Honduras has little hope of improvement in prisons after the massacre in prison

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TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Honduran authorities have begun handing over to relatives the battered and charred bodies of 46 women murdered in the worst riot at a women’s prison in recent history.

Some of the bodies were so burned that genetic testing or dental analysis would be needed to identify them, said Yuri Mora, a spokesman for the Honduran national police investigative agency.

The facts that were beginning to materialize about the violence on Tuesday in the women’s prison of Támara described a carefully planned massacre of alleged members of rival gangs by inmates of the notorious Barrio 18 gang.

The massacre prompted calls for changes to the country’s prison system and even a debate over whether Honduras should follow the example of El Salvador, where President Nayib Bukele has imposed a zero-tolerance policy with no prison privileges.

Although the repression of gangs in El Salvador has led to human rights violations, it has also proved immensely popular in a country long terrorized by street gangs.

“One of the serious dangers is the ‘bukelization’ of security policy in the country, with all that this implies,” Joaquín Mejía, a Honduran human rights expert, told AP.

No one questions that Honduran prisons are in a shameful state. In Tuesday’s riot, prisoners belonging to Barrio 18 murdered another 46 women with shots, machetes and then locking the survivors in their cells and throwing flammable liquid on them before starting a fire.

In a chilling detail, the female gang members were able to arm themselves with guns and machetes, walk past the guards, and attack. They even carried padlocks to lock up the victims, apparently to burn them alive.

“We believe that the order for this massacre came from a criminal network and I am sure that information was received beforehand and nothing was done,” said Jessica Sánchez, an activist with the Civil Society Group.

Miguel Martínez, a spokesman for the Ministry of Security, said the attack was recorded on security cameras until the gang members destroyed them, in what he described as a planned operation.

“There you can see the moment in which (…) they render the prison police powerless, they take away their keys, they put the padlocks and they are seen carrying firearms,” ​​said Martínez.

The president, Xiomara Castro, said that the riot in the Támara prison, northwest of Tegucigalpa, was “planned by gangs in full view and with the patience of security authorities.”

Castro dismissed the Minister of Security, Ramón Sabillón, and replaced him with Gustavo Sánchez, who until now was director general of the National Police.

He also ordered that the country’s 21 prisons remain under the control of the military police for a year, which was commissioned to train 2,000 new guards.

However, he did not announce any immediate plans to improve prison conditions, characterized by overcrowding, dilapidated facilities and poorly trained guards. Security is so lax that inmates often run their modules, where they sell prohibited products and demand money from other inmates.

Many doubted that the solution was to adopt a style of prisons with brutal regimes as El Salvador has done.

“Building more prisons in Honduras is not necessary, for what? To make more prisons for slaughterhouses where there is no state control over them?” said Roberto Cruz, 54, who runs a small retail store in the capital.

“Suitable professionals are needed to manage prisons,” said Cruz, who acknowledged that “it is a complex and large problem that requires an urgent solution.”

Most did not trust that the government would come up with the right strategy.

“We demand an international investigation by a commission that can really look at the issue of prisons and the situation of women, specifically,” said Sánchez.

Meanwhile, the cold facts of the massacre on Tuesday are beginning to emerge: after the riot, 18 pistols, an assault rifle, two Uzis and two grenades were found in the jail. They had all been smuggled into the compound.

Then there was the shocking fact that, as in many Latin American prisons, some of the prisoners’ children were living with their mothers in the prison at the time of the attack.

“Some of the women lived with their children in detention. Now these children are left alone and are very vulnerable. I am very concerned for their well-being and safety,” said Garry Conille, regional director of UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund.

It was not clear if any children had witnessed the attack.

The death toll surpassed that of a fire at a detention center in Guatemala in 2017, when girls held at a center for troubled youth set their mattresses on fire in protest of rape and other abuses. Smoke and fire killed 41 girls.

The world‘s worst prison disaster in the last century also occurred in Honduras. In 2012, 361 men died in a fire at the Comayagua prison possibly caused by a match, a cigarette or some other flame.