| The IAPA Feigns Unawareness That Its Own Members Were Behind the Honduran Coup | |||||||||||||||
Honduras: The boundless hypocrisy of the Inter-American Press Association | |||||||||||||||
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AUTHOR: Jean-Guy ALLARD Translated by Machetera | |||||||||||||||
 The Inter-American Press Association (IAPA) that bemoans the “limitations” on press freedom suffered by media opposed to the coup d’etat, avoids recalling that two of the main conspirators behind the coup which led to the expulsion of President Zelaya from Honduras are also its main (and practically only) Honduran members. Associated for decades with the CIA and located in Miami, USA, the IAPA has issued “denunciations” of the electricity cutoffs to Channel 36 and Radio Globo, through which they are trying to give themselves a legitimate image. The IAPA criticizes the climate of “instability and restrictions surrounding the press” in Honduras “in recent months,” which in some cases, it notes, has led to “self-censorship.” Just as hypocritically as the other press organization corresponding to North American intelligence, Reporters Without Borders, which attributes a new “wave of censorship” to President Zelaya’s return, the IAPA acts as though it is completely unaware that its own members are those who fostered the Micheletti regime.   Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé Jorge Canahuati Larach Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé, the former president of Honduras (1998-2001) and the owner of the La Tribuna newspaper, and Jorge Canahuati Larach, the billionaire owner of the La Prensa and El Heraldo newspapers are among the conspirators who brought about the coup. For those who may be unaware, the IAPA which aims to represent press freedom in America is nothing more than the cartel made up of the largest proprietors of communications media on the continent. Created in New York in 1950 through a U.S. intelligence operation, it was a pirate takeover of the legitimate pan-American organization created in Havana in 1943. The IAPA is so closely linked to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that its headquarters in Miami is named after its founder, Jules Dubois, a CIA agent and former U.S. military intelligence colonel who died miserably in a Bogota hotel in 1966, under hazy circumstances. Over the years, this association of press magnates intervened in UNESCO in order to defend the control of information by private business, participated in the dirty propaganda war against the democratic government of Salvador Allende, and kept quite silent during the coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. In the meantime, it has never missed an opportunity to attack Cuba. A real network of magnates from the corporate press, the IAPA manipulates information far and wide across the continent, in parallel with its radio and television stations which pursue the same destabilizing objectives. Through the servile collaboration of its providers, the press agencies, the IAPA continually expands its attacks against Latin American leaders which are then taken up by its media affiliates. In Honduras, the television, radio, cable and Internet circuits are entirely in the hands of very few individuals: Rafael Ferrari, Miguel Andonie Fernández, Rodolfo Irías Navas – all of them, primary “shareholders” in the Micheletti coup.  José Rafael El Chancho Ferrari These millionaire communication media barons are such business professionals that some, such as Rafael Ferrari, also have their tentacles in U.S. chain franchises such as Burger King, Dunkin’ Donuts and Pizza Hut. Instead of dedicating itself to stopping cold the fascist impulses of its associates Flores Facussé and Canahuati Larach, the IAPA went so far as to organize a “meeting” in Caracas with the reactionary Venezuelan press, under the pretense of “discussing the situation of freedom of expression,” but really to attack President Hugo Chávez all over again. The IAPA and Venezuelan Press Group held their meeting last Thursday and Friday in Caracas, in order to discuss the situation of freedom of expression throughout the continent. The adjunct Secretary General of the Latin American Federation of Journalists (Felap), Nelson del Castillo, denounced this IAPA maneuver, pointing out that this mafia organization “has fathered the derailment of democratic processes, in the name of certain liberties, when the only intention is to violate the rights of the people and keep them in the most backward political, economic and social [state].”  Some of the men (and the woman) behind the coup: Ramón Velásquez Nazzar, Toribio Aguilera, Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, Rafael Pineda Ponce, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, Miguel Andonie Fernández, Marcia Villeda, Juan Orlando Hernández, Juan Angel Rivera Tábora, José Alfredo Saavedra, Rodolfo Irías Navas, Rafael Ferrari, Ramón Custodio, Jorge Canahuati and Roberto Micheletti Source: La SIP pretende ignorar que sus propios miembros iniciaron el golpe en Honduras Original article published on 24 September 2009 About the author Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, translator and reviser are cited. URL of this article on Tlaxcala: http://www.tlaxcala.es/pp.asp?reference=8797&lg=en What Some US Reporters Don't Get About Brazil and the Honduras CrisisPosted by Al Giordano - September 23, 2009 at 11:17 am By Al Giordano D.R. 