In Honduras, the government has extended a state of emergency, which was declared in December to combat gang crime, by 45 days. The state of emergency is also being extended to new areas because the intervention has produced “good results”, according to the government.
Since December 6, thousands of agents have been deployed in poor neighborhoods in Honduras to fight organized crime in this way. The measure is mainly aimed at the two largest gangs in the country, Pandilla 18 and MS-13.
The state of emergency would initially apply for 30 days. During that period, certain constitutional guarantees were suspended. For example, the police were able to arrest people without a warrant in 89 neighborhoods in the capital Tegucigalpa and in 73 districts of San Pedro Sula, the industrial capital of the country.
A report published on January 2 shows that the murder rate in Honduras, one of the most violent countries in the world, has fallen to its lowest level in 16 years (35.79 per 100,000 inhabitants). The authorities attribute that decrease to the “implementation of the new security strategies”. In the past period, 1,371 arrests were made among members of the ‘maras’, the criminal gangs that terrorize the population in the ‘triangle of death’ (Honduras, Salvador, Guatemala).
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