Ashamed to be Canadian: Corruption, Fear, Humiliation and Militarization in Honduras

Ashamed to be Canadian: Corruption, Fear, Humiliation and Militarization in Honduras

by Janet Spring, mother-in-law of Honduran political prisoner Edwin Espinal

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Day #491 – Edwin Espinal, political prisoner illegally jailed in max-security Honduran military prison. Edwin is married to Karen Spring, Canadian human rights defender and director of Honduras Solidarity Network. Since January 19, 2018, Edwin has been illegally held in a max-security military jail, facing trumped up charges filed by the corrupt, repressive U.S. and Canadian-backed Honduran regime.

 

 

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Ashamed to be Canadian: Corruption, Fear, Humiliation, and Militarization in Honduras

By Janet Spring (mother-in-law of Edwin Espinal, political prisoner in Honduras), May 26, 2019

 

I am writing this article as I sit by the Caribbean Sea in the evening of May 26 in Trujillo Bay, Honduras. Trujillo is a Garifuna community that is in a land struggle against the Honduran government and Canadian tourism businesses that are trying to or have already stolen Garifuna land for economic gain.

 

As I visit this community, I am embarrassed and ashamed to be Canadian as corrupt Canadian investors have given Canada a bad name.

 

I am traveling with 16 people – 4 Canadians from the broader Simcoe County area (Ontario), and 12 US citizens – on a delegation sponsored by the Honduras Solidarity Network and Cross Border Network, based in Kansas City, Missouri. The delegation is focusing on the ‘Roots of Migration,’ which is taking us along the north coast of Honduras to La Ceiba and Trujillo.

 

“Little Canada” tourism corruption and violence

The cruise ship docks are located here; tourists disembark and enter these communities, and most do not know that they are on disputed indigenous Garifuna territory and that tensions are high. Little do they know that corruption abounds here and that it is perpetuated by Canadian business interests supported by the corrupt narco-trafficking illegal government of Juan Orlando Hernandez.

 

The delegation began on May 25th with our first stop in El Progeso. Here we participated in a march in support of political prisoners and walked through the streets with the leaders of the movement that demand Hernandez resign. We also met with a member of the El Progreso community who provides support to families who choose to join migrant caravans to the US.

 

The presenter explained how the deep-seated corruption, extortion, drug cartels, lack of employment, fear, and marginalization forces the Honduran people to leave their country. He remarked that 48% of 5th and 6th grade students wish to leave the country due to the lack of hope perpetuated by the corrupt oligarchy families and drug-trafficking government that control the population.

 

Our group left with a greater understanding of why people leave the country that they love and the desperation migrant families feel for their children’s future.

 

This coming week, our group leaves the north coast and travels back to El Progreso, the site of the 1952 banana plantation struggles, to La Esperanza, home of Berta Caceres (assassinated March 2, 2016), and finally to the capital of Tegucigalpa. We will meet with the US Embassy staff and have also requested a meeting with the Canadian Embassy. The group will participate in a dialogue with a very well respected former presidential candidate – Carlos Reyes – who will provide a perspective of the current political situation, listen to the struggles that Hondurans face through corruption at all levels of the Hernandez government, and about gang violence and drug trafficking.

 

Later in the week, our group will travel to La Tolva prison, hoping to get in to see my son-in-law Edwin Espinal and another political prisoner Raul Alvarez. We have sent in all documentation required for this visit but as the government does not follow their own laws, we may be denied entry.

 

My visit to La Tolva military prison

This past week before the delegation began, I went to La Tolva prison to visit Edwin. When I traveled to La Tolva for my first scheduled visit on a ‘visitor pass,’ the visit was horrendous on many levels. Firstly, it took two trips to La Tolva to present my documentation that I received from the National Penitentiary Institute (NPI). Each time I travel to Honduras, I must go through this process. We handed the documentation to the prison both on Friday the 17th and then when the guards at the gate asked for further documentation – my flight information, something that was never requested by the prison – Karen drove the extra documents to La Tolva on Saturday the 18th.

 

When we arrived (Karen was the driver), the officers at the gate said that no papers had been submitted. The director of the prison finally came out and the papers were eventually found. But this took over an hour and a half, minimizing my visitation time. I was expected to get 4 hours. (We got there at 1 p.m. because if you go any earlier, they will not process anyone after 11 am due to upcoming lunch break, and any earlier they just make visitors wait anyway until 1 p.m.)

