JINHA

NEWS CENTER – Honduran courts have ordered a 1.5-year prison sentence for women's rights activist Gladys Lanza for "defamation" of an official at the state-linked development agency FUNDEVI who sexually harassed female employees.

 Since the U.S.-supported coup in the country, women's rights and humans rights activists have faced a challenging atmosphere in Honduras, one of the world's most violent countries for women. Gladys, a survivor of the torture in the 1980s in Honduras, says the campaign against women's rights activists is only the most recent "open and shameless" example of the violence she has experienced under every regime in the country.

 Gladys is one of the leaders of the Visitación Padilla Women's Movement for Peace. The organization, named for one of the 20^th century's leading Honduran feminist intellectuals, works entirely with women to support cases against male perpetrators of violence, organize neighborhoods across the country and educate women in its feminist academy.

 The overall impunity rate of 95% for violence against women makes Visitación Padilla's struggle for women's basic rights a dangerous one.A woman in Honduras is killed every 16 hours and raped every three hours. According to the National Human Rights Comission (CONADEH), 4,460 women died under violent circumstances in the country between 2002 and 2014. 58% of them were killed in public places, many by strangers and in the massacres that have occurred frequently in recent years. Of the 400 reports by women of sexual violence between 2012 and 2014, only 60 ended in sentencing.

 The current case emerged from Visitación Padilla's work for justice for victims of harassment. Juan Carlos Reyes is a director of FUNDEVI (Foundation for Development of Urban and Rural Social Housing), tied to the Honduran state. In 2013, when Visitacíon Padilla women activists learned of Juan Carlos Reyes' harassment of a female employee, they led a series of demonstrations to publicize the case and denounce the serial harasser.But Juan Carlos Reyes received no punishment. Instead, he opened a defamation case against Gladys Lanza. He claimed in court that Gladys had "discriminated" against him on the basis of his male identity.

 Women's movement activists across the region demonstrated in solidarity with Gladys, bearing signs reading, "we are all Gladys Lanza" and emphasizing that the case against the activist was an attack on the women's movement in general. In February, Honduran courts found Gladys guilty. On Thursday, they issued her a 1.5-year prison sentence.

 "This decision against me is actually a decision targeted at the Visitación Padilla Women's Movement for Peace; it has just been realized in my person," said Gladys in an interview with JINHA. Since 2009, Gladys and other Visitación Padilla activists have been the target of a campaign of harassment, death threats and state violence. The state's role in encouraging violence against women and in turning a blind eye to the threats against women's rights campaigners is worrying.

 Her comrade Merly Eguigure found her tires slashed as she returned from a demonstration and found herself surrounded by police shortly after. Only fellow woman activists' solidarity actions savedMerly, who was detained for 24 hours, from also being tried. Another Visitación Padilla activistdiscovered her brakes cut, narrowly escaping death.

 Gladys herself received a number of threatening emails, ranging from a funeral announcement with her name on it to photographs of women on torture tables.The Inter-American Court for Human Rights called for Gladys to be put under protection, but the state has been reticent.

 Gladys says that women have been active in every movement for the oppressed in Honduras, fighting for the right to strike, to vote, for people's sovereignty over their land, for political prisoners, and against militarism and violence against women. Visitación Padilla is just one example of the long struggle for Honduran women's rights and democracy, in which Honduran women like Paca Navas de Miralda, María Luisa Medina, Graciela Bogran, Elena Holt, Teresina Rossi, Zenaida Velásquez and Bertha Cáceres have led the charge.

 "As defenders of human rights and women's rights, we will continue with the same conduct, attitude and commitment, even if it means we have to go to jail," said Gladys. "We reaffirm our commitment to the cause of women and we declare our disobedience and rebellion against the cruel and unjust patriarchal system that breeds inequality and discrimination."

 (cm)