Negligent Central American Leaders Fuel Deepening Refugee Crisis Erika Guevara-Rosas - Inter Press Service
go to original October 21, 2016

The number of people from Central America seized by U.S. immigration authorities at the southern border outnumbered people from Mexico for the second year in a row, according to Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. (wochit News)

One word could undoubtedly summarize the past year with painful precision: Refugees.

We all have seen the heartbreaking images of men, women and children desperately jumping on makeshift boats in the Mediterranean or the Andaman Seas, narrowly escaping death in search for a safer future. The bodies of lifeless toddlers washed ashore. The harrowing cries of mothers and fathers who lost everything trying to save their families, only to be denied a safe-haven in other countries.

In an often-ignored corner of the world, equally tragic images abound, showing a dreadful and rapidly deteriorating refugee crisis that many do not even know about.

El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras are not Syria. There is no official war there. But even in the absence of one, the alarming death toll in each one of these countries show that there might as well be.

More people are murdered in Central America’s “Northern Triangle” – as the three countries are jointly known – than in most conflict zones. El Salvador, for example, with a homicide rate of 108 per 100,000 inhabitants, is currently more deadly than Iraq with 48.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Honduras and Guatemala are not far behind with homicide rates of 63.75 and 34.99 per 100,000 inhabitants respectively.

And it’s not only murders that make life in these small countries nearly impossible.

Most people struggle to survive under the merciless watch of criminal gangs that control what people do and can’t do, what they can talk about and even where they can walk. They force bus drivers and shop owners, sex workers and anyone else to pay hefty fees for the “privilege” of not being killed.

And the authorities are doing very little to protect them – with police even abusing young teenagers and others to force them to “confess” to helping gangs in a desperate attempt to show they are taking action against this unbearable violence.

It should come as no surprise that people feel they have no option but to flee home, often with little more than what they can carry with them.

Read the rest at Inter Press Service

Related: Obama Admits Increase in Migration to U.S. from CentAm Due to "Desperation" (EFE)

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