• Protecting Water and Farmland in Simcoe County

Simcoe County Honduras group has two more ‘Free Edwin’ signs

By
In AWARE News Network
Jul 4th, 2019
0 Comments
1296 Views

 

From Janet French Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor

Today Datamax Outdoor Advertising erected two more signs to help us advocate for Edwin and others’ release from prison. We put one on our home farm on Highway 92 which leads to Wasaga Beach. The highway is really busy at this time of year so there will be many interested viewers.

The second sign is located on the main thoroughfare of Wasaga Beach, and again this road is very busy all year round, but particularly during the summer months. The signs were very generously donated by the owner of Datamax. We are also considering putting up another sign either on Highway 26 outside of Barrie or on a very busy county road which leads to Midland, Penetanguishene, and Balm and Thunder Beaches.

Left, recent march in Tegucigalpa. The main demands of the marchers are for Juan Orlando Hernandez (Honduras President) to rescind privatization bills on both healthcare and education, and to free the political prisoners arrested during and after the November 2017 illegal presidential election. Marchers carry a ‘free political prisoners’ banner in every city and town they protest in.

SCHRM is stepping up our campaign to push for Edwin and Raul’s release from prison, which is getting more dangerous as time passes for their mental and physical wellbeing. They will have been incarcerated for almost 19 months in mid-July.

As the protests and marches organized by the healthcare, education, transportation, and business sectors escalate throughout Honduras, tensions are mounting everywhere. The population is calling for Hernandez’ resignation due to the severe repression by the military who are shooting marchers in the streets, using very strong teargas to suppress the crowds, murdering at random, and terrorizing the general population.

Yet the US and Canadian governments still fail to call out the human rights abuses that are occurring daily as well as total impunity by the JOH government, corruption scandals, narco-trafficking by government officials, gang violence, gang extortion, lack of rule of law, and very heavy militarization by local police, military, and military police. In the maximum-security prisons such as La Tolva, where Edwin and Raul are incarcerated, JOH has also added new national military prison police.

SCHRM is therefore planning further in the fight for the political prisoners and the Honduran population, organizing an event in Toronto in September, attending summer community events, election events, and having a greater presence on social media. Springvalley is hosting the Ontario Federation of Agriculture barbeque on the evening of July 12; I am presenting to the group about Edwin and the ongoing crisis in Honduras. Hope to see you there!

Leave a Reply

Commenters must post under real names. AWARE Simcoe reserves the right to edit or not publish comments. Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *