Humanitarian crisis on Honduras-Nicaragua Border

Note by Tortilla con Sal : Events are moving so quickly on the Nicaragan-Honduran border that this interview with Dr. Alfonso Pon may already have been overtaken by events. The UN agencies may well be taking a hand in resolving the humanitarian aspects of the complicated problem at Las Manos. It is an open question whether they can do anything for the equally severe or perhaps more severe difficulties people are facing in the El Paraiso area on the Honduran side of the border. Individuals like Dr. Pon - Vice Minister for Health in the government of President Manuel Zelaya - are under all kinds of stress : fatigue, their own anxiety, pressure due to the heavily politicised context. Estimates of the number of people who have crossed over to Nicaragua from Honduras are hit and miss because there doesn't seem to be a systematic attempt to register details of those who have arrived. In any case the number seems certainly to be over 3000. The exact number may become clearer today July 28th when all the people who were moved to Ocotal over the weekend are supposedly being accommdated in an encampment at Las Manos

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Caption: Hondurans arriving in Las Manos meet to organize healthcare, food and accommodation

TcS: We are with Doctor Ponce Pon, he is here supervising some of the aid, there is a mountain of people who have arrived here in Las Manos, next to Honduras. There are people arriving in Honduras from Nicaragua aren’t there?

How are they arriving, doctor?

Dr Pon: Because the situation is unusual, in that the army has taken the highways, the people have taken the option of going across the mountains, crossing properties and haciendas, rivers and gullies, whatever way they can get here, arriving in a sorry state, exhausted, muddy, hungry, dirty and for us here, thanks to the cooperation of Nicaraguan civil society we are able to help them, we are giving attention to each person as they arrive in groups of 10, 20 and 30 people, and also groups of 150 people like the one that is arriving right now.

TcS: In Tetele on Friday night the 24 of July, today is the 26 so it was 24th July in the night we are calculating that there was between 300 and 500 people and now there are many more. Could you give me an idea more or less of how many there are?

Dr Pon: I can’t give you an exact number but I can give an approximation by how much food we are buying, and it has surpassed five thousand people who have already crossed the border and thanks to the help of the Nicaraguan civil society we are giving medical assistance and we have four or five Nicaraguan doctors, we are feeding them with that help and the last big group to arrive was almost a thousand people who arrived at dawn.

TcS: Then, with this many people, I imagine you were not prepared to receive that quantity of people?

Dr Pon: No, definitely not. We were not prepared for such a large number of people, that has brought problems so we have been improvising shelters, kitchens so people can cook, some people are lost here, tired, so we are making a list to buy shoes and provide clothing because they arrived with torn clothes, unfortunately that is so sad to see the state in which people are arriving - in a terrible state.

TcS: Would it be exaggerating to speak of it as a serious humanitarian problem?

Dr Pon: I believe we have a really grave humanitarian problem. In my case I have been focused on housing people to provide human conditions where they are, and I am working with the support of friends organised by Nicaraguan civil society to provide them with one or two meals a day, we are trying to improve the way it’s organised, to provide different types of food. The conditions are always subhuman.

TcS: I think it’s necessary for the Red Cross and other international organisations to take more interest in what is happening here?

Dr Pon: Precisely. Yesterday I was trying to contact the Red Cross because we have real limitations and the Red Cross has more possibilities to cross the border, and today you can see the Red Cross has been bringing humanitarian aid.

TcS: Then in terms of food and medical supplies are you receiving enough or is it a big problem?

Dr Pon: Exactly, about an hour ago we finished a meeting with the doctors and we made a list of medicines and in a few minutes I will send the list to the city of Botan and Esteli to obtain the medicines we need. Some people became ill on the way, walking 10-15 hours, obviously they are arriving with health problems. I needed to give them attention and I am worried because someone told me that there are thousands of people coming across the mountains. That means that in a few hours we will be trying to fit them in, with the support of the people of Nicaragua to prepare, because I understand that between now and tomorrow we are expecting an average of about two thousand more people. We sent a person that knows this region well, they say that there are many more people coming, and there are many people who have fallen and we are trying to co-ordinate help to get them out by people who know the area.

TcS: What military presence is there, because we have talked about the militarisation of the highways, but what do you know about the military presence in the mountains, what are the risks?

Dr Pon: Today I am especially worried because as you know with the curfew that begins at 6am and ends at 6pm but from 5.30 am they announced on the radio that the curfew begins again from 6pm to 6am all around the border where those people are. That represents a big problem because we have been informed that some people have been coming through the mountains and come across groups of military who have detained them and loaded them into military trucks and taken them back to the capital.

TcS: And in terms of the mobilisation of the people in the whole country and here in Las Manos, are you giving advice to everyone about this area?

Dr Pon: The main recommendation is about the people on the roads and highways, who are the people that worry me the most, there are so many people who have gone more than two days without eating. The Red Cross I think is going to intervene, to provide food and water because those people are many, one of the members of the Red Cross was telling me that he saw 14 military checkpoints between Tegucigalpa and Las Manos, something never seen before in this country at such a high level, not even during the Cold War.

TcS: For the people that don’t understand this humanitarian problem in the mountains on the border between Honduras and Nicaragua, what is the cause? The right in Nicaragua is against Zelaya, asking him to leave.

Dr Pon: I think people are getting away from a place of terror and they can see that there are better conditions in Nicaragua and so they come here. The situation is so bad that the people I recommend not to come, they say they cannot live in a country where they are constantly in a state of siege. People say that thousands of people have been detained, I don’t know what they are doing with the people considering the physical space in the jails because where can they put so many people. The people that talk to me say they are escaping a regime of terror.

TcS: Then how do you see the problem in depth?

Dr Pon: There were some people that were linked to work with the government, they are afraid of being captured because there is a state of terror, the problem is not so much for those who were linked to the government, that isn’t the main cause, the main cause is the [coup’s] resistance to the opinion poll. Many local officials throughout the country were supporting the opinion poll, so there are many arrest warrants out for these public officials Obviously they and the people linked to these officials are the people that we are seeing in Nicaragua today. Not all of them have detention orders because they were linked to President Zelaya. Some of them were because they were with the officials of those towns supporting the fourth ballot [referendum for a constituent assembly] which makes them an object of persecution.

TcS: Okay, the coup government threatened to take to court all those who supported the opinion poll.

Dr Pon: Here, for reasons of security, I cannot give their names, but there are 15 officials that are here in Nicaragua who have arrest orders out against them in Honduras. Today I found three, four, five officials that came from Guatemala to refuge in Nicaragua, obviously they want to co-operate with the humanitarian situation in Nicaragua, they are officials related to the holding of the fourth ballot, escaping from the coup regime.

TcS: So in legal terms, they are political refugees?

Dr Pon: They are political refugees as the arrest warrants came about because of the opinion poll, because this is a political issue. For their ideals, for doing what they think is the right thing to do, there are arrest warrants out against them, so they have no other option but to flee the country.

ENDS

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