Coup in Honduras: President Zelaya Ousted by Military
https://nacla.org/node/5947 

Resistance and Repression in Honduras
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/notebook/kristin-bricker/2009/06/resistance-and\
-repression-honduras
Venezuelan, Cuban, and Nicaraguan Ambassadors to Honduras Kidnapped
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4556
 
Honduras: Indigenous people condemn plot
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/800/41204
 
Honduras: Military Coup a Blow to Democracy
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/06/28/honduras-military-coup-blow-democracy
 
"In Solidarity with the Organizations of Via Campesina and the People of
Honduras"
 http://www.narconews.com/Issue57/article3581.html
 
North American Imperialism and the Extreme Right are Behind Coup in Honduras:
Chavez
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4555

Demand a Call from Barack Obama for the Reinstatement of Honduran President
Zelaya 
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/727/t/3823/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27531

"We Will Not Be Silenced or Humiliated"
http://www.narconews.com/Issue57/article3580.html

Honduran Congress names provisional president
http://www.upi.com/turl-88b6a3/
 
RT - Military Coup in Honduras
http://rightsaction.org/Alerts/Honduran_coup_062809.html

FEDERACIÓN SINDICAL MUNDIAL

Atenas, 28 de junio de 2009

Organización Internacional del Trabajo

Organización de Naciones Unidas

UNESCO

Tema: Golpe de Estado en Honduras

La Federación Sindical Mundial expresa su solidaridad con la clase trabajadora y el pueblo de Honduras. Condenamos el golpe de estado militar y pedimos la inmediata liberación de todos los detenidos. Apoyamos todas las movilizaciones populares y pedimos a la OIT, ONU y UNESCO que condenen el golpe de estado.

Solamente el pueblo está capacitado para decidir el presente y el futuro de su propio país y nadie más.

Hacemos un llamado a todos los afiliados y amigos de la FSM en Honduras para que luchen por las libertades democráticas y sindicales; por el progreso y la abolición de la explotación.

En nombre de los setenta millones de afiliados de la FSM en todo el mundo pedimos que cesen de inmediato las interferencias de la CIA en los asuntos internos de los estados.

Los pueblos de América Latina han padecido muchos problemas a causa de la política de los imperialistas y especialmente de la política de los EE.UU. Actualmente, en el siglo XXI, los pueblos y los trabajadores no toleran  los métodos y las prácticas fascistas.

Los organismos internacionales no tienen derecho a mantenerse en silencio. Tienen el compromiso de actuar en favor de las justas peticiones del pueblo de Honduras.

El fascismo no conseguirá pasar.

La democracia ganará.

Solidaridad Internacional Obrera ya.

EL SECRETARIADO

40, Zan Moreas street,  Athens  11745   GREECE

Tel. +302109214417,  +302109236700,    Fax +30210 9214517

www.wftucentral.org     E-mails : info@wftucentral.org,   international@wftucentral.org

In a Coup in Honduras, Ghosts of Past U.S. Policies

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday strongly condemned the ouster of Honduras’s president as an illegal coup that set a “terrible precedent” for the region, as the country’s new government defied international calls to return the toppled president to power and clashed with thousands of protesters.

“We do not want to go back to a dark past,” Mr. Obama said, in which military coups override elections. “We always want to stand with democracy,” he added.

The crisis in Honduras, where members of the country’s military abruptly awakened President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday and forced him out of the country in his bedclothes, is pitting Mr. Obama against the ghosts of past American foreign policy in Latin America.

The United States has a history of backing rival political factions and instigating coups in the region, and administration officials have found themselves on the defensive in recent days, dismissing repeated allegations by President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela that the C.I.A. may have had a hand in the president’s removal.

Obama administration officials said that they were surprised by the coup on Sunday. But they also said that they had been working for several weeks to try to head off a political crisis in Honduras as the confrontation between Mr. Zelaya and the military over his efforts to lift presidential term limits escalated.