2009 Latuff. When Brazilian President Luis Inácio Lula da Silva addressed this morning's UN General Assembly in New York, he said: "Without political will, we will see more coups such as the one that toppled Manuel Zelaya in Honduras."I don't know what is so hard for some observers to understand about that statement, which comes from the elected president of a country that itself was victimized by a military coup d'etat in 1964. Brazil, like every other democracy on the planet, has a legitimate self interest in making sure that no military coup succeeds, especially in its own hemisphere. Like the 2009 coup in Honduras, the 1964 putsch had a "civilian" gloss when Brazil's vice president ascended to the presidency but under terms dictated by the military. (Much like the top Honduran military lawyer told the Miami Herald in July that "It would be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a leftist government. That's impossible." That was a smoking gun that demonstrated how the Honduras coup regime's claims to be a "democracy" led by civilians are utter rubbish: When the Armed Forces dictate that the people can't elect a government of the left, or it will always risk a violent coup - which is exactly what that military official said - they are dictating the terms. That's where the word dictatorship comes from.) Fair and free elections are impossible under such a regime. In recent days, the Honduran coup of "president" Roberto Micheletti has demonstrated, again, that it is incapable democratic governance. Peaceful Hondurans came to the Brazilian Embassy to greet their only elected President, Manuel Zelaya, and they were violently driven away with water cannon tanks, tear gas, billy clubs, and rubber bullets. National Police then followed the dispersed crowd into the popular barrios to wound and maim them, and invaded homes that provided them refuge. That led to scenes like this one in the neighborhood of Hato de Enmedio, and in more than 20 heavily populated slums in and around Tegucigalpa yesterday: Clueless desk editors like those at the New York Times titled these conflicts "Riots in Honduras." But you don't need to be able to understand Spanish to see and hear, in this video, that, distinct from rioters, the young people of the neighborhood that came out and violated the military curfew to defend their neighborhood from this police invasion know and have memorized complicated political slogans and rhymes which they chanted in unison. "Riots" are disorganized explosions. This neighborhood, and others like it, however, have been forced by the realities of the coup to organize themselves to a greater extent than ever before. In neighborhoods like Hato de Enmedio, where a majority of Honduras' citizens live, you can also see in the video see that not even the main street in the barrio is paved. Many of the homes have dirt floors as well. And if a citizen is harmed by a robber or predator, you can call the police, but they won't come. People who live in neighborhoods like this only see the police when they invade, like they did yesterday, to enforce an unenforceable curfew on people who, if they obeyed the curfew, would starve of hunger. A curfew is unsustainable on a people that live hand to mouth, day to day. We can also see in that video the revelation that the tear gas canisters shot by the National Police yesterday were stamped as property of the government of Perú, suggesting strongly that Peruvian President Alan García is a participant in smuggling arms to the Honduran coup regime. Something he will now have to answer for to the Organization of American States in general, and his neighbor Brazil in particular. But back to Lula of Brazil. At the UN today, he said: "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. So when Reuters publishes, as it has, what it calls an "analysis" titled "Brazil's risky role in Honduras may backfire," its author, one Raymond Colitt, doesn't know his ass from his elbow. It's a pure propaganda piece, based on the faulty presumption that Brazil's goal is to mediate some kind of negotiated solution in Honduras. "Analysts" like that can only be called such, with a straight face, by adding quotation marks. Any fool can see that the Honduran crisis has moved to a level of dysfunction that is beyond a negotiated solution. It is a raw power struggle now between a coup regime trying desperately to hold on to power and an increasingly organized people that is peeling away the layers of its support. A similarly clueless "analysis" came from Sara Miller Llana and Andrew Downing of the Christian Science Monitor, titled, "Did Zelaya Snub Hugo Chávez for Brazil?" Here's the first clue: when reporters speak of "snubs" they are merely gossip columnists, not journalists. What is far more likely is that Brazil has emerged as the interlocutor between Venezuela and the United States, whose intelligence agencies would not work together, but could be effectively coordinated so they don't trip all over each other by a party that is friendly with both of them and has, similarly, its own top shelf intelligence agencies, that being Brazil. If that is what we're witnessing here - all sides would deny they had any role in the impressive operation that returned Zelaya to Honduras while fooling the coup regime into thinking he was in Nicaragua, of course - then nobody's feeling "snubbed," except perhaps the leaders of Mexico and Colombia, who in the past had been the interlocutors between