On Tuesday, February 4, Profiro Lobo, the Honduran president “elected” in the fraudulent November 27, 2009 elections, gave the mandate to create a proposal for a “Truth Commission” to former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein.
The same day, a union leader active in the pacific Resistance movement was murdered, and on February 2nd, two cameramen from the national Television outlet Globo TV were kidnapped and tortured by Honduran state security agents (see articles below).
The unionist’s murder and the two journalist’s testimonies confirm fears that repression will continue or increase against sectors that express opposition to the Lobo government, report on the ongoing human rights violations or advance the call for a new constitution in Honduras.
On January 27, 2010, Porfirio Lobo was sworn in as president of Honduras in a ceremony attended by few international diplomats, while hundreds of thousands of Hondurans marched from the National Teaching University to the airport to see off the plane that carried President Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the Dominican Republic.
In an attempt to strengthen the very weak image of his government, Lobo has constructed the appearance of what he calls a “government of national reconciliation,” including political parties considered to be left leaning, but whom the National Resistance movement has stated that in no way represent the Resistance. Also, as part of this attempt to strengthen his government’s legitimacy, Lobo is promoting the structuring of a Truth Commission.
The proposal to create a Truth Commission first appeared in the so-called San Jose-Tegucigalpa accords, and was an initiative of mediator Oscar Arias. While the National Popular Resistance front and ousted President Manuel Zelaya consider that “accord” to be null since Zelaya was not restored to the presidency, the Truth Commission continues to be promoted by the Lobo government and by the US government which supported the illegal coup regime and supported the original design of the Truth Commission.
Promotion of a Truth Commission in the midst of on-going State repression, without the participation at any level of Honduran society, including the Resistance Movement, members of which have been most targeted for repression (including assassination, disappearance, rape, torture), and direct coordination with the author of the State repression - the military-oligarchic regime installed after the military coup – is an attempt to lend legitimacy to those carrying out violations without the conditions necessary to allow victims to clarify the truth.
The Resistance continues to set their sights on the establishment of a National Constitutional Assembly to draw up a new constitution that incorporates proposals from a broad sector of the society. The current constitution was the result of a process that initiated in 1981 following a military coup.
Even as we must denounce the on-going repression and human rights violations, in the short term, and view the “Truth Commission” with extreme caution and skepticism, we must work with and support the Resistance Movement in its medium and long-term struggle to establish the National Constituent Assembly and to refound their country and society.
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TWO GLOBO TV CAMERAMEN ARE KIDNAPPED AND TORTUREDFebruary 4, 2010, Tiempo.hn, translation Rights Action, http://www.tiempo.hn/secciones/sucesos/10351-raptan-y-torturan-a-dos-camarografos-de-globo-tv
TWO GLOBO TV CAMERAMEN ARE KIDNAPPED AND TORTUREDFebruary 4, 2010, Tiempo.hn, translation Rights Action, http://www.tiempo.hn/secciones/sucesos/10351-raptan-y-torturan-a-dos-camarografos-de-globo-tv
Two cameramen from TV Globo who worked in the Presidential Palace during the administration of president Manuel Zelaya , and who actively participated in the marches of the Resistance against the Coup, were kidnapped and tortured by to police dressed as civilians, the victims denounced.
The tortured are Manuel de Jesus Murillo (24), who works for several news programs on Globo TV newscasts, and Ricardo Vazquez Vazquez (27), who works for the news Mi Nacion, directed by journalist Julio Ernesto Alvarado and transmitted by that same medium.
According to those affected, the abduction occurred at 10:00 pm last Tuesday at a gas station at the entrance to the Colonia Hogar in Tegucigalpa, where the youth had coordinated a meeting with another person, whose name was not revealed, to exchange video material related to the January 28th march when former President Zelaya left the country.
Manuel de Jesús Murillo said that while at the gas station two men in plain clothes, with nine-millimeter guns, pointed guns at their heads and warned them if they cried out or did not cooperate they would die there; they were then taken to a unknown house for torture and interrogation.
THREE HOURS OF AGONY
According to the cameraman Murillo, upon reaching the unrecognized house they were violently taken from the vehicle and thrown to the ground, then blindfolded, they placed a gag and tied hand and foot for three hours. Between the physical and psychological torture questioned about weapons and dollars. "It is better to cooperate, you sons of bitches, because if not we are going to kill you, tell us where are the weapons and dollars of the fourth ballot, where are the cellars with the RPG-7 grenade launchers and AK-47s," Manuel recalled that armed men repeatedly asked, while slapping them.
