[News] The President of Honduras Is Deploying U.S.-Trained Forces Against Election Protesters

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://theintercept.com/2017/12/03/the-president-of-honduras-is-deploying-u-s-trained-forces-against-election-protesters/ 



  The President of Honduras Is Deploying U.S.-Trained Forces Against
  Election Protesters

Lee Fang <https://theintercept.com/staff/leefang/>, Danielle Marie 
Mackey <https://theintercept.com/staff/danielle-marie-mackey/>- December 
3 2017
------------------------------------------------------------------------

_Honduran President Juan_ Orlando Hernández, using the specter of 
rampant crime and the drug trade, won extensive support from the 
American government to build up highly trained state security forces. 
Now, those same forces are repressing democracy.

The post-election situation in Honduras continues to deteriorate as 
Hernández, a conservative leader and stalwart U.S. ally in Central 
America, has disputed the result of last week’s vote while working to 
crack down on protests sweeping the nation.

Initial results showed Salvador Nasralla, an ex-sportscaster chosen by 
an alliance of left-wing political parties as their candidate, leading 
the vote count 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/27/world/americas/honduras-election-salvador-nasralla-juan-orlando-hernandez.html> after 
the November 26 presidential election. The lead was substantial enough 
that a magistrate on the Supreme Electoral Tribunal estimated victory by 
Nasralla, characterizing his lead as “irreversible.”

The next day the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE by its Spanish 
initials) announced that Hernandez was closing the gap. Then it suddenly 
stopped publicizing the tally, alleging that its electronic system went 
down, prompting criticism 
<http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/european-observers-worried-silence-honduran-election-51437137> 
from European Union election observers. Police and military flooded the 
streets in the hours of silence that followed. On Wednesday, 
the announcement that Hernández had overtaken Nasralla in the vote count 
was met with disbelief. In the words 
<https://twitter.com/CarlosDada/status/936359570150129665> of Salvadoran 
journalist Carlos Dada, “There are only two possibilities: Either the 
TSE is of Olympic incompetence or it’s committing fraud.”

The turn of events led to chaos on the streets, and Hernández instituted 
a military-imposed curfew across the nation on Friday. At least one 
protester has been killed and scores of others have been injured and 
arrested in violent clashes with police.

For human rights observers, the curfew and delay of an official recount 
are steps to produce an inevitable Hernández victory, regardless of the 
vote tally.

“The delay has only served to fuel claims of mass fraud, confusion, and 
deep suspicion,” said Karen Spring, a human rights activist with the 
Honduran Solidarity Network. The demonstrators “went into the street 
because they know that being calm means allowing a cover-up to happen 
and what many call a dictator to illegally stay in power,” she added.

Several observers on the ground told The Intercept that they have seen 
elite military police from the TIGRES and Cobras units alongside the 
Honduran National Police involved in clashes 
<http://www.sinembargo.mx/30-11-2017/3357570> with protesters in the 
capital, Tegucigalpa, and around the country. The three forces are 
increasingly coordinated as the violence soars, they say.

On the evening of Wednesday November 29, the three forces launched tear 
gas against an estimated 1,000 people who were gathered to wait for 
results outside the building where the TSE tabulated. Among the 
demonstrators was former police commissioner Maria Luisa Borjas, who 
wrote in an email statement to a group of journalists that the people 
gathered included many children and the elderly, along with opposition 
candidate Nasralla and his pregnant wife.

An American human rights observer also present said that when the 
coalition of police forces attacked the crowd the gathering was 
peaceful. “People were singing and had a giant Honduran flag, they were 
running up and down the street. It was beautiful actually. People were 
angry – it was loud – but it was peaceful,” the observer, who asked for 
anonymity given the increasingly dangerous situation, told The Intercept 
in a phone interview.

On Friday evening, as police cleared demonstrators from the streets of 
the La Kennedy neighborhood of Tegucigalpa, officers adorned with 
visible TIGRES insignia were spotted by Spring. The TIGRES were 
accompanied by Cobras and Honduran National Police (PNH), according to 
another human rights observer from the U.S., who also asked not to be 
named out of fear for her safety.