Washington and Latin America. From that perspective, Brazil has already triumphed in this equation. It has emerged as the community organizer among nations in the hemisphere: the one country that has enough trust from so many different sides that don't really trust each other that it can coordinate them effectively. The Honduras coup regime now has to come to terms with the reality that it can't touch the Brazilian Embassy, or it may become an unwilling host of some of those UN Peacekeeping forces that have Brazil as one of their leading nations. And as that reality sinks in - that Micheletti and his Simian Council are powerless against this equation - the regime will continue to shed layers of support. The simple presence of President Zelaya, day in, day out, in Tegucigalpa, protected by the Brazilian Embassy, strips the regime of any pretense of inevitability or claim to be the eventual winner. As with last night's regime press conference - held embarrassingly and hastily in English, as if there wasn't time to translate the incoherent drivel that US lobbyist Lanny Davis wrote for them to recite - the Honduras coup regime is now in flail mode. All it can do is attempt pathetic media stunts like that and turn up the brutality of its repression of its own people: a formula for continued repudiation and total self-destruction. Update 2:23 p.m. Tegucigalpa (4:23 p.m. ET): Here's a sanction that will have a huge psychological impact in Honduras, where futbol is just about the only respite left from the coup's horrors: The Oct. 10 World Cup qualifying match between Honduras and the USA may not take place in Honduras. In political turmoil after the military's ousting of President Manuel Zelaya, Honduras is cordoned off to most visitors. It has closed airports, implemented a curfew and set up roadblocks so that a roadway from El Salvador serves as the only entrance into the country. The crisis has raised doubts about the safety of playing the USA's scheduled World Cup qualifying match in San Pedro Sula, Honduras's second largest city and industrial center.Really, what can the coup regime say? That it will close airports and impose martial law but the FIFA should still hold soccer games there? The bottom line: A country that can't even host a soccer game successfully certainly can't hold a fair or free election. 3:20 p.m.: Another layer of the onion rings around the coup regime begins to cry: Honduras’s nationwide curfew is costing the Central American nation’s economy $50 million a day, said Jesus Canahuati, vice president of the nation’s chapter of the Business Council of Latin America.Poor babe. Maybe Canahuati should have thought about that before helping to orchestrate the coup, put Micheletti in power, and then have his organization hire Lanny Davis to screw it all up in Washington! Yo, Sherlock; it's like that old flower child poster: Curfews are not healthy for oligarchs and other living things. If the poor can't go out on the street to slave in your sweatshops or buy the junk produced there, it hits you, too. 5:35 p.m.: The coup regime - after two days of blocking Hondurans from traveling on all the roads to Tegucigalpa, after imposing curfews night and day, after beating up anybody it could lay a nightstick on who came to welcome the legitimate president or redress their grievances - has just called a pro-coup demonstration for tomorrow in the capital. You can bet there won't be any blockades or curfews or repression and the coup soldiers may even encourage the provocation of incidents outside the Brazilian Embassy. But the resistance isn't stupid. Already the call has gone out via Radio Globo to the nation: Since the coup plotters have urged their protesters to dress in the color red, the members of the resistance should do the same, rent buses, and travel the highways to the capital, telling the cops at the roadblocks - if they even put them up tomorrow - that they're coming to join the pro-coup rally. And that will get them into the capital, for events on the following days once the "march of the perfumados" has gone back home. This, again, points to how this regime is incapable of holding fair and free elections. When one side assembles, it brings out the blockades, the cops, the tear gas and billy clubs. When the others side does it, the regime rolls out the red carpet and even pays for it. Anybody that claims fair elections can be held in that climate of violence, intimidation and cheating is not really a friend of democracy, no matter how many times they mouth the word. Giving Constitutional Research a Bad NameUS congressman Aaron Schock (Republican from Illinois) commissioned a research report that has excited immense interest in the pro-coup Honduran media. So far, in English mainstream media, it appears to have been given the cold shoulder it deserves. But make no mistake, bad research is consequential, and the right-wing blogs are alive with the story as well.Written by someone identified only as a "Senior Foreign Law Specialist" at the Library of Congress, Norma C. Gutierrez, the report makes an argument that the removal of President Zelaya was constitutional. In this, her report would contradict numerous constitutional law professors in Honduras, Spain, and the United States. The references cited in the report consist almost entirely of citations of the Honduran constitution, or of documents posted online by the Honduran Supreme Court. A notable exception, and key to understanding the