According to the cameraman Murillo, upon reaching the unrecognized house they were violently taken from the vehicle and thrown to the ground, then blindfolded, they placed a gag and tied hand and foot for three hours. Between the physical and psychological torture questioned about weapons and dollars. "It is better to cooperate, you sons of bitches, because if not we are going to kill you, tell us where are the weapons and dollars of the fourth ballot, where are the cellars with the RPG-7 grenade launchers and AK-47s," Manuel recalled that armed men repeatedly asked, while slapping them.
Manuel de Jesús Murillo, who has yet to recover from the shock, told Tiempo that as they responded that they knew nothing and that the only weapon they had was the video camera, the torture increased. "Since we told them we did not know anything they put a sharp machete in his mouth, then they put it on my throat and then on my neck, and since we still didn’t say anything, they put a hood on me until I fainted, but when I woke up one of them said in my ear, speak ... son of a bitch… if you're don’t, the same thing will happen to you as your friend, touch him he is already dead," Manuel de Jesus recalled with great emotion, because he believed that what had felt was the corpse of his friend and teammate Ricardo Vazquez.
Manuel de Jesus said the most difficult time he lived while in captivity was when he was wrapped from head to toe in a huge plastic bag, as used in the morgue, and was told that if he did not say where were the weapons were then they were going to bury him alive.
"I begged them in the memory of my mother and my two daughters I have, do not kill me. I felt so scared I peed my pants, then I started to pray and ask God to protect me, and then they received a call from their chief who was told that we had not talked and he told them to kill us, but thank God we were left abandoned at 2:00 am on Wednesday at the Beltline, near the settlement Victor F . Ardon,” detailed the young cameraman.
"My only crime was to participate in the marches of the Resistance. Three days before the elections I was arrested for hanging posters by the same policemen who tortured me this Tuesday, and my house was raided on election day and they told my mother and my daughters that if they did not surrender weapons, they would kill them all", said Manuel de Jesús Murillo.
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UNKNOWN ASSASSINS KILL SITRAIHSS UNION MEMBERFebruary 5, 2010, El Liberator, Translation by Rights Action, http://ellibertador.hn/vivvo_general/3745.html
Yesterday a member of the Syndicate of Workers of the Honduran Social Security Institute (SITRAIHSS) was found dead in the Loarque neighborhood. As yet the security forces have not captured the executioners.
In an quiet area in the Loarque neighborhood, south of the city , the body of Vanessa Zepeda, an active member of the Popular Resistance Front National (the main opposition movement to the regime of Porfirio Lobo), was found.
Zepeda, since she became active in the Resistance against the coup, was repeatedly threatened, receiving text messages warning her that if she continued militancy in the social movement, she would be eliminated.
Human rights organizations had knowledge of the harassment suffered by the union leader, having taken the testimony of the persecution that the now deceased had been suffering for several months.
Meanwhile, the National Commissioner for Human Rights, Ramón Custodio, linked to the coup, has not commented on the execution of Zepeda, nor has he commented on any of the other victims murdered during the dictatorial regime of Robert Micheletti for opposing the breakdown of institutions.
Zepeda's body was found in a remote location south of the city. Residents from the area say the body was thrown from a double-cab vehicle. State forensic medical examiners prevented lawyers from the National Resistance Front from making the arrangements for the recognition and removal of the victim's cadaver to the judicial morgue.
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NEW HONDURAN PRESIDENT'S LEGITIMACY QUESTIONED AS 'ONE-SIDED CIVIL WAR' DEEPENS HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS - NATIONAL BANKRUPTCY DECLARED, By Jeremy Kryt, February 3, 2010,jkryt@aol.com, http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/5509/a_lobo_in_sheeps_clothing
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS -- It was all supposed to be different once Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo took over as the new president of Honduras. Human rights crisis finished. Dictatorship deterred. Even after a highly-contested election in November -- which most of the world refused to recognize and more than half of Hondurans didn't participate in -- many both here and abroad still clung to the hope that a new executive officer might resolve what some experts have called a "one-sided civil war" because only the military-backed regime has employed violent means.
The diverse anti-coup resistance movement has maintained a nonviolent stance, refusing to respond even when authorities have attacked peaceful marches and gatherings with chemical-based crowd control weapons, rubber bullets and live rounds. Dozens of peaceful resistance members have been killed by soldiers, police and government-funded paramilitaries since the armed coup against democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya in June 2009.
