Law professor Carozza travels to Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Law professor Carozza travels to Honduras
Madeline Buckley
Issue date: 9/17/09

The June 28 Honduran military coup that ousted then-President Manuel Zelaya received criticism from the United States and several international organizations, but a Notre Dame Law professor saw a bitterly divided country on a recent fact-finding trip to Honduras.

Paolo Carozza, an associate professor of Law and member of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), helped investigate how the human rights situation in the country has fared since coup d'etat during a trip from Aug. 17-21 with the Commission.

"It was just difficult on a very basic human level because it's a country in which there's so much polarization and conflict and very passionately and deeply held convictions on both sides about what happened and who was to blame and all of this," he said.

As part of IACHR, Carozza said he observed the country's current political and social workings and helped report on the discoveries.

What they found was a country of division.

"I think you really have to talk separately about the segment of the population that is strongly in support of the ousted president," he said. "The whole point of the kinds of human rights violations that we verified while there were designed and used in order to prevent effective vocalization and participation of his supporters."

The IACHR noted suppression of media outlets that reported on the coup, arbitrary detention of supporters and the use of undue military force in squashing demonstrations by the de facto government.

More:
http://media.www.ndsmcobserver.com/media/storage/paper6...