More than 600 members of Honduras’ Military Police of Public Order (PMOP) have been deployed «indefinitely» on the country’s borders to prevent the entry of criminals, four days after authorities declared «war on extortion» in the country.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro decreed a national emergency on Thursday due to insecurity in the Central American nation and declared «war» on criminal groups operating in Honduran territory.
With this measure, Castro has instructed security authorities to establish «states of exception and suspend constitutional guarantees» wherever necessary. He has also ordered the Military Police and the Armed Forces to carry out these border controls which began this Sunday.
The operations will be intensified in the departments of Choluteca and Valle (south); La Paz, Intibucá, Ocotepeque, Copán and Santa Bárbara (west), Cortés (north), El Paraíso (east) and Gracias a Dios (east), bordering El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua, according to the police communiqué published this Sunday by ‘La Prensa’.
Honduran authorities have declared a state of emergency in more than a hundred neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, the two main cities of the country and those with the highest rates of violence by groups formed by youths and adults, known as «maras».