Even more worrisome, local human rights groups report that clandestine death squads, reminiscent of groups that terrorized the country in the 1980s, are once again roaming the streets at night.
AMNESTY DECREE (ie, impunity) FOR COUP PLOTTERS
During a heavily-militarized inauguration ceremony in this capital city on January 27, Lobo -- whose last name means "wolf" in Spanish -- signed an amnesty agreement for those who had perpetrated the coup against Zelaya. The move was seen by many as confirming his pro-coup stance and furthering his attempts to white-wash the military takeover. Lobo urged Hondurans to "forget the past," saying, "We have proven that we are a peace- and freedom-loving nation."
During a heavily-militarized inauguration ceremony in this capital city on January 27, Lobo -- whose last name means "wolf" in Spanish -- signed an amnesty agreement for those who had perpetrated the coup against Zelaya. The move was seen by many as confirming his pro-coup stance and furthering his attempts to white-wash the military takeover. Lobo urged Hondurans to "forget the past," saying, "We have proven that we are a peace- and freedom-loving nation."
But despite Lobo's rhetoric, there seems to be little peace or freedom in Honduras these days - and many critics say the situation seems unlikely to change under the fledgling Lobo administration.
HUMAN RIGHTS SITUATION WORSENING
"In terms of the human rights situation, our overall impression is that in some ways it's worse since the elections [of November 29] than it was before," said Victoria Cervantes, coordinator of the Chicago-based human rights organization Los Voz de los de Abajo. Cervantes met with In These Times in the capital of Tegucigalpa last week, at the conclusion of a fact-finding trip that combined several international human rights delegations from the United States and European Union. "What we're seeing now is a violence that's very selective against people and communities in resistance," Cervantes said. "But violence that is very much the style of the death squad and paramilitary violence . In other words, resistance people are found in their closets with their hands tied, ropes around their necks. People have been found with their tongue cut out. Decapitated bodies. raped and tortured."
"In terms of the human rights situation, our overall impression is that in some ways it's worse since the elections [of November 29] than it was before," said Victoria Cervantes, coordinator of the Chicago-based human rights organization Los Voz de los de Abajo. Cervantes met with In These Times in the capital of Tegucigalpa last week, at the conclusion of a fact-finding trip that combined several international human rights delegations from the United States and European Union. "What we're seeing now is a violence that's very selective against people and communities in resistance," Cervantes said. "But violence that is very much the style of the death squad and paramilitary violence . In other words, resistance people are found in their closets with their hands tied, ropes around their necks. People have been found with their tongue cut out. Decapitated bodies. raped and tortured."
According to Meri Agurcia, a human rights worker with the nonprofit Committee for the Families of Disappeared Persons in Honduras (COFADEH), the numbers support Cervantes' theory. COFADEH has confirmed the deaths of seven resistance members in January alone. In the previous six months, COFADEH reported a total of 28 politically-motivated killings of nonviolent resistance members.
"The military is starting to assert itself," Agurcia said. "All of these recent victims were members of the resistance -- we haven't seen that kind of targeting before." COFADEH also reports more than a dozen other incidents of authority-backed violence against pacifist activists in January, including beatings, detentions and one disappearance.
But, even as casualties rise, the eyes of the world seem focused elsewhere. "What concerns me most is that human rights abuses -- including murders – could continue with little international attention," wrote Dan Beeton, a Honduras expert with the Washington D.C.-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, in an email to In These Times. "Most of the media has 'moved on' from the Honduras coup story, and killings that have occurred since the elections ... have received very little attention in the foreign press.
Meanwhile, the Lobo government -- aided by the U.S. -- will continue to lobby governments for international recognition while these abuses are ignored."
EXIT ZELAYA, CENTER STAGE
President Zelaya emerged from the Brazilian Embassy shortly after Lobo's swearing-in ceremony last Wednesday, and was taken to the airport in a heavily-armed motorcade. It was his first time outside the embassy since September 21, but the former president spent less than an hour on Honduran soil before being flown into exile in the Dominican Republic.
President Zelaya emerged from the Brazilian Embassy shortly after Lobo's swearing-in ceremony last Wednesday, and was taken to the airport in a heavily-armed motorcade. It was his first time outside the embassy since September 21, but the former president spent less than an hour on Honduran soil before being flown into exile in the Dominican Republic.
"For us, it is a great insult, this expulsion of our president," said top anti-coup resistance leader Juan Barahona, in an exclusive interview with In These Times. "And it is a victory for the putschists, who would have everyone forget what happened last June."
