Center for Democracy in the Americas

U.S. senators seek review of spending in Honduras

CDA — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 14:18:14 +0000

Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times – Alarmed by what they call troubling reports of human rights atrocities in Honduras, 21 U.S. senators are calling on the Obama administration to review how U.S. money is being spent in support of possibly abusive security forces.

In a letter to Secretary of State John F. Kerry dated Tuesday, the senators cite numerous recent killings and threats targeting union leaders, opposition figures, farmers, students, journalists and others, noting that authorities have been implicated in some of the incidents, most of which go unpunished.

“As the November 2013 [Honduran presidential] elections draw near,” the senators wrote, “we are particularly troubled by reports of corruption and extrajudicial killings.”

Cardin Leads Senate Call For Accountability In Honduras For Human Rights Violations

CDA — Wed, 19 Jun 2013 13:17:27 +0000

Senator Ben Cardin (MD), official press release -

Spanish version available here.

Washington, DC - U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-MD), a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and 20 of his Senate colleagues, today sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry urging him to work to support human rights in Honduras and free, fair and peaceful elections there this November. Given the “reported violence and impunity linked to state entities in Honduras,” the letter questions the State Department’s decision to certify that the government is implementing policies to protect due process of law and “prosecuting military and police personnel who are credibly alleged to have violated human rights” as called for under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012.

In addition to Cardin, the letter is cosigned by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Pat Leahy (D-VT), Barbara A. Mikulski (D-MD), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Tom Harkin (D-IA), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Jack Reed (D-RI), Mark Udall (D-CO), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Robert P. Casey, Jr. (D-PA), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Michael F. Bennet (D-CO), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chris Coons (D-DE), Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), Barbara Boxer (D-CA), Al Franken (D-MN) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH).

“U.S. taxpayers demand accountability at the highest levels when their resources are used for any purpose, especially in foreign assistance. I have been appalled at the stories of glaring human rights abuses coming from Honduras. We must ensure that U.S. funds are not enabling rampant human rights violations, including by members of the Honduran security forces who seem to rely on a system of impunity,” Senator Cardin said.

The letter requests that the Department of State “provide Congress with a detailed assessment of the efficacy of current Honduran government efforts to protect freedom of expression and association, the rule of law, and due process, and to investigate extrajudicial killings and abuses allegedly involving police and military personnel,” and that the Secretary “conduct a thorough review to ensure that no U.S. assistance is provided to police or military personnel or units credibly implicated in human rights violations.”

The full text of the letter follows and can be downloaded here.

Dear Secretary Kerry,

We are writing to express our concern regarding the grave human rights situation and deterioration of the rule of law in Honduras. As the November 2013 elections draw near, we are particularly troubled by reports of corruption and extrajudicial killings.

Since June of 2009, international and Honduran human rights organizations have documented a pattern of violence and threats against journalists, human rights defenders, members of the clergy, union leaders, opposition figures, students, small farmers, and LGBT activists. There are also recent reports of death squads working with police, and in some cases consisting of on- or off-duty police, to kill gang members even after they surrender. The Honduran Congress created a “Directorate for Investigation and Evaluation of the Police Career” in December 2011 to address corruption and criminality in the police force, but it has turned out to be a disappointing failure. Only a handful of the hundreds of officers recommended for dismissal have been removed. The Honduran judiciary routinely fails to prosecute human rights violations, and many other crimes go unpunished.

As you are aware, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2012 requires the State Department to investigate and report on whether the Honduran government “is implementing policies to protect freedom of expression and association, and due process of law,” whether it is “prosecuting military and police personnel who are credibly alleged to have violated human rights,” and whether the Honduran police and military “are cooperating with civilian judicial authorities in such cases” – prior to obligation of 20% of the funds designated for the Honduran military and police, with exceptions for the promotion of transparency, anti-corruption efforts, and the rule of law. Given the reported violence and impunity linked to state entities in Honduras, we have serious questions regarding the State Department’s certification that these conditions were met for Fiscal Year 2012.

