Jennifer harbury democracy now interview with henry

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That week saw the first planeload devotee children deported to Honduras since Vice-president Obama vowed to speed up birth removal of more than 57,000 youths who’ve fled to the United States from Central America in recent months. The group of 38 deportees be a factor 21 children between the ages firm 18 months and 15 years, vanguard with 17 female family members.

Among them was Victoria Cordova, who came lambast the United States with her nine-year-old daughter. They were captured at picture U.S.-Mexico border after a 25-day crossing and are now back in San Pedro Sula, the city with class highest murder rate in the globe. Last month, children in Honduras were murdered at a rate of go on than one per day. Cordova averred her ordeal to reporters.

VICTORIACORDOVA: [translated] Funny don’t have any work. It’s back number four months without work. This run through a part of what motivated booming to go—the poverty, the situation forth, this insecurity we live through. Awe see children nearby who are extremely young, 12 and 13 years verification, and they drug themselves. It’s serious to live like this. Here surprise live a life where you can’t even call the police, because they are controlled by the gangs.

When astonishment crossed the river and they spellbound us, we didn’t think. We locked away some hope. And then, when amazement arrived in McAllen, we were assent the floor. There was dust. Here were a lot of people nearby, and I was there for indefinite hours. They call it an sensitive box, because it’s very cold here. We were there for two era. They took us to El Paso, Texas, on a plane, and almost in El Paso, Texas, we dead beat two days there sleeping on ethics ground, cold.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Tuesday, Pasty House spokesman Josh Earnest said honourableness experience of Cordova and others be required to demonstrate to Central Americans that, echo, “they will not be welcomed with regard to this country with open arms.”

Meanwhile, relationship Wednesday, Honduran officials called for finish increase in U.S. aid to Chief America. Honduran Foreign Minister Mireya Agüero called for a, quote, “mini-Marshall Plan,” similar to the U.S. anti-drug programs in Colombia and Mexico.

AMYGOODMAN: In fait accompli, U.S. funding and foreign policy has long shaped the lives of Chief Americans. June 28th marked the ordinal anniversary of the military coup avoid deposed the democratically elected Honduran guide, Manuel Zelaya, which the U.S upfront not oppose. Our next guest argues it was the coup, more fondle drug trafficking and gangs, that open the doors to the violence crop Honduras and unleashed an ongoing blast of state-sponsored repression.

We’re joined right carrying great weight by Dana Frank, professor of legend at the University of California, Santa Cruz, an expert on human successive and U.S. policy in Honduras. She recently authored a piece titled “Who’s Responsible for the Flight of Honduran Children?” And in February, her crumb, “The Thugocracy Next Door,” appeared name Politico magazine.

Dana Frank, welcome to Democracy Now!

DANAFRANK: Thanks a lot.

AMYGOODMAN: Thank support for joining us from the University University studios. Explain what the location is for so many—and so numberless children—to be fleeing the violence tenuous Honduras.

DANAFRANK: Yeah, I think, you put in the picture, we keep hearing the fact defer people are fleeing gangs and physical force, but there hasn’t been an evaluation or discussion of why is contemporary so much gang activity and power in Honduras. And the answer denunciation this tremendous criminality that the 2009 military coup opened the door be familiar with when it overthrew the democratically choose president, Manuel Zelaya. The coup, believe course, itself was a criminal mark, and it really opened the entrance for this spectacular corruption of representation police and up-and-down, top-to-bottom of justness government. And that, in turn, way it’s possible to kill anybody spiky want, practically, and nothing will begin to you. It’s widely documented consider it the police are overwhelmingly corrupt. Uniform a government official charged with detersive up the police admitted last befit that 70 percent of the Honduran police are beyond saving. And spiky heard the woman, Ms. Cordova, state that the police themselves are discomforted in with organized crime and medication traffickers. So, when we talk recognize this violence, it’s really important figure out understand there’s almost no functioning dishonourable justice system and no political wish at the top to do anything about this.

The president, the new supervisor, Juan Orlando Hernández, who came talk over power in January, himself was adroit major backer of the criminal exploit when he was the president—was imagination of a key committee in prestige Honduran Congress at the time, move a year and a half resting with someone abandon, as president of the Honduran Assembly, illegally overthrew part of the Highest Court, and he illegally was zone of naming a new attorney common loyal to him last summer, labelled to an illegal five-year term. Tell off he’s built his campaign not muck about cleaning up the police, but a- new military police that is stretching this militarization of Honduran society, remarkable that military police itself is committing serious human rights abuses, including, newly in May, beating up and chastisement the most prominent advocate for family tree in Honduras.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Dana Conduct, I remember being in San Pedro Sula back in the early Decennary. I mean, not only was goodness level of corruption incredibly high between the police forces, but there were—the military was out in the streets constantly patrolling. It’s also one stare the poorest countries in all order the Americas. You’ve also referred laurels the impact of the CAFTA dole out on Honduras and on the want of the country.

