Honduras under state of emergency over gang activity, After President Xiomara Castro declared a state of emergency to stop a rise in gang activity in the Central American country, police increased their presence on the streets of Honduras on Friday. The little nation has long been afflicted by gangs, poverty, and bloodshed associated with drug trafficking. Recently, gangs have started extorting regular people as they go about their daily lives.
Honduras under state of emergency over gang activity
“To strengthen efforts to recover lawless areas in the neighborhoods, in villages, in departments, I declare a national state of emergency,” said Castro on Thursday. An AFP photographer reported a heavy presence of special forces and other officers in the capital on Friday.
Police spokesman Mario Fu told AFP that first arrests were made Friday, with four suspected gang members detained across the country. The state of emergency comes just days after hundreds of bus and taxi drivers protested in the capital Tegucigalpa to demand the government take steps to stop gangs from extorting a “war tax” from them. Castro, elected the country’s first woman president in January, declared “war on extortion, just as we declared war on corruption, impunity, and drug trafficking. ” She urged the police to recover public spaces “assaulted and controlled by organized crime and its gangs.”
She requested that police pinpoint any trouble places where “the partial suspension of constitutional safeguards” would be required. Police Chief Gustavo Sanchez promised to increase funding and commit at least 20,000 policemen to the fight against gang activities. Honduras is part of the “triangle of death,” which also includes its neighbors El Salvador and Guatemala, where vicious gangs known as “maras” rule the drug trade and organized crime.
For every 100,000 people, there were 37.6 documented killings in 2020. Nearly 800 Hondurans leave their nation every day due to extreme poverty, high unemployment, gang and drug violence, and most of them are going to the United States, where more than a million people already reside, most of them illegally.