Day of the Disappeared: Garifunas Demand Return of Comrades

On International Day of the Disappeared, the Garifunas of Honduras are demanding the safe return of five abducted members of the community of Triunfo de la Cruz, including Garifuna leader Snider Centeno, the president of the elected community council.

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Honduras: Protests Demand Return of Disappeared Garifuna Youth

Saturday marked six weeks since the young men were taken on Saturday, July 18th, by a group of men wearing Honduran Police (DPI) bullet proof vests, according to witnesses. 

The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Ofraneh) led a twitter storm at 11:00am while the communities of San Juan Tela, Trujillo and Puerto Cortes came together in traditional song, dance and other forms of protest, to sound alarms about abducted men whose whereabouts continue to be unknown 43 days on.

The demand for their return is being accompanied by calls to end the violence against Afro-Indigenous communities and the attempts to displace Garifuna communities from their ancestral lands in order to turn their territories into mono-culture agriculture, tourist resorts and extractive projects for the benefit of developers linked to the Honduran regime of Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Given the human rights situation in Honduras and the failure of the state to protect threatened communities, the community is afraid they’ll never see the four men alive again. “They were taken alive, we want them back alive” is the slogan.

Ofraneh is also demanding an impartial investigation which does not include the DPI, into the disappearance of the men and compliance with orders of the Inter-American Human Rights Court (IACHR) for justice for Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra.

The IACHR ordered the Honduran State to make reparations for the harm they committed against Garifuna communities, to return the stolen land and to end impunity for the crimes committed but the government has ignored the court’s orders and allowed violence to intensify.

The Alliance for Global Justice reports that the government has tried to frame activists as being part of organized crime in order to cover up and divert from the disappearances and murders taking place with total impunity.