November 2020 Honduras Coup, Hurricanes and Pandemic Update (tags)
Not only do Hondurans continue to suffer the repression and impoverishment of living under the JOH dictatorship for years following previous coup regimes, and suffer through the pandemic while the regime redirects resources meant for health care and public health to the pockets of politicians and big business; Hondurans are now additionally suffering from two hurricanes that have devastated them. The regime and politicians - who just a week before were visiting communities with their political campaigns - not only are largely absent in rescue, refuge and rebuilding efforts, but actively impeded Hondurans who autonomously organised to help with rescue and food, and equally impeded the entry of donations and rescue volunteers from neighbouring countries. Hurricane Eta arrived in Honduras on 4 November 2020, and Hurricane Iota followed in on 16 November 2020. Amidst the disasters, flooding, and heavy winds that ravaged the people and land and crops, political persecution did not rest in this time; hitmen made an attempt on the life of CNTC (National Confederation of Campesino Workers) treasurer of the Santa Barbara branch, only to five days later assassinate the son of an organiser of the same branch of CNTC. Also in November, ex political prisoner Raúl Alvarez was stabbed by attackers, having been released on bail in August 2019 after imprisonment for 18 months together with Edwin Espinal and towards the end with Rommel. Meanwhile, there have been some absolute heroes this month within communities in Honduras with their autonomous actions of solidarity in both rescue and sharing what they can. All this and more: https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2021/01/13/november-2020-honduras-coup-hurricanes-and-pandemic-update/
June 2019 Honduras coup update (tags)
28 June 2019 is the 10 years anniversary date of the atrocious military coup in Honduras. Throughout June 2019, the strike and barricades of the education and healthcare sectors that began at the end of April 2019 continued, accompanied by the heavy cargo transport sector, paralysing the highways across the country and drying out petrol and electricity, driving into desperation the JOH (Juan Orlando Hernández – second term president by electoral fraud in 2017) dictatorship regime; this regime which only wants to keep privatising and repressing. This desperation translated into severe repression where gunshots were fired in many barricades on different dates and places wounding and on several occasions killing protesters.
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
April 2019 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
April 2019 in Honduras. During the month already there had been some very ferocious evictions that involved gunshots, and when people protested a bill to privatise education and health blocking highways and occupying schools, health centres, and workers went on strike, the repression we as heavy, several people had been assassinated by state security forces in this context this month sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2019/05/20/april-2019-honduras-coup-update/
October 2018 Honduras Coup update (tags)
This month: a glimpse at what the migrants are facing, and protest marches are also heavily repressed, environmentalists defending land water and life arrested and kidnapped and a whole camp militarised for a couple of days during which one family was especially terrorised in such a magnitude and fascist way that all this violence, and the barely known violent eviction of the camp and of the subsequent night time highway blockade, was quickly made invisible by announcing two soldiers were shot dead in the confrontations. Similarly, farmers have faced evictions and persecution. Read on to find out more sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2018/11/16/october-2018-honduras-coup-update/
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/
April 2017 Honduras coup update (tags)
This April 2017 in Honduras, repression goes on, with melon industry worker/unionists threatened and interrogated by armed people on city highways, with organised farmers with years of living on land growing food getting arrested, with cops arresting high school students for participating in a protests where others had damaged cops' repressive tanks with stones, with stones and other things that can cause bodily harm being thrown at prochoice feminist demonstrators, with a public hospital doctor being suspended and threatened for saying the fees increase against patients is wrong .. these and a bit more here: https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/ https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/
December 2015 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
News from Honduras in December 2015. Less news but bad news. Another environmental and human rights defender kidnapped. Navy shoots Garífuna (Afro-descendent Indigenous Hondurans) killing one and wounding another and say it was an accident because they thought they are drug traffickers. A Lenca indigenous activist was assassinated. A unionist and whistleblower seeks asylum. More funding approved from US and World Bank, always more of the same, more militarisation and more 'trickle down'...
Honduras coup update September 2015 (tags)
September 2015 in Honduras. Intensifying repression with soldiers and cops pulling out guns against protesters and in mass evictions particularly where there are occupying farmers. One sixteen year old died this way, and another farmer was assassinated 2 days after participating in a protest. This is mixed with selection persecution against journalists and leaders as they came to control demonstrations. 28 year old loved son of writers was arrested accused of killing lawyer of an elite family - both responsible for the massive IHSS scandal that stole so much from people, and for continuously killing people who are witnesses to the scandal for example. About this and more, check out the update
July 2015 Honduras Coup update (tags)
https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/ The July Honduras coup summary is up... this time a lot of the repression was against hunger strikers, students linked to occupations, journalists and human rights defenders. Things are getting to an impossible point for many and there is some hope about how this rage be channelled.
Elections in Honduras: Whitewashing a Path to a Past of Horrors (tags)
"Except that it’s probably the beginning of a story. One that we thought had been left to rest in Latin America years and years ago. One of fear and repression and deaths and disappearances. We know the litany all too well, and we remember the names of its thousands of victims each November. This year we had to add too many new names from Honduras. And, if our government chooses to recognize these elections, this massive whitewash, I fear that many more names will be read from the stage in front of Ft. Benning next year. And perhaps not just from Honduras."
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."