Ahead of Honduran Elections, Movements Denounce Violence and Demand Democracy

In the lead-up to the general elections in Honduras on Sunday, November 28, 2021, Grassroots International joins our movement partners and allies – in Honduras and globally – in denouncing violence, repression, and the undermining of democratic processes in Honduras, as laid out in this statement by the Honduras Solidarity Committee.

We denounce the violation of human and peoples’ rights in Honduras and demand guarantees for the upcoming electoral process

In view of the stigmatization, xenophobia, criminalization, displacement, forced disappearances, persecution, and assassinations in Honduras, which are brutally exacerbated day after day, we, the undersigned organizations, demand respect for the Honduran people.

These dire circumstances and permanent violations are not unknown to the international community and institutions. Bodies such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), United Nations Human Rights Council, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), as well as various international organizations, have received numerous complaints and issued statements in recent years highlighting the situation of the Honduran people.

Aware of the electoral experiences this Mesoamerican country has lived through in the recent past, we demand transparency in the electoral process that will take place in November and that is taking place under a flawed and deeply anti-democratic scenario. A scenario marked by violence against opponents, including patriarchal aggressions against female politicians and young people, femicides, anti-protest laws, and impunity—such as the impunity enjoyed by the co-perpetrators of the crime against Berta Cáceres; including as well a campaign against Olivia Zúñiga, Berta’s daughter, a human rights defender who courageously denounced the crime against Keyla Martínez, a nursing student who was murdered in a police cell by the same authorities; and including also the impunity surrounding the forced disappearance of our Garífuna comrades from Triunfo de la Cruz, who were demanding compliance with the sentence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR), which ordered the restitution of their ancestral lands.

All these atrocities take place in a context of profound territorial exploitation, prosecution of land defenders, and violation of peoples’ rights and undermining of territorial and environmental rights by transnational corporations, supported by a government that uses the State’s armed forces to silence opposition, as well as the resistance and defense against dispossession.

For all of the above, we call on the Honduran government to cease violence against the Honduran people and condemn the repression unleashed by the army and police against defenders of peoples’ rights and territories. We join the internationalist solidarity with women, peasants, Indigenous Peoples, Garifuna people, Guapinol peasants, the Comité de Bienes Comunes de Tocoa (Committee of Common Goods of Tocoa), and Plataforma Agraria (Agrarian Platform). We remain alert to the upcoming events that will occur in November, inviting more organizations to speak out against this anti-democratic electoral process.