Country ... Honduras
The US and Honduras

AJE Faultlines ... Is the US lending financial support to a police force and army linked to a campaign of extra-judicial killings?

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Fault Lines The US and Honduras Is the US lending financial support to a police force and army linked to a campaign of extra-judicial killings?

Honduras has become the newest front in the US war on drugs in Latin America. The US has provided financial support for both the police and the military there in spite of its deep corruption issues.

Furthermore, members of both institutions have been linked to a range of killings. Political dissidents, human rights workers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community have all been killed at alarming rates.

In May, a mission in the Moskitia region, which was led by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), left four innocent civilians killed and four others wounded. It was followed by two more incidents where a US DEA agent shot and killed an alleged drug trafficker. Local communities have demanded a thorough investigation but so far nothing has been done.

The US has a long and controversial history in Honduras. In the 1980s, the US built a base there and trained an elite Honduran military unit. That unit went on to carry out tortures, kidnappings and killings.

Who is responsible? What should be the role of the US in Honduras? And what happened that night in the Moskitia when a US raid ended up leaving innocent people dead?

Fault Lines travels to Honduras, the country with the highest homicide rate in the world, to find out.