August 2020 Honduras Coup and Pandemic Update (tags)
This August 2020, we see Honduran people continue to suffer the lack of healthcare and the militarisation under the pandemic, with stories of majorly blatant examples of the dictatorship’s approach to people, arresting and killing a 74 year old healthy man for ‘breaking the curfew’ outside his own home, disappearing a 16 year old whose family had been involved in ‘Where is the Money?’ campaigns, and arresting a COVID-19 frontline doctor, preventing his delivery of an oxygen tank to a patient who needed it, the doctor being someone critical of the JOH dictatorship regime. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2020/09/29/august-2020-honduras-coup-and-pandemic-update/
July 2020 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
This July 2020 in Honduras we saw many killings and disappearances against activists and we saw many COVID-19 deaths including of a political prisoner, an organiser, health care workers and jorunalists. Living under a dictatorship regime where global and national capital, together with regime leaders, continue to profit through laundering and exploiting the people and the land – when you put a pandemic into that equation it’s a disaster, as we can see in Honduras. Government offers no protection for its poor majority, the money officially designated for healthcare doesn’t translate into actual healthcare, and there is no welfare to enable people to stay home, but the military is controlling the streets and spreading the illness. Communities and organisations continue to campaign for the ‘Where is the money?’ campaign, with voices reverberating from zoom conferences, to managing to stage large letters across highways, printing the question on roads for drivers to see, and on walls for passers-by – people must have found holes in the militarisation. They paint their pained words about losing increasing numbers of fellow Hondurans to death from COVID-19, lives lost due to government’s greed and lies. This July 2020 we saw many attacks against people and organisers, and we continue to see that on the other hand, big businesses that don’t even have environmental permits are free to move around, operate, and act in ways that are harmful to people and environment. And similar to discourse familiar to all of us worldwide about balancing the economy over staying home, this regime, like others, is broadcasting that the nation only has a chance of surviving the pandemic, if ‘development (mega) projects’ of mining, logging, energy etc go ahead and if people also put up with low wages (not to mention threats, killings, and arrests to impose opposed projects) so that large profits can be made from them. International development finance organisations also continue to ignore the violence meted out by capital and by the regime and fuel this fire, passing loans to the regime and ignoring cries from communities who dream of a different kind of ‘development’. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/july-2020-honduras-coup-and-pandemic-update/
March 2020 Honduras coup and pandemic update (tags)
March 2019 Honduras coup update At the beginning of this month, people commemorated that 4 years had passed since Berta Caceres the indigenous feminist environmentalist and anticapitalist leader was murdered, and continued to question how those who had ordered the murder were getting away with this. A teacher and writer who lived a life critical of the dictatorship regimes was murdered. Meanwhile, another school is left with no teachers. The pandemic also arrived in Honduras this month, devastating a people already hungry, lacking healthcare access, and militarised, bringing about a much worse state of affairs. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2020/04/30/march-2020-honduras-coup-update/
October 2019 Honduras Coup update (tags)
Summary: A campesino of the Bajo Aguan territory struggle was kidnapped by soldiers and murdered. Political prisoner Rommel’s mental health crisis forced a transfer to the psychiatric hospital. A Garífuna kindy teacher killed. Campesinos growing food in Siguatepeque were oppressed by cops and courts. A Libre party leader was assassinated. A journalist’s family home was attacked. Police intimidated another media. 18 October 2019 was also a date of major protests nationally because the regime president JOH’s brother Tony Hernández – also then parliamentarian – was declared guilty in New York as a drug trafficker and assassin. Police attacked many times with gases and arrests against ongoing protests against the dictatorship. A teacher leader was kidnapped and left for dead. A Miskita indigenous leader and spouse (teacher) were murdered by hitmen. One more Guapinol community member who opposed Mining company Inversiones Los Pinares was arrested.
