Honduras Faces Criticism Over Journalist Killings After a Coup

[Judi Lynn]

Source: New York Times

Honduras Faces Criticism Over Journalist Killings After a Coup
By ELISABETH MALKIN
Published: July 26, 2010

MEXICO CITY — The Honduran government’s failure to investigate the killings of seven journalists this year has fostered “a climate of lawlessness that is allowing criminals to kill journalists with impunity,” the Committee to Protect Journalists concluded in a report released Tuesday. The seven killings all occurred against a backdrop of political unrest set off by the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya 13 months ago.

The political conflict has continued since then, creating significant difficulties for the nation’s current president, Porfirio Lobo, who was elected in November. He has been lobbying to gain international recognition, but has run up against resistance by his counterparts in South America, preventing his country’s return to the Organization of American States, the main regional body.

Under pressure from the United States, Mr. Lobo has established a truth commission to investigate the events surrounding the coup and appointed a human rights adviser. But human rights violations — directed mostly against the coup’s opponents, human rights defenders and activists — continue, according to a report last month by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

In addition to killings, the commission cited kidnappings, arbitrary detentions, sexual violations and illegal searches of “members of the resistance to the coup d’état” and their families. But the lack of proper investigation by the judicial system made it more difficult to “clarify the question of whether these are related to the context of the coup d’état,” it said.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/world/americas/27honduras.html