Wayzata World Factbook 1996/The World Factbook - 1996 Edition - Wayzata Technology (3079) (1996).iso/pc/text/humanrts/honduras.txt

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TITLE:  HONDURAS HUMAN RIGHTS PRACTICES, 1994
AUTHOR:  U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DATE:  FEBRUARY 1995

                            HONDURAS


Honduras is a constitutional democracy with a President and a
unicameral Congress elected for 4-year terms, and an
independent judiciary headed by a Supreme Court of Justice
(CSJ).  President Carlos Roberto Reina took office in January
as the fourth democratically elected president since the
reestablishment of democracy in 1982.  Both major parties
(Liberal and Nationalist) have now assumed power from the other
after free elections.

The Honduran Armed Forces (HOAF) comprise the army, air force,
navy, and the National Police (Public Security Force--FUSEP) as
a fourth branch.  The HOAF operates with considerable
institutional and legal autonomy, particularly in the realm of
internal security and military affairs.  It controls the
police, the merchant marine, and the national telephone
company.  In November the Congress passed legislation which
will remove the merchant marine from military control in 1995.

The Government established an Ad Hoc Commission on Police and
Judicial Reform in 1993, in response to credible allegations of
extrajudicial killings by members of the FUSEP, particularly its
Directorate of National Investigations (DNI).  On January 6, it
established a new Public Ministry containing a new Directorate
of Criminal Investigations (DIC) to replace the DNI.  The
Government formally dissolved the DNI in June, but the DIC is
still in the process of formation, leaving a gap in
investigative capability.  Human rights organizations, including
the Government's National Commission for the Protection of Human
Rights (CONAPRODE), say there was a noticeable drop in reports
of abuses after the DNI was abolished.  However, members of both
the armed forces and the FUSEP continued to commit human rights
abuses.

The economy is primarily based on agriculture, with a small but
growing light manufacturing sector.  The armed forces also play
a sizable role in the national economy, controlling numerous
enterprises usually associated with the private sector,
including several insurance companies and one of the two cement
companies.  Economic activity was plagued by a drought-induced
shortage of electricity, and real gross domestic product
declined by about 2 percent.  Combined unemployment and
underemployment were approximately 58 percent, and the
Government estimated that 62 percent of all citizens live in
poverty.

The most widespread human rights abuses were arbitrary and
incommunicado detentions, and beatings and other abuse of
detainees, sometimes including torture.  There was a small
number of extrajudicial killings.  One major cause of human
rights problems is the impunity enjoyed by members of the
civilian and military elite, exacerbated by a weak,
underfunded, and sometimes corrupt judicial system.  Prison
conditions remained deplorable.  Other continuing human rights
problems were violence against women, discrimination against
indigenous peoples, and the inability of the judicial system to
provide prisoners awaiting trial with swift and impartial
justice.  Almost no elected official, member of the business
elite, bureaucrat, politician, or anyone with perceived
influence or connections to the elite was tried, sentenced, or
significantly fined in 1994.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1  Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including
           Freedom from:

     a.  Political and Other Extrajudicial Killing

There were no reports of politically motivated killings, but
members of the security forces committed several extrajudicial
killings.

The crime rate surged in 1994, including a rise in the number
of homicides.  It has become increasingly difficult to
differentiate between homicides that may have been extrajudicial
acts by government forces or agents and those which were common
crimes.

In March two FUSEP agents kidnaped, tortured, and stabbed to
death a 78-year-old evangelical pastor, Justo Irias Ordonez, in
Lepaguare, Olancho (located in a remote part of eastern
Honduras).  Witnesses to the events claim the two agents went
to the home of Ordonez, beat him with rifle butts, tied his
hands, and took him to a place known as Pozo Malacate where
they sodomized and killed him.  The FUSEP commander in
Juticalpa arrested the two agents and charged them with the
crime.  At year's end, they were awaiting trial by civil court.

On November 7, the authorities suspended the Chief of Police in
La Ceiba and two of his subordinates pending an investigation
by the Attorney General's office into the alleged kidnaping and
murder of a vendor suspected of killing an 11-year-old boy
during an attempted burglary.  Officials from the Committee for
the Defense of Human Rights in Honduras (CODEH), the Attorney
General's Office, and the police are working together on the
investigation, the first time this has ever occurred, according
to CODEH.