July 2019 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2019/09/06/july-2019-honduras-coup-update/ As barricades and school occupations continued from having started at the end of April, repression against students continue to be severe, and the struggle is in the backdrop of a dengue epidemic that the Honduran healthcare system, denied of resources from the state, is not handling. In Choluteca where the social struggle is reputed to be the strongest, a heavy hunt for the ‘leader’ was confessed by the police, and also an 11 year old daughter of a social leader was assassinated.
May 2019 Honduras Coup update (tags)
This May 2019 in Honduras, starting with May Day, and culminating in 2 days of general strike in the continued struggle against the privatisation of education and healthcare. Way too many gunshots in different protests, and brutal repression generally. Several killed. Read on for details
March 2019 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
In March 2019, one journalist who has been critical of local mayors and MPs was assassinated, other journalists have been threatened and one was captured. Territory defenders have been shot at with gunfire, or have soldiers attempt to destroy their home. This and other news from this month here. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2019/05/03/march-2019-honduras-coup-update/
May 2018 Honduras coup update (tags)
This May had repression including of May Day protests around Honduras, and lots of attacks against defenders of land, environment and territory including one murder, a number of political prisoners released on bail but a few remain locked up, attacks against journalists, and the congress moves towards making compulsory both military service and bible reading in schools.. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2018/06/11/honduras-coup-update-may-2018/
Part 5: Honduras Coup Repeat Update: 16-31 January 201 (tags)
This fortnight of 16-31 January in Honduras. The dictatorship took possession. People never stopped blocking the roads, determined to not live under a dictatorship. Several assassinations against people of barricades. More political prisoners including Edwin Espinal locked up in La Tolva maximum security prison. Teargases. Gunshots. As well as calling for JOH to get out, farmers are taking land, banana workers are on strike, communities are blocking machinery of dam companies from destroying their rivers https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/
August 2017 Honduras coup update (tags)
This August 2017 in Honduras. El Libertador newspaper owners were attempted against with gunfire. Two other journalists had gunshots at their houses when they were sleeping inside. Students struggle continue at the uni, they faced several violent evictions this month, smear campaigns, more charges, more threats and intimidation, and now that strikes have stopped classes for two months, authorities announced that lecturers will no longer be paid. Another blockading struggle against the installation of a hydroelectricity dam has faced massive repression this months including violent evictions and arrests, having their camp burned down, physical and psychological mob attack .. news including about these, see below https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/
July 2017 Honduras coup update (tags)
This July 2017 in Honduras. A sociology student is hunted down and murdered, in the backdrop of a lot of persecution against uni students including arrests, violent evictions, 5 years suspensions. Several leaders of indigenous organisation Copinh were attempted against twice, with the intention of pushing them all over the edge
January 2017 Honduras coup update (tags)
The January update is up. First up is a call out from Copinh for actions in March, one year on from Bertha's murder, but also, her birth month, and Copinh's birth month. And there's been a report coming out from Global Witness on Honduras, the state reacted furiously to this. And in lawmaking, Honduran state wants to make it law that cops and soldiers kill people in Honduras - it happens but they want to make it law. And, a gunfiring violent eviction against another farmers occupation. Another journalist killed. Melon workers fight for their rights. 17 year old killed by soldier. Read more on the blog.
May 2016 Honduras coup update (tags)
Its been a heavy month in Honduras. A resistance activist Tomás was murdered on May day in Tegucigalpa. There have been lots of attacks against people who are part of Copinh or who accompany copinh, whether as a member and activist, journalist, or international observers. There were definitely no shortage of gunshots this month courtesy of the state (mostly in evictions against farmers) and of companies and the state who paid hitpeople. Activists in Zacate Grande were imprisoned for being poor and breaching expensive bail conditions. High school students who opposed policy imposition faced 6 killings in 3 months, which the state is likely to dress up as gangs killing gangs.
January 2016 Honduras Coup update (tags)
This month in Honduras, 6 and a half years into the coup, attacks including fatal attacks continue against indigenous persons defending territory, workers from different walks of life, journalists, and even politicians. And from the general news section there are worrying warnings of increases of mass deportations from US, about Zika virus having been introduced as another US intervention as a form of biological warfare, and some updates on corruption and who is getting away with it and who might appear not to be..
