OneWorld.net (U.S.)

WASHINGTON, D.C., Sep 7 (OneWorld.net) - Amnesty International has announced that it is relaunching its global campaign to press the Honduran government to take stronger measures to stop the continued killing of street children, nearly 700 of whom have been murdered in the last 18 months.

The London-based group made the appeal for renewed efforts on the second anniversary of the creation by the government of the Special Unit for the Investigation of Violent Deaths of Children. While the office has made some progress in investigating a small number of cases, Amnesty said, it continues to "fall far short" of its stated objectives.

Of more than 2,3000 cases of killings of children and youths since January, 1998, the Special Unit has forwarded only 88 cases to the Attorney General's office. To date only three cases have resulted in convictions. Although the government in Tegucigalpa has admitted that police officers have been involved in many of the killings, only two policemen have so far been convicted, Amnesty said.

Despite considerable media attention over the past five years, the plight of thousands of street children and youths in Honduras, and indeed in much of Central America, remains precarious and desperate, according to experts, including Casa Alianza, an independent advocacy group which is particularly active in the region and elsewhere in Latin America.

For example in February, a relatively good month compared to the previous two years, 20 children and youths under the age of 23 were summarily executed in Honduras, according to the group, which noted that about one third of the victims were under the age of 18, and a majority of the killings took place in the northern industrial city of San Pedro Sula.

Honduras is Central America's second poorest country after Nicaragua, and many families cannot make ends meet, particularly in the wake of Hurricane Mitch which destroyed much of Honduras' agriculture-based economy in 1998. As in other poor countries, children are often forced to leave home early and, unable to earn a living or attend school, they resort to petty theft and prostitution to support themselves on the street.

The authorities blame much of the violence on youth gangs whose numbers of risen sharply in recent years, particularly with the deportation of thousands of gang members from the U.S. back to Honduras and other Central American countries. Central American authorities estimate the number of gang members in the region at some 60,000.

But Casa and Amnesty insist that, while gang violence is a growing problem, most of the killings are carried out by police or death squads operating under police protection.

"The notion is widespread that violence is practically the exclusive product of the gangs, but we doubt it. We believe that the reasons are related to impunity, the conspiracy of the authorities and the operation of death squads," Casa's local director in Honduras, Jose Manuel Capellin, told Inter Press Service (IPS) last March. Honduras' national human rights commissioner, Ramon Custodio, charged at the same time that "individual and governmental vigilantes" were carrying out a "social cleansing" of presumed delinquents.

In May, some 103 suspected youth gang members were killed in a prison fire in San Pedro Sula. According to press reports, the victims, all of whom had never been convicted of any crime, cried for help after the fire began, but guards prevented them escaping the blaze. The incident was similar to another in a prison near La Ceiba in April 2003 when 69 youths were killed in a fire and clashes with guards.

But most of the street children are killed in smaller numbers. Amnesty cited the case of 16-year-old Darwin Sauceda Flores, who was arrested and beaten by a police officer in February 2002, held for two days, and then released. The next day, however, his body was found with signs that he had been summarily executed.

The boy's mother, Sara Sauceda Flores, filed complaints against two officers whom she believed carried out the killing. But her action was greeted with anonymous threats, and no one has been prosecuted for the crime.

"Thousands of children in Honduras face a similar fate to Darwin," said Amnesty. "The Honduran authorities must comply with its obligations to prevent and punish killings of children and youths in the country, and to protect witnesses."

Indeed, according to Casa, the perpetrators of the murders are often widely known but are protected by fear. Last year, the government of President Ricardo Maduro promised to create a National Witness Protection Plan but has failed to follow through. "Protection of witnesses is of paramount importance as they can be intimidated to prevent them from providing testimony against perpetrators," Amnesty said.

It also called for both the Special Unit and the Attorney General's Office to be given more resources to do their job and for the government to appoint ad-hoc judges to work specifically on cases involving children or youth murders. "The future of the country depends on it," the group said.