The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) became the most recent body to condemn ongoing rights abuses being carried out against anti-coup activists in Honduras. On Monday the IACHR said at least three members of the resistance movement were murdered in the last month while numerous other anti-coup activists have been the target of “kidnappings (at least 2 confirmed cases), arbitrary detentions (more than 50 confirmed cases), acts of torture (at least 8 confirmed cases), sexual violations (at least 2 confirmed cases), and illegal raids (at least 1 confirmed case).” Further, the IACHR says, children of resistance members have been the latest group to be subjected to violence with two children of activists murdered recently. Here’s the IACHR in its own words: “The Commission observes with dismay that it appears that sons and daughters of leaders of the Resistance Front are being killed, kidnapped, attacked, and threatened as a strategy to silence the activists.” The graphic of these acts of violence are retold by the inter-American rights commission, and the IACHR calls on the Honduran government to “adopt urgent measures to guarantee the rights to life, humane treatment, and personal liberty.”
The statement, following a similar one by Human Rights Watch last week, is significant given Sec. of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement late last week that the US is set to restart both development and military assistance. Further, in a country plagued by violent crime, the fact that the IACHR singles out anti-coup resistance members as the specific targets of violence is evidence that the country is far from having resolved the deep political divisions of the last 8 plus months.
That point was made evident in another way this week by former president Mel Zelaya’s visit to Venezuela where he was named the head of PetroCaribe’s new political council [for an interesting piece about PeteroCaribe’s financial woes, click here; for another one on how PetroCaribe has provided economic stability in the Caribbean, click here]. It was Zelaya’s growing relationship with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez that sparked anger among many coup backers in June and those tensions appear to remain. AFP reports that President Pepe Lobo denounced Zelaya’s call for the international community to not reintegrate Honduras this week, saying Zelaya “insists that a Honduran people who have suffered greatly already continue to be inflicted with pain.”
To other stories this morning:
· In Washington, Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes was at the White House Monday for a face-to-face meeting with President Barack Obama. BBC Mundo has a report on the hour-long meeting, writing that Obama created Funes with a “bienvenido” before talking bilateral trade and regional security (drug trafficking and organized crime, specifically). Obama also praised Funes for his “wise and pragmatic” stand vis a vis the coup in Honduras and the quake in Haiti. For his part, Funes said the U.S. should not be blamed for the current state of his country, adding that “we are looking for the U.S. to become a strategic partner…not a junior or senior partner but an equal and effective partner.” Specifically, Funes went on, he said he sought resources for Salvadoran small and medium sized businesses so that they might improve the economic situation in El Salvador.” Today Funes meets with leaders of various multilateral agencies as well as congressional leaders.
· On Colombia via the news site Latin America News Dispatch, word on the next major case to appear before that country’s Constitutional Court: the controversial U.S.-Colombia bases deal. The court will decide whether the agreement, authorized last October and set to be implemented in May, will have to be approved by the Colombian Congress before going into effect. LAND writes, “It is illegal under the Colombian Constitution to allow foreign soldiers into the country without congressional approval (Article 173).” But “the Álvaro Uribe administration has said that the agreement with the U.S. was not a new one, but rather an extension of an existing, decades-old military pact and, consequently, should not require separate scrutiny.” AFP adds that the court has taken up the case at the petition of a group of lawyers (the “José Alvear Restrepo” group) who also say Uribe ignored the “advice of the State Council -- the highest court on administrative matters, which also urged that the congress take up the agreement before it was signed.”
· Meanwhile, Monday also marked the unveiling of former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos as Uribe’s handpicked successor. Uribe’s Partido Social de la Unidad selected Santos as its choice for late May elections. Santos accepted saying he would “defend the party’s historic legacy.” That “legacy” is being praised by a few conservative commentators this week who frequently hold up Colombia as a poster child for a successful U.S. counternarcotics/counterinsurgency partnership. In the Weekly Standard, Vanessa Neumann has a long report from Bogotá on the matter, saying the country’s Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (DDR) process is the “envy of other countries trying to extract themselves from civil wars.” She says others refer to it as “the Rolls Royce” of such program. And in the Washington Post this morning, Robert Kagan and Aroop Mukharij praise not only Uribe’s security policies but also the constitutional court’s decision to not grant him a chance at a third term. But, they write: “Uribe is the ultimate hero of this story. Whatever his personal desires, he allowed the court to do its job without interference. Whatever his accomplishments, including defeating terrorists and giving Colombians hope, his greatest gift to his people will be a society and political system based not on the power and appeal of an individual but on the rule of law.”
· Rene Preval arrived in Washington Monday. He’s expected to meet with President Obama Wednesday, says the AP. According to President Preval, he will discuss the next phase of the reconstruction process with the US President: job creation and the potential long term risk to food production in the country being caused by food aid. Also on Haiti, Paul Collier has an opinion in the Independent on the need to rethink the NGO model in the country. He writes of a new state-NGO “hybrid agency, run jointly by government and donors. “Its function,” argues Collier, “would be to take in money from the donors and disburse it to the frontline – the NGOs, churches and local communities that actually run schools and clinics. The core job of the agency would be to monitor the comparative performance of these frontline providers, continuously shifting money to the more cost-effective.”
· New poll numbers are out ahead of 2011 presidential elections in Peru. Lima mayor Luis Castaneda still leads the pack, followed by Keiko Fujimori, Ollanta Humala, and Alejandro Toledo. Notable, however, is the large number he say they prefer to simply annul their vote rather than elect any of the potential candidates (nearly 10% already).
· Three notes on Brazil in the international arena. The LA Times has more on the memo of understanding signed between the US and Brazil last week related to climate change and cooperative efforts to fight deforestation. The BBC reports Brazil is taking the US to task on cotton subsidies by instituting a new round of sanctions against a variety of US goods. The move has been approved by the WTO in a somewhat surprising decision. And from IPS, a report on Brazil’s ambitious plan (Plan 2022) to launch the country onto a new political and economic path. One of its main goals: continued progress against economic and social inequalities.
· Colum Lynch at the FP’s UN Turtle Bay blog, says three Latin Americans could be in the running to for the position of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Those individuals are Chile’s current UN ambassador Heraldo Munoz, Chile’s UN ambassador to Geneva, Carlos Portales, and Mexico’s former ambassador for human rights and democracy, Marieclaire Acosta.
· The Miami Herald reports on how Cuba is getting tough on hunger strikers after the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo.
· Finally, a few more opinions today. Andres Oppenheimer on the movement of drug cartels south from Mexico to Central America. He writes: “Washington may have to consider decriminalizing personal marijuana consumption -- as former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil, Ernesto Zedillo of Mexico and César Gaviria of Colombia proposed last year -- to free massive resources that could be used to fight more dangerous drugs, such as cocaine and heroin, on a hemisphere-wide basis.” And Matt Kennard at the Guardian on why Bolivia under Evo Morales a “beacon of hope” for those seeking a form of “a government and....a grassroots movement, committed to economic and gender equality, anti-racism, free speech and every other ideal the left should hold dear.” He also contrasts Bolivia with Venezuela. “The texture of the modern Bolivian revolution is different to that of Hugo Chávez's Venezuela. It is a much more bottom-up revolution, and Morales is kept on a tight leash by the democratic movement that was behind his rise to power in a way Chávez isn't.”
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