gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community and active member of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d'Etat, was killed this morning. Below there is a denunciation from the human rights organization CIPRODEH, a press release from Feminists in Resistance, and a denunciation written by Walter before he died about the repression against the LGBTQ community in Honduras under the de facto government. Killing of human rights defender Walter Tróchez
On December 4th the human rigths defender, member of the gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community and active member of the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup d'Etat Walter Tróchez was kidnapped and savagely beaten around the Obelisco Park of Comayaguela by four masked men who came in a gray pickup truck without plates, presumably from the police investigative unit (DNIC) (a vehicle of similar description that he had denounced a few months back had been watching his home, forcing him to move).
On that day the kidnappers told him they knew him well and they were going to kill him. They hooded him, insulted him, and began to interrogate him about the resistance, asking for information about its leaders and its movements. At that time he managed to escape alive, and the next day he filed a complaint with national and international authorities.
Today we have been informed that he has been assassinated by two gunshots just outside of Larach & Co. in the center of Tegucigalpa.
We denounce this deplorable act before all Hondurans and the international community; this death adds to the more than ten deaths already suffered by the gay, lesbian, trans and bisexual community of Honduras and to the persecution, harassment and threats suffered by human rights defenders and organizations since June 28th under the coup regime.
We demand to the authorities that this crime not go unpunished, that an investigation be carried forth and those responsible for it be uncovered.
We demand that the State of Honduras guarantee the physical integrity and life of those people involved in human rights work, that it respect and comply with treaties and international conventions that protect human rights defenders and the people in general.
We demand an end to the persecution, threats and harassment to which individuals, leaders and organizations who oppose and differ ideologically from the de facto regime are subjected.
Fecha: 14/12/2009
Press Release from Feminists in Resistance
The grave political conflicts generated by the coup d'etat in Honduras and the subsequent setting up of a fascist dictatorship have imposed an environment of repression, ignoring and violation of Human Rights. As Feminists in Resistance we pronounce and denounce the following before the national and international community:
This morning Walter Trochez, defender of human rights, especially of the LGTTTBI community was killed. He was fired at in the center of Tegucigalpa from a moving car. He was taken to the Escuela Hospital where he died.
Friday December 4th, Walter suffered a brutal attack and was able to escape death. His attackers reproached his participation in the Front of Resistance.
For a National Constitutional Assembly we Resist and we will Win!
For freedom and respect for the life of the people in resistance!
Neither coup d'etats nor beating of women!
For the emancipation of women and all oppressed people!
December 14th, 2009
Walter Tróchez had denounced the harassment and violations against the LGTTB months ago. We reproduce his denunciation below:
The civic-military coup d'etat that took place in Honduras the 28th of June has brutally knocked down the new perspective that had been opening up in Latin America in the 21st century. In effect, the region over the last ten years had been marked by the installation of governments with different characteristics whose common denominator was that they meant a change with regards to the neoliberal politics that had reached their height in the region in the last decade of the twentieth century. In many cases the parliamentary form assumed by the governments in the region masked to a certain point the continuity and identity of the social and economic politics of neoliberalism with those installed in the epoch of the military dictatorships. The situation in Honduras makes clear the impossibility of separating the economic and social policies of neoliberalism and the interests in whose service the crimes against humanity were perpetrated by de facto governments.
It also makes clear a fact somewhat disguised by the rhetoric of "consensus" and "tolerance" to which they tried to reduce the notion of democracy in the period after the military dictatorships and civil wars that devastated the region: not just the persistence but the rearming of the civilian sectors who in other epoch ran to the security and armed forces to impose their interests and who now easily combine their adaptation to the democratic proceedings with the known arrogance and illegality with which they impose their will on groups who are somewhat below them, somewhat their accomplices. Without going further, it isn't difficult to see in the forces who took advantage of the legislative elections in Argentina that same June 28th 28 the support, in some cases explicit, for the Coup d'Etat in Honduras and a commonality of interests with the business class, the media corporations and the Catholic and Evangelical Churches who promoted it. For our purposes it serves to make clear the explicit support of the religious leadership in Honduras to the military coup d'etat which on June 28th, 2009, impeded the carrying out of a plebiscite organized by a legitimate constitutional government and put the Dictator Roberto Micheletti into the Executive Power.
