Five members of the Black Fraternal Organisation of Honduras (OFRANEH) [1] were arrested during a violent eviction in the Garífuna community of San Juan, on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, in early July. The five people were subsequently released but are facing criminal charges for “aggravated usurpation” of their own territory.
This criminalisation is taking place in a context of growing violence against Garífuna communities following the implementation of the “Law to Strengthen and Protect the Agricultural Sector, Energy Projects, Tourism, Livestock and Small-Scale Farmers,” also known as the “Agroindustrial Law.” [2]
The legislation, passed by the Honduran Congress in June this year, benefits industrial agriculture giants, blocks any possibility of agrarian reform, freezes long-standing land claims, and facilitates violent evictions, according to social and human rights organisations.
Furthermore, through this law, the Honduran State is disregarding a ruling by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found Honduras responsible for violating the rights to collective property, legal safeguards and judicial protection of the Garífuna communities of San Juan, Punta Piedra, and Cayos Cochinos, and ordered the restitution and effective titling of their territories.
The Agroindustrial Law prioritises corporate interests over ancestral land rights, threatening the survival of communities and peoples defending their land and territories. According to Telesur, there are 1,000 pending eviction orders in the country as a result of its implementation.
Social, peasant, and Indigenous organisations in Honduras remain mobilised and organised against the law. They have also presented an initiative to impeach Tomás Zambrano, President of the Honduran Congress, for his role in the passage of the legislation.
OFRANEH is maintaining an indefinite protest camp outside the Supreme Court in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital, and is demanding that the proceedings against the five Garífuna people (four men and one woman) criminalised for defending their land be dropped.