Honduras: Forced disappearance of four Garifuna leaders completes two years without answers or enforcement of sentences
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"Honduras: Two Years after the Abduction of Four Garífuna Land Defenders, The Struggle Continues", 21 July 2022
...On July 18, 2020, a group of heavily armed men wearing uniforms of the Police Investigation Directorate (DPI) entered the Garífuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, in northern Honduras. The Garifunas are an oppressed national minority of mixed African and indigenous people who originally lived on Saint Vincent, a Caribbean island, and speak their own language; they were exiled to Honduras in the 18th century. The men abducted four young land defenders: Alberth Sneider Centeno, Milton Joel Martínez Álvarez, Suami Aparicio Mejía García and Gerardo Mizael Róchez Cálix. They also took Junior Rafael Juárez Mejía, a young man who was close to the community. Their families and communities still await answers from the state regarding their whereabouts.
Sneider Centeno, the president of the patronato (community council) at the time, was leading a struggle for the recovery of the community’s ancestral lands, which have been under threat by corporations in the tourism and African oil palm industries...Threats against the Garífuna people have increased since 2015, when the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued a ruling in favor of the communitie...The decision demands that the Honduran state pay reparations to the Garífunas and return their communal lands.
...César Benedith, a member of OFRANEH (Honduran Black Fraternal Organization)...[:]...
The number of murdered community leaders has decreased a little, but what has not diminished are the threats and prosecution of some of the leaders of the different Garífuna communities. The lack of justice for our people also continues, and not much has changed after these events...
We expect this government to comply with the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and apply pressure to determine the whereabouts of the leaders who were abducted from their homes...
We’ve been informed that the president has begun to set up a new commission to comply with the ruling. As a community, we’re waiting for the commission to be formed and for the government to call us to establish a dialogue and start working toward the demarcation, delimitation, and recovery of the lands...