 

This kind of delay tactic is a prime example of how the prison officials humiliate visitors in an attempt to discourage them from returning.

 

In a discussion that Karen had with the officials at the NPI the next day, they advised her that the guards and the director of La Tolva do not have the authority to question any documentation after the permission is granted by the NPI. The permission is signed by the director of the NPI so it must be accepted. They are not supposed to request any further documentation after it has been processed yet more and more this documentation is questioned. Yet the guards do not follow the rules and make their own rules up as they please.

 

The visit got worse after I finally cleared the front gate. Because I could not speak Spanish, the guards laughed and made fun of me and were very disrespectful to me. The guards at the third checkpoint where the body scanner area is located, refused to accept my doctor’s note because it did not have a doctor’s stamp on it. After repeatedly telling them that our Canadian doctors do not use ‘stamps’, the guard in charge said that I could not enter without the scan.

 

When I got upset, they mocked me further. This was a very humiliating experience. I therefore had no choice … they had already picked and poked through the food that I had made for Edwin, cut the fruit open with a dirty prison knife, pawed the bread, and even disallowed one of the items that is on the list of ‘approved foodstuffs’ to bring in. I went through the scanner against the recommendation of my family doctor.

 

After I went through the body scanner, which my doctor deems is very detrimental to my health condition, I had to wait another hour before I could see Edwin. Edwin finally came out at 3:30 so my visit only lasted for 30 minutes. The ridiculing and laughing behind my back continued throughout the whole visit, even when I was leaving the front gate.

 

Not only were my rights violated according to Honduran ‘law,’ Edwin was very depressed; he has lost more weight, has a constant buzzing in his ear where hearing loss has occurred due to lack of medical treatment, and the water had been shut off for two days. Edwin explained that there was NO drinking water, no water to flush the cell toilets, and no water to properly prepare food. He said that this situation was desperate.

 

Due to this inhumane, horrific, and degrading treatment I endured as a Canadian citizen by the FNCCP (a new special prison task force recently implemented by the Hernandez government), the military police and the military (three forces in La Tolva which participated in that day’s humiliation), which is excessive only to terrorize and harass, I sent this information to the Canadian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, and requested that someone from the Embassy accompany me on my next prison visit. I did not feel safe and felt very vulnerable, and frightened that during the next visit, the taunting and humiliation would escalate.

 

Canadian government support for illegal, illegitimate government of Honduras

The Canadian government supports this illegal and illegitimate government of Honduras and its agencies, as well as funds programs related to the prison situations throughout the country through CONAPREV, so I requested this accompaniment. Yet my request was denied. In a second letter, I apprised the Canadian Embassy of the dire water situation in La Tolva prison. I have not yet received a reply.

 

Edwin and Raul’s appeal cases are in limbo, shuffled from court to court only for the sole purpose of delaying them. Yet if their cases do come to trial and the appeals are heard and accepted, we must be prepared to pay for their bail, which may cost up to $20,000 USD.

 

Fund-raising campaign

A Go Fund Me campaign has been launched to raise these needed funds. So far to date, one quarter of the money has been raised in less than four days. If you wish to donate to Edwin and Raul’s campaign or find further information on the cause, please refer to the following: www.gofundme.com/politicalprisonershn

 

The Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor and the Spring family thank all of those who support our cause and send their best wishes. We hope for success in Edwin and Raul’s case soon.

 

From Honduras,
Janet Spring and the Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor

jspring2@lakeheadu.ca

Why People Flee Honduras

Immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border are hoping to leave behind a home devastated by poverty, gangs and crime, and widespread violence against women.

By POLITICO MAGAZINE

https://www.politico.com/magazine/amp/story/2019/06/07/honduras-why-people-flee-photos-227087

06/07/2019

Nichole Sobecki/VII

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Hundreds and sometimes thousands at a time, Honduran migrants have joined caravans of Central Americans making their way north through Mexico to seek refuge in the United States. They arrive at the southern border only to face stricter asylum rules from an administration increasingly hostile to their entry. There are a number of reasons people may choose to flee their country, and when they do, it’s not an easy endeavor. Yet, they keep coming because of what they’re hoping to leave behind.

Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Two-thirds of its roughly 9 million people live in poverty, according to the World Bank, and in rural areas, 1 in 5 lives in extreme poverty. With a growing population, combined with high underemployment and limited job opportunities because of a largely agricultural economy, many Hondurans seek opportunity elsewhere. And many who stay are dependent on remittances.

Women sit outside their home on the hills overlooking the city of Tegucigalpa. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

A family looks out from their home in the impoverished neighborhood of San Pedro Sula. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

Honduras is one of the deadliest countries in the world and has one of the highest impunity rates. According to an analysis by InSight Crime, gang membership and activity have been on the rise in the past two decades, and the associated violence has hit the country’s urban areas the hardest. Extortion by gangs has forced many to flee in search of more security. Moreover, the Honduran police are both understaffed—in the northern district of San Pedro Sula, home to nearly 230,000 people and where well-known gangs like Barrio 18 and MS-13 operate, just 50 police officers watch over its 189 neighborhoods—and plagued by corruption and abuse.

Top, the tag for MS-13 is sprayed across a wall in La Rivera Hernandez, one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in San Pedro Sula. Bottom, police officers frisk civilians and check their ID cards on a criminal database outside a pool bar, while others search the facility, in another neighborhood in San Pedro Sula. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

Violence—particularly domestic and sexual violence—in Honduras has taken or forever changed many women’s and girls lives. Gender-based violence is the second-leading cause of death for women of reproductive age. And in a country where emergency contraception and abortion are banned, even for rape victims, survivors of sexual violence have few options if they become pregnant. They can seek to terminate the pregnancy and risk prison time, or they can go through with it and face one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Latin America. As Jill Filipovic reports for Politico Magazine, for Honduran women, economic instability and physical insecurity are intertwined, and both are exacerbated by long-standing patriarchal social norms in the country.

Top, Debora Castillo, 17, outside her home in Corazol. Debora lost two children during childbirth. Honduras has an infant mortality rate over three times that of the U.S. Bottom left, Heydi Garcia Giron, 34, with her children, Daniel and Andrea, in their home in Tegucigalpa. Bottom right, Ricsy (a pseudonym), 19, outside her home in Choloma. Heydi and Ricsy are the victims of domestic and sexual violence, respectively. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

The cemetery in Corazol, Honduras. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

Buses ferry workers to and from their jobs at a clothing factory in Choloma, one of the most dangerous cities for women in the world. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

Almost 1,000 people gathered at the bus terminal in San Pedro Sula, after news of a new migrant caravan spread in April, one of several from Central America since late last year. The migrants travel the over 3,000-mile distance to the U.S. border in large groups for safety to avoid being robbed, kidnapped or killed by gangs on the way.

A woman and her child rest on the floor with other participants in a migrant caravan leaving Honduras. | Nichole Sobecki/VII

Narco-Politics Cast Shadow on Honduran Presidents: Court Documents

• Analysis

Written by

Héctor Silva Ávalos

–

May 31, 2019

• Cachiros
• Elites and Organized Crime
• Honduras

President Juan Orlando Hernández (left) and former President Porfirio Lobo Sosa

Honduras’ most powerful drug trafficking organization, Los Cachiros, bribed the country’s former president and opened a line of communication to current President Juan Orlando Hernández, documents recently unsealed in a New York federal court show.

Prosecutors also named President Hernández as a target in a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) investigation that started in 2013, a separate recently unsealed filing shows. Hernández, his sister Hilda, and several members of Honduras’ powerful Rosenthal family were under investigation for “large scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities related to the importation of cocaine into the United States,” according to the 2015 filing that was unsealed this week in a New York federal court.

In Honduras, meanwhile, Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, has been accused of directing government funds to fraudulent business deals with a Cachiros-owned construction firm.

Though the documents come from three separate cases, when taken together, they paint a damning picture of drug traffickers coopting one presidency and trying to influence another.

On May 31, Hernández’s office issued a statement, categorically denying the allegations. “Annoyed at having been prosecuted and extradited by the president Juan Orlando Hernández, various drug trafficking leaders in Honduras, in 2015, falsely accused the president and his colleagues to the United States government.”

It added that the US Justice Department found no evidence to “sustain the accusation” and that the DEA had actually acknowledged Hernández for his collaboration against drug trafficking.

