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Trump could end protected status for Hondurans – 'condemning them to total misery':
chamerionwrites:
For Jonny Rivas, going home is not an option. For the past four years, the 40-year-old campesino leader has been hunted by gunmen terrorising the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras – a territory controlled by drug traffickers, African palm conglomerates, mining companies and elite military units.
So far, Rivas has survived several assassination attempts but many have not been so fortunate. Thousands have fled and more than 150 campesinos opposing land grabs have been murdered in the Aguán since the country’s 2009 military coup against the populist president Manuel Zelaya.
The victims include two of Rivas’s close colleagues who were shot dead in front of dozens of people leaving a meeting in 2016. The killers – believed to have links to military officers and a local drug cartel – were so confident that they removed their hoods after the double murder.
This toxic mix of violence and impunity has forced hundreds of thousands of Hondurans to abandon home in recent years. Some of them have found refuge in the US under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) visa, which allows them to live and work legally in the country.
But this Friday, the Trump administration will announce whether it will extend TPS for Hondurans – or cancel the programme, as it already has for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Liberia and Nepal.
TPS was created in 1990 to protect migrants from 10 nations from deportation while their homelands recover from armed conflict or natural disaster. This includes 57,000 Hondurans who sought refuge after Central America was devastated in 1998 by Hurricane Mitch which killed at least 11,000 and left thousands more without homes, crops or jobs.
Since then, however, climate change has increased Honduras’s vulnerability to natural disasters such as a recent two-year drought which seriously dented food and water supplies for more than 2 million people.
Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc (Clinic), is one of hundreds of religious groups calling for TPS to be extended.
“Honduras continues to face a lack of adequate housing, vital public and private infrastructure, food and water security. Under law, these factors, as well as the pervasive and shocking homicide rate and gang violence that plagues the country, must all be carefully weighed.”
Honduras is the one of the world’s most violent countries – it is also one of the poorest and most unequal in the Americas. 68% of the population – more than 6 million people – live in poverty, according to National Institute of Statistics (INE) figures. Unemployment stands at 56%, and three-quarters of those with jobs don’t earn enough to make ends meet.
As a result, many families depend on remittances from the US where about 1 million Hondurans currently live. Last year, just over $4.4bn was sent to Honduras – a 12.7% rise on 2016 – contributing 18% to the GDP, according to the central bank.
Honduras has ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in the world since the 2009 coup ushered in the pro-business, authoritarian National party.
At least 36 people were killed and hundreds detained during nationwide protests prompted by general elections mired by fraud allegations. A UN investigation found evidence of extrajudicial killings.
Extortion and gang violence in the country’s biggest cities – Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba – have forced tens of thousands of entire families to flee north and seek refuge in the US and Mexico. At least 190,000 have been internally displaced by violence in recent years, according to the UNHCR.
In rural areas, communities resisting the imposition of megaprojects such as mines, dams and model cities which threaten increasingly scarce land and water resources face harassment, repression and jail on trumped-up charges.
“The rural displaced have two choices, moving to the urban misery belt, or migrating to the US. If you want to stop migration give people back their land and rivers,” said Donald Hernández from environment and human rights group Cehprodec (Honduran Centre for the Promotion of Community Development).
Jonny Rivas, a spokesman for the Agrarian Platform, told the Guardian: “Cancelling TPS and forcing people back to a repressive country where there are no jobs, no land and no future would condemn them to total misery.”
This article is…frustrating. It’s an important subject and I’m glad someone is calling attention to it, but it glosses over a lot of crucial context.
The United States (under Obama as well as Trump) has actively supported Honduras’ authoritarian government. The U.S. supported the 2009 coup. It supported Juan Orlando Hernández’s blatantly unconstitutional (and almost certainly fraudulent) reelection last year. The State Department rubber-stamped aid that was contingent upon support for human rights two days after the contested elections, while the Honduran police were brutally repressing protesters in the streets despite the risk of - as Sarah Chayes wrote in an excellent Washington Post column that I encourage you to read - “abetting a coup d’etat in the making.” Nikki Haley has praised JOH for “continued progress on human rights.” John Kelly (who was the commander of SOUTHCOM before he joined Trump’s cabinet) has called him “a good friend.” The United State government considers him an important ally in the drug war despite the fact that his administration has been heavily implicated in running drugs. The hypocrisy is lost on nobody.
Meanwhile US-supplied bullets fired from US-supplied guns kill Honduran protesters. US-military-trained security forces murder Honduran activists. And that’s before we get to the history of Cold War-era death squads like Battalion 3-16 (discussion of torture and rape if you click those links) or economic exploitation at the hands of American fruit companies (part of the reason Hurricane Mitch - the original reason for giving Hondurans TPS - was so devastating was that it destroyed the banana crop, which due to that legacy still plays an outsized role in the Honduran economy; the term “banana republic” originated there).
Cancelling TPS for Hondurans would not merely be a case of turning a blind eye to people’s misery. It would be abdicating responsibility to refugees of our own making, after ACTIVELY CREATING (and continuing to create) the conditions that cause that misery.
