Violence & ethnocide continue against indigenous Garifuna people
In the midst of the Covid19 pandemic - that is obviously devastating a majority of the Honduras population, and particularly indigenous and African descendant peoples – Honduran state and private sector violence and ethnocide continue unabated against Garifuna people along Honduras’ north Caribbean shore.
This repression, that began long ago, is aimed at forcibly removing the Garifuna people from their ancestral lands to make way for global tourism and African palm industries.
Based on information from OFRANEH (tw: @ofraneh), Telesur news reported (July 18, 2020, https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/honduran-garifuna-leader-snider-centeno-kidnapped-20200718-0007.html) that community defenders Snider Centeno (President of Triunfo de la Cruz community council), Milton Martinez and Suany Alvarez – plus one other community member - were kidnapped from their homes early Saturday morning by heavily armed men.
As of July 22, 2020, their whereabouts are unknown.
Snider Centeno. Photo: @ofraneh
OFRANEH (Organización Fraternal Negra de Honduras / Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras) is the leading Garifuna rights organization in Honduras since the 1970s, working and fighting in defense of Garifuna territories and human rights, the environment and locally controlled development. Dozens of Garifuna community defenders have been killed over the years; many more shot and wounded, criminalized and jailed as political prisoners. Entire communities have been illegally and violently destroyed in the interests of tourism and African palm operators.
Miriam Miranda, General Coordinator of OFRANEH, tweeted: “Under this dictatorship, the gangster, corrupt and murderous, machinery of death is intact and strengthened. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, an armed group arrived in Triunfo de la Cruz and took, among others, the leader Snider Centeno. We demand that he be promptly returned alive.”
Miriam
For updates on the forced disappearance of these Garifuna community defenders, follow the work of HSN (the Honduras Solidarity Network, @hondurassol) that is reporting regularly about this urgent situation, along with a wide range of human rights and territorial defense issues in Honduras, and the complicit roles of the US, Canada and other actors in the “international community”.
The Alliance for Global Justice prepared an action alert, asking folks to fill out and submit the form at https://afgj.salsalabs.org/snidercenteno/index.html, sending email messages to selected officials with the Honduran regime.
US and Canadian policy and complicity
Very importantly for US and Canadian citizens: Call or write your MPs, Senators and Congress members, and government officials.
The 11 years-and-counting human rights nightmare in Honduras –including on-going ethnocide and violence against Garifuna people– are US and Canadian policies at work. Without the substantial US and Canadian economic, political and support – buttressed by on-going economic relations with the IMF, World Bank and a host of exploitative multi-national companies - the drug-trafficking, military-backed regime of Honduras would not be in power today.
Find your MP, Senator and Congress Member
U.S. Senate: https://www.senate.gov/senators/contact
U.S. House: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
Canadian Parliament: https://www.ourcommons.ca/Parliamentarians/en/members
Call and/or write your elected politician and demand they speak out and denounce US and Canadian support for and complicity with the Honduran regime, including the on-going repression and ethnocide against the Garifuna people, including the illegal kidnapping of Snider Senteno and three other Garifuna youth community defenders.
Since the US and Canadian-backed coup ousted Honduras’ last democratic government in 2009, the country has been ruled with an iron fist by a corrupt, military-backed, narco-trafficking regime that is fully supported by the US, Canada, Spain, the World Bank and IMF, a numerous global companies and investors. Until the US and Canada – plus other governments and actors of the “international community” – are held accountable for policies and actions that prop up and enable regimes such as that of Honduras, this type of ‘pro-global business’ violence and repression will undoubtedly continue.
Grahame Russell, director Rights Action
info@rightsaction.org
More information
Honduras Solidarity Network: @hondurassol; www.hondurassolidarity.org;
OFRANEH (Organizacion Fraternal Negra Hondureña): @ofraneh; garifuna@ofraneh.org; www.ofraneh.org, http://www.ofraneh.wordpress.com
Community-defense/ Covid19 response fund
(… including OFRANEH. Since 1998, Rights Action has supported the courageous territory and rights, environmental and community-controlled economy work and struggle of OFRANEH)
