How a declaration of emergency deepened the crime crisis of Honduras | Government news

The operation, on paper, seemed to be a typical government repression against drug traffickers.

At the end of 2024, more than two dozen masked officers came down to an alleged drug laboratory on the outskirts of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where they found materials for the treatment of cocaine and automatic weapons.

There was only one problem: evidence, including firearms and cocaine, seems to have disappeared from the public file.

It is according to a Hondurian prosecutor specializing in cases of state corruption which spoke to Al Jazeera under the cover of anonymity, for fear of professional reprisals.

The prosecutor considers that there is a strong possibility that the police had the weapons and the drugs to resell them on the black market.

Experts say that questions of corruption and abuse have come to characterize the “exception” of Honduras, a declaration of emergency which has suspended certain constitutional rights while granting greater powers to the army and the police.

Such measures are supposed to be temporary. The state of exception was declared for the first time in December 2022, in the name of the fight against drug traffickers and gangs.

But it has been extended at least 17 times since, often without the explicit approval of the Honduras Congress.

For human rights observers, continuous renewals have made alarms on the question of whether the exception is used as a shield for excess of the law.

In May, for example, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (Ohchr) exhorted The Honduran government “ends” the state of exception, citing systematic abuses in the hands of the security forces.

“The implementation of the state of exception has led to serious violations of human rights, in particular extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and raids without judicial supervision,” wrote the UN Office.

He added that the Honduras National Human Rights Commission (Conadeh) had reached similar conclusions.

Joaquin Mejia – An investigator of the team for reflection, investigation and communication, a Honduurian group for the defense of human rights – believes that these abuses are a trend under the state of exception.

“The biggest negative effect is that the National Commission for Human Rights has registered: that, from December 2022 to December 2024, 798 complaints at the human rights violations are attributed to the State Security Forces,” said Mejia.