The War Against Teachers: The Regime Targets Teachers Again
Background:
1. Yesterday, in a communiqué, the Teachers' Union accused repressive organs of the regime of persecuting leaders and threatening them to death. They blamed the Education Ministry, the Police, and the General Directorate of Criminal Investigation(DGIC, now called DNIC) for "persecution and death threats" to the teachers' leaders at a local, departmental and national level.
The Teachers' Union of Middle School Education(Copemh) denounced that teacher, Javier Castillo, in the Lempira Department, "has been a victim of threats by gunmen, demanding him to retire from the teachers's struggle", case which has already been filed to human rights organizations.
The context surrounding the crimes and harassment against teachers is that in view the government wants to eliminate the Teachers' Statute (a law which grants teachers' rights, their minimun wage, and guarantees public education) in order to privatize education, the teachers organized massive protests against these measures. El Heraldo published an article yesterday, as usual with its smear campaign against teachers, in which it states that " it is impossible to pay salaries indexed to teachers" according to the Teachers' Statute, if there is a minimum wage raise.
Yesterday, October 25, the Teachers' Union of Middle School Education (Copemh) denounced that Porfirio Lobo seeks to eliminate article 49 of the Teachers' Statute, "seeking to blame the Teachers' Statute for the disorder in education and intends to eliminate article 49", of that same law. However, the Statute's article 95, states that the rights recognized by this law will not be diminished, manipulated, nor ignored. This is why the teachers are organizing a protest and why also the regime clearly seeks to demobilize them through intimidation and coersion by shooting a teacher in front of his colleagues and students and sending gunmen to threaten another one within the same 24 hours.
Since the coup d'état took place last year, around 10 teachers members of the Copemh, the backbone and one of the biggest organizations in the National Front of Popular Resistance. have been killed and none of their deaths have been investigated by authorities.
On March 23 this year, one of those teachers, Manuel Flores, member of Copemh, National resistance front leader, and founding member of the Central American Socialist Party(PSoCA), was also murdered in front of his students and colleagues at the High School where he worked. His death was attributed to youth gangs by the authorities, as it is their habit.
Teachers were victims of repression; harassment, threats, aggressions, imprisonment and assassination. Teachers Andrés Martínez; Edgar Soriano; Luís Sosa and Carlos Anariva were captured and tortured, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office opened a legal suit against them for exercising their right to peaceful protest.
Teachers Nelson Milla Díaz, Néstor Alemán, and Juan Ramón Márquez were captured and taken to the Transit Police Station where their bodies, bloodied from the beatings, were cleaned up as were those of other teachers.
Teachers Dagoberto Espinal, José María Andino and German de Jesús Maldonado, were captured and taken to Liberty Plaza, next to the Presidential Palace, where they were illegally detained for hours. (Source: COFADEH/Quixote Center)
According to a list of the Committee of Relatives of the Detained Disappeared in Honduras COFADEH, after the coup d'état the death of at least 8 murdered teachers is registered. Among them : Roger Abrahán Vallejo(shot by the military during a protest), Félix Orlando Murillo López(who was a key witness of Roger Abrahán Vallejo's death and was found some weeks later dead with signs of torture), Rubén Estrada, Mario Fidel Contreras Moncada, Sergio Eliseo Juárez Hernández, Gradis Espinal, Blas López, and José Manuel Flores. At the wake held to honour Vallejo's memory, teacher Martín Florencio Rivera was stabbed to death. (Source: In These Times / Honduras Resists: Violence against the Resistance Movement, Unionists continue by Kari Lydersen)
On June 10, 2010, a group of heavily armed men tried to kidnap without success the finances secretary of the Teachers' Union of Middle School Education of Honduras(COPEMH), Carolina Pineda, informed the president of the organization, Jaime Rodríguez. (Source: Honduras Laboral)
3. The "Evil" Teachers' Statute: Repression, scapegoating Teachers, Smear Campaigns by Corporate Honduran Media as well as government officials blaming the Teachers' Statute of the cause of all evils in the country,while stealing the teachers' pension funds and pushing for a bill to privatize education
On Thursday and Friday (August 26-27), police and military violently repressed public school teachers who have taken to the streets for almost 3 weeks to demand, amongst other things, that the Pepe Lobo regime return 4 billion lempiras (or some 200 million dollars) that were taken from the National Institute of IMPREMA, an institution that manages teachers' pension funds, after the military-oligarchic coup against President Zelaya on June 28, 2009.
Friday (August 27th), teachers were violently evicted twice from the area around the National Pedagogical University, first, when they had occupied the boulevard, and second, when teachers were regrouping and meeting inside the University.
At the university, located close to a major boulevard and across from a business shopping center, police arrived with 2 water tanks, firing more than 100 tear gas canisters and rubber bullets at the teachers and members of the resistance movement in and outside the university grounds, beating up those they chased and captured without regard for the presence of children and the public in the busy area of the city and the peaceful form in which the teachers were protesting.
From a black Toyota four-runner parked on the street in front of the university, a man opened fired at the protesters with a 9-millimeter gun. Although no one was shot, the car was later identified as belonging to the National Congress.
Over 100 people were captured and 'guarded' by police against a fence outside the university. They were later released after human rights representatives arrived and negotiated with the police. Many teachers and resistance members, fleeing the tear gas, were trapped inside the classrooms in the university where they suffered from severe exposure to tear gas. Over 7 people were injured from the gas and from police beatings, including a journalist from Globo TV/Radio Globo.
The day before, on Thursday, after occupying a street close to the Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa, the teachers were violently evicted by police and military. Six teachers were reported injured from the tear gas and wounds inflicted by the police.
These two days, last week, were the icing on the cake to the violence inflicted against the teachers movement on August 20th, when again, police and military evicted the movement and brutally beat up 3 union leaders and one teacher, all of whom were supposedly identified on the spot to the police by individuals infiltrating the marches.
Before and particularly since August 20th, the major media outlets owned by the oligarchy have continued a media campaign against the teachers' movement to portray them as instruments of violence with no regard for children's education and the educational system in Honduras.
(Source: Honduras: Teachers and Students Resist Repression by Karen Spring)
In the month of August, the repression and infiltration of marches, assemblies and the seizure of the installations ofINPREMA, were some of the strategies to demobilize sectors which had decided to protest. (Source: COFADEH)
Teacher is shot in front of his students in Tegucigalpa
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Red Morazánica de Información
Tegucigalpa 25 de octubre de 2010. Two gunmen aboard a motorcycle attacked a teacher of a school in Colonia Villa Nueva in Tegucigalpa.
According to versions broadcasted by Radio Globo, the teacher received several gunshots, shot "with a gun with silencer".
The teacher, whose name and identity is unknown is in grave danger in a hospital of the capital city.
According to a radio, the event had occured in front of his students and colleagues.
The assailants fleed inmediately after they commited the crime, while the teacher was transferred to a hospital due to the gravity of the wounds caused by his aggressors.
After the coup d'état, about 10 murdered teachers in circumstances that have not yet been clarified by the State, have been reported.
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