6 April 2010 | News | Human rights
Bloody April
Honduras: Peasants of Aguan face criminal repression. Interview with Wilfredo Paz Reyes
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Over a hundred arrest warrants issued against peasants, excessive military and paramilitary presence, the death of over five civilians is the situation that the Aguan region is undergoing in Honduras, in a government crackdown to evict peasants who recovered their lands from large estate owners.
Tuesday 6 is the date set by Profirio Lobo’s administration for the military intervention of the area. He said he would not hesitate to use all the power force of the Honduran army.
But the peasants of the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan (MUCA) answered to the threats with action: they occupied another 700 hectares of land on Tuesday early morning, while they are exposing the repression and the death toll resulting from it, to the international community.
“There is huge psychological pressure on the brothers and sisters from different groups, the situation is terrible”, Wilfredo Paz Reyes, leader of MUCA and of the National Front of Popular Resistance, told Real World Radio in a phone interview.
The process of recovery of lands comprises 17 families against half a dozen estate owners. “In this scenario, the people would rather die in their lands than give them away. In fact we have lost five fellow peasants in the military and paramilitary crackdown, but nobody surrenders here”, said Wilfredo.
The coming hours are crucial and several organizations have already warned about an impending confrontation.
“The police and the Army of Colon are operating with vehicles from businessmen who own lands, armed with AK-47s, wearing ski masks and they carry out daily operations with the paramilitary against the MUCA”, says a communiqué of the organization that was disseminated worldwide.
The incidents that mark the continuous repression after June’s coup d’état by Roberto Micheletti against ousted Manuel Zelaya’s government reach the high spheres of government, such as the recent appointment of the “operative chief” of Micheletti’s dictatorship, General Vázquez Velásquez, as the National Head of Telecommunications.
“It is a totally illegitimate government. They have imposed by force on the Honduran people. The National Front of Popular Resistance repeated its call for solidarity with the struggles we are undertaking because we have not given up on the National Constituent Assembly, to change the direction of the country”, Wilfredo Paz told Real World Radio.
