Honduras Crackdown Drawing International Condmenation
The international community sounds alarms over the Honduran crackdown on freedoms.
From The New York Times:
Rosamaria Valeriano Flores was returning home from a visit to a public health clinic and found herself in a crowd of people dispersing from a demonstration in support of the ousted president, Manuel Zelaya. As she crossed the central square of the Honduran capital, a group of soldiers and police officers pushed her to the ground and beat her with their truncheons.
She said the men kicked out most of her top teeth, broke her ribs and split open her head. “A policeman spit in my face and said, ‘You will die,’ ” she said, adding that the attack stopped when a police officer shouted at the men that they would kill her.
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In New York, Director-General Koichiro Matsuura of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) voiced concern over the “crisis”.
“Freedom of expression is a particularly important human right that must be preserved if a durable solution, acceptable to all, is to be found to the crisis,” he stressed. He further called on authorities to resolve political tensions and reconsider their position on freedom of expression with democratic principles in mind.
A group of independent UN human rights experts has reported that the de facto government’s decree allowed the police to repress all non-authorized public meetings or demonstrations. This had resulted in the deaths of five people in the last few rallies, including an 18-year-old youth.
The group of experts, which reports to the Geneva-based Human Rights Council, consisted of El Hadji Malick Sow, Chairperson-Rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention; Margaret Sekaggya, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders; Frank La Rue, Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and Manfred Nowak, Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
“It is worrying that police and military officers are resorting to the use of excessive force, including beatings and shootings, in order to dissolve street protests,” the group said.
“The result of these interventions has been large-scale detentions, in some cases in non-authorized detention facilities, where those arrested run the risk of being subjected to torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.”
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