On 20 March, after an initial hearing against thirteen members of the McLaughin family from the Black English-speaking community of Santos Guardiola in the Bay Islands, the Judge of the Roatán Court, Hermes Benigno Pineda, issued a formal indictment including alternative measures against four community defenders.
The Military Police was present at the hearing, carrying high caliber weapons seeking to harass and threaten those who were peacefully demonstrating outside the Roatán Court of Justice to support and accompany the criminalized persons.
The McLaughlin family has protected the Diamond Rock community’s territory since 1965, and is currently defending this territory against attempts by the Cooper-McNab family to usurp it. This criminalization process began on 28 January, when the Public Prosecutor’s Office, through Prosecutor Yescenia Canizales, filed a request for arrest warrants and judicial detention against 13 members of the McLaughlin family who belong to the community, accusing them of arson, robbery with violence, and damage to the ancestral property of this same family. There have been a series of irregularities throughout the process: unfounded accusations against the Black Islander population of Diamond Rock, Judge Hermes Pineda’s admission of six pieces of illegal evidence obtained by the Prosecutor’s Office without respecting procedural norms, and the broadening of charges.
Despite the fact that the Black English-speaking Peoples have occupied the territory since the mid-nineteenth century and hold a title issued by the Bay Islands Departmental Court, the community has faced eviction and forced displacement. Community members have been victims of harassment, threats, and persecution, creating a climate of fear and uncertainty. Furthermore, the eviction to which they are currently subjected violates their fundamental rights and places their culture, identity, and traditional ways of life at risk.
The National Network of Women Human Rights Defenders in Honduras and IM-Defensoras denounce the false accusations lodged by the Public Prosecutor’s Office – which privilege economic power over peoples’ rights – and Judge Pineda Castro’s arbitrary decision that goes against the rule of law.
We demand a definitive dismissal of charges against the defenders of the Black English-speaking Peoples’ ancestral territory, as well as an immediate halt to the persecution and dispossession of the territories of Indigenous and Black Peoples.
The land rights of the Black English-speaking Peoples must be respected, their collective ownership of land must be recognized, and the fraudulent records that have allowed the dispossession of their territories must be voided.
We reiterate that the Honduran State has the responsibility to ensure the protection of the rights of a community that claims its just right to land, respecting its rights as an ancestral peoples and its territory, which is indispensable for its survival and preservation of its cultural legacy.
Finally, we call on social, feminist, and human rights organizations to denounce the military harassment of the Garifuna and Black English-speaking Peoples.