Professor José Manuel Flores, FNRP member, assassinated

José Manuel Flores

On March 23, at three in the afternoon an unknown person was sighted in front of the Official High School Institute San Jose del Pedregal. The unusual presence of the stranger caused concerns among students and the more than 30 teachers that make up the staff of teachers that take care of the teaching obligations at school. Among the teachers was Professor of Social Science José Manuel Flores, who also had the role of teacher counselor.

Witnesses saw two pickup vehicles approaching from the rear of the premises of the institution, one green and another color white, apparently both year 2009.

Professor Manuel, as his friends called him, was in the back of the facility overseeing his pupils when he found his murderers. They had crossed the perimeter fence and fired their guns at close range. Professor Manuel was in a terrace and fell over but the murderers fired again. One of them lost his balaclava cap as they escaped through a whole they had made in the wired fence which serves as perimeter security. The teacher died instantly.

Thus they´ve murdered another member of the Resistance against the coup. Professor Manuel was a member of Socialist Workers Party (PST), wrote several articles, some of them published in the Tribuna newspaper and the SOCA online newspaper, of socialistic tendencies.

This is the first case of a teacher who was murdered inside educational facilities, in front of his peers and students. Those who ordered and planned the crime have a clear strategic purpose to set fear in the peaceful movement of the resistance by assassinating prominent leaders of the movement.

These crimes are being committed without compromising state security forces, for which they are working with transnational crime by hiring assassins from other countries who have come to Honduras to take revenge. Revenge against those who, in their pursuit of justice against the criminal aggression following the coup, broke glass, painted
walls, threw a bottle with gasoline, caricatured religious, human rights defenders and journalists [in favor of the coup], and gave nicknames to their aggressors.

SOURCE: CODEH

RELATED: Régimen se ensaña contra la resistencia: Encapuchados asesinan a maestro (Defensores en línea), and Organizaciones realizan audiencia ante la CIDH, mientras asesinan a otro miembro de la resistencia (Radio Progreso)

Posted in: Targeted assassinations, Teachers and student movement