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Arabica Robusta's List: Honduras-coup

    • Canales Vásquez, a LIBRE activist, who remarked to Upside Down World’s Sandra Cuffe: “They don’t want an example to be set in Honduras where the people kick the oligarchy out at the ballot box and where the system changes in favor of the people. That’s what we’re struggling for in Honduras, and that’s the reason for this repression against the people and against the LIBRE party.”
    • The top 10 percent got over 100 percent of all income gains in the two years after Zelaya was overthrown, sharply reversing a strong trend toward more equality during the Zelaya years.
    • In the past six months both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives have sent letters to Secretary of State John Kerry expressing deep concerns about political repression and its implications for next   month’s election in Honduras.   The Senate letter called attention to a “pattern of violence and threats against journalists, human rights defenders, members of the clergy, union leaders, opposition figures, students, small farmers, and LGBT activists …” as well as “extrajudicial killings.”

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    • They say that following the coup, Cáceres, working with the pro-coup Marrder family that controlled the HTW website, deceitfully wrested control from the Gutierrez family which had founded the paper and until then had maintained editorial control.
    • The Marrders eventually decided to found Honduras weekly as a competing newspaper, with Cáceres as editor. Stanley Marrder, listed on its website as "Owner and publisher of Honduras Weekly," is a Texan businessman and large Republican donor who grew up in Honduras. As they watched their own paper go under, the staff and owners of HTW darkly joked that they too had been victims of a coup.

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    • The diverging positions of the commissioners are reflected in the text of the report.  On the one hand, several passages in the "Background" section suggest that President Porfirio Lobo, elected in controversial elections held under the coup regime late last year, has made significant efforts to repair the damage done by the coup with measures such as the creation of a so-called "Unity Government" and the Creation of a Truth Commission made up of "national and international personalities of prestige and proven track record," according to the authors.  This section of the report also highlights the Honduran Congress' decision to review an alleged case of corruption perpetrated under the coup regime of Roberto Micheletti and appears to belittle the widespread accusations of ongoing human rights violations and repression of the opposition (it states that "some sectors insist" that the violations are still occurring despite the fact that major human rights organizations, including the OAS' own Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and Human Rights Watch, express the same concern in recent reports).
    • However, the final "Conclusions and Recommendations" section of the report is less favorable to the Lobo government.  In contrast with the "background" section, it explicitly recognizes the gravity of the human rights situation with a call for the "cessation of impunity for human rights violations" and the "adoption of measures to put an end to threats and harassments against human rights defenders, journalists . . . and members of the National Popular Resistance Front" (NPRF) as well as "measures issued to protect the lives and bodily integrity of numerous persons who are at risk."  Perhaps most significantly, it questions the Lobo government's justifications for maintaining some of the criminal charges against President Zelaya -- and thereby preventing him from returning without the risk of immediate prosecution -- and states that "the Commission considers it useful to put an end, in accordance with Honduran law, to the legal actions initiated against" the former president and his associates.

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  • Dec 14, 09

    This article makes important points about current Latin American constitution-writing but does not examine how such constitutions were written in the first place. The ability of people to argue that the Honduran constitution supports a coup, shows the importance of knowing the history of Latin American constitutions.

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