By Grahame Russell, Rights Action
Or, to summarize 12 years and 7 months of official US and Canadian policy towards the people and country of Honduras: Who gives a f**k!
After supporting the June 28, 2009 military coup that ousted the elected government of President Zelaya, and after providing full military, economic and diplomatic/political support to 12 years and 7 months of corrupt, repressive, ‘open-for-global-business’ regimes headed by the National Party and primarily by the drug-trafficking President Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), the US government now publicly distances itself from its former narco-trafficking, military allie, President Hernandez, and imposes visa restrictions against him.
The AP News reports:
“The Biden administration placed former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández on a classified list of officials suspected of corruption or undermining democracy in Central America. The list was provided last summer to the U.S. Congress in compliance with legislation pushed by former Congressman Eliot Engel.
“The publication of the so-called Engel List fell like a bombshell in Central America, containing the names of another former Honduran president, Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo Sosa, among more than 50 active lawmakers, top politicians and former officials in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
“But one notable omission was Hernández, who was in power at the time but reeling from accusations that surfaced in the drug trafficking trial of his brother, ex lawmaker Antonio “Tony” Hernández, that his political ascent had been funded by bribes from drug traffickers. Tony Hernández was sentenced in New York in March to life in prison.
“Sen. Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, this month called on the Biden administration to revoke Hernández’s U.S. visa and list him as a “significant foreign narcotics trafficker” under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act.
“His comments followed a letter sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland by Rep. Norma Torres, a California Democrat who co-chairs the Central America caucus in Congress, calling for the U.S. Justice Department to indict Hernández.
“Hernández has been a central figure in undermining the rule of law in his own country and in protecting and assisting drug traffickers to move their materials through Honduras and to the United States,” Torres said at the time. “He has been repeatedly identified as a co-conspirator in other drug trafficking cases and has caused incredible pain to the people of Honduras. I believe it is essential that the United States hold him accountable for his criminal behavior.”
Craven dishonesty, complicity and impunity of “international community”
It is difficult to overstate the hypocrisy of the “international community” – led by the US and Canadian governments, Spain and the EU, the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and numerous transnational companies, that supported the 2009 military coup and maintained beneficial relations with 12 years and 7 months of corrupt, military-backed regimes.
It remains an urgent and timeworn challenge for the people and institutions of the cabal of rich, powerful countries – primarily the U.S. and Canada in this case – to start to hold our governments, companies and banks politically and legally accountable each and every time they intervene in, ‘legitimize’ and do ‘business-as-usual’ with corrupt, repressive, anti-democratic regimes in Honduras, and beyond.