basis of her unique conclusions, are references to phone calls with Guillermo Pérez-Cadalso, described as "a Honduran attorney who formerly served as Supreme Court Justice and Secretary of Foreign Relations." Sounds impressive, right? But wait, who is this, anyway? Well, he was part of the pro-coup delegation that came to testify before Congress in early July. This was the lobbying group put together by Lanny Davis. His service in the executive branch came during the administration of Ricardo Maduro, one of the former Honduran presidents implicated in the carrying out of the coup. Mr. Pérez-Cadalso is #34 on the widely circulated list These are the coup leaders: They will be judged. So, hardly a disinterested source. So let me match Ms. Gutierrez expert-for-expert. Mr. Pérez-Cadalso's testimony is countered by the opinions of Angel Edmundo Orellana Mercado, who was until June 24 a cabinet Secretary in the Zelaya government, resigning over his disagreement with President Zelaya's attempt to remove General Vasquez Velasquez from his position as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Formally a member of Congress since he resigned from the Zelaya government, he formally refused to attend sessions of Congress following the June 28 coup, offering a powerful critique of precisely the same "constitutional" arguments and processes she, relying on a known golpista, accepts. Orellana's editorials specifically rebut the constitutional analysis offered by Gutierrez. Orellana, in addition to his most recent service in government, has an illustrious history as a Professor of Constitutional Law and a member of various Honduran governments. He holds a PhD in law, and was from 1976 a Professor of Law at the National University of Honduras (UNAH). His government service began in 1982, when constitutionality was restored to Honduras; was Magistrate in the Court of Appeals of "lo Contencioso Administrativo" (the courts that ruled against Zelaya in his attempts to hold a poll) from 1988-1994; was the Attorney General of the country from 1994 to 1999; served as Honduras' ambassador to the UN, was a cabinet minister in multiple administrations, is the recipient of many honors, and the author of legal texts as well as research articles. And Orellana-- like his colleague on the law faculty at UNAH, Efrain Moncada Silva, and Francisco Palacios Romeo, Professor of Constitutional Law at the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, not to mention Professor Doug Cassell of the Law School of Notre Dame, whose invited analysis published by the American Society of International Law is considered the authoritative English-language study of the constitutional issues-- does not agree with Gutierrez or her single Honduran legal advisor. Why not? well, let's begin with the fact that Ms. Gutierrez appears willing to ignore major points of law. She admits it was unconstitutional to expatriate President Zelaya. But she provides a spurious rationale for the Supreme Court's enlisting the Armed Forces to carry out the raid on President Zelaya in the early hours of Sunday, June 28. On page 2, she says one of the existing constitutional questions is whether the Supreme Court had the authority to order "the public forces (fuerza pública) to carry out an arrest warrant". That is not the legal issue. The issue is, did they have the power to ask the Armed Forces (military) to carry out such a raid? The original 1982 Honduran Constitution included all security personnel under the Armed Forces, and made no distinctions between the military and the police, at that time a branch of the Armed Forces called the Fuerza de Seguridad Pública (FUSEP). Article 306 of the current Constitution authorizes the judiciary to call on the Fuerza Pública (capitalized, not lower case) to enforce legal decisions, and failing that, the citizenry. What it does not do is authorize the Armed Forces, from which the police were separated in order to demilitarize civilian policing, under special legislation ratified in 1996. Article 293 of the current Constitution defines as proper duties of the civilian National Police the ejecutar las resoluciones, disposiciones, mandatos y decisiones legales de las autoridades y funcionarios públicos, todo con estricto respeto a los derechos humanos.The two instances of the term "fuerza pública" in the present constitution, including that cited by Ms. Gutierrez, were retained from the original 1982 Constitution. The multiple revisions of the Constitution have left many such dangling phrases. But the revision of the Constitution that introduced the present Article 293 makes it clear what public forces are supposed to enforce judicial rulings. Re-militarizing a demilitarized branch of public security forces is one of the main acts by the de facto regime that Honduran analysts point to as evidence that this was, indeed, a military coup. Ms. Gutierrez does acknowledge that the Supreme Court had started the legally mandated process of investigation of the charges brought by the Public Prosecutor, and that this process was truncated by the unconstitutional expatriation of President Zelaya. But she seems incapable of acknowledging that this means there was in fact no determination of guilt that might serve as a legal basis for any move to remove the president from office. She manages to avoid the thoroughly debunked "Article 239" argument which the de facto regime adopted days after the coup. Instead, she comes up with a