The Armed Forces are now in charge of confronting citizen mobilizations instead of the Preventative Police and Police Special Forces which continue in rebellion against the Executive and are under threat of being attacked by force to make them submit, destroy or imprison them.
Meanwhile, employees of government social assistance programs support the military in the form of groups of civilian shock forces, at times armed, acting against popular protests in the principal cities of the country.
Despite the suspension of the national transport strike after a supposed economic agreement with the regime was reached, gasoline shortages continue and all collective transport services are impacted.
From June 19 thru Friday morning, June 21, following the executive order to deploy the Armed Forces nationwide, the results are tragic and the population continues the peaceful protests.
Due to the danger of this situation, the Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) has officially denounced the violent deaths of three people, two by fire arms of a caliber corresponding to official weapons used by the military police.
The public denunciation also includes the illegal detention of 41 people and a preliminary statistic of 29 seriously injured. Three people have been admitted to neurosurgery, orthopedics and general surgery at the Hospital School; and one person with a traumatic brain injury caused by a firearm projectile, died Thursday morning at 11:32.a.m.
“We have victims of anxiety and panic in many zones in the country. The injured show bullet impacts to the head, legs and back; in the capital, the injured were from the Villanueva, Suyapa and Las Palmas neighborhoods” according to the second preliminary report by COFADEH which is currently in process.
The cities of Tegucigalpa, La Esperanza and Choluteca lead the list of victims of this armed brutality launched by the army in reprisal for exercising the right to popular insurrection that does not include acts of vandalism carried out by groups of infiltrators.
In the capital, the barrios and neighborhoods attacked most heavily by military forces are Kennedy, Pedregal, Hato de Enmedio, San Miquel, and Quezada.
In Pedregal, taxi driver Erick Peralta was fatally injured while working; he died Thursday morning in the Hospital School. Kevin Modesto Banegas lost his left eye as a result of a shot fired by the Military Police.
In la Esperanza Intibucá, 16 year old Edwin Emanuel Cantarero Flores was illegally captured, submitted to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, locked in a police jail cell and gassed.
A group of young people that arrived on Thursday to demand the release of the youth was ambushed in the street by two platoons of armed soldiers that launched excessive amounts of tear gas in an indiscriminate and abusive manner, and did not allow them to escape.
The indigenous leader and human rights defender Salvador Zúñiga, was beaten with clubs by the Military Police which also threw tear gas at the Enrique Aguilar Cerrato Hospital and inside houses.
In this city, employees of the “Better Life” and “Better Families” programs have been seen, at times armed, accompanied by the Military Police, invading peaceful protests and acting as informants to identify protestors. This practice has also been denounced in the municipality of San Antonio de Oriente and La Paz.
The citizen mobilization will continue this Friday in approximately 12 departments of the country, which provoked an emergency re-convening of the National Defense and Security Council, “to guarantee private property and public goods and finally to protect the life and physical integrity of people.”
Centers of Higher Education and many private centers have suspended academic activities as a preventative measure and also as a strategy to de-activate social mobilizations.
During the last semester an intense cycle of social mobilizations and protest has demanded the expulsion of Juan Orlando Hernández who self-proclaimed himself President re-elect in November 2017.
Hernández uses the Armed Forces to forcibly close the only remaining spaces for peaceful expression of social and political opposition. The regime controls the traditional media system, and disseminates false news and personality cult propaganda via networks. Journalists and national and international media outside of his financial control are under surveillance.
We demand that countries that produce and export tear gas suspend sales to Honduras. The indiscriminate use of gas against hospitals, homes, public transport vehicles and crowds is producing intoxication and damage effects on public health.
We ask international human rights organizations to monitor the situation on the ground and not depend on official reports that mask the abuses by the repressive forces which the dictator has made of the armed institutions.
Tegucigalpa, MDC., June 20, 2019
!!De los Hechos y los Hechores, Ni Olvido, Ni Perdón!!
COFADEH
