Freedom in the World 1999 - Honduras

1999 Scores

Status: Partly Free
Freedom Rating: 3.0
Civil Liberties: 3
Political Rights: 3

Overview

Official corruption and the lingering power of Honduras's once-omnipotent military dominated the headlines during much of 2000, as the country prepared for presidential elections to be held in 2001. In January, the country's most important human rights group complained that senior government officials, police officers, and businessmen financed and protected death squads operating on the Atlantic coast and in the country's central region, their targets mostly consisting of youth gang leaders and homeless children. Sweeping changes made in the military high command in February 2000 and the cashiering of 26 active-duty officers in May formed part of an ongoing effort by President Carlos Flores to assert his authority over military institutions unhappy with civilian challenges to their economic power and legal impunity. The frustrated efforts of a respected former international civil servant to depoliticize and clean up the Honduran Social Investment Fund (FIS) pointed to a continuing problem, albeit one the Flores government has moved to confront – that of official corruption. Transparency International has called Honduras one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

The Republic of Honduras was established in 1839, 18 years after independence from Spain. It has endured decades of military rule and intermittent elected government. The last military regime gave way to elected civilian rule in 1982. The constitution provides for a president and a 130-member, unicameral congress elected for four years.

The two main parties are the center-left Liberal Party (PL) and the conservative National Party (PN). In the 1993, the PN nominated Oswaldo Ramos Soto, an outspoken right-winger. The PL, which held power during most of the 1980s, nominated Roberto Reina, a 67-year-old progressive and a former president of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. Reina won with 52 percent of the vote. The PL won 70 seats in congress, the PN, 56. Two small left-wing parties took the remaining 4.

Reina promised a "moral revolution" and greater civilian control over the military. His administration had a positive, if mixed, record. The size of the military was reduced greatly, although its spending remained secret, and officers suspected of rights offenses protected. The process of separating the police from the military was undertaken following the December 1996 approval by congress of a constitutional amendment to place the police under civilian control.

However, a virulent crime wave, believed to be, in part, the work of former and serving military and intelligence officers, continued unabated. Several leaders of Indian and Garifuna minority groups attempting to defend their land from encroachments by non-Indian landowners were murdered.

On November 30, 1997, PL presidential candidate Flores, a U.S.-trained engineer and newspaper owner, won a resounding, 54 to 41 percent victory over PN candidate Nora Melgar. The ruling party won 67 congressional seats and retained control over 180 of Honduras's 297 municipal districts. Flores immediately announced that civilian control of the armed forces would be strengthened by the creation of a functional defense ministry and the newly civilianized police would enjoy an increased budget. He also appointed five women to high-level posts, including that of minister of security, the portfolio in charge of the new civilian national police. In September 1998, congress voted to end more than 30 years of military autonomy by suppressing the post of commander in chief of the armed forces, a move that created unrest in the barracks.

In May 1999 a civilian judge ordered the arrest for abuse of authority of the general who had retired at the end of the previous year as commander in chief of the armed forces. A July 1999 crisis within the army, which brought a drastic reorganization of the military high command, was apparently the result of efforts by the civilian defense minister to audit the military's lucrative pension fund and holding company. The crisis was resolved only after Flores granted concessions to the rebellious officers in secret negotiations. In August 2000, in a move many hailed as a blow to military impunity, the former chief of the armed forces and nine other retired officers, including two generals, were accused in civilian court of embezzling $349,000. In late August, the security minister was fired after several police officers implicated in narcotics trafficking were arrested and a deputy police commander was reportedly under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Agency. On a positive note, that same month the Honduran congress ratified an antidrug accord signed four months earlier with the United States that provides for joint air, sea, and land patrols and allows U.S. Coast Guard vessels to board "in exceptional circumstances" suspect ships in Honduran waters.