The United States has long had strong ties to the Honduras military and helps train Honduran military forces. Those close ties have put the Obama administration in a difficult position, opening it up to accusations that it may have turned a blind eye to the pending coup. Administration officials strongly deny the charges, and Mr. Obama’s quick response to the Honduran president’s removal has differed sharply from the actions of the Bush administration, which in 2002 offered a rapid, tacit endorsement of a short-lived coup against Mr. Chávez.

On June 2, Obama administration officials got a firsthand look at the brewing political battle when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton traveled to Honduras for an Organization of American States conference. Mrs. Clinton met with Mr. Zelaya, and he reportedly annoyed her when he summoned her to a private room late in the night after her arrival and had her shake hands with his extended family.

During a more formal meeting afterward, they discussed Mr. Zelaya’s plans for a referendum that would have laid the groundwork for an assembly to remake the Constitution, a senior administration official said.

But American officials did not believe that Mr. Zelaya’s plans for the referendum were in line with the Constitution, and were worried that it would further inflame tensions with the military and other political factions, administration officials said.

Even so, one administration official said that while the United States thought the referendum was a bad idea, it did not justify a coup.

“On the one instance, we’re talking about conducting a survey, a nonbinding survey; in the other instance, we’re talking about the forcible removal of a president from a country,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity during a teleconference call with reporters.

As the situation in Honduras worsened, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas A. Shannon Jr., along with Hugo Llorens, the American ambassador to Honduras, spoke with Mr. Zelaya, military officials and opposition leaders, administration officials said. Then things reached a boil last Wednesday and Thursday, when Mr. Zelaya fired the leader of the armed forces and the Supreme Court followed up with a declaration that Mr. Zelaya’s planned referendum was illegal.

The White House and the State Department had Mr. Llorens “talk with the parties involved, to tell them, ‘You have to talk your way through this,’ ” a senior administration official said Monday. “ ‘You can’t do anything outside the bounds of your constitution.’ ”

Still, administration officials said that they did not expect that the military would go so far as to carry out a coup. “There was talk of how they might remove the president from office, how he could be arrested, on whose authority they could do that,” the administration official said. But the official said that the speculation had focused on legal maneuvers to remove the president, not a coup.

Whether Mr. Zelaya merited removal remains a strong point of debate in Honduras. Fierce clashes erupted Monday between thousands of soldiers and thousands of Mr. Zelaya’s backers. The protesters blocked streets, set fires and hurled stones at the soldiers, who fired tear gas in response. But opponents of Mr. Zelaya said they intended to rally Tuesday in support of his ouster.

On the diplomatic front, three of the country’s neighbors — Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua — said they would halt commerce along their borders for 48 hours. Beyond that, Venezuela and some of its allies, including Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Cuba, said they were withdrawing their ambassadors from Honduras in an effort to isolate the new government. Brazil also said it had ordered its ambassador to Honduras, who was out of the country at the time of the coup, not to return until further notice.

In the face of criticism from across the hemisphere, the new government hunkered down in Mr. Zelaya’s old office, ringed by soldiers and defending its actions as a bid to save the country’s democracy, not undermine it.

Roberto Micheletti, the veteran congressional leader who was sworn in by his fellow lawmakers on Sunday to replace Mr. Zelaya, seemed to plead with the world to understand that Mr. Zelaya’s arrest by the army had been under an official arrest warrant based on his flouting of the Constitution.

“We respect the whole world, and we only ask that they respect us and leave us in peace,” Mr. Micheletti said in a radio interview, noting that previously scheduled elections called for November would go on as planned.

Mr. Zelaya said from Nicaragua late Monday that he would return to Honduras on Thursday with the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, Reuters reported.

“He’s the former president of Honduras now,” said Ramón Abad Custodio, the president of the National Commission of Human Rights, who defends the replacement of Mr. Zelaya as constitutional. “He may feel like he’s still president, but he’s a common citizen now.”