Honduras Coup, 6 years on (tags)
6 years into the coup, the news for June 2015 of political persecution against indigenous peoples, activists, journalists, and lgbti activists. A look at the current situation of crisis and grassroots movement with the IHSS crisis.
May 2015 Honduras Coup update (tags)
May 2015 in Honduras.... it came out that high officials of a social security department stole $320 millions using companies, this ending up in the campaign funds for National Party's electoral campaign in 2013 and diverted to those who made this happen using ghost companies... assassinations, threats, evictions, law being blatantly on the side of money, all evidentially continue. Check the titles here in the May post to see if you want to read some of it....
Actualización del golpe de estado en Honduras en marzo de 2015 (tags)
Se trata de las noticias en Honduras con la persecución política, neoliberalismo extremo y este mes se enfatiza el ataque brutal contra lxs estudiantes de colegios secundarios
March 2015 Honduras coup update - during high school students strikes: 4 students assassin (tags)
A monthly update of news in Honduras of political persecution, and new practices and laws imposed, etc. This month is especially horrible and full on.
February 2015 Honduras coup update (tags)
Another February in Honduras: two killings of journalists, more persecution, evictions, threats... and the militarisation with something like Plan Colombia that may soon be funded by the US congress, and more
September 2014 Honduras coup update (tags)
This September in Honduras...we now within two months of this infamous model cities (privatisation of entire cities) actually starting unless miraculous resistance springs up. But uprisings do actually happen, in Miskitia, a long boat ride or helicopter ride from much of Honduras, when pissed cops and soldiers arrested 40 at a party after people refused to give them alcohol or money for alcohol, and these agents of the system fired gunshots,wounding 4 who were locked up, the community didn't take it,the officers ran away, the community set on fire the copshop.
August 2014 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
A monthly update of the political persecution and plunder in Honduras - see archives here: http://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/monthly-news-summaries/
Death Squad Terror in Honduras (tags)
terrorist killings
Honduras State Employees Forced to Attend Santos Campaign Rally (tags)
"On Saturday November 28 military soldiers raided the offices of small business collective RED-COMAL in Siguatepeque, Comayagua, a city approximately 2 hours north from the capital. The Police Commissioner issued a search warrant 15 minutes after the raid began with the purpose of looking for weapons, posters and any documents that call on the population not to vote. Ricardo Bueso, speaking to Radiodelosmenos.org, reported that the military and police stole four laptops along with money from some of the organization’s sales The National Front Against the Coup d'Etat has called on its participants to remain indoors in a "voluntary curfew" in noncooperation with the fraudulent vote. Should any incidents of violence occur today it won't be from the Resistance, but, rather, the result of the regime's own provocateurs. National presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes withdrew from the ballot last month, as did many Congressional candidates and one major-party vice presidential candidate: Santos' own running mate on the Liberal Party line is among those who reject this fraudulent process as illegitimate."
US Rep. Jan Schakowsky’s Three-Day Fact-Finding Mission in Honduras (tags)
"Schakowsky’s three day visit from November 10-12 included meetings with family members of victims that have died directly from violence from the coup, media outlets such as Channel 36 and Radio Globo that have been attacked for honestly reporting on the resistance movement, and also a visit to the Brazilian Embassy where ousted President Zelaya and approximately 40 others have taken refuge for the last 53 days. The Chicago Congresswoman commented on her opportunity to hear a recording of some of the sounds bombarded into the Embassy and see the blinding lights set up outside, in addition to the crane set up for the military to spy into the Embassy."
Honduran Accord Solidifies Coup E'Etat Rule (tags)
democracy subverted
National Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat Announces Boycott of Elections (tags)
"So what conclusions can we draw from the US State Department visit? Considering the US Embassy’s media contacts list or following the mainstream media, one might be lead to believe that the State Department delegation truly was as historic as Secretary Clinton claimed it was. The walls of Tegucigalpa, though, shout a different message: “Solo el pueblo salva el pueblo,” (Only the people save the people). On the ground, most people never really trusted any of the diplomatic visits in the first place."