Credible allegations of extrajudicial killings by members of
the FUSEP, particularly its now defunct Directorate of National
Investigations, led to the creation of the new Public Ministry
to manage investigations of criminal cases.  The new Ministry
is also responsible for investigating all cases of extrajudicial
killings, including those of past years.  The Government
formally dissolved the DNI on June 11 and moved its functions
to the new civilian-controlled DIC.  Human rights groups noted
a drop in the number of reports of human rights abuses since
the dissolution of the DNI.  The Public Ministry is still in
the process of training and organizing its staff and recruiting
members for the new DIC.  The attorneys and staff of the
Ministry will lack the capability to investigate adequately
current or past criminal cases until the DIC completes its
training in the spring of 1995.

The authorities undertook no further investigation or
prosecution of alleged extrajudicial killings committed in
previous years.  These included the 1993 killings of Eduardo
Pina van Tuyl, Guillermo Agurcia Lefebvre, Lourdes Enamorado,
Roger David Torres Vallejos, Rigoberto Quezada Figueres,
Cleofes Colindres Canales, Juan Jose Menendez, Glenda Patricia
Solorzano Medina, and Jorge Alcides Medina Hernandez; the 1992
killings of Juan Humberto Sanchez, Rigoberto Borjas, Ramon
Castellon Baide, and Cayo Eng Lee; the 1991 murder of Manuel de
Jesus Guerra; and the 1990 killings of Francisco Javier Bonilla
Medina and Ramon Antonio Briceno.

The family of 18-year-old student Riccy Mabel Martinez, victim
of a July 13, 1991 rape and murder, appealed the original
verdict in the case (equivalent to second-degree murder), and
requested that the two military defendants be convicted of
first-degree murder (which would preclude any possibility of
pardon).  The defendants filed a countersuit; at year's end,
both cases were pending before the Supreme Court of Appeals.

     b.  Disappearance

There were no reports of disappearances motivated by politics
or conducted by the security forces.

Local human rights groups and Amnesty International continued
to press, unsuccessfully, for an official accounting of the
184 claimed disappearances which occurred mainly during the
early 1980's under the tenure of former armed forces Commander
General Gustavo Alvarez Martinez.

In December 1993, Human Rights Commissioner Leo Valladares
presented a preliminary report on political disappearances
during the 1979-89 period.  On November 9, a CSJ Commission
announced that all but 9 of the 184 missing persons cases
lacked the evidence required for proper legal proceedings.
(The nine cases referred to are those or persons who were
missing for some time but were later found alive.)  The report
also noted that the survivors accused the current Minister of
Defense of involvement in the detention, torture, and
disappearance of four suspected leftists in 1988 (when he
commanded an infantry brigade), but offered no proof.  The
Commission sent the nine cases warranting further action to the
Attorney General's office.  All nine were reopened and at
year's end, preliminary investigations were under way.  A full
investigation will be possible only when the DIC is trained and
in place.

On December 9, three forensic anthropologists who excavated a
grave site believed to contain a death squad victim from the
1980's were able to confirm the identity of the body buried at
that site since 1982 as that of Nelson Mackay Chavarria, a
Honduran citizen.  Because of serious decomposition of the
body, the anthropologists could not determine the cause of
death or whether the victim had been tortured.  Human Rights
Commissioner Valladares called for an immediate investigation
by the Attorney General's Office and an end to impunity for
those involved in the 184 disappearances during the 1980's.
The Attorney General began an investigation which will include
testimony by members of the security forces.

     c.  Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading
         Treatment or Punishment

Although the Constitution prohibits torture, and police and
military authorities issued assurances throughout 1994 that the
practice had been stopped, credible charges of torture and
other abuse of detainees continue.  Members of the police force
resort to abuses to obtain confessions and keep suspects in
jail.  There were no reports of torture for political motives.

