Honduras: Another Campesino Kidnapped In 'The Aguan' [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Rights Action.org

Honduras: Another Campesino Kidnapped In 'The Aguan'
By Annie Bird
July 5, 2012

On July 2, 2012, neighbors from the town of Panama found evidence that campesino Gregorio Chavez Arranda was kidnapped from his fields and taken by Dinant palm oil company private security forces onto the Panama Farm. As in three similar kidnappings last year, authorities have refused to assist family members and neighbors in locating the victim and appear to be collaborating with the security forces, making this kidnapping a forced disappearance.

Gregorio Chavez Arranda Kidnapped

On Monday, July 2, Gregorio Chavez Arranda, a campesino resident of the town of Panama, disappeared while working his yucca field that borders the Panama Farm, controlled by palm oil businessman Miguel Facusse through his corporation Dinant, and heavily controlled by large armed private security force.

Every day at 5pm Chavez Arranda tended his garden plot and then returned home. When he had not returned home at 6:30pm, his family and neighbors worried and went to the plot, where they found a shotgun bullet casing, his machete thrown to the side and remnants of material which could have been used to bind him. Plants were crushed in a path enter the Panama Farm in what appeared to have been where he was dragged away into the Panama farm. Given this evidence and the history of abuses by Dinant security forces, his neighbors are certain he was kidnapped by Dinant security guards.

AUTHORITIES DO NOT ACT, BUT OCCUPY THE PANAMA TOWN
Neighbors immediately called on the police in the nearby town of Tocoa demanding that based on the evidence police immediately search the Panama farm. The police refused to come to the community's assistance claiming it pertained to another jurisdiction, the town of Trujillo over an hour away. It was not until the following afternoon at approximately 2pm that investigators from the town of Trujillo came to Panama and took the bullet casing but did not enter the Panama farm to search for the missing man.

Read more: http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1207/S00198/honduras-another-campesino-kidnapped-in-the-aguan.htm