Tuesday, June 30, 2009 4:26 PM

Denounce the Human Rights Abuses in Honduras

The situation in Honduras turned violent when over 10,000 people gathered in the
streets to protest the coup Monday evening. Using tear gas, high-powered water
and guns (it is still not clear whether soldiers were armed with rubber bullets
or otherwise) many people were wounded and there has been one confirmed death in the capital, Tegucigalpa.

In the capital, pro-coup marches are occurring, defended by the police and
national guard.  As of Tuesday morning, the resistance movement to the coup is
gathering in Tegucigalpa, to determine how and where to take to the streets.

Therefore, there is anticipation of violence today, as soldiers are expected to
react violently today to protesters as they did yesterday.
Violence has also broken out outside of Tegucigalpa.

In the interior of the
country, especially in the state of Olancho, the military has been conducting
home invasions in order to capture and detain youth. Many youth have fled to
the mountains, and their whereabouts are unknown.

The military is violently disbursing pro-Zelaya marches, and many protesters are
missing.  The local media is refusing to air any comments about the violence
and human rights abuses taking place in the country, insisting that nothing is
amiss.

An international news crew from TeleSur was detained and beaten while
broadcasting the oppression of protesters by the military.

Yesterday in a meeting of the Rio Group, President Zelaya reiterated that he is
the only president of Honduras, and that he has not stepped down.  He declared
his plans to return to Honduras on Thursday, mostly likely accompanied by the
Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Jose Miguel
Insulza.  Argentine president Cristina Fernandez also plans to accompany Zelaya
on Thursday.

The coup in Honduras has been unanimously condemned throughout the Western
Hemisphere, and has also been condemned by the United Nations and European
Union. Zelaya spoke on Tuesday in front of the United Nations.
Notably, two army battalions have refused orders from the coup government. They
are the Fourth Infantry Battalion in the city of Tela and the Tenth Infantry
Battalion in La Ceiba (the second largest city in Honduras), both located in the
state of Atlantida.

The coup leaders include several well-known human rights abusers, such as the
retired Captain Billy Fernando Joya Amendola, who was a member of the
CIA-trained 3-16 batallion from 1984-91, one of the most notorious battalions
noted for human rights abuses during that time.

Bertha Oliva, of COFADEH, calls the coup advisers a line-up of the "Galley of
Terror".

Furthermore, two coup leaders, Air Force Commander General Luis Javier Prince
Suazo and Army General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, were trained at the School of
the Americas (SOA, renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security
Cooperation), a US army school located in Fort Benning, GA, whose graduates have
been linked to some of the largest human rights atrocities in Latin America's
history.

COFADEH (Comite de Familiares de Detenidos y Desaparecidos en Honduras or the Honduran Committee of Families of the Disappeared or Detained), a leading Human Rights group in Honduras, has gone hospital to hospital attempting to document the cases of violence and human rights abuses. They are conducting this
documentation work because the national Human Rights Commission, headed by Ramon Custodio and the Fiscal (Attorney General), Sandra Ponce, have thus far refused to document and denounce human rights abuses since the coup began Monday morning and are fully supporting the coup government.

One of the first moves of the army and de facto government was to cut
electricity and telephone lines throughout most of the country. Later Monday two
television channels were re-established, both of which maintained that Zelaya
had voluntary resigned, the change of power was constitutionally legitimate and
that the new President had the support of the majority of the Honduran people.
Through TeleSur, a transnational South American television news station, the
public in South America has been able to see on the ground footage of protests
in Honduras as well as streamed footage from the Honduran pro-coup news
stations.

Hondurans within their country are much less informed than larger Latin America
because the coup government has been able to stop TeleSur from broadcasting.
Information is arriving to Honduran people about the whereabouts of President
Manuel Zelaya and the vast international support he has by way of people from
outside Honduras calling to cell phones of friends and family inside who are
inside the country. The biggest issue now are human rights abuses inside the
country.