(Your picture was not posted)
Trump could end protected status for Hondurans – 'condemning them to total misery':
chamerionwrites:
For Jonny Rivas, going home is not an option. For the past four years, the 40-year-old campesino leader has been hunted by gunmen terrorising the Bajo Aguán region of Honduras – a territory controlled by drug traffickers, African palm conglomerates, mining companies and elite military units.
So far, Rivas has survived several assassination attempts but many have not been so fortunate. Thousands have fled and more than 150 campesinos opposing land grabs have been murdered in the Aguán since the country’s 2009 military coup against the populist president Manuel Zelaya.
The victims include two of Rivas’s close colleagues who were shot dead in front of dozens of people leaving a meeting in 2016. The killers – believed to have links to military officers and a local drug cartel – were so confident that they removed their hoods after the double murder.
This toxic mix of violence and impunity has forced hundreds of thousands of Hondurans to abandon home in recent years. Some of them have found refuge in the US under the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) visa, which allows them to live and work legally in the country.
But this Friday, the Trump administration will announce whether it will extend TPS for Hondurans – or cancel the programme, as it already has for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Sudan, Liberia and Nepal.
TPS was created in 1990 to protect migrants from 10 nations from deportation while their homelands recover from armed conflict or natural disaster. This includes 57,000 Hondurans who sought refuge after Central America was devastated in 1998 by Hurricane Mitch which killed at least 11,000 and left thousands more without homes, crops or jobs.
Since then, however, climate change has increased Honduras’s vulnerability to natural disasters such as a recent two-year drought which seriously dented food and water supplies for more than 2 million people.
Jeanne Atkinson, executive director of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, Inc (Clinic), is one of hundreds of religious groups calling for TPS to be extended.
“Honduras continues to face a lack of adequate housing, vital public and private infrastructure, food and water security. Under law, these factors, as well as the pervasive and shocking homicide rate and gang violence that plagues the country, must all be carefully weighed.”
Honduras is the one of the world’s most violent countries – it is also one of the poorest and most unequal in the Americas. 68% of the population – more than 6 million people – live in poverty, according to National Institute of Statistics (INE) figures. Unemployment stands at 56%, and three-quarters of those with jobs don’t earn enough to make ends meet.
As a result, many families depend on remittances from the US where about 1 million Hondurans currently live. Last year, just over $4.4bn was sent to Honduras – a 12.7% rise on 2016 – contributing 18% to the GDP, according to the central bank.
Honduras has ranked as one of the most dangerous countries in the world since the 2009 coup ushered in the pro-business, authoritarian National party.
At least 36 people were killed and hundreds detained during nationwide protests prompted by general elections mired by fraud allegations. A UN investigation found evidence of extrajudicial killings.
Extortion and gang violence in the country’s biggest cities – Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and La Ceiba – have forced tens of thousands of entire families to flee north and seek refuge in the US and Mexico. At least 190,000 have been internally displaced by violence in recent years, according to the UNHCR.
In rural areas, communities resisting the imposition of megaprojects such as mines, dams and model cities which threaten increasingly scarce land and water resources face harassment, repression and jail on trumped-up charges.
“The rural displaced have two choices, moving to the urban misery belt, or migrating to the US. If you want to stop migration give people back their land and rivers,” said Donald Hernández from environment and human rights group Cehprodec (Honduran Centre for the Promotion of Community Development).
Jonny Rivas, a spokesman for the Agrarian Platform, told the Guardian: “Cancelling TPS and forcing people back to a repressive country where there are no jobs, no land and no future would condemn them to total misery.”
This article is…frustrating. It’s an important subject and I’m glad someone is calling attention to it, but it glosses over a lot of crucial context.
The United States (under Obama as well as Trump) has actively supported Honduras’ authoritarian government. The U.S. supported the 2009 coup. It supported Juan Orlando Hernández’s blatantly unconstitutional (and almost certainly fraudulent) reelection last year. The State Department rubber-stamped aid that was contingent upon support for human rights two days after the contested elections, while the Honduran police were brutally repressing protesters in the streets despite the risk of - as Sarah Chayes wrote in an excellent Washington Post column that I encourage you to read - “abetting a coup d’etat in the making.” Nikki Haley has praised JOH for “continued progress on human rights.” John Kelly (who was the commander of SOUTHCOM before he joined Trump’s cabinet) has called him “a good friend.” The United State government considers him an important ally in the drug war despite the fact that his administration has been heavily implicated in running drugs. The hypocrisy is lost on nobody.
Meanwhile US-supplied bullets fired from US-supplied guns kill Honduran protesters. US-military-trained security forces murder Honduran activists. And that’s before we get to the history of Cold War-era death squads like Battalion 3-16 (discussion of torture and rape if you click those links) or economic exploitation at the hands of American fruit companies (part of the reason Hurricane Mitch - the original reason for giving Hondurans TPS - was so devastating was that it destroyed the banana crop, which due to that legacy still plays an outsized role in the Honduran economy; the term “banana republic” originated there).
Cancelling TPS for Hondurans would not merely be a case of turning a blind eye to people’s misery. It would be abdicating responsibility to refugees of our own making, after ACTIVELY CREATING (and continuing to create) the conditions that cause that misery.
(Your picture was not posted)
