DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL GATHERING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS IN SOLIDARITY WITH HONDURAS

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DECLARATION OF THE INTERNATIONAL GATHERING FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

IN SOLIDARITY WITH HONDURAS

Tocoa, Bajo Aguán, Colón, Honduras – February 16th- 20^th

In Tocoa, under a sun foretelling a hot summer, with grief in our outraged hearts following the most recent events that took place in Comayagua and El Progreso, where fires have ended the lives and means of subsistence of hundreds of people, which makes us think of a premeditated planned terror against the people, we have gathered. Amidst the tireless joy of rebellion and solidarity, more than one thousand people from North to South, which includes many people from Our America and activists from Europe, the USA and Australia, hundreds of greetings from people and organizations from the entire continent arrived to this gathering to express their solidarity.

With the presence of a great diversity of social movements, and organizational, cultural, artistic and politic initiatives, mobilized from several parts around the country to support the call and the goals of the International Gathering for Human Rights in Solidarity with Honduras, for four days discussions, denunciations, exchanges, debates and proposals occured, made public through this Declaration.

We begin our words opening the way to the living MEMORY of the women and men who fought and gave their lives, who are now part of our struggle towards justice… To them, we pay homage. To their families, friends and comrades we let them know we won’t forget them, that their words live in our battles, that they’re still there in all our voices and in all of our hands.

The assembly embraces every child from the campesino settlements of this zone, who in their own workshop expressed that they wanted to live without fear, in safe houses with plenty of food, painted schools and to play and play, a lot. We make a COMMITMENT to keep on fighting for the childhood of this country and the world.

From the workshop "Bodies, Struggles and the Resistance of Women," there came a strong demand to support the growing movement of women in this zone, in this country and throughout the whole world against all forms of violence and aggression against women for being women, within and outside organizations and homes, and we encourage their participation in all of the spaces and movements as protagonists, with financial resources and the power to make decisions and not just as cooks and mothers.

Once again, with a powerful collective voice we DENOUNCE to the world the growing and unceasing violations of Human Rights in Honduras, a denunciation which expresses itself with all bluntness through the speakers of a large number of organizations that work to defend life and justice. Particularly we listened to multiple women's, men’s, girl’s and boy’s testimonies from the Bajo Aguán. The ongoing war against the people of Honduras carried out with savagery after the Coup is manifested in murders, persecutions, criminalization of organizational activities, kidnappings, sexual aggressions towards women, a climate of intentional terror against the children who live in campesino settlements and communities in struggle, attacks against popular media, imprisonment, exile and lately attacks with fire against different populations in the country. In a particular way we want to DENOUNCE and send an alert of the enormous peril due to direct eviction threats against the community of Rigores, and the growing and strengthened militarization going on in the community of Guadalupe Carney.

We declare ourselves in ACTIVE SOLIDARITY with the victims of repression in this country, and we understand that they are victims and that the harm inflicted against their lives has authors, people who are responsible; therefore we demand JUSTICE in Bajo Aguán and many other places in Honduras. One of those who is responsible is called Miguel Facussé Barjum.

WE UNDERSTAND that this situation that deteriorates each day can only be explained due to the interests of the capitalist, patriarchal and racist system, a system that seeks to subjugate the people, expropriate their natural and cultural resources and place them at the service of Northern nationals and their transnational businesses. To make this expropriation possible a process of militarization is utilized which is growing in Honduras through the foreign military occupation that guarantees colonization and the violation of Human Rights, which we experience in Honduras with great crudity and brutality.

We REAFFIRM our local, national and international will to keep on fighting against domination and colonization, through every organizational form that we promote to re-found this Motherland. In this fight we are propelled forward by the indigenous and black peoples of the country, with their profound understanding and strength to stop the plundering of lands, territories, water, forests, and with the theft of cultural and other common goods of nature.

WE HOLD RESPONSIBLE those international financial organisms allied with the coup-supporting oligarchy for promoting the plundering and privatization of the lifeways of our people.

The Assembly at this event is challenged to keep on fighting, and to demand:

- The definitive solution to the agrarian conflict in the Bajo Aguán without the outrageous sale and purchase negotiations, for this land belongs to the campesinos and campesinas.

- The immediate release of our brother José Isabel Morales, unjustly imprisoned in the penal farm of La Ceiba.

- The dismissal of more than 500 warrants on people for being in the land struggle.

- The total and immediate de-militarization of the Aguán region and of the entire national territory.

- Jail and punishment for the aggressors of the Honduran people who fight for life, justice and freedom for all.

-We support the consolidation of the Permanent Human Rights Observatory of the Aguan so that all of the proposals arising from this encounter will be pursued in the struggle for a dignified life in this area.

- The immediate investigation and punishment for the massacres against the inmates of Comayagua.

Those Assembled here return home, with equal measures of strength and commitment, to resist the death that capitalism is trying to impose everywhere, and in particular we manifest:

- The demand for freedom for the Cuban anti-terrorists imprisoned in the jails of the empire.

- We demand the exit of the military troops in Haiti.

- We express our solidarity with the indigenous people of Panamá in their struggle for the autonomy of their people and territories.

- We support the struggle for the land of the indigenous people in all of Mesoamerica and Abya Yala.

- We repudiate so-called "green" capitalism and demand climate justice in the world.

- We greet the peoples of the world, that with their outraged cries from within the guts of the capitalist "First" World, this day denounce a predatory system that condemns majorities to misery.

- As Honduran people we continue to call ourselves to this re-foundational process that strengthens with  events where the words and solidarity reign above the silence of death.

-We call for strong solidarity with all peoples supporting the international events to be carried out in Haiti in the month of July of this year, where our journeys will continue.

The agreements approved in the plenary of the encounter are:

- To create solidarity committees with the Honduran people in countries, cities and communities of those who participated in the encounter.

- To create the international day of solidarity with the Honduran people, to be set for June 28^th. Activities will be carried out in front of embassies…

- To create communal, national and international networks for Human Rights.

- To promote a communal, national and international campaign for Human Rights framed within a practice of active non-violence.

- To create a network of community radios to denounce violations of Human Rights.

- To create a committee of Hondurans to be ambassadors to denounce violations of Human Rights in other countries who might be victims of repression and militarization.

- To create an informative dossier with violations of Human Rights (translated in every language)

- To have the alternative media gather all possible testimonies from the victims of violations to Human Rights and spread them through the world.

- To create a gender-equitable popular school of Human Rights.

- To provide national and international follow-up to these agreements.

- To support the Human Rights Observatory in the Bajo Aguán and the Human Rights Observatory of the Indigenous and Black peoples of Honduras.

- To carry out a campaign of international mobilization for the release of Isabel Morales.

- To create conditions in each country for the reception of Honduran refugees.

- To spread materials on the security measures for people who defend Human Rights.

- To create networks of safety and community protection.

- To strengthen the Permanent Human Rights Observatory in the Aguán.

- Contribution with the establishment of community radios in the territories of the Aguán.

THE PEOPLE UNITED, WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED

TO SILENCE THE WEAPONS, THE PEOPLES SPEAK

Tocoa, Colón, February 19^th of 2012.