A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China
Continue reading...Category Archives: Honduras
US-made guns are ripping Central America apart and driving migration north | Ioan Grillo
An iron river of illegal guns flows from the US to Mexico, Central America, and across the hemisphere
The stray bullet from the gang fight struck Katery Ramos when she was 12 years old, playing on the dirt street in the poor Planeta neighbourhood of San Pedro Sula, Honduras. “I was standing up for a moment, afterwards I fell,” she told me, sitting with her mother in a scrubby field near her home.
Related: Biden strikes international deal in bid to stop migrants reaching US border
Continue reading...Mexico’s vow to tighten border fails to deter US-bound migrants
As the Biden administration enlists its neighbours in attempts to slow the flow of people, families seeking a future free from hunger and violence journey on
Groups of men, women and children stepped off small boats and on to Mexican soil without showing their documents to anyone.
Drivers quickly bundled them into taxis which sped past an immigration office to a nearby crossroad, where the travelers climbed into a vans for the next leg of their journey toward the US border.
Continue reading...Facebook knew of Honduran president’s manipulation campaign – and let it continue for 11 months
Juan Orlando Hernández falsely inflated his posts’ popularity for nearly a year after the company was informed about it
Facebook allowed the president of Honduras to artificially inflate the appearance of popularity on his posts for nearly a year after the company was first alerted to the activity.
The astroturfing – the digital equivalent of a bussed-in crowd – was just one facet of a broader online disinformation effort that the administration has used to attack critics and undermine social movements, Honduran activists and scholars say.
Continue reading...How Facebook let fake engagement distort global politics: a whistleblower’s account
The inside story of Sophie Zhang’s battle to combat rampant manipulation as executives delayed and deflected
Shortly before Sophie Zhang lost access to Facebook’s systems, she published one final message on the company’s internal forum, a farewell tradition at Facebook known as a “badge post”.
“Officially, I’m a low-level [data scientist] who’s being fired today for poor performance,” the post began. “In practice, in the 2.5 years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve … found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions.”
Continue reading...Revealed: the Facebook loophole that lets world leaders deceive and harass their citizens
A Guardian investigation exposes the breadth of state-backed manipulation of the platform
Facebook has repeatedly allowed world leaders and politicians to use its platform to deceive the public or harass opponents despite being alerted to evidence of the wrongdoing.
The Guardian has seen extensive internal documentation showing how Facebook handled more than 30 cases across 25 countries of politically manipulative behavior that was proactively detected by company staff.
Continue reading...The US has been silent on Honduras’s drug problem, but that might be about to change
Analysis: The Biden administration is expected to take a cooler approach to President Hernández than Donald Trump did
For the US, this is a painfully embarrassing fortnight to count Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández as a key ally in Central America.
On Monday he was named in a New York federal courtroom as a co-conspirator in the conviction of his associate, Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez, for smuggling tons of cocaine into the US, and receiving a $250,000 bribe from Fuentes, an alleged drug kingpin.
Continue reading...‘Blindsided’: Biden faces tough test in reversing Trump’s cruel border legacy
As unaccompanied children reach the US, Republicans seek political gain. The White House has a fight on its hands
Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.
Related: Is there a crisis at the border? Advocates in Texas say it's 'political manipulation'
Continue reading...Convicted drug trafficker testifies that he bribed Honduran president
Ex-cartel leader says he bribed Juan Orlando Hernández with $250,000 in exchange for government contracts and protection
A convicted drug trafficker and former cartel leader has testified in a New York court that he bribed the Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, with $250,000 in exchange for government contracts as well as protection from capture and extradition to the United States.
“It was for protection so neither the military nor preventative police would arrest me or my brother in Honduras and so we would not be extradited to the United States,” Devis Leonel Rivera Maradiaga, a leader of the Honduran drug clan Los Cachiros, testified in the trial of alleged drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez.
Continue reading...Man leaves church and reunites with family after years in sanctuary from deportation
Alex García from Honduras sought sanctuary in Missouri church in 2017 under threat of removal from US by Trump administration
After three and a half years living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, a Honduran man has finally stepped outside, following a promise from Joe Biden’s administration to let him be.
Alex García, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the US in 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.
Continue reading...Eight-year-old boy dies as migrants risk Arctic conditions to cross river into US
Child drowned while crossing the freezing Rio Grande with his family amid unprecedented weather conditions at US-Mexico border
An eight-year-old Honduran boy has become the latest victim in a string of drownings on the US-Mexico border as migrants attempt to cross the Rio Grande in treacherous winter conditions.
The child, who has not been named, drowned on Wednesday while attempting to cross the freezing river with his family amid unprecedented Arctic conditions in the borderlands which have killed more than 30 people and left millions in Mexico and Texas without power, water and food.
