The National Resistance Front is looking for truth, the application of justice and the restitution for the victims who have had their human rights violated during the de facto regimes that were imposed by force subsequent to the military coup d’état on June 28, 2009.
The Font considers the decree of the actual regime which creates the “Commission of Truth and Reconciliation (CVR), as illegal, because it was created without constitutional order having been reestablished and illegitimate because it doesn’t meet international good practice standards which have been established after more than 30 truth commissions have operated around the world. It also isn’t considered credible nor have the confidence of the Honduran people nor international human rights organizations.
The decree which established this official Commission establishes as its objective “clarify the things which happened before and after June 28, 2009 with the goal of identifying the acts which conducted things towards the crisis and offer to the Honduran people observations in order to avoid these kinds of things happening again in the future.” This language only serves to justify the coup d’état and convert this Commission in yet another source of impunity under the guise of a supposed “reconciliation” which the actual regime is desperately searching for, with the only purpose of gaining international recognition and an opening with the international financial institutions.
The official Truth Commission is part of the political strategy of those who promoted and carried out the coup in an attempt to achieve a forgetting of and forgiving of the criminals. This is not merely a capricious argument of the Frente: in February of this year, the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) declared that the behavior of the Honduran authorities “suggest that a truth commission could be a farce.”
Even if it had been created in the context of a legitimate government, it still would lack legitimacy. In this Commission the victims and other actors in the Honduran society who have a voice in the process of clarifying the acts committed are excluded. Additionally, it was created by Presidential Decree, and is not connected with other powers of the state, under the particular circumstances which Honduras is living there is no ability to guarantee the application of justice when “in some cases the institutions gave active aid to those who headed the coup d’état”, as CEJIL stated.
This same consultative institution of the OAS points out that after the coup, the Attorney General and the Supreme Court of Honduras threw out the accusations of assassinations, torture, sexual abuse and arbitrary detentions “without even conducting investigations”, and the same attitude persists in these institutions to this day.
How could one believe in the good will of those who control the three institutions of the state when they speak of reconciliation, if they are the same ones who participated in the coup, the same ones who approved an amnesty to assure there would be no future charges against them, the same ones who converted a criminal without scruples into a “Honduran hero”, the same ones who created a fraudulent law removing guilt from the Group of Commanders for having expatriating and sending into exile a Constitutional President, the same ones who rewarded Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, by naming him director of the state telephone company Hondutel, the same ones who continue raiding the accounts of the State and repressing the Honduran people?
A Truth Commission should elucidate the acts which have been committed from the perspective of those who have been offended, from the conscience of the victims, bring together the moral and ethical recognition of the people who have suffered, the victims of violations of their human rights, that identifies those responsible for so much pain, and then present political recommendations which guarantee that the human rights violations are not repeated.
We firmly believe that the Commission of Truth which is promoted by the Platform of Human Rights organizations would achieve these objectives, because it recognizes that its legitimacy is expressed in its ethical responsibility and recognition by the Honduran people and the instances dedicated to the defense and promotion of human rights in the international environment.
No external influence, of states, governments or particular bilateral cooperation should intervene with political, diplomatic or financial arguments, relative to the general interest which the people of Honduras have expressed in the objectives of the Commission of Truth.
The FNRP expresses our high assessment and gratitude to the national and international commissioners who have accepted to be a part of the Commission of Truth, for their high level of professional credibility and commitment with the defense of human rights which are universal and indivisible.
We will Resist and Overcome!
Tegucigalpa, June 22, 2010
We will Resist and Overcome!
Tegucigalpa, June 22, 2010