We respectfully request that the Department of State provide Congress with a detailed assessment of the efficacy of current Honduran government efforts to protect freedom of expression and association, the rule of law, and due process, and to investigate extrajudicial killings and abuses allegedly involving police and military personnel, particularly in the Bajo Aguan area. We also request that you conduct a thorough review to ensure that no U.S. assistance is provided to police or military personnel or units credibly implicated in human rights violations, and that top Honduran law enforcement officials are persons of integrity dedicated to protecting the rights of the Honduran people and upholding the rule of law. Lastly, we request that you make every reasonable effort to help ensure that Honduras’ upcoming November 2013 elections are free, fair and peaceful.

As Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee you firmly denounced human rights abuses in Honduras. As Secretary of State, we hope you will continue to do the same.

Thank you for your consideration.

Originally published here:
http://www.cardin.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/cardin-leads-senate-call-for-accountability-in-honduras-for-human-rights-violations

Mediators who helped arrange El Salvador gang truce will work on similar deal in Honduras

CDA — Tue, 18 Jun 2013 16:18:11 +0000

Associated Press – Two Salvadorans who mediated in a gang truce in their country that cut the homicide rate by at least 50 percent met Monday with gang leaders in Honduras, where they will help do the same.

El Salvador’s chief army and police chaplain, Monsignor Fabio Colindres, and former guerrilla fighter Raul Mijango talked inside the San Pedro Sula prison with leaders of Honduras’ 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha gangs. Those gangs also dominate criminal activity in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Members of the Organization of American States are also participating in the negotiations to secure a truce with the government in Honduras, which is often called the most dangerous country in the world.

AP source: US, Cuba to resume talks on restarting direct mail service suspended 50 years ago

CDA — Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:28:31 +0000

Associated Press – The United States and Cuba will resume talks this week on restarting direct mail service despite a deadlock between Washington and Havana over detainees that has largely stalled most rapprochement efforts, a U.S. official said Monday.

U.S. and Cuban diplomats and postal representatives will meet in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday for technical talks aimed at ending a 50-year suspension in direct mail between the United States and the communist island. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the matter publicly before Congress is notified. Lawmakers were to be notified of the meetings starting Monday morning, the official said.

CUBA CENTRAL Newsblast: Feliz Día del Padre

CDA — Fri, 14 Jun 2013 21:17:01 +0000

As we begin Father’s Day weekend, it seemed right to open with a brief note about family, connection, and inclusion.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, the financial and emotional support provided by members of the Cuban diaspora to their families on the island got caught in the twist of the tourniquet of U.S. sanctions.

Family visits to the island were limited to one trip every three years under a specific license, as the Congressional Research Service explained, to visit only immediate family members. The ability to send remittances – transfers of money to kin in Cuba – was severely restricted, as was the amount of cash (from $3,000 to $300) that the limited numbers of authorized travelers could bring. Ironically, these policy changes were driven, in part, by hardliners in the diaspora, but the sting could be felt in homes on both sides of the straits.

During the first year of his presidency, Barack Obama used his executive authority to permit unlimited family travel and remittances. This action not only alleviated the suffering imposed on families divided by the Bush-era travel policy, but it also coincided with the process led in Cuba by President Raúl Castro to liberalize economic and social restrictions on the Cuban people.

According to a new report, Remittances Drive the Cuban Economy, issued by the Havana Consulting Group, cash remittances, from the U.S. and other nations, estimated at $2.6 billion in 2012, now compromise Cuba’s largest individual source of hard currency. They exceed revenues derived from tourism and exports of nickel, pharmaceuticals, and sugar.

Beyond the simple and important role of helping families make ends meet, this report is not alone (see here and here) in finding that cash to Cuba from the diaspora is helping to drive the creation and expansion of entrepreneurial activity in Cuba that is enabling Cuban citizens to leave state jobs and seek their futures in Cuba’s changing economy.

For critics who carp that nothing changes in Cuba – their odd defense for keeping U.S. sanctions in place exactly as they have been for fifty plus years – the remittance report is a reminder that President Castro has engineered significant changes, that Cubans are responding, and families in the U.S. are contributing importantly to a transition that is making their family members and other Cubans more independent and ideally more prosperous.

