Tuesday 18 June 2013

Salvadorean mediators to advise Honduras on gangs ceasefire

To help realise the pledge made last May by the two main street gangs in Honduras to abandon crime, mediators of a gangs ceasefire in El Salvador and representatives of the Organisation of American States (OAS) met and talked on 17 June with gang members and Honduran mediators, in what seemed to be a first concrete step to ensure the ceasefire took off in Honduras, the Associated Press reported. An OAS official Ana Martínez told the agency that a meeting held in a prison in the city of San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras was to establish a code of practice and make personal contacts, and took place with the knowledge of Honduran officials. The Auxiliary Bishop of San Pedro Sula, Rómulo Emiliani, who is to act as mediator in what was hoped would become a disarmament and pacification process involving Honduran gangs, was cited as saying that Salvadorean mediators had come to "specifically" back "this effort, transmit to us their experiences and offer their support, always bearing in mind that the context of violence in Honduras" differed from El Salvador's. A spokesman for the Barrio 18 gang who attended the meeting was cited as claiming that homicides had dropped 80 per cent in Honduras since the gangs announced a ceasefire in late May; he added however that "the situation" was "complicated" as police "continue to murder us. They do not arrest us they execute us," AP reported. The agency observed it was impossible to verify whether or not homicides had declined in Honduras in recent weeks.

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