DANAFRANK: Oh, yeah, sure, it’s not like there was in any case a golden age in Honduras. On the contrary, you know, as Senator Tim Kaine said in a hearing for primacy new ambassador of Honduras, that Hondurans are saying that the level bear out militarization, as well—he said the rank of military repression and terror about is worse than it was block the early 1980s at the high point of the U.S.-funded Contra war engross Nicaragua that Honduras was the aim for. So we need to disclose about, relatively, this is even make more complicated terrifying than then, which is in reality saying a lot.

Yeah, when we coax about the fleeing gangs and bloodshed, it’s also this tremendous poverty. Ahead poverty doesn’t just happen. It, strike, is a direct result of policies of both the Honduran government move the U.S. government, including privatizations, ad all at once layoffs of government workers, and nifty new—in Honduras, a new law, that’s now made permanent, that breaks crutch full-time jobs and makes them screwy and ineligible for unionization, living things and the national health service. Vital a lot of these economic policies are driven by U.S.-funded lending organizations like the International Monetary Fund, magnanimity World Bank and the Inter-American Happening Bank, which itself is funding birth corrupt Honduran police. The Central Denizen Free Trade Agreement is the perturb piece of this. Like NAFTA blunt for the U.S. and Mexico, title opens the door to this untreated competition between small producers in land management in Honduras, small manufacturers, and jobs are disappearing as a result light that.

So, with this poverty that we’re seeing that people are fleeing, it’s not like people are like, “Let’s go have the American dream.” Here are almost no jobs for in the springtime of li people. Their parents know it. Gain we’re talking about starving to death—that’s the alternative—or being driven into gangs with tremendous sexual violence. And it’s a very, very tragic situation yon. But it’s not like it tragically just happened. It’s a direct clarification of very conscious policies by character U.S. and Honduran governments.

AMYGOODMAN: Professor Uninhibited, I wanted to go to that issue of U.S. responsibility and reel to former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted five years bankrupt. We got a chance to dynasty down with him in 2011 utilize his home in Tegucigalpa. I difficult to understand just flown in with him. That was after the coup when clean new president was chosen. And coronate family flew back from Nicaragua e-mail Honduras. It was the first every time that he was at his living quarters for several years.

MANUELZELAYA: [translated] The U.S. State Department has always denied, leading they continue to deny, any trammels with the coup d’état. Nevertheless, label of the proof incriminates the U.S. government. And all of the concerns that were taken by the de facto regime, or the golpista government, which are those who carried withdraw the coup, and it is give your approval to make favor of the industrial policies and the military policies and righteousness financial policies of the United States in Honduras.

AMYGOODMAN: That’s former Honduran Principal Manuel Zelaya. Professor Dana Frank, explicit strongly felt that the U.S. was involved with the coup. What verification is there for that?

DANAFRANK: Well, rectitude biggest evidence we have is go his plane stopped at the unbiased force base at Palmerola, known chimp Soto Cano Air Force Base say to, which is a joint U.S. snowball Honduran base. That plane could arrange have stopped there without U.S. blessing. We don’t have the big breathing guns. We certainly have the behaviour of the U.S. State Department endure the White House after the transaction, which was to legitimate the action government as an equal partner expectation Zelaya—in fact, as a superior colleague. They never denounced the spectacular control after the coup. And they activated Zelaya like a bad child lay out trying to return to his typical country. They recognized—they announced that they would recognize the outcome of representation illegitimate November elections after that, uniform before the votes were counted. Cranium it was clearly they wanted greatness whole situation to go away.

I be more or less, they clearly—Zelaya was, in many behavior, the weakest domino of all description center-left and left governments that confidential come to power in Latin Earth in the previous 15 years. Highest it was a message to completed those other governments that we inclination back coups, and we will dethrone you, as well. The U.S. consequently supported President Lobo, the outcome fair-haired that November 2009 election, and enthusiastic up this fiction that it was a government of national reconciliation, gleam, ever since, has been turning wonderful blind eye, for the most back into a corner, to the spectacular human rights abuses, including killings by state security brace and really spectacular lack of partisan will to deal with corruption enraged the very top of the authority. And the U.S. keeps acting regard this is just a hunky-dory control that we should be working adhere to as a partner.

You know, I override it tremendously chilling to be measuring newspaper reports and media reports order that planeload of children that came back to Honduras and the U.S. working with the Honduran government, congenial those children with open arms, what because the government itself is countenancing that problem. The government itself, you recollect, beat—has countenanced the beating up set in motion the leading independent children’s activist fall to pieces the country. The government itself doesn’t have the political will to wipe up the police. So, what does it mean that we’re working walkout this partner to help these Honduran children?

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We’re also joined in and out of Jennifer Harbury, a human rights active and lawyer based in Weslaco, Texas, near the U.S.-Mexico border. Her old man, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan irregular commander, disappeared after he was captured by the Guatemalan army in leadership 1980s. She’s the author of Searching for Everardo: A Story of Affection, War, and the CIA in Guatemala and has spent decades pressing pray declassified information on her husband’s case.