On Saturday night, Borjas received multiple emergency calls from the 
Cabañas neighborhood of San Pedro Sula, a city in Northern 
Honduras. People were being forced out of their houses and into the 
streets when Honduran law enforcement, including the PNH, launched tear 
gas canisters into their homes. Police attacked because the neighbors 
had begun a “cacerolazo,” a common form of protest in Latin America, 
banging pots and pans when state repression makes anything else 
impossible. Upon forcing people out of their homes, the PNH arrested 
them, Borjas said. “This is happening as we speak,” she told The 
Intercept in a phone interview on Saturday night, adding that the TIGRES 
and Cobras maintain a strong presence on the streets especially around 
the building where the votes are being tallied.

_The PNH and_

elite military police units are among the beneficiaries of generous 
security-related foreign aid earmarked for Honduras by the U.S. 
government. Figures compiled by the Security Assistance Monitor show 
that Honduras has received nearly

$114 million 
<https://securityassistance.org/data/program/military/Honduras/2009/2018/all/Global/> 


  in security support since 2009.

The PNH receives extensive training by various branches of the U.S. 
government. The exact substance of U.S. training for foreign security 
forces is notoriously difficult to ascertain, but some light has been 
shed by new data provided by the Departments of State, Defense, Justice 
and Homeland Security at the request of Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and 
shared with The Intercept by John Lindsey Poland, a Latin America expert 
who participated in making the request.

In 2015, for instance, the data shows that members of the PNH received 
courses titled “Advanced Close Quarter Combat,” “Tactical Safety and 
Survival,” “Communication and Electronic Intelligence,” among 
others, and received donations including Toyota trucks and 
computers. “Multiple Honduran Military and Law Enforcement Units” also 
received trainings on “Special Forces Advanced Military Operations in 
Urban Terrain,” “Reconnaissance and Surveillance” and other themes. 
“This will support [U.S. Southern Command] Theater Engagement strategy 
and will improve partner national [counternarcotics] units’ abilities to 
conduct unilateral and combined [counternarcotics] missions,” reads the 
text describing the purpose and objective of those courses, as reported 
by the Defense Department and U.S. Southern Command.

Courses listed for the year 2016 were similar. The instructors of the 
courses both years included federal agencies like the DEA, FBI and the 
State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement 
Affairs (INL), along with other agencies such as the Chicago police 
force. The data does not include additional detail about curriculum of 
the courses or identifying information of trainers or trainees.

Since the elections, the Honduran government has made no effort to 
conceal the role of the two elite military police units. In the run up 
to the election, Secretary of Security Julián Pacheco Tinoco announced 
<http://www.laprensa.hn/honduras/elecciones2017/1125131-410/honduras-elecciones-polic%C3%ADas-seguridad-> that 
TIGRES and Cobra forces would be among the 16,000 police officers 
deployed to monitor the election.

The Comando de Operaciones Especiales, or Cobras, are riot police 
trained by U.S. SWAT teams. The Tropa de Inteligencia de Respuesta 
Especial de Seguridad, or TIGRES, were formed to fight urban violence 
and organized crime in 2014 by Hernández as he took office promising to 
bring down the world’s highest peacetime murder rate.

The TIGRES are paid a higher salary than traditional Honduran police, 
and they have also benefited from close coordination with multiple U.S. 
military bases in Honduras. A video obtained 
<http://www.wsj.com/video/green-berets-train-elite-police-units-in-honduras/D80E3F64-F857-4439-892B-068B85445BBC.html> by 
the Wall Street Journal shows Green Beret units training with the TIGRES 
in the mountains of Honduras.

The militarized units, known to operate at night with uniforms that 
disguise the officers’ faces, have featured 
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKB445FC5sk> widely in Hernández’s 
political campaigns as the president has championed his war on crime.

