A Simcoe County group that spent the last 19 months calling on Canada’s Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland for help with a political prisoner in Honduras took their fight to her riding this week.
The membership of the Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor hosted a meeting at St. Stephens-in-the-Fields Church on College Street, where Freeland serves as the local MP. The Monitor group formed last year when Edwin Espinal and several other Hondurans were arrested and put into a maximum-security prison. Espinal is a known human rights defender in Honduras and he is the husband of Karen Spring, who grew up in Elmvale, Ontario.
Espinal was in prison in conditions Amnesty International and the United Nations described as ‘inhumane’ for nearly 19 months. He’s been released on bail, but prosecutors have appealed his release and are asking for Honduran courts to put him back in the max-security facility.
Throughout those 19 months, the Simcoe County group and the Spring family from Elmvale have been constantly petitioning Freeland to get involved in Espinal’s case, and further, to condemn the Honduras government for its treatment of human rights defenders and protestors in the country. Freeland did not respond to their requests and made no public statements about political prisoners or election fraud in Honduras.
On Sept. 18, the group hosted a meeting with a panel of experts on College Street near Kensington Market.
Karen Spring spoke first, sharing her experience as a Canadian and a human rights defender living in Honduras.
She said her husband, Espinal, is an example of the people who are staying in Honduras to try to change the day-to-day lives of the people who live there. Others have fled in caravans, many in fear of an increasingly violent military police directed by the government.
“I’ve seen things get worse and worse,” said Spring, who has been in Honduras since 2009. “Two years ago the Honduran government didn’t open fire on protestors, now they do it regularly.”
A group of Honduro-Canadians joined the audience for the panel discussion. Together, they form the Honduro-Canada Solidarity Community, and they too have been crying out for help for Honduras for the last 19 months and for much longer.
Pati Flores said the group has been organizing protests and raising awareness about the state of Honduras since a 2009 military coup-d’etat.
“As Latin Americans, we knew what happened,” said one member of the collective.
But something like the Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor, and Karen Spring’s connection to a political prisoner has helped more people understand what Hondurans face every day.
“It brings a Canadian perspective,” said Flores. “For us, it was important to really support that especially because it’s a white woman - we have to be honest - she has a voice that is a little more elevated.”
Though, Flores acknowledged Spring also faces a difficult challenge to be heard by Canadian and US government.
The Solidarity group wrote letters and emails to Canadian MPs including Chrystia Freeland about Espinal’s case.
“We are doing everything we can,” said Flores. “We are screaming. But our stories are not heard.”
Flores immigrated to Canada in 1995. Her father is Canadian, and she said she was privileged to be able to move to Canada. Last year she visited Honduras for the first time in about ten years.
She said she was shocked to see snipers on the roofs in her neighbourhood - in places she remembers playing soccer as a child. But most of all, it was Karaoke with her family that showed her how much had changed.
There’s a chant many Hondurans use during protests that goes “Fuera JOH,” which translates to Out with JOH - the initials of Juan Orlando Hernandez, president of Honduras.
There’s now a song for the chant as well. Flores said her family wanted to sing it for her, but they told her they had to close the windows first.
“My family are not activists,” said Flores. “They have never been politically involved. They are still working, but they are afraid. To me, that was a clear sign of a dictatorship.”
Xica Rodriguez, also a member of the Solidarity community attended the Sept. 18 meeting. She came to Canada 18 years ago as a refugee claimant and was granted citizenship due to the discrimination she faced in Honduras.
Last year, her 26-year-old cousin was killed while on a migrant caravan travelling through Mexico. He was hit in the head with a rubber mallet and killed instantly. He has a child at home in Honduras.
Rodriguez' family is all still in Honduras, as is Flores’.
The Sept. 18 event included speakers Yurissa Varela, a member of the Honduro-Canada Solidarity Community; Yves Engler a Montreal-based author and activist; and Tyler Shipley, an author and York University professor who has written about Canada’s role in Honduras since the 2009 military coup.
Varela travelled to Mexico in November, 2018, where she met with a caravan of migrants fleeing Latin America. There she saw a diverse group of people with different stories to tell. She said her conversations with those in the caravan reminded her the problems they face go back to the 1400s and colonialism. She said so many of the people in the caravans had their land taken from them, or lost access to food and water because a Canadian mining company or tourism company wanted the land for mining or timeshare homes.
She met one young adult male who said he was trying to protect his community from a mining company after their land. He said he had to leave because now the police were coming after him.
“Money is what’s controlling the situation,” she said.
The panellists told the group gathered at the St. Stephens-in-the-field church to petition the Canadian government to stop sending aid to Honduras because those the aid is intended for never see it. They also encouraged Canadians to hold Canadian mining and tourism companies accountable for their business in Honduras and the way in which they are interacting with Indigenous people in Honduras.
For more on this subject, visit the Simcoe County Honduras Rights Monitor website here.
