External resources relating to Honduras

Activists in Honduras have been targeted in a wave of surveillance, intimidation and violence since the country’s security forces cracked down on a wave of social unrest prompted by last month’s disputed presidential election... Fernández and other activists have also accused the Honduran police and military – as well as armed civilians – of intimidating protesters who are still holding regular demonstrations over alleged fraud in the re-election of President Juan Orlando Hernández. A national strike was launched on Sunday ahead of Hernández’s inauguration this weekend. Thousands of security forces, including military police and elite Cobra riot officers, have been deployed since the election in late November.

Climate change, increased global migration, and expanding border enforcement are three linked phenomena guaranteed to come to an explosive head in this century.

The ongoing demonstrations continue to call for Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez to step down, and for the National Elections Commission to finalize an announcement.

Honduran elite police, known as "Cobras", are now refusing to confront the protesters and are demanding an end to the crisis.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, using the specter of rampant crime and the drug trade, won extensive support from the American government to build up highly trained state security forces. Now, those same forces are repressing democracy.

The post-election situation in Honduras continues to deteriorate as Hernández, a conservative leader and stalwart U.S. ally in Central America, has disputed the result of last week’s vote while working to crack down on protests sweeping the nation.

The Honduran government has suspended constitutional rights to give the army and police more powers and imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew to contain unrest triggered by a contested election, a senior government official said on Friday...

There is a growing body of evidence suggesting that the militarization of domestic security is bad for human rights and has little impact on crime and violence in the long term. So what keeps attracting Latin American governments to adopt these “iron fist” policies?

Evidence suggests Honduras’ use of the military to conduct domestic policing has increased human rights violations by soldiers. Yet the country’s corrupt and ineffective police force offers an equally unpleasant alternative for combating widespread insecurity...

Latin America is witnessing a steady movement toward the militarization of the police, with the armed forces taking over many of the day to day functions of community policing.  But given Latin America’s past troubles with military governments, this development is raising serious concerns. In the 1960s and 1970s a spate of coups across the region brought harsh right-wing regimes to power, with the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay deploying their militaries as internal security forces, purging their countries of domestic political opponents, real and imagined. Now many fear that we may be heading back toward the bad old days, with unbridled militaries running riot over the citizenry...

The Honduras government named Julian Pacheco, an active military general, as the head of its Security Ministry in Honduras, another sign of its reliance on military personnel to fill positions in domestic security and other state institutions...

Honduras is adding 1,000 new officers to its military police, while the president is pushing Congress to enshrine the force in the constitution, in the government’s increasingly militarized approach to public security...

The following report highlights three local and international companies that manufacture “non-lethal” crowd control weapons. These weapons are currently used by Israeli authorities and security forces, mainly to suppress non-violent demonstrations in the occupied Palestinian territories, in violation of the right to freedom of expression and association. Despite the fact that they are often labeled as “nonlethal” weapons, they have already been proven as potentially lethal in different incidents around the world, when the use of these weapons led to the death of demonstrators.

The report focuses on three types of weapons as case studies: tear gas canisters, which are produces and marketed by Combined Systems, Inc. (CSI) and M.R. Hunter; “the Scream”, manufactured by Electro-Optics Research & Development (EORD) and LRAD; and “the Skunk”, which is manufactured by Odortec, with the supporting companies: Man and BeitAlfa Technologies. The report will highlight the harmful consequences of these weapons, including their potentially lethal effects. The occupied Palestinian territories are being used as a lab for testing new civil oppression weapons on humans, in order to label them as “proven effective” for marketing abroad.

Honduras has signed into law the creation of a military police force to help confront the country’s security crisis, a move that has provoked human rights concerns and skirts around the need to overhaul existing police bodies...

The Honduras government plans to create a new force of 4,500 community police, and to reorganize the structure of existing police units, though neither plan seems capable of addressing the deep rooted issues undermining the country’s security forces...

Honduras’ Congress has taken up the debate over the possible establishment of a military police unit as an answer to spiralling violence, a discussion that will likely touch upon the dangers of blending police and military roles.

On May 8, Congress debated a proposed law would create a specialized police force, known as the “Tigers” (based on the Spanish acronym for Special Response Team and Intelligence Troop Law). Congress approved the law in a first round of debates, with two more expected to follow...

The Honduran government launched a second operation to put troops on the streets of its most violent cities, paid for using funds from a newly imposed security tax...

Faced with surging crime and corrupt police forces, many Latin American governments are turning to their militaries to combat citizen insecurity, but the peacetime deployment of the armed forces is not without risk...

The report, Preach What You Practice: The Separation of Military and Police Roles in the Americas, from the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) provides a background briefing on key distinctions between military and police functions. It calls on the Obama Administration to change direction, and stop encouraging the military forces of other countries to take on roles that would be illegal for the U.S. Armed Forces to carry out at home. The authors, a team of WOLA’s regional security experts, set out specific steps to be taken by both United States and countries in the region.

Israeli military exports to South America have been on the rise in the recent years. Brazil is gearing up to become the gateway for Israeli military technology and companies. Israel continues to be a top supplier of the Colombian military. Ecuador, while not having extensive military ties with Israel, has recently purchased drone aircraft. Chile, already a buyer of Israeli arms, also has expressed interest in similar drone technology.

It is the goal of this report to analyze these trends, both in light of recent events and also as they relate to the history of Israeli involvement in South America. We will highlight that it is impossible for South America’s democratic governments to reconcile protection of human rights - whether at home or abroad - with military ties and arms trade with Israel.

Any military ties with Israel support the state’s policies of occupation, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, policies whose sustainability depends on Israeli military capacities and the profits deriving from its military industry,  and adversely affect the Palestinians and their struggle. Israel has developed an indigenous military industry that produces much of the equipment used by its military.  International buyers help ensure the survival of the Israeli military industry.

The militarization of police units has been a longstanding policy in Latin America well before it received attention from the U.S. media. U.S. bilateral assistance to countries in Latin America has encouraged the adoption of military equipment and military training for local police forces.   While the U.S. prohibits the armed forces from assisting police forces at home, the practice of technology transfer and military training in-country has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy in Latin America and the Caribbean for years. The logic is that crime and violence have overwhelmed local police forces—weak and corrupt to begin with—and therefore the armed forces are necessary for the state to provide security.   But that comes with huge risks...