March 15, 2016
Little mentioned in the
Democratic campaign is Hillary Clinton’s role in supporting a 2009 coup in
Honduras that contributed to a human rights crisis, including the recent murder
of a renowned environmental activist, writes Marjorie Cohn.
By Marjorie Cohn
A critical difference between
Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is their position on whether children who
fled violence in Central American countries, particularly Honduras, two years
ago should be allowed to stay in the United States or be returned.
Sen. Sanders states
unequivocally that they should be able to remain in the U.S. Former Secretary
of State Clinton disagrees. She would guarantee them “due process,” but nothing
more. In 2014, Clinton told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, “It may be safer [for
the children to remain in the U.S.],” but “they should be sent back.”
By supporting the June
28, 2009 coup d’état in Honduras when she was secretary of state,
Clinton helped create the dire conditions that caused many of these children to
flee. And the assassination of legendary Honduran human
rights leader Berta Cáceres earlier this month can be traced indirectly to
Clinton’s policies.
During the Feb. 11 Democratic
debate in Milwaukee, Clinton said that sending the children back would “send a
message.” In answer to a question by debate moderator Judy Woodruff of PBS, she
said, “Those children needed to be processed appropriately, but we also had to
send a message to families and communities in Central America not to send their
children on this dangerous journey in the hands of smugglers.”
Sanders retorted, “Who are you
sending a message to? These are children who are leaving countries and
neighborhoods where their lives are at stake. That was the fact. I don’t think
we use them to send a message. I think we welcome them into this country and do
the best we can to help them get their lives together.”
In the March 9 debate in Miami
between the two Democratic candidates, Sanders accurately told moderator Jorge
Ramos of Univision, “Honduras and that region of the world may be the most
violent region in our hemisphere. Gang lords, vicious people torturing people,
doing horrible things to families.”
He added, “Children fled that
part of the world to try, try, try, try, maybe, to meet up with their family
members in this country, taking a route that was horrific, trying to start a
new life.”
The violence in Honduras can
be traced to a history of U.S. economic and political meddling, including
Clinton’s support of the coup, according to American University professor
Adrienne Pine, author of Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival
in Honduras.
Pine, who has worked for many
years in Honduras, told Dennis Bernstein of KPFA radio in 2014 that the
military forces that carried out the coup were trained at the Western
Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (formerly called the U.S. Army
School of the Americas) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Although the coup was
supported by the United States, it was opposed by the United Nations and the
Organization of American States (OAS). The U.N. and the OAS labeled President
Manuel Zelaya’s ouster a military coup.
“Hillary Clinton was probably
the most important actor in supporting the coup [against the democratically
elected Zelaya] in Honduras,” Pine noted. It took the United States two months
to even admit that Honduras had suffered a coup, and it never did admit it was
a military coup. That is, most likely, because the Foreign
Assistance Act prohibits the U.S. from aiding a country “whose duly
elected head of government is deposed by military coup or decree.”
Although the U.S. government
eventually cut nonhumanitarian aid to Honduras, the State Department under
Clinton took pains to clarify that this was not an admission that a military
coup had occurred.
“Hillary Clinton played a huge
role in propping up the coup administration,” Pine said. “The State Department
ensured the coup administration would remain in place through negotiations that
they imposed, against the OAS’ wish, and through continuing to provide aid and
continuing to recognize the coup administration.”
“And so if it weren’t for
Hillary Clinton,” Pine added, “basically there wouldn’t be this refugee crisis
from Honduras at the level that it is today. And Hondurans would be living a
very different reality from the tragic one they are living right now.”
In her book Hard Choices,
Clinton admitted she helped ensure that Zelaya would not be returned to the
presidency. She wrote, “In the subsequent days [following the coup] I spoke
with my counterparts around the hemisphere, including Secretary [Patricia]
Espinosa in Mexico. We strategized on a plan to restore order in Honduras and
ensure that free and fair elections could be held quickly and legitimately,
which would render the question of Zelaya moot.”
When he was deposed, Zelaya
was attempting to get a nonbinding resolution on the ballot asking voters
whether they wished to reform the constitution. He supported a 60 percent hike
in the minimum wage, “and this infuriated two U.S. companies, Chiquita Brands
International (formerly United Fruit) and Dole Food Company,” said John
Perkins, author of The New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, in
an interview with the website Truthout. The big corporations feared that a
rise in Honduras’ minimum wage could spread to other countries in Latin
America.
Zelaya put in place several
liberal policies, including free education and meals for children, subsidies to
small farmers, lower interest rates and free electricity.
“These policies paid off,”
Perkins said. “Honduras enjoyed a nearly 10 percent decline in the poverty
level. But these same policies were seen as a dire threat to the hegemony and
bottom lines of global corporations and as a precedent that would alter
policies throughout Latin America and much of the rest of the world. Corporate
leaders demanded that the CIA take out this democratically elected president.
It did.”
Less than a month after the
coup, Hugo Llorens, former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, sent a cable to Clinton
and other top U.S. officials. The subject line read: “Open and Shut: The Case
of the Honduran Coup.” The cable said, “There is no doubt” that the coup was
“illegal and unconstitutional.” Nevertheless, as noted above, Clinton’s
objective was to “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
After the coup, there was a
fraudulent election financed by the National Endowment for Democracy —
notorious for meddling in Latin America — and the State Department. The
election ushered in a repressive, militarized regime. Conditions deteriorated,
leading to the exodus of thousands of Honduran children.
Since the coup, the Honduran
government has carried out systematic repression against most sectors of
society, including teachers, farmers, union leaders, gays, peasant organizers,
journalists and anyone who opposed the coup. Many were assassinated. Honduras’
homicide rate was already the highest in the world at the time of
coup, and it soared between then and 2011. There is rampant corruption and
drug-related gang violence.
Amid all this, the United
States has added two military bases in Honduras — bringing the total to 14 —
and increased its financing of the Honduran police and military.
Before the coup, Cáceres, a
prize-winning activist, worked with indigenous groups on human rights and
education issues with Zelaya’s support. In a 2014 interview, she cited
Clinton’s role in the coup, saying, “The same Hillary Clinton, in her book
‘Hard Choices,’ practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This
demonstrates the bad legacy of North American influence in our country.”
Cáceres added, “The return of
Mel Zelaya to the presidency (that is, to his constitutionally elected
position) was turned into a secondary concern. There were going to be
elections. … We warned that this would be very dangerous. … The elections took
place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud.”
Cáceres criticized the coup
government for passing terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized
protest, labeling the actions “counterinsurgency” conducted in the interests of
“international capital.”
Cáceres was killed March 3 by
armed men who broke into her home. Her friend and compatriot, journalist
Gustavo Castro Soto, wounded in the assault, is being held incommunicado by the
government.
On Thursday, more than 200
human rights, faith-based, indigenous rights, environmental, labor and
nongovernmental groups sent an open letter to U.S. Secretary of State John
Kerry, expressing “shock and deep sorrow regarding the murder of Honduran human
rights and environmental defender Berta Cáceres … winner of the prestigious
2015 Goldman Environmental Prize.”
The groups urged Kerry to
support an independent international investigation into her murder led by
the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights. They also urged the State Department “to suspend all
assistance and training to Honduran security forces, with the exception of
investigatory and forensic assistance to the police, so long as the murders of
Berta Cáceres and scores of other Honduran activists remain in impunity.”
Marjorie Cohn is a professor
at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers
Guild, and deputy secretary general of the International Association of
Democratic Lawyers. Her most recent book is Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal,
Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. Visit her website at http://marjoriecohn.com/ and follow her on
Twitter at @marjoriecohn.
[This article originally
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