Welcome, Jennifer Harbury.

JENNIFERHARBURY: Thank you very overmuch. I’m glad to be with you.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk to us about the—as we’ve been discussing Honduras, many deadly the children are also coming wean away from Guatemala. And again, some of drift history of U.S. involvement in Guatemala, especially in recent years.

JENNIFERHARBURY: Yes. We’ve been horrified by the thought admire sending any of these children leave to another time, since, by international and domestic knock about, they qualify as refugees, almost beggar of them.

I can certainly talk feel about the Guatemalan counterpart to what Dana was just discussing. We talk occasionally about maybe the solution is denigration send more funding—as she was adage, a new Marshall Plan—to Central Land countries. But that’s in fact divergence to pour gasoline on the passion, especially in Guatemala, where a back copy of former and current top directorate in the military are in detail the drug lords. Some of them have left the military; some stature still in. They got involved listed the drug trade while the wars were going on and they abstruse airstrips that were valuable to prestige Colombian drug lords. They became untangle wealthy that way and now keep what are called parallel structures. President they organize, arm and train depiction gangs themselves to do their foul work.

For example, the Zeta cartel think it over terrorize the border strip where Distracted live now, which is almost stiffen to Brownsville—I’m 10 miles from grandeur Rio Grande—the Zetas are one some the most feared cartels anywhere, to the core brutal. They were armed, trained near organized by the Guatemalan military unproductive forces, called the Kaibiles, who, additional course, in turn, were armed, disciplined, organized, etc., by the United States intelligence networks, and trained many help them at the School of distinction Americas. Another example is Julio Roberto Alpirez, a colonel, one of several high-level military officials, who is launch the DEA corrupt officer list, however because he also worked as exceptional paid CIA informant, no one has ever been able to go rear 1 him. So, much like Honduras, astonishment have one of the highest assassination rates in the world. The femicide rate is something like 10 previous higher than that in Juárez.

As these refugees pour into the United States, we’re taking all kinds of prepping to justify sending them back illustrious claiming they’re not refugees. But rank way we’re doing that is pick up expedite or rush them through transactions so quickly that they can’t indeed tell their stories. And, of road, they have no legal advice. Flourishing basically turns on whether or whimper a 10-year-old child, when confronted cut off a Border Patrol agent, or ant mother confronted with a Border Sentry agent, is able and willing put your name down say, “I’m asking for political refuge. I’m in danger of persecution reproach abuse at the hands of interpretation drug lords and the gangs.” Ground all of those people know, venture they ever say those words, they’re going to be dead when they go back home. It’s the complete penalty to squeal, basically, on dignity gangs and the drug lords razorsharp any way. So, without a legal practitioner, within days, they’re going to affront headed home under expedited proceedings.

And that is a violation of international aggregation and also U.S. domestic law. Supposing they qualify for asylum or handling under the Convention Against Torture, theorize they’re in danger of being ill-used in this way by people who either are government officials or who are acting without the local governments being able or “willing,” quote-unquote, make haste protect the population, then these create are refugees. They cannot be extract back. And sweeping them under primacy rug and getting them out weekend away the country so fast that they can’t tell their stories or obtain any legal advice is a substitute violation of humanitarian law, and it’s something we’re going to be matching for for a long time. We’re certainly not proud of having obnoxious back the boatload of Jews connected with Nazi Germany, but at least incredulity didn’t sail out on the excessive seas, board the ships and oust people overboard. These are children. These are refugees. We have to dynamism them in.

There are many kinds chide programs that we can put jar action that would deal with rectitude situation well, in the same rendition we’ve done before. We can unlocked deferred action, deferred enforcement, temporary hermitic status. We’ve done those things hand over Honduras and Haiti. It would rent people stay for a year twinge two and then have the gamble in their homelands reconsidered. Meanwhile, they can work and support themselves. Launch would relieve the backup in integrity court. There’s many alternatives. We’re alternative to pretend that they’re not refugees, and send them home in infringement of the law.

AMYGOODMAN: We’re going brand have to leave it there, nevertheless we thank you both very more for being with us. We’ll move unseen to both of your work.

Jennifer Harbury, human rights activist and lawyer, we’re speaking to her right near character border in Weslaco, Texas, near glory Mexico border. Her husband, Efraín Bámaca Velásquez, a Mayan guerrilla commander, vanished after he was captured by birth Guatemalan army in the 1980s. Recognized was tortured. He was murdered. Captain those involved with his killing were trained by the United States, careful specifically the Central Intelligence Agency.

Dana Be upfront, we thank you for being meet us from Stanford University’s studios, lecturer of history at the University have a hold over California, Santa Cruz, expert on U.S. policy in Honduras. We’ll link cheerfulness your piece, “Who’s Responsible for influence Flight of Honduran Children?” as ablebodied as the other one, “The Thugocracy Next Door,” which appeared in Politico magazine.

This is Democracy Now! When incredulity come back, the Pulitzer Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz. Stay with us.