Honduran student dies in police custody after breaking curfew, sparking protests

Arrested for breaking curfew regulations, 26-year-old Honduran nursing student Keyla Martínez died in her cell. She was arrested in the community of La Esperanza, just 150 kilometers from the capital Tegucigalpa.

A police report said Ms. Martínez committed suicide, but forensic experts say she choked to death. The news sparked a wave of protests in Honduras and raised questions about how many Latin American governments are using brutal ways to enforce isolation measures.

In countries such as Venezuela, El Salvador, and Paraguay, governments have gone about enforcing repressive and abusive isolation measures, including placing tens of thousands of people in mandatory state-run quarantine centers, which operate more like prisons than anything else. 

In Colombia, a lawyer was killed — also in police custody — after violating quarantine rules. In El Salvador, President Nayib Bukele used coronavirus restrictions as a front to subject the country’s prison population to excruciating conditions — with many being summarily killed.

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