Take Acton Now: Sign this letter in support of OFRANEH
Since Monday, August 10, the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH) has maintained an encampment outside the Supreme Court in Tegucigalpa. They are demanding a definitive closure of the judicial case and charges against five Garifuna leaders from San Juan, Tela who have been accused of usurpation related to an ancestral land recovery effort. The land being recovered and in dispute in San Juan has been taken by the wealthy Rosenthal family and is located within the land that belongs to San Juan according to national land titles and the 2023 InterAmerican Court sentence against the State of Honduras.
Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to meet with OFRANEH on Friday, August 14th but OFRANEH and the Committee for the Compliance of the InterAmerican Court Sentence, both of which originally presented the request for the meeting, were informed that only four representatives could attend the meeting. Both bodies consist of 17 individuals, all of which form a collective including representatives of the four Garifuna communities that participated in the IACHR cases. The conditionality of the Supreme Court in regard to the meeting was rejected by OFRANEH.
In the evening on Sunday, August 16, Honduran police arrived at the encampment and threatened to evict OFRANEH despite their peaceful presence. These threats are on-going.
On Monday, August 19th, the National Jurisdiction court in San Pedro Sula, where the case had been sent by a judge in Tela, annulled their presentation in the case and sent the case back to the courthouse in Tela. OFRANEH announced yesterday that the San Pedro Sula court’s decision to transfer the case is insufficient and continues to demand a definitive closure of the judicial case and charges against the five Garifuna leaders. The case is not based on any valid investigation of the ownership of the land, and the application of the Law for the Strengthening and Protection of the Agro-industrial Sector was irregularly applied to the case, as San Juan and the land in dispute is Indigenous land and subject to an InterAmerican Court Sentence.
Join us in signing this letter to the President of the Supreme Court, Wagner Vallecillo and demand that the case be definitively closed against the five Garifuna from San Juan, Tela!
For more background: See the Honduras Now X and Instagram page or here
