Honduras: beverage union calls for wider action as protests against corruption and impunity grow

The IUF-affiliated Honduran beverage workers union STIBYS has called for intensified mass action as protests against corruption, impunity and the looting of the state social security system gather pace. STIBYS was a pillar of the resistance to the 2009 ‘parliamentary coup d’etat’ which deposed the elected president, and has been prominent in the recent protests.

The 2009 coup launched Honduras on a downward spiral of corruption and violence. Since 2013, cronies and relatives of President Hernandez, one of the heritors of the coup, have been implicated in a scheme to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from the national health care system which left dying patients without medicine or care. Hernandez then admitted to receiving huge sums of money from companies linked to the scheme to finance his 2013 election. “A functioning hospital system was dismantled and sick people died unnecessarily in order to win an election and justify privatization,” STIBYS leader Carlos Reyes told the UK Guardian.

The protest movement is demanding prosecution of all those involved in robbing the social security system and the establishment of an International Commission Against Impunity. STIBYS’ call for action puts the crisis in its wider historical context and is available in Spanish here.