But the TIGRES, Cobras and PNH have all been denounced 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/12/03/the-president-of-honduras-is-deploying-u-s-trained-forces-against-election-protesters/Both%20have%20been%20denounced%20for%20human%20rights%20violations.> for 
human rights violations 
<https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/honduras-the-thugocracy-ext-door-103883>.

The TIGRES in particular are said to have been used to harass political 
opponents and simply rob the cartels they are designed to rein in. 
Shortly after the formation of the unit, TIGRES officers assigned to 
work with the U.S. Embassy on counternarcotics operations stole $1.3 
million 
<https://www.insightcrime.org/news/brief/police-theft-of-1-3-mn-is-latest-mark-of-honduras-corruption/> from 
cocaine traffickers targeted in a raid.

Most controversically, there have been allegations that TIGRES were 
involved in the harassment of Berta Cáceres, an internationally-known 
and respected human rights and environmental activist who was 
assassinated last year 
<https://theintercept.com/2016/03/11/drugs-dams-and-power-the-murder-of-honduran-activist-berta-caceres/>.

Before her death, Cáceres, an outspoken critic of the Hernández 
administration, warned that commandos from the TIGRES had occupied her 
rural community, where Cáceres had led a protest movement against a 
planned hydroelectric dam. In a recording made just one month before her 
killing, she explicitly named the TIGRES, calling 
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/suspicions-mount-in-murder-of-noted-honduran-environmentalist/2016/03/17/cbac766c-ea2d-11e5-a9ce-681055c7a05f_story.html> commandos 
from the force a “hostile and aggressive presence.”

There have been attempts to stem U.S. aid to Honduras since the 
environmentalist’s killing, either through enforcing existing statutes, 
such as the so-called Leahy Law, barring foreign aid to regimes with 
repeated human rights violations, or passing new legislation. In the 
House of Representatives, 68 Democrats have sponsored HR 1299, the Berta 
Cáceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, to make Honduran foreign aid 
contingent on anti-corruption measures and a halt to the killing of 
journalists and activists in the country.

    “The Honduran security forces are using our tax payer dollars to
    repress peaceful demonstrations against stolen elections.”

The Republican majority in Congress has not scheduled 
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1299/actions> a 
hearing for the bill, making its prospects unlikely. Now, Cáceres’ 
nephew Silvio Carillo, who lives in the United States, tells The 
Intercept, “The Honduran security forces are using our tax payer dollars 
to repress peaceful demonstrations against stolen elections. We are 
giving Juan Orlando Hernández money so he can get away with murder.”

The build-up of military police forces, ostensibly to combat the drug 
trade, comes as the Hernández administration faces increasing attention 
for its own role in drug cartels.

In March, Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, the former leader of the 
Cachiros cartel, told a federal courtroom in New York that he had met 
with Hernández’s brother to steer government contracts to a company used 
to launder cartel money.

The revelation was made during the case of Fabio Lobo, who plead guilty 
for attempting to smuggle several tons of cocaine from Honduras to the 
United States. Lobo is the politically connected son of 
President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Hernández’s predecessor and ally in the 
right-wing National Party. Lobo was elected in 2009 following the coup 
d’etat 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/honduras-coup-us-defense-departmetnt-center-hemispheric-defense-studies-chds/> 
that swept the left-wing President Manuel Zelaya out of office.

A separate and equally stunning revelation was made last year in a 
courtroom in South Florida, during a case involving two nephews of 
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro prosecuted for drug trafficking, as 
researcher Jake Johnston recently reported 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/11/26/honduras-election-pacheco-security-minister-is-running-drugs-according-to-court-testimony/> 
for The Intercept.

During the trial, José Santos Peña, a Mexican drug 
trafficker-turned-informant, confided that he had met with Julián 
Pacheco, Hernández’s chief of security and the head of the TIGRES 
forces, to discuss plans 
<https://hondurasculturepolitics.blogspot.com/2016/12/honduran-security-minister-implicated.html> to 
move cocaine through from Colombia through Honduras to the United 
States. Santos said he was introduced to Pacheco by Fabio Lobo.