During his time in office, Zelaya had initiated reforms aimed at increasing quality of life for the more than 70 percent of Hondurans who live in poverty. (More than half of the people in this small textile- and coffee-exporting nation get by on less than a dollar a day.) Zelaya had raised the minimum wage and provided primitive social security and financial aid for students. Then, last spring, when hundreds of thousands of Hondurans petitioned Zelaya to hold a nonbinding referendum on changing the draconian, outdated Honduran Constitution, in favor of a more democratic and participatory national charter, the president agreed to a public opinion poll on the issue.
But the oligarchic Congress, the Supreme Court, and the dozen or so wealthy families who have traditionally ruled Honduras, fearing Zelaya's reforms would endanger their control over the Honduran economy, aligned themselves with the country's military to stage a putsch. Zelaya was kidnapped in his pajamas around dawn on June 28, and flown into exile in Costa Rica.
The official excuse: that Zelaya had sought to re-write the constitution to extend presidential term limits. But, even after months of searching, there is still no evidence for this, and Zelaya himself had never mentioned it.
"He was the president, and the military attacked him for political reasons," said Barahona, who was also one of Zelaya's chief negotiators during the embassy siege. "He never committed any sort of crime."
But Zelaya's ouster sparked hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets in peaceful, near daily marches and assemblies for months after the coup, despite the violent repression by police, soldiers and private paramilitaries. After two unsuccessful attempts, Zelaya returned to Honduras by hiding in the trunk of a car and took up refuge in the Embassy.
In a previous interview with In These Times, Zelaya acknowledged that sonic and chemical weapons had been used by police and soldiers against those trapped inside the Embassy, and that food and other basic commodities were in short supply. "Everything have done has made an impression on us, the people of Honduras," said Barahona. "The way they sacked our president. The way they treated him in the embassy. The way they tortured him there... All of this has generated great solidarity between Zelaya and the people."
That solidarity could be the reason for such a big turnout of resistance activists at the airport; estimates of the crowd that turned out to see Zelaya off range from between 300,000 and 600,000. Carrying signs and flags and chanting Zelaya's name, the crowd faced off with troops guarding the runway at the airport. It was a scene eerily reminiscent of July 5, 2009, when thousands gathered to see one of Zelaya's aborted return attempts at the same tarmac and soldiers opened fire on the unarmed demonstrators, resulting in several deaths, including a nineteen-year-old activist named Isis Obed. Many in the crowd last Wednesday carried signs bearing Obed's likeness, and his name was scrawled in several places on airport buildings and walls.
For many in the crowd, the departure of Zelaya -- who before boarding his plane pledged to return to Honduras -- was a profoundly emotional moment. "I could not believe how many people I saw weeping," said Ena Lopez, 22, a student from the capital who attended Zelaya's farewell rally. "There were grown men crying like frightened children," Lopez said. "It is a sad day for my nation. And for all those anywhere in the world who love freedom."
LIVIN' LA VIDA LOBO
Many in Honduras believe the Lobo administration to be little more than an extension of the military-backed regime of Roberto Micheletti, which swept Zelaya from power, rolled back his social programs and imposed martial law for weeks at a time in order to smother dissent. Lobo, who is 61 and backed the coup last June, is widely seen as politically identical to the far-right oligarchs who traditionally hold power here.
Many in Honduras believe the Lobo administration to be little more than an extension of the military-backed regime of Roberto Micheletti, which swept Zelaya from power, rolled back his social programs and imposed martial law for weeks at a time in order to smother dissent. Lobo, who is 61 and backed the coup last June, is widely seen as politically identical to the far-right oligarchs who traditionally hold power here.
"Lobo has inherited a political climate marked by very strong and vibrant social movements that organized in opposition to the coup, and that show no sign of slowing down," wrote Honduran expert Beeton. "They question the new government's legitimacy, since it was elected in a process completely overseen and controlled by the coup regime, and of course so far most of the international community has not recognized Lobo's government."
The Lobo administration refused several requests for interviews for this article.
Lobo is a wealthy rancher with strong ties to the timber trade. As head of the Honduran Forestry Department (COHDEFOR) in the early 1990s, Lobo was accused by the Public Ministry of abusing his authority and misusing public funds. Lobo lost to Zelaya in the presidential race in 2005, running on a far-right platform that included the death penalty.
"More than half the people in the country did not recognize the November elections. And neither do we recognize the man who assumed the presidency on January 27," resistance leader Barahona said. "Why don't we recognize him? Because he was elected under an illegal coup regime, and so he cannot be a legal or legitimate president. Even worse, he was elected under brutally repressive conditions. How can we recognize a president like that?"
