Farmers denounce suspect killings in Honduras

A land activist in Honduras warned on 19 February that killings of farmers and "repression" would not "silence peasants but sharpen the conflict for land" there, speaking after the latest killings of two farmers, one the brother of a lawyer shot in September 2012, the Associated Press reported. The promotion of commercial farming in the Lower Aguán zone in northern Honduras has provoked an ongoing conflict between the local peasantry and commercial farming concerns. Rafael Alegría told AP in Tegucicalpa that nine peasants had been killed in the Aguán valley in 2013 and more than 89 "in the past two years." The latest were Santos Cartagena and José Trejo, killed in the department of Colón on 16 February. Trejo was a cooperative farmer and member of MARCA (Movimiento Reivindicador Campesino del Aguan), one of several groups defending peasants' rights and interests. His brother Antonio Trejo, a lawyer who defended activists, was shot in late September. Cartagena was in the United Peasant Movement of Aguán MUCA (Movimiento Unificado Campesino de Aguán); both were apparently killed in and around the district of Tocoa. AP reported that a court recently confirmed Trejo's MARCA movement as owners of the San Isidro Cooperative, formerly controlled by one of the country's main landowners, Miguel Facussé. His name seems to appear and recur in media when assassinations occur but he has in the past rejected allegations of any involvement in acts of violence. On 20 February four peasant associations issued a communiqué denouncing the government's land policies and observing that recent killings closely followed peasants' recuperation of two estates on 17 February. The associations blamed the conflict on previous governments' land reform legislation of the 1990s and to the present parliament's eagerness to hand over "our country's most productive regions" to foreign investors by designating them as Development Regions.