COFADEH calls on the international human rights community to denounce the
blatant disregard of human rights abuses by Ramon Custodio and Sandra Ponce.
Bertha Oliva, of COFADEH, is available for interviews (in Spanish) by the
media.  She can be reached in Honduras at 011-504-8991-0259 (cell) or
011-501-222-7144 (land line).

Why President Zelaya's Actions in Honduras Were Legal and Constitutional

Zelaya attempted to give Hondurans the gift of participatory democracy. It was the coup leaders who violated the constitution. Those who say otherwise are wrong.

By Alberto Valiente Thoresen, RebelReports Guest Contributor

EDITOR’S NOTE: RebelReports is publishing this original article as a response to those who claim that the coup in Honduras was legal and/or constitutional and to the reporting by those media outlets that consistently repeat false characterizations of Honduran law and President Zelaya’s actions.—JS

In the classic Greek tragedy, Prometheus Bound, the playwright observes: “Of wrath’s disease wise words the healers are.” Shortly put, this story is about Prometheus, a titan who was punished by the almighty gods for having given humanity the capacity to create fire. This generated a conflict, which ended with Prometheus’ banishment and exile.

Currently, there is a tragedy being staged in the Central American republic Honduras. Meanwhile, the rest of humanity follows the events, as spectators of an outdated event in Latin America, which could set a very unfortunate undemocratic precedent for the region. In their rage, the almighty gods of Honduran politics have punished an aspiring titan, President Manuel Zelaya, for attempting to give Hondurans the gift of participatory democracy. This generated a constitutional conflict that resulted in president Zelaya’s banishment and exile.  In this tragedy, words are once again the healers of enraged minds.  If we, the spectators, are not attentive to these words, we risk succumbing intellectually, willfully accepting the facts presented by the angry coup-makers and Honduran gods of politics.

In this respect, media coverage of the recent military coup in Honduras is often misleading; even when it is presenting a critical standpoint towards the events. Concentrating on which words are used to characterize the policies conducted by President Zelaya might seem trivial at first sight. But any familiarity to the notion of ‘manufacturing of consent’, and how slight semantic tricks can be used to manipulate public opinion and support, is enough to realize the magnitude of certain omissions. Such oversights rely on the public’s widespread ignorance about some apparently minor legal intricacies in the Honduran Constitution.

For example, most reports have stated that Manuel Zelaya was ousted from his country’s presidency after he tried to carry out a non-binding referendum to extend his term in office. But this is not completely accurate. Such presentation of “facts” merely contributes to legitimizing the propaganda, which is being employed by the coup-makers in Honduras to justify their actions. This interpretation is widespread in US-American liberal environments, especially after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the coup is unacceptable, but that “all parties have a responsibility to address the underlying problems that led to [Sunday]’s events.” However, President Zelaya cannot be held responsible for this flagrant violation of the Honduran democratic institutions that he has tried to expand. This is what has actually happened:

The Honduran Supreme Court of Justice, Attorney General, National Congress, Armed Forces and Supreme Electoral Tribunal have all falsely accused Manuel Zelaya of attempting a referendum to extend his term in office. 

According to Honduran law, this attempt would be illegal. Article 239 of the Honduran Constitution clearly states that persons, who have served as presidents, cannot be presidential candidates again. The same article also states that public officials who breach this article, as well as those that help them, directly or indirectly, will automatically lose their immunity and are subject to persecution by law. Additionally, articles 374 and 5 of the Honduran Constitution of 1982 (with amendments of 2005), clearly state that: “it is not possible to reform the Constitution regarding matters about the form of government, presidential periods, re-election and Honduran territory”, and that “reforms to article 374 of this Constitution are not subject to referendum.”