Honduran government hires fiction writer to hawk coup regime (tags)
"On this morning, three months later, it was déjà vu all over again, as those same military troops reenacted the battle of June 28, busting down the doors of both broadcasters and this time removing their transmitters and equipment. And soldiers have surrounded both houses of media to prevent the people from retaking them. The coup regime is now clinging to power illegitimately, threatened on every front by truth and justice, which means it must create an illusion of democratic sanction, and so, it has inked a $292,000 contract with CLSA, calling on the PR firm to “diseñar una campaña de persuasión” [build a campaign of persuasion]."
The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed (tags)
"A significant portion of the Honduran population has gone underground overnight. Tipped off that last night their homes would be raided and they would be hauled off to the soccer stadium in Tegucigalpa where the regime already holds at least 75 citizens incommunicado – reports of the use of torture are all the more credible because the regime won’t allow any attorney, doctor or human rights observer inside the stadium to inspect – other rank-and-file Hondurans opened their homes to resistance organizers throughout the country. They are hiding from the regime, but they are in constant contact with each other, and with our reporters. Another part of last night’s wave of state terror came in the form of this provocation: Key human rights leaders and attorneys were notified anonymously of an alleged roundup of dissidents at a particular police station in the capital. They rushed down to look for the detainees, only to be greeted by the very nervous and heavily armed station police who had, simultaneously, received an anonymous phone call telling them that a mob was on its way there to burn down the station. Fortunately, cooler minds prevailed and once the human rights attorneys explained to the police the message they had received, both sides figured out it was an attempt to trick them into a violent confrontation.
Honduran Coup Regime Mocks UN Security Council with Embassy Attacks (tags)
"These evidences and the eye-witness testimonies, including that of the doctor and the priest, demonstrate convincingly that while the Honduran coup regime issues emphatic denials of such attacks on the sovereign embassy of Brazil, it is clearly engaging in them nonetheless. The UN Security Council should not need any high tech apparatus of its own to be able to see and hear what is really going on at ground level, and respond accordingly to the coup regime's mockery of it."
Declaration about the Situation in Honduras by ALBA Member Countries in the OAS (tags)
"We add our voice to the regional, national, and world organisations and institutions that have expressed their rejection of these barbaric acts that the coup leaders and supporters have committed in Honduras. We demand an end to the repression, a definite suspension of the curfew, respect of the inviolability of the Brazilian diplomatic headquarters, and the immediate and unconditional restitution of President Zelaya to his functions as Constitutional and Democratic President of Honduras."
What Some US Reporters Don't Get About Brazil and the Honduras Crisis (tags)
"The international community demands that Mr Zelaya immediately return to the presidency of his country and must be alert to ensure the inviolability of Brazil's diplomatic mission in the capital of Honduras." The United Nations isn't likely to ignore Lula's plea. As a body, it owes Brazil heavily for its leadership of UN Peacekeeping forces in Haiti, and also for its unique role as a respected organizer and spokes-country of "developing world" states as a force for global social and economic justice. Wealthier nations, meanwhile, from the US to China to Europe, are greatly dependent (or would like to be more so) on the gigantic consumer market that is Brazil. In eight short years, Lula has greatly risen Brazil's status and respect across the globe by playing these factors upon each other very shrewdly."
Brutal represión en Tegucigalpa (tags)
"Tanques, gases lacrimógenos, balas de plomo y de goma, camiones lanza agua y líquido urticante fueron usados de forma indiscriminada para desalojar el lugar y dejar al presidente legítimo de Honduras en la espera de una posible intervención y detención, tal como lo había anunciado pocas horas antes el presidente usurpador Roberto Micheletti."
Seven Million Hondurans Under House Arrest as Micheletti Writes of "Democracy" (tags)
"This has caused a generalized phenomenon throughout the metropolitan area: People have come en masse out of their homes, chased the police out of many of those neighborhoods, and erected barricades to keep them out. They are now organizing to maintain those barricades. The coup regime thus, overnight, has lost any semblance of control of considerable tracts of urban Honduras."
