Honduran dictators’ violent crackdown


This video from the USA is called Generals Who Led Honduras Military Coup Trained at the School of the Americas.

By Bill Van Auken:

Honduran coup regime launches brutal crackdown

1 August 2009

In an attempt to suppress the growing popular resistance to the regime installed just over a month ago by the June 28 coup that overthrew Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, police and troops carried out a brutal crackdown against demonstrations in the capital of Tegucigalpa Thursday.

According to press reports, as many as 150 people were arrested and dozens injured as the cops and soldiers attacked demonstrators with tear gas, water cannons, clubs and gunfire.

One of the wounded, 38-year-old teacher Roger Vallejo, was left fighting for his life after suffering a bullet wound to his head. It was unclear where the shot came from, but witnesses said that the gunfire was initiated by plainclothes policemen who had infiltrated the demonstration. He was listed in critical condition at the hospital where he was taken by co-workers, having suffered two heart attacks en route.

Among those arrested was Carlos Reyes, the president of the Honduran beverage workers union and an independent candidate for president. After he submitted to arrest, Reyes, who is 70 years old and diabetic, was beaten badly by the security forces suffering a broken arm and a head wound.

Also detained was Juan Barahona, a trade union official and leader of the Frente Nacional contra el Golpe de Estado (National Front against the Coup).

The troops and police also turned violently against reporters, who before had been allowed to operate freely during the protests. According to the Mexican daily La Jornada, Roberto Barra of Prensa Latina and Oscar Estrada of Habla Honduras were beaten up and had their equipment damaged. “It is your fault that this country is screwed up, there is nothing to report here,” police told reporters. They added, “If you’re a nica [Nicaraguan] we’ll kill you.”

According to a report from the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), one of the country’s main human rights groups, agents of military and police intelligence were dispatched to emergency rooms to search for wounded protest leaders in order to follow and capture them.

See also here. And here.

THE HOODED FACE OF THE HONDURAN DICTATORSHIP: here.

Zelaya vows peaceful resistance: here.

Alan Maass reports on the powerful U.S. political figures who are fronting for the coup that toppled Manuel Zelaya in Honduras: here.

On August 8, Providence City Council member Miguel Luna and antiwar activist Shaun Joseph will travel to Honduras as part of a week-long International Mission for Solidarity, Accompaniment and Observation. The U.S.-based part of the delegation is being organized by Quest for Peace, a project of the Quixote Center: here.

US war plans target Latin America: here.

6 thoughts on “Honduran dictators’ violent crackdown

  1. With Honduras, with all of Latin America — sign the statement

    July 31, 2009 — We, the undersigned social, political and solidarity
    organisations, faced with the ongoing coup d’état in Honduras and the
    imperialist project of installing military bases in Colombia whose
    objective is to throttle the hope for liberty and emancipation across
    the Latin American continent, declare:

    * Read more http://links.org.au/node/1179

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  2. Rapporteur blasts coup dictatorship

    Honduras: The UN has slammed Honduras’s “dictatorial” regime for limiting freedom of speech.

    UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression Franck la Rue blasted the de facto administration as “a dictatorial government, which is closing the spaces of the democracy.”

    The regime has threatened to close down Radio Globo, one of its biggest critics, and recently closed TV channel 36, which also aired views opposed to the military takeover in the country.

    http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/world/world_in_brief__97

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  3. Are you for real? Do you not understand what the Chavez puppet named Zelaya was planning for Honduras? How can you call those in power now ( temporarily, I may add…which was NOT Zelaya’s plan) Dictators? Learn the facts before you blog them!

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  4. Hi Eric, it is clear that the person who does not understand the facts of the situation in Honduras is you. You are not reacting at all about the human rights violations by de coup d’état regime which this blog post sums up. Writing from Virginia as you do, in 1861, you might also have considered slavery not tyranny; but, on the contrary, the popularly elected president of the USA, Abraham Lincoln, a “tyrant”. Zelaya, of course, was not elected by Chavez, but by the Honduran voters. As far as the present de facto regime is concerned, which owes their position to armed thugs storming the presidential palace with guns ablaze, they have plans to prolong their far from “tempoeary” (as far as they are concerned) dictatorship by fake elections, which most Hondurans will boycot. Micheletti-Pinocheletti and his ilk, will, indeed, prove to be temporary: *because the people of Honduras will drive them away*.

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  5. Pingback: New York, Chicago against war | Dear Kitty. Some blog

  6. Pingback: Hondurans will boycot dictatorship’s ‘elections’ | Dear Kitty. Some blog

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