Honduras fails to investigate land battle killings, report says

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http://www.latimes.com/world/worldnow/la-fg-wn-honduras-land-battle-killings-20140212,0,6328230.story



A policeman makes arrests during an operation in Tegucigalpa last month. The Honduran army and national police have cracked down on violence in an operation ordered by President Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Honduras fails to investigate land battle killings, report says
By Tracy Wilkinson
February 12, 2014, 2:14 p.m.

MEXICO CITY -- Scores of people have been killed in brutal land battles in rural Honduras but authorities have failed -- or refused -- to investigate, possibly bowing to moneyed interests, a new report says.

The violence in the Bajo Aguan valley has come from many sources, including private security guards hired by huge landholders making millions of dollars from palm oil; government forces accused of abuses including arbitrary arrests and torture; and peasant groups, who contend their land has been stolen, according to the study.

The comprehensive report, released Wednesday by New York–based Human Rights Watch, echoed journalistic accounts and other studies describing killings and intimidation in one of the deadliest countries in the hemisphere. It delves especially deeply into the institutional failures to conduct even cursory investigations of many homicides, which in turn fuel impunity and more bloodshed.

Honduran police and prosecutors rarely visit crime scenes, order autopsies of victims, question key witnesses or suspects or inform victims’ families about the cases, the human rights group reported.