Keyla no se suicidó, la mataron

Rosie Stevenson

On the morning of the 8th February, social media in Honduras was awash with demands of justice for Keyla Martínez, after an official police statement announced the suicide of the 26-year-old student nurse, following her arrest the night before. News outlets shared a photo of her smiling face in a selfie from her Facebook page. Nobody could believe the statement to be true.

Keyla Martínez: https://www.facebook.com/unetvhn/posts/3661963880598966

The National Police of Honduras claimed that they had arrested Keyla the night before for breaking a national curfew, when she had been drunk in a male friend’s car in the small town of La Esperanza, Intibucá. Deputy Commissioner Melvin Alvarenga stated that no blood-alcohol test had been performed, but that it was assumed the young woman had drunk two or three beers. Keyla, accused of public indecency, had been transferred to a cell where hours later, she hung herself from the bars of a window using her sweater. The statement confirmed that officers had taken her to hospital where life-saving efforts were unsuccessful, and that an autopsy would not be necessary.

As public attention grew and more evidence came to light, it became clear that an urgent investigation was needed into the circumstances surrounding Keyla’s death. Her family rejected the claims of public indecency and suicide, a video emerged of the arrest where Keyla appeared calm whilst trying to reassure her friend, and the official police mug-shot began to circulate, showing Keyla wearing a sleeveless blouse and no sweater. Suspicion grew, and the media storm attracted the attention of human-rights defenders and feminist activism groups from Honduras and further afield, demanding an explanation from the Police and organising protests and rallies. On Facebook and Instagram, a viral message was shared under the hashtag #JusticiaParaKeyla:

La noche de ayer salí un momento para relajarme tras haber acabado mi semana de clases como estudiante de enfermería, la policía nacional de La Esperanza, Intibucá, me detuvo supuestamente por incumplir el toque de queda y me trasladaron a la celda de detención en donde amaneció mi cuerpo sin vida esta mañana.

Ahora los agentes policiales se niegan a que me practiquen una autopsia para determinar mi causa de muerte.

Lo cuento yo porque Keyla Martínez no pudo.

#JusticiaParaKeyla

[Last night, I went out for a moment to relax after a week of student-nursing classes. I was detained by The National Police of La Esperanza, Intibucá, allegedly for breaking the curfew. They moved me into a detainment cell, where my lifeless body lay this morning.

Now, the police refuse to let an autopsy be performed to determine the cause of my death.

I tell this story because Keyla Martínez couldn’t.

#JusticeforKeyla]

Following her death, vigils and protests took place all over the country, leading to five arrests in the capital, Tegucigalpa. Speaking to local media, Keyla’s parents tearfully described her as “una excelente hija, una excelente hermana”. They demanded an autopsy, eventually conducted by Dr Julissa Villanueva, who highlighted that public pressure had forced the Public Prosecutor's Office to reveal the cause of the young student’s death. Villanueva sustained that this was a symbolic case for Honduras, given that the cry for justice from external human-rights organisations, such as Amnesty International, had obliged state entities to act truthfully.

Protests in La Esperanza, Intibucá by Martín Cálix: https://www.instagram.com/p/CLDjVCoHDJI/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link

Villanueva’s autopsy concluded that Keyla had died from “mechanical asphyxiation”, tweeting photos of her body alongside the report that proved torture, intense trauma, and sexual abuse. Keyla had been murdered.

The conclusion of Villanueva’s autopsy will not mean justice for Keyla: an investigation will be hindered by various obstacles and drawn out by the State. There have already been accusations that the friend she was arrested with that night had been threatened or paid off by the Police to corroborate their suicide story in interviews with news stations. Hers will not be the last in a history of state-sponsored murders, in a country where allegations of extrajudicial killings have beset the authorities for decades.

Keyla’s story caught public attention instantly, perhaps because she was a young professional in a relatively safe part of the country, because of her smiley Facebook profile picture, because she was cisgender, or simply because the official Police story was so unbelievable. But what of the other women who were murdered in Honduras that same day? The Observatorio de la Violencia at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras estimates that one woman is murdered in the country every sixteen hours. With statistics like this, external pressure from international organisations can only be effectively leveraged in particular cases, whilst the majority of violence against women goes unpunished and unreported.

No woman is safe under a regime that has the highest rates of femicide per 100,000 women in all of Latin America. The machista culture responsible for these statistics is part of the dominant, patriarchal state that is facilitated partly by religion and the media. It prevails due to social fragmentation and economic needs that put immense pressure on romantic relationships and family life. To be a woman in Honduras is to be in danger, to not be protected by the very systems who claim to “Servir y Proteger” [“Serve and Protect”], the National Police of Honduras’ motto. The recent hurricanes ETA and IOTA have only amplified the precarious living conditions and vulnerability of women, who were already suffering huge economic and social inequality as a result of the pandemic.

Alongside the murder of Keyla and many other women, limited access to reproductive healthcare is promoted by this patriarchal system. Lawmakers in Honduras changed the constitution at the end of January, making it almost impossible for abortion to ever be legalised, their laws having already been some of the strictest in Latin America. This was the very same month in which there was, quite rightly, worldwide celebration of Argentina’s landmark legalisation of abortion, that is expected to spur reform across the continent. In Honduras, such progress seems unlikely.

Keyla Martínez is one of 35 women reported to have been murdered in Honduras since the beginning of 2021. There have likely been countless other gender-based and extrajudicial killings that have gone undocumented and unpunished in that time. With such staggering numbers and the deep roots of machismo in all spheres of society, hashtags like #NiUnaMenos can seem like a scream into the void. It’s the responsibility of the international community to bear witness, acting to resolve this systematic denial of human rights in Honduras, without letting ground-breaking decisions such as those in Argentina eclipse what is surely a pull in the opposite direction.

‘She’s a pure Albanian’: the Greek-Cypriot diaspora’s response to Eleni Foureira was a re-affirmation of racial and religious intolerance

New Caledonia independence referendum: a tale of France in the Pacific