Welcome back to World Brief, where we’re looking at a deadly prison riot in Honduras, U.S.-India talks on defense cooperation and China, and new U.S. sanctions on Myanmar’s Tatmadaw.

Tragedy struck Honduras on Tuesday when at least 46 women were killed in a prison riot in Tamara, roughly 30 miles northwest of the capital. The unrest was sparked by fighting between two powerful rival gangs within the prison, Barrio 18 and MS-13; the two gangs are kept in separate cellblocks, but members of Barrio 18 reportedly opened the cellblock housing the rival MS-13 gang members and attacked them, setting fire to a cell and shooting and stabbing the inmates using guns and machetes that had been smuggled in.

Locals indicate that the inmates had warned of an impending assault, but prison authorities had simply ignored their concerns. Honduran President Xiomara Castro confirmed such fears on Tuesday, saying the street gangs appeared to have planned the riot and that prison authorities likely allowed the assault to occur. Julissa Villanueva, head of Honduras’s penal system, suggested the riot was a response to recent government efforts to crack down on illegal activity inside the country’s prisons. Most of these, including the women’s prison targeted Tuesday, are controlled by gangs. “We will not back down,” Villanueva warned in an aired announcement.

Since Castro became president in January 2022, her government has focused on combatting corruption, gang violence, and human rights abuses. This culminated in the establishment of emergency powers, beginning in November 2022, to fight the country’s rising number of extortion cases. Under these powers, which were most recently extended until late May, Castro suspended some constitutional rights—including restricting freedom of movement and assembly, as well as allowing home searches and arrests without a warrant—across 123 local districts and deployed soldiers to fight criminal gangs.

However, gang violence continues to plague the Central American nation. Between 2004 and 2018, around 191,000 people were displaced by gang violence in Honduras, Human Rights Watch reported. In April, the Norwegian Refugee Council further warned of armed conflict, issuing a report detailing “war-like levels of violence” caused by street gangs. “The arrival of Xiomara Castro’s government a year ago represented a historic opportunity to change the course of the nation and revindicate human rights,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, the Americas director at Amnesty International, said in January of this year, “but there has been insufficient change to address the grave crisis facing the Honduran population.”

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Rolling out the red carpet. U.S. President Joe Biden welcomed Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the White House on Wednesday for a two-day state visit. Biden and Modi plan to focus on defense cooperation, artificial intelligence, and economic investments. The conversation will also touch on human rights and democratic backsliding in India, though U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters ahead of the meeting that Biden will not “lecture” Modi on human rights, saying the White House will make its views known in a way where “we don’t seek to lecture or assert that we don’t have challenges ourselves.” The U.S. State Department issued a report in March detailing “significant human rights issues” in the country.

Democratic backsliding under Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party has many human rights advocates and policy experts questioning Biden’s decision to appease Indian diplomatic and military requests, such as greater arms sales. But common ground on China may bridge the divide, FP columnist C. Raja Mohan argued, as Washington tries to convince New Delhi to act as a strategic counterweight against Beijing to hamper its growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.

Sanctions hit Myanmar. Human rights issues continued to dominate the U.S. agenda on Wednesday following the Treasury Department’s announcement of new sanctions on Myanmar’s ruling military junta, known as the Tatmadaw. The sanctions target Myanmar’s defense ministry as well as two banks—state-owned Myanmar Foreign Trade Bank and the Myanma Investment and Commercial Bank—which are used by junta members to buy arms from other countries. According to the U.S. Treasury, Myanmar’s Tatmadaw has relied on foreign actors, such as Russian entities, to buy materials that support its “brutal repression” of political dissidents and skirt Western trade barriers.

Washington has repeatedly used economic punishments to denounce the Tatmadaw’s human rights abuses, including its ethnic cleansing campaign against the country’s Rohingya minority population, which the Biden administration formally declared a genocide in March 2022. The United States also houses Myanmar’s National Unity Government, the body that most international actors recognize as Myanmar’s legitimate governing coalition, FP’s Robbie Gramer and journalist Mary Yang reported.

A rainbow win. Many Estonians are waving rainbow flags following the country’s legalization of same-sex marriage on Tuesday. The bill, which amends the country’s Family Law Act, allows any two adults to marry “regardless of their gender.” The new legislation also grants same-sex couples the right to adopt children. “This is a decision that does not take anything away from anyone but gives something important to many,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said.

Tuesday’s parliamentary decision makes Estonia the first Baltic country to legalize same-sex marriage. While much of Western Europe has adopted LGBTQ protections already, many nations in Central and Eastern Europe, having spent years under Soviet control, continue to deny their citizens these rights. “My message [to Central Europe] is that it’s a difficult fight, but marriage and love is something that you have to promote,” Kallas added. The new law will go into effect next year.

Time to add Ocomtun to your travel bucket list. The newly discovered ancient Mayan city is located in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and includes large pyramid-like buildings, numerous altars, lots of stone columns, and even a ball court. According to local archaeologists, Ocomtun was likely an important Mayan city center between 250 and 1000 AD.