CHICAGO, IL—Tomás Gómez Membreño, General Coordinator of the Popular Indigenous Council of Honduras (COPINH), will be in Chicago to deliver a message to Senator Durbin. He will be accompanied by Chicago organizations who will deliver a letter to Senator Durbin asking that he immediately hold all security aid to Honduras, which numbers in the tens of millions of US tax payer dollars annually. While Honduras maintains a 95% impunity rate, political assassinations persist, including the March 2, 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, cofounder of COPINH and one of the most internationally well-known indigenous rights defenders in Honduras.
The letter insists that, “Instead of funding the Honduran security system or prosecutorial and investigative capacities in the context of no political will, U.S. policy should focus on conditioning human rights in 100% of security funding. Moreover, the U.S. should withhold all military and police aid to leverage political will at the top of the Honduran administration while we push for an end to the assassinations, threats and harassment of people in opposition political parties, journalists critical of the Hernandez administration, small farmers, Indigenous groups, LGBTQ folks, and unionists.” As ranking Democrat on the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee and a member of the State and Foreign Operations subcommittee, Senator Durbin wields immense power over the flow of U.S. security aid to Honduras.
Tomás will be accompanied by the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN) and La Voz de Los de Abajo-Chicago, both of whom have pressured elected officials in the past to combat human rights violations in Honduras which dramatically escalated after the June 2009 coup d’état. Both organizations have also been actively supporting COPINH’s demand that the investigation into Cáceres’ murder be carried out by the independent Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) and not the “Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras,” or MACCIH. The letter reiterates that, “the MACCIH is not only closely tied with the Juan Orlando Hernandez administration and thus fails to deliver justice or adequately investigate Hernandez’s use of public health funds in his private election campaign in 2014; the MACCIH is also merely an advisory body and has no power to implement any of its recommendations.”
(Español Abajo) Contact: Celeste Larkin (clarkin@crln.org), 847-942-6323, Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America When: TODAY Wednesday, June 8th, 11AM Where: Federal Plaza, just outside the Federal Building at 230 S Dearborn Who: Consejo Popular Indígena de Honduras (COPINH), Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America (CRLN), La Voz de Los de Abajo-Chicago What: Tomás Gómez Membreño, General Coordinator of COPINH, is in Chicago to ask that Senator Durbin hold all security aid to Honduras and support an independent investigation into the assassination of Berta Cáceres.
After the press conference, Tomás, CRLN and La Voz de Los de Abajo invite the press to join them in delivering the letter to Senator Durbin’s office on the 38th floor of John C. Kluczynski Federal Building and for a debrief about our exchange with Durbin’s office after the delivery.
CHICAGO, IL—Tomás Gómez Membreño, General Coordinator of the Popular Indigenous Council of Honduras (COPINH), will be in Chicago to deliver a message to Senator Durbin. He will be accompanied by Chicago organizations who will deliver a letter to Senator Durbin asking that he immediately hold all security aid to Honduras, which numbers in the tens of millions of US tax payer dollars annually. While Honduras maintains a 95% impunity rate, political assassinations persist, including the March 2, 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, winner of the 2015 Goldman Environmental Prize, cofounder of COPINH and one of the most internationally well-known indigenous rights defenders in Honduras.
