"Fears growing for five indigenous Garifuna men abducted in Honduras", 23rd July 2020

Fears are growing for the safety of five black indigenous men in Honduras who were abducted from their homes last weekend by heavily armed gunmen in police uniforms.

The victims are Garifuna fishermen from the town Triunfo de la Cruz on the north coast – a region where communities are embroiled in a longstanding struggle to save their ancestral land from drug traffickers, palm oil magnates and tourism developers aided by corrupt officials and institutions.

The Garifunas are descendants of an Afro-indigenous population from the Caribbean island of St Vincent, who were transported from their home by the British and abandoned on the Honduran coast in the late 18th century.

In Honduras, they and other indigenous communities have suffered decades of violent land grabs, which have been carried out with almost total impunity...

“We are under constant threat by those who want our land and natural resources,” said Jenny Ramona Herrera Álvarez, a community spokeswoman in Triunfo de la Cruz. “We do not want our brothers to be just another murder statistic. They were taken alive, we want them back alive.”...