TEGUCIGALPA — Police stepped up their
presence on the streets of Honduras Friday after President
Xiomara Castro
declared a state of emergency to quash a rise in gang activity in the Central
American nation.
اضافة اعلان
The small country has long been plagued by poverty,
gangs, and violence linked to drug trafficking. Gangs have recently been
extorting ordinary citizens as they go about their business.
“To strengthen efforts to recover lawless areas in
the neighborhoods, in villages, in departments, I declare a national state of
emergency,” said Castro on Thursday.
An AFP photographer reported a heavy presence of
special forces and other officers in the capital on Friday.
Police spokesman Mario Fu told AFP that first
arrests were made Friday, with four suspected gang members detained across the
country.
The state of emergency comes just days after
hundreds of bus and taxi drivers protested in the capital Tegucigalpa to demand
the government take steps to stop gangs from extorting a “war tax” from them.
Castro, elected the country’s first woman president
in January, declared “war on extortion, just as we declared war on corruption,
impunity, and drug trafficking.”
She urged the police to recover public spaces
“assaulted and controlled by organized crime and its gangs.”
She asked police to identify hotspots where “the
partial suspension of constitutional guarantees” would be necessary.
Police chief Gustavo Sanchez said he would dedicate
more money and at least 20,000 officers to the efforts to stamp out gang
activity.
Along with neighbors El Salvador and
Guatemala,
Honduras forms the so-called “triangle of death” plagued by the murderous gangs
called “maras” that control drug trafficking and organized crime.
In 2020, there were 37.6 recorded homicides per
100,000 inhabitants.
High poverty and unemployment, mixed with gang and
drug violence, forces nearly 800 Hondurans to leave the country every day,
mainly headed for the US, where more than a million already live, most of them
undocumented.
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