URGENT ALERT: Demand the Return Alive of the 4 Garifuna Victims of Forced Disappearance
Alliance for Global Justice & Honduras Solidarity Network
(July 12, 2021) — One year ago, four afro-indigenous Garifuna men were forcibly disappeared from the community of Triunfo de la Cruz. The community’s elected president, Snider Centeno, together with Suami Mejía, Milton Martínez and Gerardo Trochez were violently removed from their homes by several armed men dressed in investigative police (DPI) uniforms.
Centeno and some of the other men, along with the Black Fraternal Organization of Honduras (OFRANEH), were very vocal against the theft of Garifuna land led by Honduran state institutions in support of private investors and were actively demanding that the Honduran government implement the 2015 Inter American Court ruling regarding stolen ancestral Garifuna land in Triunfo de la Cruz and the community of Punta Piedra.
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Stand in solidarity with the families of Snider, Suami, Milton and Gerardo
Since their forced disappearance of the four Garifuna men, their families, the community of Triunfo de la Cruz and OFRANEH formed the Garifuna Committee for the Search and Investigation of the Disappeared from Triunfo de La Cruz (SUNLA). We join OFRANEH and SUNLA to say that the family members of the disappeared and the Triunfo de la Cruz community ARE NOT ALONEand to demand:
- The continued search for Snider, Suami, Milton, and Gerardo. The Honduran state must investigate the circumstances that led to their disappearance and their whereabouts.
- Full support for OFRANEH and SUNLA in the struggle to seek justice and the truth about the forced disappearances and the on-going assassinations and criminalization of the Garifuna people in Honduras.
- That the state of Honduras immediately implement the full sentences of Triunfo de la Cruz and Punta Piedra as ordered by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights.
We send all our solidarity and respect to the families of the four men, the Garifuna community in Honduras, OFRANEH, and SUNLA.
They were taken alive, we want them back alive!