A press release from the Episcopal Conference of Honduras, signed by the eleven bishops of the Catholic Church, justified with supposed constitutional foundations the kidnapping, the transitory disappearance and the expulsion from the country of the constitutional president: “the institutions of the democratic Honduran state are in effect and their judicial and legal execution have followed the law...". In addition it defines the current situation as a "new departure point for dialogue, for consensus and reconciliation..." On the other side, the social movements, especially the LGTTB community, peasants and indigenous peoples of the country, didn't wait to react, including Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual and Transvesites (LGTTB), organizations, networks and movements of youth, Afro-descendant organizations, women's organizations, human rights activists and defenders, human rights organizations and networks, all condemning the coup and calling for regional and international solidarity with the rule of law and with the victims of the repression by the de facto government.
The LGTTB organizations, netoworks and movements in resistance, for example, condemn "the political-military coup against the state of honduras with the financial support of the ultra-right businessmen of Latin America and North America, the promotion of the national media corporations, the protection of the Ombudsman, Ramón Custodio, the National Commissioner of Human Rights in Honduras (CONADEH) and the blessing of the Catholic and Evangelical churches" through their highest representatives like Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodríguez, monseñor Darwin Andino, Pasquel Rodríguez, Monseñor Garachana of the San Pedro Sula diocese, pastor Oswaldo Canales current president of the National Anti-corruption Council CNA, pastor Evelio Pistero of the Vida y pisto Abundante Church, Pastor René Peñalba and pastor Alberto Solórzano and the elder co-founders of the Evangelical Church CCI . They [the LGTTB organizations] express their "unrestricted support of the return to the constitutional order in Honduras which requires the restoration of democracy" and demand "the cease of repression lived through by activists and human rights defenders, the organizations that pronounce themselves against the coup d'etat by the retired military and police bodies responsible for the disappearances of the 80's in Honduras commanded by the assassin Billy Joya.
“For its part the LGTTB Rainbow Association and the TTT Collective of the City of San Pedro Sula, activists and defenders of human rights, denounce that since the coup d'etat there have been more hate crimes and homophobia promoted by the Honduran Religious Leadership in complicity with the Oppressive Groups like the Armed Forces, the National Secretary of Security, Private Enterprises, the Pro-Life Groups, Opus Dei, etc.. These crimes make evident once again the high levels of hate, stigma and discrimination against people of diverse sexualities which we call out as homophobia, lesbophobia, biphobia, and above all transphobia, suffered by those of us who have a different sexual orientation or gender identity from the heterosexual norm. On the ocassion of the loss of two friends this last week, we reiterate that it is NOT ACCEPTABLE that in these last four months, during such a short period, 9 trans and gay sisters and brothers have died cruelly and violently, 6 of them in San Pedro Sula and 3 in Tegucigalpa.”
The martyrs of the LGTTB community:
1. Viki Hernández June 29th, San Pedro Sula
2. Martina Jackson June 30th, Choloma
3. Fabio Zamora July 5th, Tegucigalpa
4. Héctor Maradiaga August 11th, Tegucigalpa
5. Michelle Torres August 30th, San Pedro Sula
6. Salomé Miranda September 20th, Choloma
7. Saira Salmerón September 20th, Choloma
8. Marión Lanza October 9th, Tegucigalpa
9. Montserrat Maradiaga October 11th, San Pedro Sula.
“Know this: neither the corrupt nor the impure nor the exploiters who serve their god Money will have a place in the Kingdom of Christ and God."
“As a revolutionary, I will be today, tomorrow and always in the front lines of my people, even knowing that we could lose our lives."
[The late] Walter Orlando Trochez
Activist and Defender of Human Rights in Honduras and the Latin American sector (AIDS and HIV + Youth, Adolescents, Kids)
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