Political Rights and Civil Liberties

Citizens are able to change their government through elections. The 1997 presidential contest was considered generally free and fair. Constitutional guarantees regarding free expression, freedom of religion, and the right to form political parties and civic organizations are generally respected. But repressive measures coming in the face of peaceful protests and mounting crime have limited political rights and civil liberties.

The judicial system, headed by the supreme court, is weak and corruption-prone. In 1998 the new court was packed with lawyers close to both the military and officials accused of corruption. Death threats and violent attacks face judges who assert themselves in human rights cases. Although 90 percent of the 10,000 people incarcerated are awaiting trial, they share deplorable prison conditions with convicted inmates. Drug-related corruption is rampant, and in August 2000, Guatama Fonseca, Honduras's new security minister, charged that "venal" judges were protecting drug smugglers.

In 1997 the government moved to place the police under civilian control, a task made easier by the emergence of a cadre of police professionals at the top reaches of a force controlled by the military since 1963. However, Reina frequently used the military for internal security tasks, putting down labor unrest, quelling street protests, and seeking to control street crime, a pattern continued by Flores in March 1999 when, in response to demands from business organizations, he sent 12,000 troops into the streets. Arbitrary detention and torture by the police still occur. A crime wave throughout Honduras has been fueled by the presence of some 120 youth gangs whose main activities include murder, kidnapping, and robbery. Where crime rings have been effectively broken up, good police work, rather than troops in the streets, has made the difference. The need to strengthen and professionalize the poorly equipped civilian police is hampered by a lack of public confidence in them. In August 2000, Fonseca, the newly appointed security minister, promised to target members of the police suspected of working in concert with drug traffickers.

The military exerts considerable, if waning, influence over the government. By naming a civilian instead of a general to head the armed forces in January 1999, Flores said he hoped to strengthen government control over the military. The oversight offensive also included civilian control of the armed forces budget and the independent auditing of military business ventures – the sources of much high-level corruption. A constellation of military-owned businesses makes the armed forces one of Honduras' ten largest for-profit enterprises. In December 2000 the United Nations announced that it will finance the audit of firms owned by the military, including a bank, brokerages, radio stations, a security firm, and a public relations agency. Most criminal cases against the military remained in military court jurisdiction, and the charges were usually dismissed. However, beginning in 1999 military personnel are no longer immune from prosecution in civilian courts.

In 1998, army officers were implicated in drug trafficking, including taking sides in cartel turf wars and protecting drug shipments in transit through Honduras. The military remains the country's principal human rights violator, and the institution protects members connected to both political repression and street crime, often linked to narcotics. In February 1998, the human rights leader Ernesto Sandoval was murdered in a "death squad" style assassination. The death squads are now also reportedly involved in the "social cleansing" murders of youth gang members in San Pedro Sula, the country's second largest city.

Labor unions are well organized and can strike, although labor actions often result in clashes with security forces. Labor leaders, religious groups, and indigenous-based peasant unions pressing for land rights remain vulnerable to repression. On December 31, 1999, José Cosme Reyes, the local secretary of the National Lenca Indigenous Organization, was strangled to death by unknown assailants. His death brought to 54 the number of indigenous leaders killed in a nine-year period. In May 1999, prosecutors asked courts to issue arrest warrants for ten landowners in connection with the killing of at least 42 of the Indians in land disputes. On a positive note, in September 2000, the government reached an agreement with indigenous and black peoples in Honduras that gave their concerns a more prominent place in the public agenda.

Some 85,000 workers, mostly women, are employed in the low-wage maquiladora (assembly plant) export sector. Child labor is a problem in rural areas and in the informal economy. UNICEF has estimated that, in the aftermath of the devastating Hurricane Mitch in 1998, more than 42,000 children joined an estimated 1.3 million between the ages of 10 and 17 who left school to work in the country's streets, factories, and fields. In August 2000, the Latin American branch of the U.S. organization Covenant House, a group that protects the rights of minors, said that Honduran death squads had killed 338 children and young people in extrajudicial executions since the beginning of 1998.