Fabio Lobo, Fixer for Narcos, Reaches Out to Hernández

Fabio Lobo, the former president’s son, pleaded guilty to conspiring to import cocaine and is currently serving a 24-year prison sentence in the United States. In documents in the case against him, which were unsealed this week, President Hernández’s name comes up in conversations between Lobo and Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, a leader of the Cachiros drug organization, who cooperated with US prosecutors for leniency.

SEE ALSO: Honduras News and Profiles

Prosecutors used undercover recordings and interviews with Rivera Maradiaga to lay out that Fabio Lobo acted as a fixer for Rivera Maradiaga, introducing him to his father and high-level police and military officials who, in turn, eased the way for the Cachiros to traffic cocaine and launder money in exchange for bribes.

In documents from that case, President Hernández is first mentioned when Fabio Lobo tells Rivera Maradiaga that he urged his father and Hernández, then newly elected to the presidency, to “support” Rivera Maradiaga and his family because the “Honduran government had already taken enough from them,” and that they “were good people” and “humble.”

Prosecutors say that Fabio Lobo referenced his father; Hernández; Hernández’s brother Tony, who is currently charged with drug trafficking; and other politicians and military officials when speaking with Rivera Maradiaga, whom prosecutors call “one of the most prolific and violent drug traffickers in Honduras.”

InSight Crime reached out to the President Hernández’s office about the allegations contained in the case documents, but received no response.

Fabio Lobo, according to the filings in his case, also made calls to General Julián Pacheco, Honduras’ current security minister, on behalf of the Cachiros, including sending a picture of a Hummer to the general as a potential bribe.

At one point Fabio Lobo brought a DEA informant to a meeting with Pacheco, where he asked for Pacheco’s consent to move drugs on the Cachiros’ behalf, assuring the general that “it’s not much” cocaine. Pacheco, according to the documents, walked out of the room in anger. Several years later, in 2018, a DEA informant alleged that Pacheco was involved in drug trafficking with the Cachiros.

Cachiros Win Contract After Contract Under Pepe Lobo

In a separate case brought by Honduran prosecutors, Fabio’s father, former president “Pepe” Lobo, figures in an investigation into a Cachiros-owned construction firm that received nearly two dozen government contracts during its first 5 months of existence in 2010, earning the business a total of $2.7 million, according to the Attorney General’s office and the Mission Against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Misión de Apoyo contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras – MACCIH), an anti-graft body.

Case files show that the Lobo administration violated the law to direct the contracts to the drug trafficking group. For example, the Cachiros-owned firm, called INRIMAR, received its first contract for 1.6 million lempiras (about $65,000) on August 2nd, 2010, two days before it was authorized to receive public money, according to investigative documents obtained by InSight Crime.

By December 16 of that year, the firm had been awarded 21 contracts from the Honduran government through the Secretary of Public Works, Jobs and Housing (Secretaría de Obras Públicas, Trabajo y Vivienda – SOPTRAVI).

A source close to the investigation told InSight Crime that “the majority” of the work contracts given to INRIMAR by the Lobo administration “were never even carried out.”

The Lobo administration also rigged bids to favor the Cachiros. On May 10 and July 6 of 2010, the Honduran government declared states of emergency to respond to devastation from a powerful tropical storm that swept through Central America. The emergencies provided the Lobo administration the ability to award no-bid work contracts. Between May and December, the Cachiros-owned firm received six direct contracts from SOPTRAVI, worth 43 million lempiras (about $1.8 million.) According to Honduran law, all such contracts must go through the ministry of advisers, which is directed by the president.

Contracts awarded to Cachiros-owned construction firm

In this case, which investigators are dubbing “narco-política,” prosecutors have brought corruption charges against a dozen people, including former President Lobo’s then secretary of public works and his chief adviser. The ex-president himself, however, has not yet been charged.

When InSight Crime spoke with Tegucigalpa-based investigators linked to the case about why Lobo isn’t among the accused, one investigator said that the Attorney General’s Office has opened an investigation into the former president.

During a press conference last week in the Honduran capital, Pepe Lobo dismissed the investigation and accused MACCIH director Luiz Antonio Guimaraes Marrey of conducting a political witch hunt, challenging him to present his evidence.