The United States -- which maintains close economic ties with Honduras and has been one of the few governments in the world to unequivocally recognize the elections -- sent a large delegation to attend Lobo's swearing in. On Saturday, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens met with Lobo and afterwards declared that Honduras-U.S. relations had been "normalized."
But the EU, as well as regional powerhouses like Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil, have yet to recognize the Lobo government. Bolivia even went so far as to officially label the new regime a "dictatorship."
There are also pressing internal problems, as the military coup has left Honduras' economy in tatters; the day after being sworn in, Lobo was forced to declare national bankruptcy.
But the most pressing and dire challenge to reconciliation in Honduras seems to be accusations of ongoing human rights abuses leveled at the government. "The burden of proof is really on Lobo to communicate to the military and the police that human rights abuses, as have occurred over the past seven months, will no longer be tolerated," Beeton wrote. "But Lobo...will probably receive little pressure to do anything about this from the Obama administration - which otherwise could be very important - since the U.S. said almost nothing about the murders, rapes and disappearances that occurred under the coup regime."
In fact, it seems unlikely that those responsible for the civil abuses over the last seven months will ever be brought to justice. In addition to the amnesty that Lobo signed last week, the highly-corrupt Honduran Congress also voted to award lifetime appointments to more than 50 government workers, making permanent what were once elected positions. Among those so honored was de facto president Roberto Michelletti, who became an official congressman for life.
" is an offense to the intelligence of every Honduran, and makes a joke of democracy," Barahona said. "But that attitude is typical in dictatorships."
DEATH SQUADS OR 'RANDOM VIOLENCE'?
On Wednesday, January 27, at 10:30 a.m., as Lobo was preparing to deliver his speech about loving peace and freedom, trucks carrying heavily-armed police officers and privately-contracted paramilitaries opened fire on a group of peaceful, anti-coup activists in the Department of Colon, several hours away from the capital. The demonstrators were poor farmers to whom Zelaya had promised land reform; the Micheletti regime instead sold their land to an outside corporation. The farmers had been living on the land for weeks in primitive conditions, but when In These Times visited with them a few weeks before the attack, they were cheerful and said they did not intend to resist violently if the police came for them.
On Wednesday, January 27, at 10:30 a.m., as Lobo was preparing to deliver his speech about loving peace and freedom, trucks carrying heavily-armed police officers and privately-contracted paramilitaries opened fire on a group of peaceful, anti-coup activists in the Department of Colon, several hours away from the capital. The demonstrators were poor farmers to whom Zelaya had promised land reform; the Micheletti regime instead sold their land to an outside corporation. The farmers had been living on the land for weeks in primitive conditions, but when In These Times visited with them a few weeks before the attack, they were cheerful and said they did not intend to resist violently if the police came for them.
Three unarmed farmers were wounded in the police crossfire last week, one of them shot critically in the face. When In These Times visited the First Metropolitan Precinct in Tegucigalpa to hear the police version of events, Inspector Carlos Delcid, the chief officer there said, "What happened in Colon was that the farmers were on private land, and that is prohibited... We have the instruments to use in the necessary cases. If everything is calm, we don't use our instruments. But if they want a revolution, they will get a revolution."
Not surprisingly, Delcid denied the existence of death squads or political killings. "Yes, there is random violence," he said, shrugging. "But there is always much random violence in Honduras."
But Victoria Cervantes, of La Voz de los Abajos, disagrees: "These victims are all resistance people... This is not random violence. They have tried to make some of the deaths look like suicide, but the problem is that they've beaten the people so badly before they the suicide that it's not very convincing."
"They are targeting the resistance leaders," said COFADEH's Agurci, "holding them in special, clandestine locations, and interrogating them brutally. They are after information. They torture the prisoners, and treat them as if they were not human." Her organization has documented a number of cases of police beating, suffocating, starving, dehydrating and sleep depriving various prisoners, she said.
Agurci said the most common questions asked during torture sessions are about the whereabouts of other resistance leaders, and whether or not the resistance is armed.
But the resistance has no plans to change its peaceful methodology. "We are mobilizing the country," said Barahona, "in the hopes of organizing to participate in the next election. need weapons, but we do not need weapons. Because we are the majority in Honduras."
(Jeremy Kryt is a graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has been reporting from Honduras since August, and his coverage of the crisis there has appeared in The Earth Island Journal, Alternet and The Narco News Bulletin, among other publications.)
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