Garifuna community in Honduras demands a search for five of its missing leaders

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (Ofraneh) demanded Tuesday that Honduran authorities search for five young people from the Garifuna community of Triunfo de la Cruz, who disappeared a year ago.

“A year since they took our brothers from Triunfo de la Cruz, a year of pain for all the families, a year that we have been subjected to investigate and demand justice, a justice that does not come from a narco-dictatorship that has kidnapped,” said the coordinator of Ofraneh, Miriam Miranda, during a sit-in held in front of the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Tegucigalpa.

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Dozens of Garífunas, many of them wearing white t-shirts, demanded that the authorities of the Public Ministry clarify the disappearance of the young people from Triunfo de la Cruz, a black community three kilometers from the tourist municipality of Tela.

The Garífunas who disappeared, in an apparent kidnapping, are Milton Joel Martínez, Suami Aparicio Mejía, Gerardo Misael Trochez, Albert Snaider Centeno and Júnior Chávez.

“We are demanding, but also that real decisions be made to look for our brothers (…) at this moment they say they are organized crime criminals and drug traffickers,” Miranda stressed.

She pointed out that in the last year the authorities have prosecuted and criminalized many activists of the Garífuna community, who are also being “forced to leave the country”.

In Honduras there is a “policy of extermination against the Garífuna people, a country where they only invite us to leave”, underlined the coordinator of Ofraneh, who affirmed that the government of Juan Orlando Hernández has “subdued the country”.

Ofraneh demanded the incorporation of the Garifuna Committee for the Investigation and Search for the Disappeared of Triunfo de la Cruz to the investigation into the whereabouts of the young people.

“Enough of so much impunity in our country, enough of them lying to us, enough of them persecuting us,” said Miranda.

On August 7, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) issued an urgent order to the State of Honduras to protect the Garífuna communities and to search for the young people who disappeared in an apparent kidnapping.

The resolution of the inter-American body required the Honduran State to “adopt all necessary and appropriate measures” to determine the whereabouts of the five Garifuna, who have been missing since July 18, 2020.

The State of Honduras was also ordered to “adopt all appropriate measures to effectively protect the rights to life and personal integrity of the members of the Garífuna communities of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra who collectively develop actions in defense of the rights of the people”.

So far, the Honduran authorities have not responded to the case, despite the fact that a few days after the disappearance of the five young people, they reported that they hoped to find them soon.