Kidnapped: Censorship in Honduras

by Dina Meza, Jill Powess (Translator)

Freedom of expression in Honduras has been kidnapped. Those who are afraid of the truth attempt to imprison it in the depths of the earth. Kidnapped seeks to expose the problems for freedom of expression in journalism and literature in Honduras, the forms of censorship that have been introduced to conceal the truth, but also the creativity of Hondurans who refuse to be defeated in the face of this oppressive system.
Kidnapped describes how the Honduran state, responsible for protecting this right, essential for democracy, has both in the past and present placed obstacles in the paths of those who decide to defy censorship, with harmful and even fatal consequences.

The Honduran journalist and human rights defender Dina Meza (1963) is active on the field of freedom of writing in different ways. She is currently President of PEN Honduras, part of PEN International, and director of the pasosdeanimalgrande.com digital newspaper which covers freedom of expression issues and the general human rights
situation in Honduras. Dina Meza received Amnesty International UK’s Journalism
Under Threat Award in 2007 and the PEN International/Oxfam Novib Freedom of Expression award in 2014. Also in 2014, she was one of Reporters without Borders’ 100 Information Heroes and a nominee for the Index on Censorship Freedom of Expression Awards.

A publication of the Eva Tas Foundation.

The Eva Tas Foundation encourages publication and promotion of texts that are, no matter where and no matter how, subject to censorship.

74 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 14, 2015

Reviews

[Anwen Hayward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit, I knew absolutely nothing about Honduras before I read this book. I didn’t know there was a coup in 2009, and I didn’t know that Honduras has one of the highest rates of murder of transgender people in the world, which is something that Meza explores. After reading this book, I did a little research into the current political climate of Honduras, and learnt that some of the human rights violations examined in this book have since been brought to the attentions of international Human Rights courts, and have led to rulings about the culpability of the government at the time, such as the murder of Vicky Hernández, which occurred on the very first night of the coup in 2009. In the 11 years since this book was published, Honduras has again held presidential elections, and as such some of the topics Meza covers here have shifted in terms of prevalence or specificity. Reading about these crimes in a book that was published in 2015 felt strangely prescient; it’s a snapshot of Honduras at a very particular time, and it’s interesting to see the ways in which the country has (and hasn’t) changed since.

(Full review at The Global Women's Library.)