Washington's been involved in Central American human rights abuses for decades. Geopolitical interests alone matter. Crimes against humanity continue.

By Mark Weisbrot - May 05, 2013

Recent events indicate that the Obama administration has stepped up its strategy of “regime change” against the left-of-center governments in Latin America, promoting conflict in ways not seen since the military coup that Washington supported in Venezuela in 2002. The most high-profile example is in Venezuela itself, during the past week. As this goes to press, Washington has grown increasingly isolated in its efforts to destabilize the newly elected government of Nicolas Maduro.

By MARK WEISBROT - April 03, 2013

A death squad government may not be the Obama administration’s first choice for Honduras, but they prefer it to another left government that people might elect if they were able to organize in a free election. The current government belongs to Washington, as does the U.S. military base that the Pentagon would like to keep there indefinitely.

By NICK ALEXANDROV - Counterpunch Weekend Edition

The killings continue in Honduras, where violence targeting lawyers, human rights defenders, LGBT people, women and others has intensified since the June 2009 coup. Two School of the Americas graduates helped topple the democratically-elected leader that month, and Obama supported the ensuing presidential election, a farce the mainstream media would have ridiculed had it taken place in, say, Venezuela.

A state of siege exists. Human rights violations are horrific. Killings, beatings, disappearances, and intimidation are commonplace.

Honduras is a US installed police state.

By Graham Russell - Sunday, May 20, 2012

There is no end in sight to violence and repression in Honduras. There is also no end in sight to the United States and Canadian governments and business maintaining political, economic and military relations with the country's military-backed regime...A fundamental, underlying problem is that US and Canadian governments and businesses are maintaining profitable economic and military relations with the Honduran regime, turning a blind eye to, and partially benefiting from the violence, repression and impunity.

By Bill Van Auken - 19 May 2012

The killing of at least four Honduran civilians, including two pregnant women, in an attack by a US helicopter last Friday has triggered angry protests in Honduras’s remote northeastern Mosquito Coast area...The attack was carried out in an anti-drug operation carried out under the direction of American commandos working as part of a Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) team deployed in the area. The DEA in Washington acknowledged Wednesday that its armed agents were in the helicopter when it strafed a boat...killing two men and two women.

By Jesse Freeston and Stéfanie Clermont - April 13, 2012

In 2011, Honduras became the deadliest country in the world, for those countries which the UN has been able to gather statistics. "Our country of just 8 million people is suffering more than 20 murders per day...Among the victims are around 20 journalists and 424 women. On top of murders, there are death threats, forced disappearances, exile for some and a general criminalization of the social resistance movement.”

By Bill Van Auken - 31 March 2012

At least 13 prisoners died Thursday in a prison riot and fire in Honduras that has once again exposed not only the desperate conditions in the country’s prison system, but also the overall assault on basic rights of the population by the country’s US-backed government.

By Bill Van Auken - WSWS

The more that emerges about this immense tragedy, the more it becomes clear that those who died were victims of a state organized massacre, just as surely as if they had been gunned down by the military death squads that have played such a bloody role in Honduras's recent history...Surviving prisoners have reported that they were fired upon as they tried to escape the flames and have called upon those doing the grim forensic work of identifying the victims to check the corpses for bullet wounds.

By MARK WEISBROT - November 21, 2011

When I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 I never thought that his legacy in Central America would be the return of death squad government, of the kind that Ronald Reagan so vigorously supported in the 1980s. But that seems to be the case for Honduras.

Since mid-March, police and soldiers unleashed violent repression throughout the country, using infiltrators to provoke demonstrators into confrontations to justify what may result in massacres. This is how police state barbarism works, crushing resistance oppressively.

Murder rages in fascist Honduras.

And Washington fully supports it.