In place since December, the “state of exception” aims to fight against the criminal gangs that are rampant in this country among the most violent in the world.
Forty-five additional days to fight against maras, criminal gangs. This was announced on Saturday, January 7, by the authorities of Honduras, on the strength of the results they presented last week. According to the Security Secretariat, the country has reached its lowest homicide rate for sixteen years, and nearly 1,400 members of maras reportedly arrested within a month, including within the country’s two largest gangs, Pandilla 18 and MS-13.
► To listen: [Grand Reportage] Honduras: living where the gangs rule
Figures that the secretariat attributes to “ the implementation of new strategies “, namely the state of exception which, since December 6, suspends certain constitutional guarantees and allows the police to make arrests without a warrant in dozens of neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa, the capital, and the second city of the country, San Pedro Sula. Measures extended from this Saturday to 73 other municipalities in Honduras.
The country is at the heart of the Latin American “triangle of death” (Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala), undermined by poverty, violence and corruption, and plagued by drug trafficking. A month ago, President Xiomara Castro’s decision to declare a state of emergency, initially for 30 days, and to deploy thousands of police to poor neighborhoods followed a demonstration in the capital of hundreds of bus drivers calling for measures to no longer be extorted and killed by criminal gangs.
(With AFP)