination is also carried out with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice (DOJ), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), among others.

The Merida Initiative promotes interagency coordination and particularly joint national security actions by police and military. Central America nations have been struggling for over 20 years to remove militaries from internal security functions following the genocide and massive human rights violations carried out in the 1980’s by Central American militaries, with strong U.S. support.

ORGANIZED CRIME AND VIOLENCE IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Levels of violence in Guatemala, Honduras and EL Salvador have grown over the past decade to such an extent that United Nations statistics demonstrate that the level of killing is higher than even during the internal armed conflicts of the 1970s and 1980s, and are among, if not the, highest murder rates in the world.

It is interesting to note that while the Sandinista government in the early 1980s dismantled the corrupt security forces in Nicargua, which currently enjoys a lower murder rate than Washington, DC, no such process occurred in other Central American nations.  In El Salvador and Guatemala, in theory new civilian police forces were constructed following the peace processes, however many military personnel were simply shifted directly into the police, and parallel death squad structures were immediately articulated within the police forces.

It is worth noting that the militaries of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala have been heavily implicated in drug trafficking.  In the case of the Honduran and El Salvadoran militaries, they undertook extensive collaboration with the covert Contra supply network operated by White House aid Lt. Col. Oliver North out of the Ilopango air base in El Salvador at a time when internal Central Intelligence Agency reports, a Department of Justice report and a Congressional report all document that the Medellin drug cartel contributed cash to the Contra effort in exchange for accommodation of their activities by CIA and other US authorities.   US Ambassador to Honduras at the time, John Negroponte, was a key bulwark of support for the Contra support.

The 1980’s set the stage for the growth of organized crime in the region and the creation of the mechanisms for impunity that allow them to flourish, including the structuring of the justice system in the current and 16th Honduran constitution, approved during a military government in 1982.

It is also interesting to note that in the recent coup attempt in Ecuador it has been alleged that police anti narcotics units that took over control of the airports had been trained by and maintained close relations with the US embassy.

JOHNSTON VISITS GUATEMALA, CONCERN OVER REGIONALIZATION OF CICIG

Yesterday Johnston visited Guatemala focusing on reviewing the International Commission Against Impunity and Corruption, a United Nations sponsored effort to prosecute organized crime networks through the Guatemalan justice system with the assistance of international lawyers.

Currently there is an effort to regionalize CICIG, creating similar programs in Honduras and Guatemala.  Though debate is ongoing, Honduran human rights organizations fear that the ongoing control of the justice system by the authors of the June 2009 military coup will make it impossible for a CICIG type program to effectively combat impunity, and that such a measure, structurally ineffective from the start, would lend legitimacy to the coup government currently engaged in massive human rights violations, which is anxious to gain reentry to the Organization of American States (OAS).

The Honduran resistance movement, born in the wake of the military coup, hopes to convoke a National Constituent assembly to create a new constitution that would restructure the justice system.  Members of the Resistance explain that structural weaknesses in the justice system can only be addressed through the drafting of a new constitution.

THE OFFICIALS WHO MOST INFLUENCE CARSI IN HONDURAS

The ambassadors in the different countries included in the Merida Initiative, CARSI and CBSI play a key role in implementing in defining the activities.  The current ambassador to Honduras is career diplomat Hugo Llorens.  Most Hondurans believe Llorens played a key role in consolidating the coup, and even in carrying it out.  In 2002, during the failed coup attempt in Venezuela, Llorens was the Director of Andean Affairs in the National Security Council, the key advisor to George W. Bush on Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador issues.

Honduran Minister of Security Oscar Alvarez has implicated in gross human rights violations, including massacres, when he last served as Minister of Security in Honduras from 2002 to 2005 under then president Ricardo Maduro.  Alvarez participated in Pepe Lobo’s first official act as de facto president of Honduras, the signing of a security cooperation agreement with Colombia, signed by then Colombian President Uribe.  Colombian security forces, especially during the Uribe administration, have committed massive human rights violations including the kidnapping and killing of urban youth, transporting them the jungle and dressing them as guerrilla combatants to demonstrate to the press as victories in Colombia’s internal armed conflict, a practice known as “false positives.”

US Assistant Secretary of State David Johnson was appointed to his current position in 2007, during the Bush administration.  He served the Clinton Administration White House from 1995 to 1997 as Spokesman for the National Security Council.  From 2002 to 2003, under the Bush administration, during the early stages of the US invasion of Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, Mr. Johnson served as Afghan Coordinator for the United States.


* * * * * * *
HOW TO SUPPORT HONDURAS' PRO-DEMOCRACY, ANTI-MILITARY COUP REGIME MOVEMENT


TO MAKE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATIONS ... for community based groups in the pro-democracy / anti-military regime movement, make check payable to "Rights Action" and mail to:


UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
CANADA:  552 - 351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
 CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm
STOCK DONATIONS: Contact info@rightsaction.org

 SPEAKERS:  Contact Rights Action to plan educational presentations in your community, school, place of worship, home, about the tireless and courageous Honduras pro-democracy movement.


 EDUCATIONAL DELEGATIONS TO CENTRAL AMERICA:  Form your own group and/ or join one of our educational delegation-seminars to learn firsthand about community development, human rights and environmental struggles.


JOIN RIGHTS ACTION's LISTSERV: http://visitor.constantcontact.com/d.jsp?m=1103480765269