breathtaking, novel new theory of Honduran law: Congress has a unilateral right to interpret the Constitution; so they "interpreted" their power to "disapprove" of presidential actions, under Article 205, section 20, as including an ability to remove the president. Powerful disapproval there. Apparently aware of the fact that "throw out" is not the most obvious interpretation of "disapprove", Ms. Gutierrez draws on an equally novel interpretation of Article 205, section 10. This section itself has an interesting history: not present in the original constitution, it was added to the Constitution in 1983-1984, giving the Congress the right to interpret not just the laws it passed, but the very Constitution itself. (This is exemplary of the concentration of authority that has made the National Congress in Honduras more powerful than the separation of powers of the original three branch model.) But the interesting thing is, as Ms. Gutierrez notes, the Honduran Congress did not in fact make the argument she is advancing now. It did not ever, in its own declaration, say that the reason it could remove the President from office was that this was a form of "disapproval". So where does her novel theory come from? Quoting from page 8: An analysis of the facts of the case and the aforementioned constitutional provisions leads one to the conclusion that the National Congress made use of its constitutional prerogative to interpret the Constitution and interpreted the word "disapprove" to include also the removal from office.This section ends with a footnote reference, footnote 40, which reads in full: This line of analysis was confirmed in an August 3, 2009, telephone interview with Mr. Guillermo Pérez-Cadalso, a Honduran attorney who formerly served as Supreme Court Justice and Secretary of Foreign Relations.Confirmed?! Meaning what? that he agreed this was as good a post-facto rationalization as any other? If all her legal "research" is this good, one can question whether any of it is reliable. But there is more. In a document that tries to hide its advocacy under a veneer of reviewing simple facts, there are some extraordinary lapses. Ms. Gutierrez repeats the then already widely debunked claim that the vote to remove President Zelaya was unanimous (p. 8). In doing so, she footnotes the supposed "resignation letter", originally furnished by the National Congress as the legal basis for proceeding to the line of constitutional succession. Her footnote is scandalous in both its ignorance and its use of a golpista smear that even the worst US congressional zealot has not attempted to use, to my knowledge. Her footnote (no. 43) says It is believed by some in Honduras that Zelaya signed the letter on June 24, before his arrest, to make use of it after the referendum, when presumably the National Constituent Assembly was going to be initiated, on June 29, because Zelaya anticipated that he would be elected President of the Assembly.It is believed by a lot more in Honduras and outside that the backdated letter was written to be used by the golpistas earlier in the week, when they originally intended to carry out their coup. The actual content of the letter doesn't accord with the interpretation offered either: the letter purported to offer the resignation not only of the President, but of his entire Cabinet. What Ms. Gutierrez reproduces here is part of the paranoid rumor-mongering through which the Honduran people were induced to believe that President Zelaya had a secret plan to suspend the Constitution June 29 and unilaterally take over the country. So, what is her source for this claim? You guessed it: the trusted Mr. Pérez-Cadalso. And so who is Ms. Gutierrez, and other than her reliance on a member of the coup faction, what is her supposed expertise? According to the Law Library of the Library of Congress, employees with her title are "a diverse group of foreign-trained attorneys". Ms. Gutierrez is listed as having jurisdiction over issues related to Mexico and Nicaragua. It is unclear where Ms. Gutierrez received her legal training; but her legal advice came from a poisoned well. US Congressional Research Service missed crucial Honduran Supreme Court Ruling...Armando Sarmiento, former director of the Honduran equivalent of the IRS, provides on quotha.net a critical and devastating critique of the CRS report discussed in our previous blog posting making two points, the first fatal for the shocking attempt to justify the coup:
This post saves me belaboring the point: the amendments to the Honduran Constitution-- proposed, passed, and ratified by the Honduras Congress-- that gave the Congress the right to interpret the Constitution itself-- as opposed to the laws passed by the Congress, as called for in the original 1982 Constitution-- eroded the separation of powers, and usurped the authority of the Supreme Court itself to interpret the Constitution. I am glad to see that the Honduran Supreme Court agreed with me this in May 2003-- even longer before the events of June 28, and also, before the now entirely discredited "research report". Sr. Sarmiento also anticipates a second point we have been actively researching, and confirms another understanding we had about legal process in Honduras, writing:
