Sunday, June 13, 2010

Gunmen fire at trade union leader José Luis Baquedano, third union leader and fourth member of the resistance attacked this week




Gunmen opened fire on the car of the trade union leader José Luis Baquedano, after following  him for several minutes from his home to the vicinity of a  shopping center in the capital on Saturday evening,  June 12.
Baquedano is attorney of the Unified Confederation of Workers (CUTH) and leader of the National Resistance Front. During the  coup he  has been beaten by soldiers and police in mass demonstrations of resistance in  2009, according to testimony given by him to the Committee of Relatives of Detained and Disappeared in Honduras, COFADEH.
The labor leader also forms part of the  the Minimum Wage Commission, representing the labor sector since December 2009, a tripartite committee between government, businessmen, and workers.
On this new event of repression against his life, he recounted that at about 10 pm on Saturday he  left his home in a vehicle  in Colonia  San Angel to  take his family to Villas del Sol shopping center, located on the exit road to the east of the country.
A few minutes later, a gray minivan with tinted windows followed him and when it came close, about three men were aboard who  proceeded to fire several shots.
Baquedano proceeded to flee his attackers through  a detour that leads to the colonia Kennedy, where  a police patrol suddenly appeared to stop  him arguing  he was the one who  fired. To show them he was unarmed he  got off the vehicle, in addition to explaining the police officers about the state of  shock  in which  his family due to  the attack they had suffered.
Despite the gravity of the situation and the danger in which the trade union leader found himself, the police delayed and didn't immediately proceed to intercept the vehicle driven by his attackers.
In recent days there have been attacks on members of the National Front of Popular Resistance, but none has been investigated. The (repressive) actions escalate as June 28th approaches, a year since the coup, the national resistance has scheduled a series of actions to condemn this act which shattered the institutionalization of Honduras, a situation that can only be reversed through the National Constituent Assembly, for which signatures are being collected throughout the country.

This week Professor Carolina Pineda, Attorney of the Teachers' Union of Middle School Education in Honduras, was shot by strangers who wanted to get her off the vehicle she was driving  which is owned by her organization and which suffered a sabotage in its  stirring wheel  
on June 4, with the aim of provoking an "accident" to  the teacher  and that  the consecuences were presented as such. 
Yesterday, the brother-in-law of Vice President of STIBYS, Porfirio Ponce,was killed in a hail of bulletsHis father and sister were injured but are out of danger. In February, Porfirio Ponce's residence was attacked by masked men who took his computer and left his bed full of blood.
Last week Juan Ramon Flores, leader of the National Resistance Front in Comayagua was kidnapped and  taken by armed  men in balaclavas  in a vehicle. He managed to survive this act of repression due to  the denunciation and pressure from the resistance.

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