Current Events > US weapons being used in Honduras state violence

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/article221908900.html

A group of Honduran military police officers dressed in army fatigues, their faces covered in black masks jumped from the back of pickup trucks around 11 p.m. on Dec. 1, 2017, witnesses say.

From the shadows, they opened fire on 20-year-old Alejandra Martnez and several dozen other unarmed young people burning tires in the streets of Tegucigalpa in protest of the recent presidential election. As bullets flew in every direction, Martnez ran, looking for shelter. She made it out alive.

Down the street, closer to where the officers emerged from the shadows, Kimberly Dayana Fonseca, 19, lay dead in a halo of blood and bits of her own skull. She was victim of a U.S.-made M4 fired by the Honduran Military Police for Public Order, investigators at the public ministry later told a reporter.

A 15-year-old boy was also critically injured that night by a bullet to the side, but survived, another likely victim of a U.S.-made weapon of war.

The Miami Herald found that the political violence in Honduras, which has contributed to an exodus of migrants, was sometimes carried out with U.S.-made weapons used by the governments paramilitary force. The Honduran military police should not possess U.S.-made rifles sold under private arms licensing agreements, according to the State Department.

Now, a year after dodging bullets fired by a paramilitary armed with U.S. weapons, Martnez is part of the caravan of thousands of migrants that left Honduras in October to make their way toward the U.S. border. The first migrants from the group just reached the U.S. border.

We know that the guns come from the United States, Martnez told the Miami Herald at the time of the bloodshed. These guns have no business in Honduras. They should stay in the United States. They are sending them to Honduras to kill us.

More than a dozen people were shot and killed by the military police in the post-election violence, including several children, according to United Nations investigators. More than 30 were wounded by the paramilitary unit, a repressive force that answers directly to the Honduran president.

Honduran security forces were ordered to contain protests spreading across the country as President Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party seemed set to win a second term. The vote was marred by irregularities and violence, prompting observers from the Organization of the American States to call for a redo.

The Honduran military and the national police have also been accused of human rights abuses, but in the wake of the 2017 elections, portions of both forces laid down their weapons, refusing to attack protesters. The military police were often deployed instead. The military police are trained to kill, Martnez said.

Official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting or associating with the Honduran military police in any way. Founded in 2013 as a supposedly incorruptible force in the fight against gangs, the Honduran military police a paramilitary force distinct from both the Honduran military and national police have quickly earned a nasty human rights reputation, including for extrajudicial killings.

The U.S. official policy has been to stay clear [of the military police], said Eric Olson, deputy director the the Latin American program at the Wilson Center, a Washington, D.C.-based non-partisan policy forum and research institute. Theyve been very self-congratulatory, saying we dont support them so we are not responsible for what they do.

Yet, a photo on the Honduran governments website shows three phalanxes of the camouflage-clad fighters brandishing rifles that five independent experts identified as modern, U.S.-made M4s, a weapon whose international sale is highly regulated by the State Department. ...

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make Honduras great again
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its the contras all over again.
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The US is the biggest arms dealer in the world.
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Lonestar2000 posted...

The US is the biggest arms dealer in the world.

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the homicide rate in much of the West Indies and Latin America would drop three fold if so many guns would stop coming from America (granted there are economical and social segregation issues that exacerbate violence in these societies but still gun running from America is a huge factor in the violence)
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U.S. weapons kill people all over the planet.
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Unfortunately unsurprising
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The US will kill you one way or another.
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Thanks to Obama and his Operation Fast and Furious.
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And if we didn't sell them there would literally be no other way they could get weapons.
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Is this more US regime change?
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Wait, the US is indirectly responsible for violence in Latin America?

I'm shocked.
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VectorChaos posted...

Lonestar2000 posted...

The US is the biggest arms dealer in the world.

Great movie. It's on Hulu right now I think
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The official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting them. Unless there's proof they bought the weapons from the U.S. this topic is just an opportunity for radical leftists on CE to have an anti-U.S. hard-on and peddle the usual narrative.