One case of alleged torture involved 27-year-old narcotics
suspect Fernando Flores Salgado.  The Public Ministry reported
that a FUSEP agent arrested Salgado on August 11 in the airport
at Puerto Lempira and took him to a police station where,
during a search of his luggage, police found an AK-47 automatic
assault rifle.  Salgado claimed he was beaten and a sack laced
with lime was placed over his head, causing burns.  The
Ministry's report said the beatings continued on August 12 and,
when the officers and their commander failed to extract
information from Salgado about the seller of the AK-47, they
took him to a lake and repeatedly submerged him in the water.
On August 13, an assistant prosecutor from the Public Ministry
obtained Salgado's release.  Attorney General Edmundo Orellana
presented charges against all three FUSEP agents for human
rights violations, torture, battery, and attempted homicide.
The courts in Puerto Lempira issued warrants, but none of the
three were arrested.  Prosecutors at the Public Ministry stated
that FUSEP officials attempted to halt any investigation of the
three agents by filing charges of drug trafficking against the
assistant prosecutor who secured Salgado's release.  Local
human rights groups say this is an attempt by the FUSEP to
discredit the charges and intimidate the investigators.  The
FUSEP rearrested Salgado on October 15 and charged him with
terrorism because of the AK-47 found in his possession.  In
late October, the FUSEP dropped all charges against Salgado and
the prosecutor; charges were also dropped against the FUSEP
agents.

On October 7, police arrested two juveniles in Tegucigalpa.
The juveniles charged that police held them in a cell with
adults and that both police and the other prisoners beat and
tortured them.  Officials of Casa Alianza (an affiliate of
Covenant House in New York), which operates a refuge for street
children, obtained the release of both of them on October 10.
Following medical confirmation of the injuries to one of the
youths, Casa Alianza filed charges against the FUSEP for
violating the youth's rights, illegal detention, and torture.
It also requested a full investigation by the Attorney
General's office.  Market vendors and a FUSEP regional
commander protested Casa Alianza's actions, asserting that the
organization provides refuge for juveniles who commit crimes.
Casa Alianza, in response, called on the national Human Rights
Commissioner to fulfill his obligation to protect children's
rights.

Amnesty International and Casa Alianza both received reports of
minors whom members of the police and the army subjected to
illegal arrest, ill-treatment, and sexual abuse.  A street girl
in San Pedro Sula, 11-year-old Martha Maria Saire, charged that
two uniformed members of the military battalion based in Tamara
grabbed and raped her.  Medical examinations confirmed she had
been sexually abused.  On April 22, the authorities presented
the case to the first criminal district court.  The Attorney
General's office issued arrest warrants for the soldiers, but
they are reportedly absent without leave.

Another case involved 16-year-old Mario Rene Enamorado Lara who
lives in Casa Alianza's transition home in Tegucigalpa.  On
July 10, while on his way to the home in the company of other
children, eight uniformed members of the FUSEP's first squadron
stopped the group and accused Mario of having stolen a watch.
They arrested him without a warrant, took him to the squadron
headquarters, and placed him in detention in a cell with adult
detainees.  He charged that three policemen severely punched
and kicked him during detention; adult male prisoners also beat
him while he was in the cell.  The same afternoon, legal
counsel from Casa Alianza obtained his freedom, and an
independent doctor confirmed injuries to his body, face, and
head.  Casa Alianza presented a formal complaint to the FUSEP
and to the Public Ministry.  Lacking an investigative arm, the
Public Ministry had made no arrests by year's end.

In February police officers severely beat U.S. citizen Terry
George Clymire, whom they were in the process of arresting on
civil charges.  The Prosecutor's office and the FUSEP Office of
Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigated the case, but
made no charges or arrests in the case.  Charges against
Clymire were dropped.

The Office of Professional Responsibility investigates cases of
alleged torture and abuse; OPR officials recommend sanctions
for police agents found guilty of such mistreatment.  However,
neither the FUSEP General Command nor the OPR is empowered to
punish wrongdoers; only the commander of the accused agent has
the authority to do so.  During the past 12 months, OPR
investigated eight FUSEP agents for abusing and beating street
children in the Tegucigalpa area.  The FUSEP dismissed all of
them, and the courts convicted three agents and gave them
30-day jail terms.

Prison conditions in Honduras are consistently deplorable.
Prisoners suffer from severe overcrowding, malnutrition, and a
lack of adequate sanitation.  In the Central Penitentiary in
Tegucigalpa, there are 1,954 internees, of whom only 512 have
been convicted and are serving sentences.  More often than not,
the mentally ill and those with tuberculosis and other
infectious diseases are thrown together in the same cells.  A
new, larger detention facility in Tamara lacks water and power
and probably will not open until 1995.  Prisoners with money
routinely buy private cells, decent food, and conjugal
visitation rights, while prisoners without money often lack the
most basic necessities as well as legal assistance.

     d.  Arbitrary Arrest, Detention, or Exile

The law states that the police may arrest a person only with a
court order, unless the arrest is made during the commission of
a crime, and that they must clearly inform the person of the
grounds for the arrest.  (By law the FUSEP cannot investigate;
it only detains those suspected of committing a crime.)  Police
must bring a detainee before a judge within 24 hours; the judge
then must issue an initial temporary holding order within 24
hours, release an initial decision within 6 days, and conduct a
preliminary investigation to decide whether there is sufficient
evidence to warrant further investigation.  However, in
practice, the authorities do not routinely observe these
requirements of the law.  While bail is legally available, it
is used primarily for what are ostensibly medical reasons.
Poor defendants, even when represented by a public defender,
are seldom able to take advantage of bail.

Under the 1984 Code of Criminal Procedures, a judge, the
police, public officials, or any citizen may initiate criminal
proceedings.  Perhaps as many as 80 percent of the cases
reported to the police are never referred to the criminal
justice system but instead are settled administratively by the
police or by municipal courts, which are separate from the
regular judicial court system.

There were continued allegations that the FUSEP hired some
former members of the DNI, and that these and other security
force elements continued to practice arbitrary arrest and
detention in a substantial number of cases.  Local human rights
monitoring organizations asserted, however, that this situation
improved markedly after the issuance of a report by the Ad Hoc
Commission on Police and Judicial Reform and the dissolution of
the DNI.

The Constitution prohibits the expatriation of a Honduran
citizen to another country; exile is not used as a means of
political control.

     e.  Denial of Fair Public Trial

Congress elects the nine Supreme Court justices and the
President confirms them.  Their 4-year terms coincide with
those of the Congress and the President.  The Supreme Court
appoints all the judges in the lower civilian courts.  Some
headway was made in using a career system to depoliticize the
appointments process and to break the subcultures of corruption,
clientism, patronage, and influence peddling within the
judiciary.  In midyear the Supreme Court ordered strict
adherence to the judicial career law, i.e., a merit-oriented
selection and retention process for judges and court officials,
commencing with second-instance judges.

However, both major political parties continue to resist the
recommendation by the Ad Hoc Commission that they agree to a
completely apolitical, independent judiciary.  Members of
Congress representing powerful economic and political interests
continued to pressure the President and magistrates of the
Supreme Court to permit politicians to appoint judges and court
functionaries purely on political criteria and without regard
to professional and ethical qualifications.  The judicial
system also still suffers from woefully inadequate funding.

Traditionally, the Honduran Armed Forces insisted that only its
courts-martial could try its members.  However, in 1993
Congress passed a resolution restricting the jurisdiction of
the military court system to military crimes committed by
active duty personnel.  Since then enlisted military personnel
accused of crimes against civilians have in fact been remanded
to the civilian judicial system.  The military continued to
accept civilian court jurisdiction over its members, and the
Public Ministry assigned civilian prosecutors to each of the 11
military courts.  It also began much publicized investigations
of human rights violations (past and present) by military
personnel and followed up on anonymous published accusations of
financial fraud by senior military officers.

An accused person has the right to a fair trial, which includes
the right to an initial hearing by a judge, to bail, to an
attorney provided by the state if necessary, and to appeal.
The number of public defenders was doubled from 51 to 104,
providing greater legal assistance to the poor.

