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By Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña; translated by Ramor Ryan
Upside Down World
Wednesday, Jan 13, 2010
Honduran Black Fraternal Organization Denounces Attack Against their Radio Station
In the early morning hours of Wednesday January 6, the Garifuna
community radio Faluma Bimetu (“Sweet Coconut”) based in Triunfo de la
Cruz was burnt down by unknown armed individuals who proceeded to loot
the station's radio equipment. This is not the first time the radio has
been attacked and its equipment stolen.
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| Radio Producer Alfredo Lopez |
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In 2002 unknown people
stole the transmitter and other key tools for radio transmission. The
Garifuna people have been exposed to a slow process of assimilation
into the dominant culture through the mass media - monopolies that are
in the hands of figures who are well known throughout the country as
manipulators of information.
Lacking control of our own Garifuna
media has led to an acceleration of loss of our culture, a process that
has become increasingly painful. Most of the communities with access to
television are confronted by a permanent alienation through
consumerism, acculturation, alienation (soccer, fashion, soap operas,
cartoons and violence) and media terrorism. We have also seen a decline
in the use of our own indigenous language, which has become,
lamentably, a second language.
Transmission of Radio Faluma
Bimetu began in 1997, promoted by the Land Defense Committee of Triunfo
de la Cruz (CODETT), in order to strengthen Garifuna culture and defend
the ancestral territory of the community.
Triunfo de la Cruz,
like other Tela Bay Garifuna communities, has become a conflict zone
since the intervention of businessmen, politicians and foreign
investors attempting to seize community land for the construction of
mega-tourism projects.
This systematic usurpation at the hands
of outsiders has led the community – conducted by CODETT and the
Community Board -- to file a petition with the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights
(IACHR), who accepted the case on 14th
March 2006, registered under No. 125-48. For the powerful ruling elite
of Honduras, the staunch defense taken by the community of Triunfo de
la Cruz of their ancestral territory, is a serious challenge to their
economic interests.
Honduras is renowned for the high level of
poverty for the majority of its inhabitants ruled by a minority that
holds the country under a feudal regime. The use of mass media by the
local feudal lords has been an effective tool for control and
manipulation.
As in the rest of Latin America, the media
monopolies have served to replicate the distortion of information and
thus perpetuate domination. The community radios of the Garifuna have
been growing strong over the past decade, setting a precedent among our
people. And the primary goal is the protection of our culture - which
is closely linked to Mother Earth.
Up to the present moment, we
have installed four community radios and in the not too distant future
we envision extending the network throughout the entire Garifuna
nation. The overarching goal: to strengthen and enrichen our culture,
to defend our ancestral territory and at the same time, to build early
warning systems to deal with climate change, earthquakes, and diseases.
The
attack against Radio Faluma Bimetu can be simply reduced to the fact
that it enrages the power elite that we, the Garifuna, have been in a
process of cultural resistance that has lasted 212 years. And,
specifically, that we have broken chains by actively participating in
the resistance against the destruction of democracy in our country, a
crime (the June 28th Coup) committed by the Honduran oligarchy last
year - with the support of the troglodyte right wing of the United
States.
Given these facts, OFRANEH (Honduran Black Fraternal
Organization) demands respect for the right to provide information, as
indicated in Article 13 - Freedom of Thought and Expression, of the the
Inter-American Convention on Human Human. Specifically, we require a
full investigation into this act perpetrated against the Garifuna
community radio and against of our people in general.
La Ceiba, January 8, 2010
Miriam Miranda
General Coordinator
Organización Fraternal Negra Hondureña, OFRANEH
Teléfono (504) 4420618, (504) 4500058
Av 14 julio, calle 19, Contiguo Vivero Flor Tropical, Barrio Alvarado, La
Ceiba, Honduras
email:
garifuna @ ofraneh.org,
ofraneh @ yahoo.com
Upside Down World
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