For all we know they bought the weapons from someone else or purchased them under false pretenses / with false identification. If they're killing young protesters in the streets then using false identification or black markets is certainly not beneath them. Just like when ISIS was able to buy Ford pick-up trucks somehow.
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Monolith1676 posted...

Thanks to Obama and his Operation Fast and Furious.

and Operation Castaway

But we're on CE, where the US government is never, ever involved in scandals and anyone who suggests as much is just an insane conspiracy theorist.

Vertania posted...

Monolith1676 posted...

Thanks to Obama and his Operation Fast and Furious.

and Operation Castaway

But we're on CE, where the US government is never, ever involved in scandals and anyone who suggests as much is just an insane conspiracy theorist.

What are you blabbering about? CE is basically only ever bashing the US government's involvement abroad or insinuating that it's the US government's fault when something bad happens somewhere.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

The official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting them. Unless there's proof they bought the weapons from the U.S. this topic is just an opportunity for radical leftists on CE to have an anti-U.S. hard-on and peddle the usual narrative.

For all we know they bought the weapons from someone else or purchased them under false pretenses / with false identification. If they're killing young protesters in the streets then using false identification or black markets is certainly not beneath them. Just like when ISIS was able to buy Ford pick-up trucks somehow.

Id give benefit of the doubt if we didn't have a history of destabilizing Latin America
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Blue_Dream87 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting them. Unless there's proof they bought the weapons from the U.S. this topic is just an opportunity for radical leftists on CE to have an anti-U.S. hard-on and peddle the usual narrative.

For all we know they bought the weapons from someone else or purchased them under false pretenses / with false identification. If they're killing young protesters in the streets then using false identification or black markets is certainly not beneath them. Just like when ISIS was able to buy Ford pick-up trucks somehow.

Id give benefit of the doubt if we didn't have a history of destabilizing Latin America

That's just a narrative you're peddling because you refuse to acknowledge that socialists destabilized Latin America. "WHAAAAA it's not REAL socialism!1111"
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HenryAllbright posted...

And if we didn't sell them there would literally be no other way they could get weapons.

Whats with this idiotic mindset I keep seeing? Ive been seeing it parroted more and more by generic conservatives and Trumpers.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Blue_Dream87 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting them. Unless there's proof they bought the weapons from the U.S. this topic is just an opportunity for radical leftists on CE to have an anti-U.S. hard-on and peddle the usual narrative.

For all we know they bought the weapons from someone else or purchased them under false pretenses / with false identification. If they're killing young protesters in the streets then using false identification or black markets is certainly not beneath them. Just like when ISIS was able to buy Ford pick-up trucks somehow.

Id give benefit of the doubt if we didn't have a history of destabilizing Latin America

That's just a narrative you're peddling because you refuse to acknowledge that socialists destabilized Latin America. "WHAAAAA it's not REAL socialism!1111"

Holy shit dude what kind of idiotic troll post is this?
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King_Hellebuyck posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Blue_Dream87 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting them. Unless there's proof they bought the weapons from the U.S. this topic is just an opportunity for radical leftists on CE to have an anti-U.S. hard-on and peddle the usual narrative.

For all we know they bought the weapons from someone else or purchased them under false pretenses / with false identification. If they're killing young protesters in the streets then using false identification or black markets is certainly not beneath them. Just like when ISIS was able to buy Ford pick-up trucks somehow.

Id give benefit of the doubt if we didn't have a history of destabilizing Latin America

That's just a narrative you're peddling because you refuse to acknowledge that socialists destabilized Latin America. "WHAAAAA it's not REAL socialism!1111"

Holy shit dude what kind of idiotic troll post is this?

Lmao it's Proudclad, I'm not even surprised
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We need Trump to don the Iron Man suit, for world peace.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

Blue_Dream87 posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

The official U.S. policy is to avoid supporting them. Unless there's proof they bought the weapons from the U.S. this topic is just an opportunity for radical leftists on CE to have an anti-U.S. hard-on and peddle the usual narrative.

For all we know they bought the weapons from someone else or purchased them under false pretenses / with false identification. If they're killing young protesters in the streets then using false identification or black markets is certainly not beneath them. Just like when ISIS was able to buy Ford pick-up trucks somehow.

Id give benefit of the doubt if we didn't have a history of destabilizing Latin America

That's just a narrative you're peddling because you refuse to acknowledge that socialists destabilized Latin America. "WHAAAAA it's not REAL socialism!1111"

You're even more unhinged than usual lately.
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Continued...

Although each expert said it is possible, if extremely unlikely, that the M4s could be off-brand copycats, half a dozen Honduran military police officers told Herald reporters in late 2017 the forces in Tegucigalpa carry only M4s that came from the United States. The Honduran government denied the Heralds request for a list of weapons used by military police officers, and refused to answer questions about the M4s, citing state secrets laws and national security as the reason for their denial.

The military police carried the weapons to police civilian protests over the past year, sometimes using them to shoot at unarmed protesters, as documented in photos taken by journalists and human rights observers and IDd by the five experts. (Military police outside of Tegucigalpa were seen by reporters carrying non-U.S.-made rifles.) During anti-government protests in December 2017, the force killed at least 20 people some execution style, others as they tried to run away, according to United Nations reports.
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Since a military coup ousted a democratically elected president in Honduras in 2009, the United States has not provided weapons directly to Honduras; the more than $100 million in direct assistance approved by the United States to Honduras since 2009 was designated non-lethal, and included equipment and training programs.

The modern, M4-style firearms carried by the Honduran military police last year likely came from a private sale known as a direct commercial sale an arms deal between a U.S. weapons seller (usually the manufacturer) and the Honduran government. Licensing agreements for international weapons sales always require U.S. government approval.

The State Department authorized companies to export over 10,000 firearms to Honduras between 2015 and 2017, according to information obtained by the Security Assistance Monitor, an organization that tracks U.S. arms deals.

According to the Federal Register, the State Department specifically approved private sales of M4 carbine semi-automatic rifles and accessories to Honduras, in 2015 and again in 2017, of over $1 million dollars each. The 2015 deal included 5.56mm caliber rounds and 30-round magazine clips for the M4 rifles. The 2017 deal was worth $6,150,000, the Security Assistance Monitor reported.
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The United States is the only country that makes M4s. Still, it is possible the M4s carried by the military police did not come directly from the 2015 and 2017 sales listed in the Federal Register, and were instead resold to Honduras by a third party another government, for example. Still, direct-sale licensing agreements also stipulate the recipients of resales, so their possession would still be a violation of a contract.

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Still, it is possible the M4s carried by the military police did not come directly from the 2015 and 2017 sales listed in the Federal Register, and were instead resold to Honduras by a third party another government, for example.
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bknight posted...

We need Trump to don the Iron Man suit, for world peace.

Too out of shape, he wouldn't fit.

He needs Hulkbuster Armor.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Still, it is possible the M4s carried by the military police did not come directly from the 2015 and 2017 sales listed in the Federal Register, and were instead resold to Honduras by a third party another government, for example.

Why are you so convinced they didnt come from the same government that runs arms to everywhere in the world?
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

Still, it is possible the M4s carried by the military police did not come directly from the 2015 and 2017 sales listed in the Federal Register, and were instead resold to Honduras by a third party another government, for example.

So then here's a question

If we know the US government sold a fuckton of M4s to the Honduras government

And

You're so convinced that these specific M4s did not come from those sales based on that once sentence

Then

Where the fuck are the guns?
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VectorChaos posted...

bknight posted...

We need Trump to don the Iron Man suit, for world peace.

Too out of shape, he wouldn't fit.

He needs Hulkbuster Armor.

He's exceedingly healthy. Don't you remember the doctor's report from prior to the election?
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