Honduras president, others targets of DEA investigation

• Byclaudia torrens and christopher sherman, associated press

NEW YORK — May 30, 2019, 7:08 PM ET

 

https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/honduras-president-targets-dea-investigation-63380702

The Associated Press

FILE – In this Sept. 26, 2018, file photo, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez addresses the 73rd session of the United Nations General Assembly at the United Nations headquarters. Recently unsealed testimony shows that a brother of the Honduran president admitted to U.S. federal agents that he’d accepted presents from violent drug traffickers he’d known for years and once asked Honduran officials about money the government allegedly owed the traffickers. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File

U.S. federal court documents show Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández and some of his closest advisers were among the targets of a Drug Enforcement Administration investigation.

A document filed by prosecutors on Tuesday in the Southern District of New York mentions Hernández as part of a group of individuals investigated by the DEA since about 2013 for participating “in large-scale drug-trafficking and money laundering activities relating to the importation of cocaine into the United States”.

Hernández was elected president of Honduras in late 2013.

The document is a July 2015 application to the court to compel Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and AOL to give investigators email header information, but not emails’ content, for a number of accounts. Two of the accounts are believed to be of Hernández, the documents says.

There is no indication charges have been brought against Hernández.

Also included in the request are the email accounts of the president’s sister Hilda Hernández, his adviser Ebal Díaz and his security minister Julián Pacheco Tinoco. Hilda Hernández, who helped manage the finances of the president’s political party and his presidential campaign, died in a December 2015 helicopter crash. The request also named four members of the wealthy and politically-connected Rosenthal family.

Yani Rosenthal, a former national lawmaker and presidential candidate, pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in 2017 for money laundering for the Cachiros drug trafficking organization.

The new court filing is part of the pre-trial motions in the case of Hernandez’s brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández, who was arrested in 2018 in Miami and accused of scheming for years to bring tons of cocaine into the country. His trial is expected to start in September.

A spokesman for the Southern District of New York said on Thursday the court’s response to the application for email header information is not public information. He declined to comment further.

The document filed Tuesday raises the possibility that the DEA has email data for Honduras’ president and members of his inner circle dating to 2015.

Messages left for Díaz, who is Hernández’s de facto spokesman, were not immediately returned. Pacheco could not be immediately reached, but the government has previously denied allegations against him.

Pacheco has been dogged by allegations of his links to drug traffickers since at least 2017 when a leader of Honduras’ Cachiros cartel testified in another case in New York about his ties to drug traffickers.

Pacheco had served under Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, as the government’s chief of investigation and intelligence. Lobo’s son Fabio was sentenced to 24 years in a U.S. prison in 2017 for drug trafficking.

In another document filed Tuesday in Tony Hernández’s case, prosecutors said “the charges against the defendant arise out of a long-term investigation of politically connected drug trafficking in Honduras” that began in 2013.

On Thursday, a DEA spokeswoman referred questions asked by The Associated Press to the Southern District of New York.

The U.S. government has been a staunch supporter of Hernández’s government, pouring millions of dollars into security cooperation because Honduras is a key transshipment point for cocaine headed to the U.S. from South America.

Hernández had especially curried favor with Gen. John Kelly who had led the U.S. military’s Southern Command and later became President Donald Trump’s chief of staff. Kelly advocated for continued U.S. support of Hernández’s government, noting their contributions to the war on drugs and progress in combatting corruption.

When Hernández’s already controversial re-election was marred by irregularities in late 2017, the U.S. government congratulated him while the opposition was still contesting the vote count.

With Hondurans filling the ranks of several large migrant caravans during the past year, the U.S. has continued to support Hernández while pressuring his government to stem the immigration flow.

Many Honduran migrants encountered making the journey to the U.S. border during the past year have referenced government corruption among their reasons for leaving. Thousands of doctors and teachers have been marching through the streets of Honduras’ capital for three weeks against presidential decrees they say would lead to massive public sector layoffs. On Thursday, a massive march led to clashes with police who fired tear gas against some protesters’ rocks.

Retired history professor Dana Frank, whose recent book “The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the Coup” details the country’s recent political turmoil said the documents confirm the U.S. government has known about drug trafficking activities linked to Hernández for years.

“Why have U.S. officials — from the State Department to the White House to the Southern Command — continued for years now to celebrate, and pour security funding into, a government whose very topmost officials and security figures it has known were drug traffickers?” Frank said. “This evidence underscores the vast hypocrisy of U.S. policy, which backs a known drug trafficker and his police and military cronies, while claiming to do so in the name of fighting crime and drugs.”