Artist: Monte Wolverton
Reproduced under license
Amazing StoriesArtist Unknown, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Central American Reporter,
The Guardian, Photo: TheDailyBeast.com
Nina Lakhani reports for The Guardian:
Keyla Martínez screamed for help from inside the police cell, but no one came to save her.
Martínez, a 26-year-old trainee nurse from La Esperanza, western Honduras, died in police custody last weekend after being detained for breaching a coronavirus curfew.
Police officers initially claimed Martínez had killed herself. But a preliminary autopsy found she had died from “mechanical asphyxiation” and prosecutors announced they were investigating her death as a murder.
How Honduras became one of the most dangerous countries to defend natural resources
She was the latest victim in a relentless wave of misogynistic killings and state-sponsored violence in Honduras – one of the most dangerous and corrupt countries in the Americas. Twenty-nine women have been killed so far this year in Honduras, which has a population of about 9 million – only slightly more than New York City.
Advertisement
Upgrade to Premium and enjoy the app ad-free.
Upgrade to Premium
This week, security forces have teargassed protesters demanding truth and justice for the young nurse. Human rights groups are also demanding accountability amid the alarming escalation of deadly violence against women. At least six women have been killed since Martínez died.
“This killing has all the hallmarks of an extrajudicial execution and must be investigated as such,” said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.
“Grave human rights violations such as the killing of Keyla Martínez do not happen in a vacuum. They are the product of rampant impunity and the lack of political will to address the human rights crisis in Honduras. This dire context has produced a relentless and widespread stream of abuses by state security forces.”
Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries in the world to be a woman or girl. It is a deeply machista society where conservative church leaders exert a powerful influence over the personal and political spheres – including women’s access to reproductive healthcare and protection from violence.
Last month, congress voted to amend the constitution to make it virtually impossible to overturn the country’s abortion laws – which are already some of the strictest in Latin America.
In 2009, a coup orchestrated by a network of military, economic, political and religious elites, ushered in an authoritarian government, which remains in power despite multiple allegations of corruption, extrajudicial killings, electoral fraud and ties to international drug trafficking networks.
Advertisement
Upgrade to Premium and enjoy the app ad-free.
Upgrade to Premium
Since then emigration has risen dramatically, as hundreds of thousands of men, women and children have fled north looking for safety and jobs. A culture of impunity has also meant that violence against women has only worsened.
In the decade before the coup, 222 women were murdered annually, according to analysis by the Centre for Women’s Studies – Honduras (CEM-H). In the past five years, 381 have been killed on average annually. Ninety-six per cent of the murders remain unsolved.
Honduras lawmakers seek to lock in ban on abortion for ever
“The militarization of the country since the coup has increased the threat to women’s lives, there are guns everywhere and we know the police have links to criminal gangs,” said Suyapa Martínez (no relation to Keyla Martínez) from CEM-H, a feminist organisation based in Tegucigalpa.
. . . .
**************
Read the rest of the article at the link.
Refugee women continue to flee Honduras, even though the Trump regime misogynist nativists have skewed asylum law to make it more difficult for them to gain legal protection.
The Biden Administration has directed consideration of gender-based asylum regulations. It’s hardly a new idea — former AG the late Janet Reno ordered development of regulations regularizing the granting of “gender-based” asylum claims two decades ago.
Those efforts were basically sabotaged by DOJ bureaucrats and litigators more interested in narrowing asylum eligibility and making denials easier to defend than they were in protecting women — one of the world’s most persecuted groups by any reasonable accounting.
After years of screwing around, including eight years of inaction during the Obama Administration, super-misogynist and anti-asylum racist Stephen Miller arrived. He perversely came up with absurdly illegal regulations that incredibly purported to bar gender-based asylum claims! Those illegal (not to mention immoral) regulations have been enjoined. Nevertheless, the anti-asylum, anti-woman, anti-Latino attitudes and “judicial” decision-making at EOIR and DHS remain deeply ingrained!
The lesson: Changing policies in the bureaucracy requires something in addition to high level support. It requires bureaucrats who actually believe in the change and are committed to making it happen! That’s why dismantling the Trump immigration kakistocracy and getting better qualified individuals at all levels is so important.
Moreover, for lasting “Miller proof” change: Get it into legislation!
🇺🇸⚖️🗽Due Process Forever!
PWS
02-13-21