For original declaration in Spanish — http://www.mioaguan.blogspot.com/
In Tocoa, beneath a sun heralding a scorching summer, with grief in hearts outraged by the recent events in Comayagua, Comayaguela, and El Progreso, where fires have destroyed the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of people, suggesting that there is a horrific plot against the people. In an inexhaustible spirit of rebellion and solidarity, over a thousand people have come together, from the north to the south, including many peoples from Our America, as well as activists from Europe, the USA and Australia. We have also received the good wishes of people and organisations from throughout the continent, registering their solidarity with us.
A huge and diverse spectrum of social movements, organisations, and cultural, artistic and political initiatives were present, travelling from different parts of the country to take ownership of the event and the aims of the International Human Rights Conference in Solidarity with Honduras. There were four days of discussions, denunciations, exchanges, and proposals which we are now making public through this declaration.
We begin by honouring the living MEMORY of the women and men who have struggled and given their lives and now form part of our path to justice… We pay tribute to each and every one of them. To their relatives, friends and colleagues we say that we do not forget them, that their words live on in our struggle, and that they continue on in all of our voices and hands.
The Assembly embraces every child in the campesino settlements in this region, who in their own workshop said that they wanted to live without fear, have safe houses with lots of food, a painted school, and to play lots and lots and lots. We make a COMMITMENT to carry on the struggle for the children of this country and the world.
From the workshop on Women’s Bodies, Struggles and Resistance, came a forceful demand to support for the growing women’s movement in this region, this country and throughout the world, which fights against all forms of violence and aggression against women for being women, both outside and within organisations and homes. We encourage them to take a leading role in all spaces and movements as subjects and protagonists, with financial resources and the power to make decisions and not only as cooks and mothers.
Once again, and with a powerful collective voice, we DENOUNCE to the world the growing and unstoppable violation of human rights in Honduras, exposed in all its brutality by the spokeswomen and men of a huge number of organisations which defend life and justice. In particular we heard numerous testimonies from women, men and children from the Bajo Aguán region. The war against the people of Honduras, waged with such savagery since the coup d’état, has taken the form of murders, persecution, criminalisation of organised social action, kidnappings, sexual attacks on women, a climate of terror deliberately targeted at the children living in the campesino settlements and communities engaged in the struggle, attacks on the grassroots media, imprisonment, exile, and most recently arson attacks on various populations within the country. We would particularly like to DENOUNCE and raise the alarm about the enormous danger faced by the Rigores community, which is receiving direct threats, and the growing and strengthening militarisation suffered by the Guadalupe Carney community.
We declare ourselves in ACTIVE SOLIDARITY with the victims of repression in the country, considering them victims in the sense that there are people responsible for the damage done to their lives, for which we demand JUSTICE. In the Bajo Aguán and in many parts of Honduras, the name of one of those responsible is Miguel Facussé Barjum.
WE BELIEVE that this situation, which is deteriorating daily, can only be explained by the interests of the capitalist, patriarchal and racist system in subjecting peoples, dispossessing them of their natural and cultural wealth and putting it at the service of the nations of the North and their transnationals. This dispossession is made possible by the accompanying process of militarization which is increasingly apparent through the foreign military occupation which safeguards colonialism, oppression and the violation of human rights which we are experiencing in Honduras in an extremely harsh and brutal form.
WE REAFFIRM our willingness, at local, national and international levels to carry on the struggle against domination and colonialism, through all of the forms of organisation that we promote, to re-found this Motherland. In this struggle the country’s indigenous and black peoples primarily, are motivating us with their ideas and strength to stop the plunder of land, territories, water, forests, the robbery of cultural, and other natural assets.
WE HOLD RESPONSIBLE, the international financial organisations allied to the coup-plotting oligarchy for promoting the plunder and privatisation of our people’s livelihoods.
The Assembly of the event calls to continue the struggle and demands:
– A definitive solution to the agrarian conflict in the Bajo Aguán without degrading negotiations for the sale of land which already belongs to the campesinos.
– The immediate release of our brother, José Isabel Morales, unjustly incarcerated in La Ceiba Prison.
– We demand the acquittal of over 500 people charged as a result of the struggle for land.
We demand the total and immediate demilitarisation of the Aguán region and of the entire national territory.
Imprisonment and punishment for the murderers and those who have attacked the Honduran people who fight for the lives, justice and freedom for everyone.
We support the consolidation of the Permanent International Human Rights Observatory in the Aguán so that the proposals made at this conference may be carried forward together with everyone’s struggle for a dignified life in this region.
We demand an immediate investigation and punishment of those responsible for the killings of the prisoners in Comayagua.
This Assembly extends, with equal strength and conviction, its solidarity with all the peoples of the world who are fighting against the death that capitalism tries to impose everywhere, and would in particular like to make the following declarations:
– Freedom for the five Cuban anti-terrorists held in the Empire’s prisons.
– We demand that the military troops leave Haiti.
– We express our solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Panama in their struggle for the autonomy of their peoples and territories.
– We support the struggle for land by indigenous peoples and campesinos in the whole of Meso-America and Abya Lala.
– We reject green capitalism and demand world climate justice.
We greet the world’s peoples, who with their cries of outrage and from the heart of the capitalist first world, have today denounced this predatory system which condemns the majority of people to poverty.
As the Honduran people we will continue to gather together in this process of re-foundation which is strengthened by these events where speech and solidarity have dominion over the silence of death.
We gathered together to strengthen solidarity with all peoples supporting the international event in Haiti in July, and we will continue this year in preparation.
The following agreements were approved at the conference plenary:
– To create committees in solidarity with the Honduran people in the countries, cities and communities of those who have participated in the conference.
– Establish an international day of solidarity with the Honduran people to be held on June 28th. Hold actions outside embassies on this day throughout the world.
– Create community, national and international human rights networks.
– Promote a community, national and international human rights campaign in the framework of active non-violence.
– Create an international network of community radio stations to report human rights violations.
– Create a commission of Hondurans who can act as ambassadors to report on human rights violations in other countries, including victims of repression and militarisation.
– Create an information dossier on human rights violations (translated into all languages)
– The alternative press should gather all the testimony possible from the victims of human rights violations and publicise it around the world.
– Establish a grassroots human rights school with a gender balance.
– Follow up on these agreements both nationally and internationally.
– Support the Human Rights Observatory for the Bajo Aguan and the Human Rights Observatory for indigenous and black peoples of Honduras.
– Conduct an international campaign for the release of José Isabel Morales.
– Establish the necessary conditions for Honduran refugees in every relevant country.
– Disseminate materials on security measures for people who defend human rights.
– Create community defence and protection networks
– Strengthen the Permanent Human Rights Observatory of the Aguán
– Contribute towards the establishment of community radio stations in the Aguán
THE PEOPLE UNITED SHALL NEVER BE DEFEATED
TO SILENCE THE GUNS, THE PEOPLE SPEAK
Tocoa, Colón, 19 February 2012
For original declaration in Spanish — http://www.mioaguan.blogspot.com/