Dina Meza
The Human Rights Crisis in Honduras
Dina Meza: A Journalist Living Dangerously in Honduras
They’ve kidnapped people. Some haven’t been let go alive, others have. They have been threatened that if you don’t stop your work, in defence of human rights or working with the Resistance, then we’re going to kill you. And, like that, calmly, they watch us. They follow us. They assault our organizations. And those responsible aren’t punished…We have a human rights emergency.
Dina Meza is a journalist and a member of the Comité de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras - COFADEH (Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared in Honduras). She is the coordinator of the Iniciativa Periodismo y Democracia (Initiative for Journalism and Democracy) as well as being active in movements in defence of rights of women and campesinos (peasants). In the past, she has also worked for Cofadeh and for the Women’s Movement for Peace “Padilla Visitation”.
Human rights defenders suffer extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment as well as judicial harassment, threats and stigmatisation. Journalists, lawyers, prosecutors, those defending the rights of women, children, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) community, indigenous and Afro-Honduran communities, and those working on environmental and land rights issues are particularly at risk.
