COFADEH calls on the international community to intervene without further delay in matters that were formally national affairs.
The Committee of Relatives of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) urgently calls on the world to refocus its gaze on our country, due the following:
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The normalcy that the regime is trying to construct with dialogue and reconciliation comes along with increased numbers of deaths, and is rooting the violent coup actors in power, along with narcotraffickers and organized crime.
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Inequality and poverty have upset the balance of governance in Honduras. Their destabilizing power has increased the panic of the privileged minority and this minority has put the rest of us in a state of total defencelessness.
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Since the June 2009 coup, state institutionality has operated as a function of the absolute domination of the violent elite over the citizenry.
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The unchecked control of the State powers, corporate media, churches and repressive armed forces—official and unofficial—has established a form of state terrorism.
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As part of the structure of terrorism that violates human rights and criminalizes dissidence, a group of outside states, particularly the United States, Colombia, and two European states–as well as organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, who provide funds to the de-facto regime–also share responsibility.
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The open operation of narcotrafficking and other forms of organized crime in the midst of the military and police has resulted in violent deaths of children, youth, and adult men and women at a rate higher than seventy per 100,000 inhabitants.
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The de-facto agroindustrial powers (and fugitives) have taken control of the armed forces and have put themselves in charge of strategic decisions for the country, including, as they did yesterday, increasing the national budget for defence and security by more than two billion lempiras (over 100 million USD) instead of increasing the health and education budgets.
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Impunity is absolute, a state of law cannot be observed and does not in fact exist for victims. Most unfourtunately, the international community seems to be waiting uselessly for the “pre-coup normalcy to return.”
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The elite sustains their power by force and enacts laws that empower their small economic groups and criminalize social struggles in favour of the people. They use civilians and military as aggressive spokespeople for their cause.
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Laws requiring that the proceeds of organized crime be confiscated are a used to launder the illicit operations of this broken state with its bloodstained budget and antiterrorist laws – that include financial intervention into civil organizations as well as wiretapping. These laws are the other face of state terrorism.
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Disproportionate militarization of the productive zones of the Aguán River in the north of the country, after the hateful massacre of campesinos in El Tumbador, constitutes another violent strategy to criminalize campesino struggles and to test a new path of devastating national security.
For the above-mentioned, COFADEH calls on the international community to intervene without further delay in matters previously considered Honduran national affairs. This is in order to avoid further deaths, other human rights violations, and the complete loss of peace. We want you here, now. Not as paramilitaries or spies, but as human shields against this barbarism; as internationalists who support the rebuilding of Honduras, together with the national resistance.
Translated from original in Spanish at http://www.defensoresenlinea.com/cms/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1087:llamado-internacional&catid=42:seg-y-jus&Itemid=159