Nevertheless, this is far from what President Zelaya attempted to do in Honduras the past Sunday and which the Honduran political/military elites disliked so much.  President Zelaya intended to perform a non-binding public consultation, about the conformation of an elected National Constituent Assembly. To do this, he invoked article 5 of the Honduran “Civil Participation Act” of 2006.  According to this act, all public functionaries can perform non-binding public consultations to inquire what the population thinks about policy measures. This act was approved by the National Congress and it was not contested by the Supreme Court of Justice, when it was published in the Official Paper of 2006.  That is, until the president of the republic employed it in a manner that was not amicable to the interests of the members of these institutions.

Furthermore, the Honduran Constitution says nothing against the conformation of an elected National Constituent Assembly, with the mandate to draw up a completely new constitution, which the Honduran public would need to approve. Such a popular participatory process would bypass the current liberal democratic one specified in article 373 of the current constitution, in which the National Congress has to approve with 2/3 of the votes, any reform to the 1982 Constitution, excluding reforms to articles 239 and 374. This means that a perfectly legal National Constituent Assembly would have a greater mandate and fewer limitations than the National Congress, because such a National Constituent Assembly would not be reforming the Constitution, but re-writing it. The National Constituent Assembly’s mandate would come directly from the Honduran people, who would have to approve the new draft for a constitution, unlike constitutional amendments that only need 2/3 of the votes in Congress. This popular constitution would be more democratic and it would contrast with the current 1982 Constitution, which was the product of a context characterized by counter-insurgency policies supported by the US-government, civil façade military governments and undemocratic policies. In opposition to other legal systems in the Central American region that (directly or indirectly) participated in the civil wars of the 1980s, the Honduran one has not been deeply affected by peace agreements and a subsequent reformation of the role played by the Armed Forces.

Recalling these observations, we can once again take a look at the widespread assumption that Zelaya was ousted as president after he tried to carry out a non-binding referendum to extend his term in office. 

The poll was certainly non-binding, and therefore also not subject to prohibition.  However it was not a referendum, as such public consultations are generally understood. Even if it had been, the objective was not to extend Zelaya’s term in office. In this sense, it is important to point out that Zelaya’s term concludes in January 2010.  In line with article 239 of the Honduran Constitution of 1982, Zelaya is not participating in the presidential elections of November 2009, meaning that he could have not been reelected. Moreover, it is completely uncertain what the probable National Constituent Assembly would have suggested concerning matters of presidential periods and re-elections. These suggestions would have to be approved by all Hondurans and this would have happened at a time when Zelaya would have concluded his term. Likewise, even if the Honduran public had decided that earlier presidents could become presidential candidates again, this disposition would form a part of a completely new constitution. Therefore, it cannot be regarded as an amendment to the 1982 Constitution and it would not be in violation of articles 5, 239 and 374. The National Constituent Assembly, with a mandate from the people, would derogate the previous constitution before approving the new one. The people, not president Zelaya, who by that time would be ex-president Zelaya, would decide.

It is evident that the opposition had no legal case against President Zelaya. All they had was speculation about perfectly legal scenarios which they strongly disliked. Otherwise, they could have followed a legal procedure sheltered in article 205 nr. 22 of the 1982 Constitution, which states that public officials that are suspected to violate the law are subject to impeachment by the National Congress. As a result they helplessly unleashed a violent and barbaric preemptive strike, which has threatened civility, democracy and stability in the region.

It is fundamental that media channels do not fall into omissions that can delay the return of democracy to Honduras and can weaken the condemnation issued by strong institutions, like the United States government. It is also important that individuals are informed, so that they can have a critical attitude to media reports. Honduras needs democracy back now, and international society can play an important role in achieving this by not engaging in irresponsible oversimplifications.

Alberto Valiente Thoresen was born in San Salvador, El Salvador. He currently resides in Norway where he serves on the board of the Norwegian Solidarity Committee with Latin America

Honduran coup tries to halt advance of Latin American left