Drug War Violence Throws Honduras into Disarray

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http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/13271/drug_war_violence_throws_honduras_into_disarray


A policeman stands guard near about 400kg of cocaine, seized in an earlier raid, which are burnt in Tegucigalpa on May 11, 2012. (ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/GettyImages)

The firefight started about two hours before dawn, while it was still full dark in the jungle. Early on May 11, muzzle flashes lit up the sky as a small fleet of U.S. helicopters engaged a boatload of drug smugglers on a twisting, thickly-wooded stretch of the Patuca River, in the Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras. It was a short, one-sided fight. The four Super Huey helicopters—piloted by a combination of Guatemalan Air Force officers and U.S. civilian contractors, manned by Honduran military door gunners and carrying both national police and U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers—had surprised the armed smugglers on the riverbank in the process of loading their cargo into a shallow-drafted skiff. The traffickers opened fire first, but strafing runs from the Hueys and fire support from agents on the ground, quickly overwhelmed the outlaws. Initial reports claimed that two of the drug runners were killed at the scene, the rest fled into the jungle and almost a ton of cocaine was recovered. U.S. and Honduran media spun the incident as a major victory against the cartels, and American officials corroborated those claims.

But soon a different a story began to emerge. The amount of narcotics supposedly seized in the raid, as reported by the New York Times and other media that had picked up the story, literally changed overnight—reduced by half. Meanwhile, locals from a nearby village began to complain that tactical units deployed by the helicopters had broken down doors to search houses and rough up residents after the firefight. Even worse, instead of two dead smugglers, villagers charge that a total of four innocent civilians had been killed by fire from Honduran officers, who were under direct supervision of DEA field agents. Two of the dead were allegedly pregnant women. All the victims were said to be indigenous passengers traveling aboard a local water taxi on the same stretch of the river in the pre-dawn darkness. Another four passengers were also allegedly wounded, including a teenage boy who lost his hand, and a woman badly shot through both legs.

“The drug boat was running without lights and going downriver, toward the coast. The launch carrying civilian passengers had its lights on, and was headed inland. But, for whatever reason, the helicopters shot at them anyway,” says Norvin Goff, President of the United Mosquitia Organization of Honduras (MASTA), an NGO dedicated to protecting the rights of local indigenous.

“We’re trapped in the middle,” Goff says. “We’re caught between the drug gangs on one side, and the army and police on the other. If we cooperate with one group, we’re targeted by the other. The situation in these poor villages is very desperate.”

[Catherina]

1. The worldwide graffiti "Yankee Go Home" is a plea

to quit destroying people's lives for our profit.

Will we ever heed it?

[rusty fender]

2. This Administration has doubled down on

the drug war.