Members of the special forces, in Tegucigalpa, November 24, 2022. ORLANDO SIERRA / AFP
The announcement was quickly followed by action. Many police officers were seen in the main cities of Honduras on Friday, November 25, the day after President Xiomara Castro declared a state of emergency.
The decision, taken in this country plagued by gang violence and drug trafficking, was taken to reinforce the government’s strategy of “immediate retaking of lawless lands,” according to Ms. Castro.
Police Director Gustavo Sanchez said at least 20,000 officers would be mobilized as part of the measure. Special forces and police were numerous in the streets of Tegucigalpa on Friday, a photographer from Agence France-Presse (AFP) noted. Around 120 neighborhoods or districts in the capital and the country’s second-largest city, San Pedro Sula, have already been identified for setting up “states of exception,” he added.
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50 drivers killed in 2022
The declaration of the state of emergency comes days after hundreds of bus drivers demonstrated in the capital to demand action to prevent racketeering by criminal gangs.
Jorge Lanza, the head of bus companies in Honduras, supported the state of emergency measure and said drivers had been calling for repressive measures for years. “We can no longer bear to see workers being killed or being made to pay,” he said. We hope that these measures will work and last in the long term. »
Mr Lanza revealed that 50 drivers have been murdered so far in 2022 and a total of 2,500 have been murdered over the past fifteen years. He estimated that companies and drivers paid the gangs an average of almost $10 million a month to keep them going.
With the declaration of a state of emergency, Ms Castro, the first woman elected president of the country in January, said on Thursday that she was “declaring war on extortion, just as we have declared war on corruption, impunity and drug trafficking “.
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Authorities have not specified exactly what the state of emergency would entail, but usually such measures temporarily suspend normal rules on arrests and searches; sometimes restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly are also introduced.
The example of neighboring El Salvador
With a population of 10 million, Honduras recorded a homicide rate of 18.47 in the first half of the year and is expected to have a homicide rate of 37/100,000 for the full year of 2022 (although declining from a rate of 42 homicides/100,000 population until 2021).
Honduras lies in the heart of the “Triangle of Death” in Central America, a region plagued by violence, poverty and corruption. Above all, the criminal gangs, known as “maras,” rule in the small country, but also in El Salvador and Guatemala.
In neighboring El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele asked Congress to grant him extraordinary powers after gangs were accused of 62 killings on March 26. This emergency decree has been renewed every month since then. It overrides certain constitutional rights and gives police more powers to arrest and detain suspects.
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The measure proved popular with the Salvadoran public and led to the arrests of more than 56,000 people over alleged gang links. However, non-governmental organizations have recorded several thousand human rights violations and at least 80 deaths in custody by people arrested during the state of emergency. Human rights activists say young men are often arrested simply because of their age, their looks or the fact that they live in a gang-dominated slum.