Johnston notes that despite the disclosures, “Pacheco remains a close US 
ally, whose ties to the US military span decades 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/11/26/honduras-election-pacheco-security-minister-is-running-drugs-according-to-court-testimony/>.” Now, 
Johnston adds, “Pacheco is overseeing the same security forces that are 
repressing election protesters in the streets.”

Additionally, two 2017 reports, one from Global Witness 
<https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/environmental-activists/honduras-deadliest-country-world-environmental-activism/> 
and the other from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace 
<http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/05/30/when-corruption-is-operating-system-case-of-honduras-pub-69999>, 
uncovered damning evidence of systematic corruption, especially as 
concerns the National Party, to which Hernández belongs.

The increasing scrutiny, as well as the cascading corruption scandal 
involving millions of dollars stolen from the Honduran social security 
program in part 
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/world/americas/honduras-election-juan-hernandez.html> to 
fund campaigns for the National Party, has prompted a bonanza of D.C. 
lobbying by the Honduran government.

Since 2014, Honduras has retained four lobbying firms to reach out to 
lawmakers, members of the Trump administration and the American media.

Records show 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4320718-6364-Supplemental-Statement-20170830-2.html> that 
one lobbyist, Gus K. West, has reached out to Florida’s Republican 
Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Rep. Ted Deutch, among others on 
Capitol Hill, to tout Honduran efforts to combat crime, and wrote to the 
New York Times on the assassination of Cáceres. Another lobbying shop 
<https://keybridgecommunications.com/> on government retainer, Keybridge 
Communications, has boosted Hernández’s reelection effort, sending press 
releases 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4320719-6450-Informational-Materials-20170908-4.html> to 
U.S. media boasting 
<https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/4320741-6450-Informational-Materials-20171126-14.html> 
about the president’s commitment to confronting corruption and the 
integrity of the presidential election.

In a Dec 1 statement distributed by Keybridge, the government of 
Honduras said that it is “deeply sad that violence has erupted on the 
streets of Honduras and that our nation’s democratic institutions have 
come under attack ” — violence it goes on to blame on ousted president 
Mel Zelaya for “inciting” Nasralla’s supporters to engage in violence.

Hernández has also traveled to Washington to meet with President Trump 
and Vice President Pence, both of whom warmly welcomed the leader. He is 
also close 
<https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/us-ally-says-he-won-honduras-presidential-election-hondurans-disagree> 
to White House chief of staff John Kelly, who referred 
<https://theintercept.com/2017/08/29/honduras-coup-us-defense-departmetnt-center-hemispheric-defense-studies-chds/> to 
the president this year as a “great guy” and a “good friend.”

Cultivating powerful friends in Washington has worked so far, as 
Hernández has weathered criticism over his handling of the Cáceres 
slaying, the social security scandal, and his administration’s reported 
ties to drug traffickers.

The crackdown by security forces only further impresses the need to 
reconsider their U.S. funding, experts say. “U.S.-funded police and 
military are engaged in violent repression of Honduran protesters, using 
munitions marked as made in the USA,” said Dana Frank, Professor of 
History at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

“For years, members of Congress have called for an immediate suspension 
of police and military aid to Honduras, because of ongoing human rights 
abuses like this, committed with impunity,” said Frank. “Now those 
forces are being used to repress the basic right of the Honduran people 
to protest. The Honduran elections offer a chance to declare which side 
the US is on: democratic processes and the rule of law, or the ongoing 
dance with a dangerous dictator, further consolidating his power.”

Top photo: Supporters of Honduran presidential candidate for the 
Opposition Alliance against the Dictatorship party Salvador Nasralla, 
are affected by tear gas during a protest outside the Electoral Supreme 
Court (TSE), to demand the announcement of the election final results in 
Tegucigalpa, on November 30, 2017.

-- 
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863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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