While we believe strongly that President Obama should move further and faster on loosening the U.S. embargo of Cuba, his policy decisions in 2009 to provide unlimited family travel and remittances and create larger openings for travel and remittances in 2011 have become important drivers of economic reform and individual empowerment in Cuba, and capitalized on the family and financial strengths of the community of Cuban descent that resides in Florida and across the United States.

One last thing: the Cuban American community, for political reasons, of course, has historically faced a different and less restrictive set of immigration rules than migrants seeking to come to the U.S. of any other nationality.

The Miami Herald noted this week that Miami-Dade county is, in their words, “a Spanish-speaking bastion where many immigrants legal and illegal can get by for years without having to speak English.”

In that bastion, they treasure family – not more and certainly not less – just like every other community that has come here from overseas. Many of them are watching with concern as the debate on immigration takes place in Washington especially now as a new proposal is offered in the U.S. Senate to “require that undocumented immigrants be able to read, write and speak English before earning a green card.” This amendment, paradoxically, is being written by their Senator, Marco Rubio.

We’re not experts in the field of immigration. But, the fear being expressed by reform advocates is that adoption of this provision could scuttle chances for passing a bill or make the policy much less welcoming and generous than the authors of reform wanted and intended.

We can only hope that the wisdom behind the travel and remittance policies grounded in the values of family, connection and inclusion is brought to bear on the larger, historic immigration debate as well.

To the families reading the Cuba Central News Blast this holiday weekend, we close by saying Feliz Día del Padre, or Happy Father’s Day.

For more this week in Cuba News, CLICK HERE.

Page(s) Denied

Recommended reading: Along the Malecón — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 19:44:52 +0000

In recent years, investigative journalist Tracey Eaton has filed more than 100 Freedom of Information Act requests, but the return rate on the documents he requested has been only about fifty percent. Of those, none arrived un-redacted. Almost all have huge passages deleted, and several pages covered by his request were simply denied to him. All of the documents he did receive came after an excruciatingly long wait.

His request to see the 2008 proposal by Freedom House to the U.S. State Department Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Targeting disenchanted Cuban youth, was no exception. He waited almost two years to get the papers.

From the text that remained after the censor did its work, we do know that Freedom House requested $574,976 to pay for a program to reach out to Cuban youth and to assure them that it was safe to join the political opposition. What we don’t know is how that half-a-million plus dollars – all to be spent in one year –would be put to work achieving that goal. Why? The sections labeled Strategic Approach, Short-and Long-Term Goals, and Activities were among the pages denied.

Just as mysterious are the two polls, conducted by the NGO and cited in the proposal’s Background section in an attempt to justify targeting Cuban youth. Calls to the Freedom House office in D.C. verified that reports on these 2005 and 2007 “public opinion polls” are not publically available. Only select results from them are presented within the narrative making the case for this grant.

But justification had already been provided by the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba Report to the President. That more than 500-page, 2004 report, updated in 2006, identified “youth, women, and Afro-Cubans [as] key constituents.”

Thanks to Mr. Eaton’s watchful eye, readers know that the U.S. government still considers them low-hanging fruit. He previously reported that $6 million of a $21 million round of U.S. government grants “aimed at expanding use of social media in Cuba” was earmarked for children as young as 12.

Read more: http://alongthemalecon.blogspot.com/2013/06/targeting-disenchanted-cuban-youth.html

Cuba’s Climate Change Threat Prompts New Coastal Strategy

CDA — Wed, 12 Jun 2013 14:05:28 +0000

Andrea Rodríguez – After Cuban scientists studied the effects of climate change on this island’s 3,500 miles (5,630 kilometers) of coastline, their discoveries were so alarming that officials didn’t share the results with the public to avoid causing panic.

The scientists projected that rising sea levels would seriously damage 122 Cuban towns or even wipe them off the map. Beaches would be submerged, they found, while freshwater sources would be tainted and croplands rendered infertile. In all, seawater would penetrate up to 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) inland in low-lying areas, as oceans rose nearly three feet (85 centimeters) by 2100.

