Human rights violations abound during Honduras coup, speaker says

Behind the scenes human rights abuses during the 2009 Honduran coup were revealed on Wednesday at Harvard University by human rights experts and students who traveled to Honduras months after the event in time to witness the country’s transition from the interim government to newly elected government.

Associate Director of the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights Studies Monica Maher and Program Coordinator for the Committee on Human Rights Lauren Herman organized a small student trip to Honduras a week before the Jan. 27 inauguration of elected President Porfirio Lobo.

The coup carried out by the Honduran military ousted former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, after he attempted to institute a non-binding poll on holding a referendum about convening a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution.

Former President of the Honduran Congress Roberto Micheletti became interim president after the coup, but was not recognized as leader of Honduras by other world leaders.

Since that time, the Honduran people have peacefully protested the coup with the goal of obtaining an inclusive democracy and revised constitution, Maher said. She said their resistance has been met with severe violence and violation of human rights, despite being peaceful in nature.

Their resistance was greeted with, “torture, imprisonment, tear gas, pepper spray and beatings with chains,” Maher said.

Maher began her lecture by asking for a moment of silence in memory of Vanessa Zepeda, a Honduran protestor who died in from tear gas complications she had gotten at a protest.

Maher focused specifically on women’s rights, and said many women were sexually abused, tortured and killed for political purposes under the new government.

“Women’s rights group all over are standing up saying “We are all Honduras,’ she said. “Groups in Argentina and El Salvador are rallying around this call already. It is important to understand that a coup against Honduras is a coup against Central America.”

Harvard Divinity School student Garret Fitzgerald, a member of the team that spent a week in Honduras, said that in a nation where 60 to 70 percent of the protestors are women, sexual abuse, discrimination and rape have been commonly used as weapons of oppression.

“Worker’s and women’s rights are the most vulnerable in Honduras right now,” Fitzgerald said.

Religion in Honduras was also an integral part of the group’s research as found in group member and Harvard Law School associate Karen Gray’s research on “Protest through lamentation and prayer.”

“Women would come weeping into the march as a way to show sorrow over the violence,” Gray said. “They are taking visible emotional suffering as a serious way to combat the government.”

Group member and Harvard Divinity School student Tiffany Curtis said she focused her research on economics and human rights to see corporations’ impacts on the coup.

“The way the body is treated in the workplace could transcend into other aspects of society,” Curtis said. “Sexual discrimination and abuse in the workplace, along with workers being used as machines for profit, extends beyond the job.”

“There were even instances of employers offering to pay workers to protest for the coup, and workers being forced to vote following the coup,” she said.

Audience member Mike Fitzpatrick said he was captivated by the discussion.

“I loved that they are bringing attention to a new and important issue, and that women in Honduras are taking such a strong stand for their rights,” he said.

Curtis ended the program with a poem by Honduran protestor Jessica Sanchez about the Honduran police breaking her young brother’s hands during a peaceful march.

“These broken hands are the hands of the resistance,” the poem read. “Beaten, broken but unwavering. Dignified hands that scream a message to the world which, for now, is unheard.”