It did not do so. The fact that a US Congressional Research report decided that the only way the Congress could have done what it did is if it was (without declaring it) interpreting the Constitution would have been utterly inexplicable-- except, as we have shown, for the fact that the researcher involved relied on one single Honduran informant, apparently not knowing or not caring that this individual was not a disinterested source, and that his opinion conflicted with all real legal analyses offered in Honduras, Spain, and the US. Indeed, we would make a third point of our own (complementing Sr. Sarmiento's third point, which we urge you to read at the original post, soon to be updated with a longer analysis): The June 28 session was not an ordinary session (as it was erroneously labeled in the CRS report). It was an "extraordinary session". The procedural document guiding Honduran National Congress meetings establishes in Article 5 the procedures to be followed for calling such an "extraordinary session". These include the requirement that only those topics listed explicitly on the call for the session be discussed. There was no explicit mention of constitutional interpretation as part of the agenda for that meeting. That may in fact be because the members of the Honduran Congress knew that the Supreme Court had rejected the claimed power of interpretation years earlier. [note that the original blog post on quotha.net had the year wrong] Surely Ms. Gutierrez should have found out that critical point? wouldn't it have been nice for her golpista source to have informed her, before she wrecked her credibility by producing this poisoned research? Grade D-: Flawed Research from the Law Library of the Library of CongressJanine D'Addario, Coordinator of the Office of Communications of the Congressional Research Service, was kind enough to confirm what many people now have noted: the attribution of bad research to that office was wrong. I am delighted, as I told her, to hear that the report was not the product of the "nonpartisan Congressional Research Service".Those quotation marks, by the way, refer to comments by neither Ms. D'Addario nor me. They enclose the quoted "speech" of US Representative (R-Ill) Aaron Schock, still posted as of 12:30 PDT on his official congressional website, that wrongly characterize the source of the analysis purporting to give the Honduran Congress a leg to stand on in the question of the constitutionality of their actions on June 28. Visit it and you can also see the box with the link to "Schock Honduras CRS Report". Rep. Schock's press release makes clear that there remains a problem with Bad Research from a Federal agency, even if the source is not the highly-respected CRS. Either we have to conclude that the research of the Law Library of the Library of Congress is generally unreliable, or that this specific report should never have been approved for release. As a scholar, I would much prefer not to have to throw into question all research emanating from an office of the Library of Congress. But until someone there issues a statement retracting the report, based on the amply documented and easily substantiated sources showing the basic facts of law are mistaken, the full faith of the Library of Congress is behind a piece of research I would not accept for a term paper by an undergraduate. To recap: the report, again in the words of Rep. Schock's office "concludes that the removal of former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was legal and Constitutional". The Law Library report does so by proposing a novel legal theory, not actually articulated by the Honduran Congress itself on June 28 or since. The researcher virtually had to do this, because the stated bases of the June 28 actions would not meet legal or constitutional scrutiny. This is not just my opinion. Armando Sarmiento, whose commentaries on this report published on quotha.net are required reading, describes the legal bases for refuting this report. Add to these analyses the opinions of US, Spanish, and Honduran constitutional law experts who find the coup violates the Honduran Constitution previously cited here. And, as Jennifer Moore explains in a report reproduced at quotha.net, a research group representing the American Association of Jurists, the National Lawyers Guild, the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the International Association Against Torture, came to the same conclusion. The Law Library may have rules against citing such external sources, or may have simply been interested in answering the narrowest possible version of a set of specific questions by consulting documents in its databases. The basis for the conclusion by the Law Library researcher is a section of Article 205 of the Honduran Constitution that was declared unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court in 2003. A search of the Law Library would not have produced the Supreme Court ruling, because the Honduran Congress refused to publish it, as explained by Sr. Sarmiento in response to my inquiries: El congreso ordenó que el fallo de la Corte Suprema del 7 de mayo de 2003 no fuese publicado ...sin embargo, el efecto legal es obligatorio. Ley de Justicia Constitucional en su Artículo 94 menciona que “La sentencia en que declare la inconstitucionalidad de una norma será de ejecución inmediata, y tendrá efectos generales y por tanto derogará la norma inconstitucional, debiendo comunicarse al Congreso Nacional, quien lo hará publicar en el Diario oficial la “Gaceta”.Sr. Sarmiento adds that Aunque el congreso se haya negado a publicarlo el fallo de la Corte Suprema el mismo está vigente desde el punto de vista