The First Year: A Chronology of the Gang Truce and Peace Process in El Salvador

Linda Garrett — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:52:06 +0000

Reflections on the First Year

Since March of 2012, El Salvador has experienced an unprecedented drop in violence due to a truce between the country’s two largest street gangs, the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18. Exceeding many early expectations, the truce has lasted over a year, and evolved to encompass a broader peace process within Salvadoran society. The extent to which the Salvadoran government has been involved in the process, even the nature of its involvement, remains uncertain and is a source of contention. But, the ongoing truce and peace process presents real lessons and serious public policy implications and now, with many communities signing on to the “violence-free municipality” initiative and thousands of lives saved by an over 50% reduction in homicides, much is at stake.

Even before news of the truce was broadly known, the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA) had been monitoring the unfolding process in El Salvador, when a Salvadoran government official hinted to us in February 2012 that a dialogue between the gangs might be underway. In the pages below, we present our chronology of the process compiled over the last year, which details this historic series of events. The chronology provides a more complete picture of the process as it developed day-by-day during the first year: from the original confusing, contradictory versions of its creation, to the various commitments and good-will gestures offered by gang leaders. The truce’s advances and setbacks are chronicled, alongside the suspicions and distrust expressed by many Salvadorans. It also records the critical support provided by the Organization of American States (OAS). Finally, the chronology helps us understand the motivations of the facilitators and gang leaders. It gives us a glimpse into the lives and thoughts of young people who are struggling to find a way out of tumultuous lives of poverty, crime and often unspeakable violence.

This chronology, focused on the gang truce and peace process, complements CDA’s extensive coverage of developments in El Salvador. It is CDA’s hope that the full telling of this story will encourage the debate and reflection, already underway in El Salvador, about the issues of exclusion and poverty, so closely connected to the causes of and solutions for the violence. The human dimensions highlighted here are crucial when considering policy choices; choices that heavily impact the lives of so many Salvadorans, not only in El Salvador but also in the diaspora. The Salvadoran government faces the challenges of developing a coherent public policy, that recognizes the possibility of human transformation from criminal to productive lives, and providing resources to implement that policy. If successful, the peace process could perhaps be the most significant legacy of the current government.

It should be emphasized that the truce in itself is not the solution, but it has transformed the conversation from repression to prevention and rehabilitation. As President Funes said, the only options for youth have been to emigrate or join a gang for survival. To change that dynamic, the peace process must be institutionalized and funded as part of a long-term strategy to provide educational and job opportunities to all at-risk youth in the historically impoverished barrios and municipalities of the country.

Advocacy of the peace process does not signify impunity for crimes committed. Nor does it reflect ignorance of the horrific violence inflicted on the Salvadoran people and their communities in recent decades: the murders of thousands of youths; the savagery of sexual violence; dismembered bodies; clandestine cemeteries; the uprooting of fearful families, and the scourge of extortion. Advocacy does mean a belief in the possibility of redemption. It reflects aspirations for an inclusive, nonviolent, democratic future for the country. “If it doesn’t work,” Bishop Colindres said, “we will have lost a little effort and illusions, but if it works the country will have found peace.”

To read the full chronology, CLICK HERE.

Colombian peace talks resume in Cuba

CDA — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 15:31:09 +0000

BBC – Members of Colombia’s largest rebel group, the Farc, have resumed peace negotiations with representatives of the Colombian government.

The talks restarted in Havana, Cuba, on Tuesday, a fortnight after the two sides reached agreement on land reform.

They are discussing how the Farc will join in politics if a deal is reached to end the five decades of conflict.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has said he wants the talks to be wrapped up by the end of the year.

Cuba rains leave severe crop losses, 1,900 homes damaged

CDA — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 21:24:10 +0000

EFE – The torrential rains in western Cuba over the past week caused “severe losses” to agriculture and damaged more than 1,900 homes in Pinar del Río province, the hardest hit by the storm, official media said Saturday.

Though authorities have not yet reported the total amount of damage, the local press estimated Saturday that more than 1,900 homes were damaged and another 437 are still underwater, while more than 2,600 people remain evacuated because of the floods.