Continue reading...Death of nurse detained over Covid curfew highlights violence faced by Honduran women
The death of Keyla Martínez, 26, is being treated as a murder – she is one of 29 women killed in the country so far this year
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.
Continue reading...Honduras lawmakers seek to lock in ban on abortion for ever
A constitutional reform would require a three-quarters majority in congress to overturn Latin America’s most draconian ban
Legislators in Honduras are pushing a constitutional reform through Congress that would make it virtually impossible to legalise abortion in the country – now or in the future.
Related: Argentina legalizing abortion will spur reform in Latin America, minister says
Continue reading...The migrants Trump forced Mexico to stop: Ada Trillo’s best photograph
‘Trump had threatened Mexico with tariffs if it let in this caravan from Honduras. Two hours after crossing this river, many were teargassed then deported’
I had been following a migrant caravan north from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, for around 10 days. It was 23 January 2020, and this was the moment the group crossed the Suchiate river, which divides Guatemala from Mexico.
The Mexican authorities had deployed the national guard to stop the caravan entering their country because Trump had threatened to increase tariffs on Mexican goods coming into the United States if they let migrants in. Previously, migrants had been allowed to traverse the length of Mexico with no problem.
Continue reading...Migrant caravan trekking north to US border clashes with Guatemalan troops
- Honduran migrants began crossing Guatemalan border Friday
- Troops use teargas, shields and sticks to repel weary travellers
Truncheon-wielding Guatemalan troops have clashed with Central American asylum seekers trying to push their way north towards the US border as Donald Trump’s presidency entered its final days.
Thousands of mostly Honduran migrants began crossing the Guatemalan border on Friday night, having set off on foot from the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula in the early hours of Thursday.
Continue reading...Indigenous environmental defender killed in latest Honduras attack
- Félix Vásquez, 60, shot in own home in front of family
- Killing followed death threats linked to work on environment
Another indigenous environmentalist has been killed in Honduras, cementing the country’s inglorious ranking as the deadliest place in the world to defend land and natural resources from exploitation.
Félix Vásquez, 60, a veteran leader of the indigenous Lenca people, was shot dead at home in Santiago de Puringla, a rural community in the department of La Paz, western Honduras on the night of 26 December – just weeks after reporting death threats linked to his work. His adult children were beaten and threatened by the four armed assailants in balaclavas, but survived the ordeal.
Continue reading...‘This was worse than Eta’: Hurricane Iota brings repeat destruction to Honduras
Second devastating hurricane in two weeks lashes fragile nation and leaves villages submerged
Nery Benitez was working shifts as a baggage handler at San Pedro Sula’s airport when it got flooded by Hurricane Eta. This week it was inundated again as Hurricane Iota struck.
“I had gone seven months without work and three days after I got called back this flooding happened,” the 50-year-old said. “We have family and children. How are we going to feed them?”
Continue reading...Hurricane Iota lashes Central America – video
Hurricane Iota has made landfall on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, threatening catastrophic damage. Huge waves crashed into the Colombian island of San Andrés as the storm churned through the region, lashing Nicaragua with winds of up to 155mph (250kmh).
The latest storm hit just two weeks after Hurricane Eta, which caused havoc across the same parts of Central America. The presidents of Honduras and Guatemala have called on wealthier countries to help deal with the cost of the climate crisis
- Hurricane Iota strengthens to catastrophic category 5 storm as it hits Central America
- Hurricane Iota hits Nicaragua threatening catastrophic damage
- Scientists link record-breaking hurricane season to climate crisis
• This video was amended on 17 November 2020 to remove unrelated footage that had been mistakenly included in a report by the Associated Press
Tropical Storm Iota may bring more damage to Caribbean after Eta
Storm may bring dangerous winds, storm surge and as much as 30in of rain to Nicaragua and Honduras
Tropical Storm Iota was brewing in the Caribbean early on Saturday, threatening a second tropical strike for Nicaragua and Honduras, countries recently ransacked by Eta, a category 4 hurricane.
Related: Devastating 2020 Atlantic hurricane season breaks all records
Continue reading...‘Overwhelming’: Central America braces for new storms in wake of Hurricane Eta
Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala worst affected with scores dead and more than 200,000 people evacuated from their homes
Central America is braced for further storms this weekend as the region reels from the devastation caused by Hurricane Eta, the Red Cross has warned.
Forecasters believe a weather front forming in the Caribbean has a 90% chance of becoming a cyclone, making it the 30th named Atlantic storm of 2020 in a record-breaking hurricane season, shattering the previous worst year of 28 storms in 2005.
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