Detention of criminal suspects pending trial averaged 18 months
and constituted a serious human rights problem.  In an extreme
case, a mentally deficient, illiterate peasant spent 17 years
in jail after being acquitted, due to the failure by
responsible officials to process his release papers.  A
significant number of defendants serve the maximum possible
sentence for the crime of which they are accused before their
trials are ever concluded or even begun.  Of the 6,042
detainees making up the country's prison population in early
1994, 5,103, or 84 percent, had been neither sentenced nor
exonerated.  These judicial weaknesses, along with the almost
total lack of thorough investigation of crimes and collection
of evidence, greatly undermine the right of citizens to a
speedy, fair public trial.  In addition, some judicial
authorities in rural areas received anonymous threats.

The passage of the 1994 Public Ministry Law and subsequent
creation of the new ministry, with 76 public prosecutors
assigned nationally and twice that many planned for 1995, is
intended to strengthen the citizenry's ability to seek redress
from government abuses and to enjoy fair and public trials.
The Public Ministry's independence from the other branches of
the Government also is intended to reduce somewhat the
opportunities for the politically and economically powerful to
distort the judicial process with impunity.  The widely
respected new Attorney General stressed the importance of
personnel selection for the Public Ministry, and indicated he
would refuse to employ former members of the DNI.  In the short
time it has existed, even before becoming fully organized, the
Public Ministry began investigations of a number of court
officials on various corruption and malfeasance charges.  As a
result, the authorities dismissed 38 court officials, including
10 Superior Court judges and 11 justices of the peace.

Despite the creation of the Public Ministry and the DIC, at
year's end the justice system still favored the rich and
politically influential and remained weak, underfunded,
marginally politicized, and generally inefficient.  While the
Supreme Court made strides in both organization and
investigation of corrupt court officials, the underfunded
judiciary remained very vulnerable to influence and corruption.

     f.  Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or
         Correspondence

The Constitution specifies that a person's home is inviolable
and that persons authorized by the State may enter only with
the owner's consent or with the authorization of a competent
authority.  Entry may take place only between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m.
or at any time in the event of an emergency or to prevent the
commission of a crime.  However, as in previous years, there
were credible charges that police and armed forces personnel
failed at times to obtain the needed authorization before
entering a private home.  Despite a new system of "duty judges"
and "duty prosecutors" to issue search orders, they appeared to
lack the discipline to make themselves available 24 hours per
day, 7 days a week.  Coordination among the police, the court,
and the Public Ministry is improving.  However, interagency
liaison problems still undermine the effectiveness of the
system.

Judges may authorize government monitoring of mail or
telephones for specific purposes, such as criminal
investigation or national security.  However, the armed forces
reportedly continued to use its operation of the national
telephone company to monitor illegally telephone lines of
influential people in the Government, the military, and the
private sector without authorization from the appropriate
civilian judicial authority.

Section 2  Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

     a.  Freedom of Speech and Press

The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and press, and
the authorities largely respected these freedoms in practice.
The media, while often openly critical of the Government and
frequently willing to expose corruption, are themselves subject
to high levels of corruption and politicization.  Serious
investigative journalism is still in its infancy.  Journalists
are known to have requested bribes to kill stories.  There
continued to be credible reports of intimidation by the
authorities, instances of self-censorship, and payoffs to
journalists.

The Government respects academic freedom and has not attempted
to curtail political expression on university campuses.

     b.  Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

The Constitution provides for the right to peaceful assembly
for political, religious, or other purposes.  The Government
does not generally require prior authorization or permits but
may ask for a permit to "guarantee public order."  In most
cases, neither the Government nor the armed forces interfere in
the right of citizens to assemble.  For example, when several
thousand Indians staged a protest march to the capital in July,
they were allowed to occupy the center of the city for several
days, withdrawing peacefully after meeting with the President
and other officials and winning concessions on their demands.

     c.  Freedom of Religion

The Constitution protects all forms of religious expression,
and the Government respects this right in practice.  Numerous
foreign missionaries work and proselytize throughout the
country.

     d.  Freedom of Movement Within the Country, Foreign
         Travel, Emigration, and Repatriation

Citizens enter and exit Honduras without arbitrary impediment,
and travel within the country's borders is freely permitted.
There were no known instances in which citizenship was revoked
for political reasons.  Of the 250 Haitian refugees who arrived
in Honduras in November 1991, 45 remain.