Honduras: Six defenders from the Garifuna community of Punta Gorda arbitrarily detained for "usurpation" during violent eviction
Miriam Miranda (@baraudawaguchu)
"Honduras: Indigenous community members arrested, evicted from land", 09 November 2022
...The Honduran army and national police converged on a Garífuna community in Punta Gorda — on the island of Roatán — on November 7, and violently evicted residents. Police arrested six community members, and at least 55 people were injured...
The community has continually fought against land grabs and evictions by commercial interests, such as transnational corporations, and the government...An Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruling in 2015 found that the Juan Orlando Hernández government had violated the collective land ownership rights of Garífuna communities.
...Garífuna people have been arrested for “usurpation” of land, or illegally occupying someone else’s land.
The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organisations of Honduras...[:]...“Indigenous and Garífuna communities in Honduras have the right to have our ancestral territories recognised. Third parties claiming to be owners of our territories were deceived or acquired land illegally and illegitimately...
The Punta Gorda Community Land Defence Committee said that “the Garífuna people are holders of property and rights over the lands and resources they have occupied ancestrally, and therefore have rights to be legally recognised as the legitimate owners of their territory”...
Since then, the six Garífuna prisoners have been conditionally released, pending an initial court hearing on November 26 in Roatán...