jurídico. That is, rulings of unconstitutionality go into effect immediately; they are not contingent on publication, unlike laws, which do not become official until they are published. This is part of the difference between the role of Congress, which is to make laws (that then need to be shared with the people by publication) and the Supreme Court, which has the role of interpreting the constitution, by ruling laws or even parts of laws unconstitutional, rulings which immediately invalidate these laws and any action based on them. The key passage in the Supreme Court ruling of May 7, 2003, that invalidated the constitutional amendment attempting to establish Article 205, section 10, says si bien el congreso Nacional de la República tiene la potestad de reformar la Constitución en las materias que el poder constituyente le ha conferido expresamente: esa potestad debe ejercerse respetando los límites constitucionales establecidos y la esencia de la de la Constitución. Esos límites no fueron respetados por el Congreso al introducir irregularmente, por medio de esa adición, una nueva excepción consistente en una norma accesoria adjetiva sin relación con alguna norma constitucional principal sustantiva por la que el Poder constituyente haya conferido al Congreso Nacional la atribución de interpretar la Constitución.In other words: the Congress cannot just add a power that was not given it in the original Constituent Assembly that produced the 1982 constitution. It can amend those parts of the constitution that deal with powers it has, but cannot smuggle in a whole new power as a subsection of a section that did not give it that power. We are dealing here with a struggle by the Honduran Supreme Court-- handicapped by being re-appointed one term at a time (formerly four years, now seven) by a process requiring unilateral approval by another branch of government-- to preserve the separation of powers that is key to a balanced government. The finding by the Supreme Court was absolutely explicit about this being based on separation of powers. Their verdict adds
That it is not unknown that the National Congress has made interpretations of the Constitution: nonetheless, in consonance with Articles 373 and 374 of the same [Constitution] the National Congress cannot attribute to itself this faculty in detriment of the attributions of the other Powers of State; since that would affect the form of government, weakening the independence that should exist among them and as an outcome establishing relations of subordination in relation to the Legislative [Branch], since that would give origin on the part of Congress to laws, sentences, disguised as interpretations of the Constitution.Sr. Sarmiento notes in closing that Un detalle importante es que después del falló del 7 de mayo de 2003 el congreso NO HA REALIZADO NUEVAMENTE NINGUNA INTERPRETACIÓN DE LA CONSTITUCIÓN.Including, pointedly, on June 28, 2009, when the analyst for the Law Library of Library of Congress thinks this would be the only way they could have considered what they were doing as legal. Which means the Honduran Congress could not think they could redefine the power to censure Congress does have under Article 205, section 20, which deals only with administrative conduct, to extend to the removal of a President from office, a power they do not have, and they did not even try to make that invalidated claim. It took a US researcher to do that. If the Law Library had to rely on its own documentary resources, it should not have allowed citation of personal communications from a single, impeachable source with an open interest in a specific conclusion. Once one such source was cited, many others willing to explain the finer points of constitutional law, reaching contrary conclusions, were available. Sr. Sarmiento's reply to my inquiries came within hours, and with rich specific detail citing published records. I give the Law Library a D- They did correctly note the unconstitutionality of expatriating President Zelaya, and did correctly note that this expatriation interrupted the legal procedures by which the Supreme Court was beginning its hearings on the charges brought by the Public Prosecutor. But the Law Library report was confused about the separation of duties of the Armed Forces (who should not have carried out the raid) and the National Police (who are charged with enforcing court rulings), missing the relevant articles of the Constitution entirely. And it engaged in the construction of a spurious rationale for what the Congress might have been doing, which it did not do because the specific power claimed in Article 205, section 10, had been ruled unconstitutional. In my teaching practice, I give students a chance to revise their first drafts. I am happy to provide the same option to the Law Library of the Library of Congress. I will update this blog when and if I receive a statement from them. WALL STREET JOURNAL: | |||||||||||||||
People walk in the streets of the El Pedragal neighborhood after riots during the night …More Enlarge photo EXTRA: Groups allege major human rights abuses in Honduras | ||||||||||
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AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL: Several reported dead in Honduras turmoil
25 September 2009The Honduran authorities must immediately halt their "repressive" response to a week of violent political unrest that left five people reportedly killed, Amnesty International has said.
