Amnesty International Report 1996 - Honduras

Steps were taken to bring to justice those responsible for some past human rights violations, although there was little or no progress in other cases. Human rights activists and those seeking to clarify human rights violations were subjected to intimidation, including death threats. The government of President Carlos Roberto Reina continued its program of human rights reforms. In October Congress granted constitutional status to the office of the Comisionado Nacional para la Protección de los Derechos Humanos, National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights. This gave the Commissioner a supervisory role complementary to the investigative role of the Attorney General. Steps were taken to bring to justice those responsible for some past human rights violations. Ten army and police officers were charged in July in connection with the temporary "disappearance" of six university students in 1982. The Special Human Rights Prosecutor in the Attorney General's office charged the 10 with attempted murder and illegal detention. In October the judge in charge of the case, Roy Edmundo Medina, ordered the arrest of three of those charged but they went into hiding. These would have been the first arrests of security officials charged with human rights violations in Honduras. Judge Medina was reportedly subjected to death threats and shots were fired at his court. At the end of the year judicial proceedings were continuing. However, other cases appeared to have stalled. Despite the exhumation and identification in December 1994 of the remains of lawyer Nelson Mackay Chavarría, there was little progress in bringing those responsible for his "disappearance" to justice (see Amnesty International Report 1995). Investigations by the Attorney General's office and judicial proceedings continued and relatives, witnesses and members of the military were called to give evidence. However, no further developments in establishing responsibility for his "disappearance" were reported. The remains of nine people were exhumed in different parts of the country between October and November. The exhumations were initiated by the Special Human Rights Prosecutor and two non-governmental human rights organizations, the Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (COFADEH), Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras, and the Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (CODEH), Committee for the Defence of Human Rights in Honduras. Definitive identifications were pending at the end of the year but the organizations and families were fairly certain that in at least five cases the remains belonged to people who "disappeared" in the 1980s. Relatives of the "disappeared" and other human rights activists were subjected to intimidation. Death threats were sent to members of CODEH and COFADEH as well as to staff in the office of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights. A COFADEH staff member, Leonel Casco Gutiérrez, was reportedly told of an army plan to kill him and was followed by unidentified armed men on motorcycles. The family of Juan Pablo Rivas Calderón, a retired army major who was killed in January, was also subjected to death threats and surveillance. Juan Pablo Rivas Calderón was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in San Pedro Sula. He had earlier told a court and CODEH that he feared for his life since accusing a former head of the armed forces of corruption. Members of his family, including his wife Norma Bessy Jeresano de Rivas, received anonymous threatening telephone calls and in March his son, Juan Pablo Rivas Jeresano, narrowly escaped when a car without number plates tried to run him over. Similar vehicles followed members of the Rivas Jeresano family and stood watch outside the family home. Staff of the Casa Alianza Honduras, Covenant House of Honduras, a non-governmental organization working with street children in the capital, Tegucigalpa, received a series of bomb threats in July. The organization had been campaigning against children being held together with adults in Honduran prisons. According to reports, up to 28 children had been held in a cell with adults in the Penitenciaría Central, Central Prison, in Tegucigalpa. Some claimed to have been physically abused by adult prisoners and at least one had been raped by an adult prisoner. Amnesty International issued a report in June, Honduras: The beginning of the end of impunity?, which described the government's efforts to end impunity for human rights violations, and the obstacles and barriers faced by those investigating "disappearances". The report examined the armed forces' denial of responsibility for the scores of "disappearances" that took place in Honduras in the early 1980s. Amnesty International called on the government to take concrete measures to overcome the obstacles impeding official investigations into "disappearances" and urged the international community to support all attempts to end impunity. Amnesty International appealed to the authorities to take measures to guarantee the safety of members of non-governmental organizations and of the Rivas Jeresano family, to investigate the incidents and to bring those responsible to justice. The organization also appealed to the authorities to protect juvenile prisoners from the threat of abuses and pointed out that under the Honduran Constitution and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Honduras ratified in 1990, children should not be imprisoned together with adults.