Honduras Indians' land being seized by drug gangs and settlers, UN official says

[Judi Lynn]

Honduras Indians' land being seized by drug gangs and settlers, UN official says

Special rapporteur on indigenous rights finds land invasions and deforestation

Miskitos and other groups demand government help in remote region

Associated Press in Mexico City
Tuesday 10 November 2015 14.00 EST

Indians on Honduras’s Caribbean coast are suffering invasions of their lands by squatters, loggers, palm-oil planters and drug traffickers, a UN official said on Tuesday.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, said drug traffickers cut down trees to carve airstrips from the jungle, recruited Indian youths into the trade and bought up land to launder money.

Honduran Miskitos and other groups are demanding the government help them protect their territory in the swampy, heavily forested region.

“There is no protection basically from invaders who come in and occupy their land, whether these are agricultural landowners or loggers, and they mentioned that even drug traffickers are entering their territories,” Tauli-Corpuz said by telephone following a visit to Miskitos and other ethnic groups in western Honduras.

“Some of their lands are stripped of trees because they [traffickers] make a landing site” for drug flights, she said. “The young people don’t have livelihood activities, and so they are easy prey to these drug traffickers.” She also expressed concern at the trafficking and prostitution of indigenous women.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/10/honduras-indians-land-seized-drug-gangs-settlers-un-official-says

[MisterP]

1. well, fortun--actually I can't use this ocean of blood as a primary punchline any more

just refer to my damn sig

[Judi Lynn]

3. This was the least likely thing you'd ever expect from a real Democrat.

They did everything they could to suppress the will of the Honduran people by underwriting this filthy coup. So damned sad.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Honduras' Indigenous Face Violence for Defending Ancestral Land

Honduras' Indigenous Face Violence for Defending Ancestral Land
Published 10 November 2015

At least 44 Inidigenous activists have been assassinated since 2010. A system of impunity is robbing Indigenous peoples in Honduras of their lands in the name of development while subjecting them to systematic human rights abuses if they dare resist, a United Nations official said Tuesday.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous peoples, warned that Honduras’ Indigenous population is in a “critical situation,” faced with illegal land thefts and the assassination of 44 Indigenous rights activists since 2010.

“I have heard of disconcerting allegations of local authorities and other accomplices in the illegal sale of lands and other violations of Indigenous peoples’ rights,” Tauli-Corpuz said in a press conference, held at the end her of a nine-day visit to the country.

One of the main threats, she said, comes from development projects, so-called “model cities,” the expansion of the tourism industry and the expansion of protected areas that encroach onto Indigenous peoples’ lands.

More:
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Honduras-Indigenous-Face-Violence-for-Defending-Ancestral-Land-20151110-0042.html