Six Years Post Coup: A Human Rights Activist Reflects on a Country in Crisis

Reposting an interview I did while at the U.S. Social Forum in San Jose, California in late-June 2015.

A glance at corporate-driven media in Honduras would reveal a climate of violence that is attributed to gang activity or drugs. This intentional practice is profitable.

Karen Spring explains while giving her observations and analysis to KGNU about the violence the day before the six-year anniversary of the June 28, 2009 military coup. She arrived in Honduras shortly after the very coup that hurled the country into months of protests against an oligarch takeover of the country and the subsequent repression against the movement that sought a return to democracy.

She said that media coverage of government violence and death squads against communities that oppose government policy that displaces them, or denies basic human rights is virtually nonexistent or heavily suppressed or repressed. If coverage does make its way to the pages, those who stand to lose their ancestral land, their clean water, their opportunity to feed their families are portrayed as responsible for the violence. The few who stand to gain from land grabs, from the extraction of natural resources, from the elimination of those who stand in the way of profit have control of the majority of the media.

For full article and interview, see KGNU website