The President Has Returned: All Hell Breaks Loose in Honduras! (tags)
"This is a textbook example of what we've referred to before as "dilemma actions." It puts the coup regime on the horns of a dilemma, in which it has no good options. It can leave Zelaya to put together his government again from the Brazilian embassy with the active support of so many sectors of Honduran civil society, or it can try to arrest the President, provoking a nonviolent insurrection from the people of the kind that has toppled many a regime throughout history. Minute by minute, hour by hour, and, soon, day by day, the coup regime is losing its grip. At some point it will have to choose either to unleash a terrible violent wave of state terrorism upon the country's own people - which will provoke all out insurrection in response (guaranteed by Article 3 of the Honduran Constitution) - or Micheletti and his Simian Council can start packing their bags and seeking asylum someplace like Panama. Meanwhile, the people are coming down from the hills to meet their elected president. This, kind readers, is immediate history."
U.S. Still Supports the Coup! (tags)
"Agency bankrolling “good governance” programs to ensure the “rule of law in the country” The taxpayer-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation has continued to move millions of dollars into Honduras since the June 28 coup d'état, but it is not alone, Narco News has now confirmed. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is slated to provide Honduras with nearly $47 million in funding in fiscal 2009, which ends Sept. 30, 2009. Nearly all of that money (some $43 million) is scheduled to be delivered as previously planned to Honduras — which is now under the leadership of a putsch regime that President Obama has already described as “not legal.”
Juan and Pedro Enter the Honduras Oil Import Business, Coup d’Etat Follows (tags)
"Padre Fausto later chronicled his own share of detentions, which included being kidnapped by paramilitaries in Honduras in 1981 on charges of inciting guerrilla activity based on his concern for campesino and indigenous rights. In captivity, Fausto was subjected to a schedule of sitting in rooms with torture instruments and being removed whenever someone needed to be tortured physically rather than psychologically. He subsequently spent a number of years in exile in Mexico; as for other Hondurans in exile, Fausto boasted that Zelaya had spoken with him and other Hondurans for four hours the previous day in Managua, neglecting a group of visiting European parliamentarians."
Honduras Coup Dictator Micheletti Calls Out the Geezer Patrol or "a country for old m (tags)
"At the celebration a group of war veterans attended from Honduras’ 1957 conflict with Nicaragua and with El Salvador in 1969… “I don’t know if the war veterans want to consider me part of them because I – here is the proof, dated August 4, 1969, that shows that I participated in the defense of the sovereignty of our country, here it is, nobody can deny it, and we will do the same as long as we are alive,” said President Micheletti…"
Coup regime in Honduras seeks to close media that report it’s activities (tags)
"This morning’s televised threat by coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez to “go after them” – the leaders of the civil resistance to the coup – also included broadcasters and journalists. Radio Globo, after its first shutdown at the hands of military soldiers, won a court order to reopen and has broadcasted constantly since June 29. If not for its news team and conductors and the thousands of calls they have received live on the air from Honduran citizens, the nationwide public would not know the real facts about what has been happening to their country."
Honduran Democracy Can Only Be Asserted from Below (tags)
"Democracy, however, can always be asserted from below, when an organized people stand up. That is the next chapter in Honduras, its best - and probably its only - hope. Update: Arias' efforts to convene, today, eleventh hour last chance "talks," are officially not happening
Peaceful Blockades vs. Coup Paralyze Honduras (tags)
"Support the Honduran people in this important struggle to beat back the coup. Obama is sure not going to do it. "
Isolated and discredited 2 - the US in Latin America (tags)
"But no matter how hard they try on the masks of agreeableness, their arrogance, hubris and infatuation with US military power seep out all over the place. Barack Obama's aspiration to reclaim US leadership in Latin America means not just maintaining US military presence in the region but boosting it. For example, in Colombia the US is currently negotiating not one but five extra military bases. " How many more coups if we allow this one to go forward?