Police are alleged to have shot dead an 18-year-old man in San Pedro Sula on Tuesday. Four more deaths have been reported in the capital Tegucigalpa amid widespread demonstrations against the de facto authorities.
"The de facto authorities must put an immediate halt to these repressive tactics and commit to respecting fundamental human rights," said Susan Lee, Amnesty International's Americas Director.
There has been a sharp rise in police beatings, mass arrests of demonstrators and intimidation of human rights defenders since the return to Honduras on Monday of deposed President Manuel Zelaya, who was expelled from the country in a coup in June.
There are reports that protestors have been shot by security forces. A 65-year-old man died of gunshot wounds during a demonstration in Tegucigalpa. The circumstances of three more reported deaths in the capital remain unclear.
The man reported to have been shot dead in San Pedro Sula was identified as José Jacobo Euceda Perdomo, 18.
Channel 10 Owner Breaks News of Men Hugging Men on Floor of Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa
Honduran Military Utilizes “Weird Apparatus” in an Effort to Drive Them Out
By Belén Fernández
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
September 23, 2009
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009: The September 22 edition of the Honduran evening news program Abriendo Brecha kept a running tally of the day’s mobile phone survey, trademark of Channel 10. The question was whether viewers thought the coup government of Roberto Micheletti had done well not to storm the Brazilian embassy currently housing reappeared Honduran President Mel Zelaya, and the responses hovered between 93 and 94 percent positive. According to newscaster and Channel 10 owner Rodrigo Wong Arevalo, the unconvinced 6 or 7 percent emphasized the need for a quick resolution to the political crisis, which could be brought about in one of three ways: through Zelaya’s abandonment of Honduran territory, Zelaya’s renunciation of claims to the presidency, or Zelaya’s appearance before a tribunal. Rodrigo Wong Arévalo, CEO of Channel 10. |
When Lula then reiterated that the golpistas must leave the government, Wong disregarded the pronouncement as Lula’s personal opinion and stressed that other opinions were being registered in Brazilian newspapers. The next several minutes of airtime were thus devoted to live video footage of online periodicals in Portuguese, while whoever at Channel 10 was in charge of operating the computer mouse attempted unsuccessfully to click on the photo of the reclined Zelaya. The mouse operator eventually switched to a photo of the US embassy in Tegucigalpa and an article in Spanish on the possibility of transferring custody of the Honduran president to other nationalities, which is perhaps one of the reasons that the Brazilian functionary opposed to Zelaya’s presence in his embassy used the term “hot potato.”
One of the reasons that I watched Channel 10 for 1.5 hours yesterday was meanwhile the curfew imposed by the Micheletti regime, which has already clocked 42 consecutive hours. The curfew announcement had made me wonder at my selection of a windowless pension in downtown Tegucigalpa, where curfew duty fell to a 60-year-old employee named Pedro who enjoyed a monopoly over the television and rejoiced at the restriction of movement of clientele based on the fact that he did not have to be bothered to open the door for anyone. He did, however, let me out of the hotel yesterday morning after emphasizing that I would be arrested, robbed, or killed.
 Rodrigo Wong Arévalo, as portrayed by a local artist. |
When the instrument appeared onscreen in the back of pickup truck belonging to the Honduran armed forces that was being slowly driven past the Brazilian embassy, Rodrigo Wong Arevalo missed the opportunity to add “alarm clock” to the sonar’s list of functions. A similarly unpleasant manipulation of airwaves was meanwhile taking place at the hotel, where a delay between the upstairs and downstairs television sets – both programmed to Channel 10 – meant that every utterance was heard twice and sometimes three times if Pedro felt the need to repeat it.
Abriendo Brecha concluded yesterday evening with the announcement that Zelaya’s companions inside the Brazilian embassy had abandoned him and a video of a departing bus. The conclusion was subsequently fine-tuned with the information that in fact a smattering of underage companions had merely been removed from the premises; presumably still inside are the slumbering homosexuals, part of the arsenal of invented issues that the Honduran media will continue to exploit in order to distract from legitimate popular aspirations to constitutional change.
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