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Honduras human rights lawyer for agrarian groups murdered at wedding

28 Sep

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — A leading human rights lawyer who represented several Honduran agrarian groups in disputes with large landowners was killed by gunmen on Sunday, a land rights organization said.

Antonio Trejo Cabrera, 41, was shot five times while attending a wedding in the capital, Tegucigalpa, the Peasant Movement of the Valley of Bajo Aguan said in a statement.

Trejo was a lawyer from three peasant cooperatives in the Bajo Aguan, a fertile farming area plagued by violent conflicts between agrarian organizations and land owners. More than 60 people have been killed in such disputes over the past two years. The lawyer had recently helped farmers gain legal rights to several plantations.

Trejo had also helped prepare motions declaring unconstitutional a proposal to build three privately run cities with their own police, laws and tax systems.

Just hours before his murder, Trejo had participated in a televised debate in which he accused congressional leaders of using the private city projects to raise campaign funds.

The lawyer was to travel to Washington in October to participate in hearings on the Bajo Aguan situation at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, said Annie Bird, co-director of Rights Action.

Trejo “had denounced those responsible for his future death on many occasions,” said Vitalino Alvarez, a spokesman for Bajo Aguan’s peasants. “Since they couldn’t beat him in the courts, they killed him.”

No arrests have been made in Trejo’s killing.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Is the US Poised to Regain Control of Latin America with Regional Proxy Wars Through Colombia?

21 Jun

The Summit of the Americas, Drug Legalization, ‘Asymmetric’ Relations & Security Cooperation

by ANNIE BIRD

The Summits of the Americas began in 1994 as forums to promote free trade. In 2009 the Summit’s focus shifted to demands for the inclusion of Cuba in regional political bodies and the end of the U.S. economic embargo, a debate which continued in this month’s Sixth Summit in Cartagena.

But a new topic made its way into the news from the April 14 and 15 Summit in Cartagena, the call to discuss ‘decriminalization’ of drugs. Strangely, the call was launched by precisely the presidents which have most embraced militarization under the guise of the drug war. Though spearheaded by Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina, reportedly a former CIA asset and former general accused of carrying out crimes against humanity, Perez Molina claims he thought of the proposal together with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes on April 15, Presidents Obama and Santos signed the U.S. – Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security Cooperation, an agreement for security cooperation throughout the hemisphere and in West Africa, whose stated objective is to respond to increased insecurity generated by organized crime.

The call for debate on such an important and sensitive topic by Washington’s military allies, while the U.S. launches with them a new regional ‘security’ project is confusing. But it also occurs as the U.S. attempts to challenge a set of popular South American leaders intent on forging an independent Latin America.

U.S. dominance is a sensitive subject in Latin America, and there is very little political capital to be gained from pandering to Washington. To the contrary, those that challenge the U.S. have become extremely popular, which leads to the suspicion that the call from the drug warriors for a debate on “decriminalization” could be a red herring to garner popularity for a new set of U.S. friendly Latin American presidents.

Colombian Host Helps US Retake Center Stage at the Summit

As South American leaders focus on building up a Latin American economic and political block with independence from its northern, English speaking neighbors, the Summits have been the sites of diplomatic tensions.

In 2009, during the last Summit in Trinidad and Tobago, US press reports focused on Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega’s “rant” against U.S. imperialism and reported on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s gift to Obama of the book “The Open Veins of Latin America” as an affront.

Whatever deference to Obama may have been missing in Trinidad and Tobago was more than made up for in Colombia where it was reported that in the ceremonial dinner Obama sat on a raised platform well above the other presidents, who could not be served until Obama arrived and was seated, well over an hour after everyone else.

Miami, the unofficial business capital of Latin America and nerve center of the political network that advance the interests of U.S. based corporations in Latin America was also given the opportunity to again flex its muscles in the context of a Summit in a Summit of corporate CEO’s convoked by the Colombian president of the Inter American Development Bank, Luis Alberto Moreno.

Immersed in his battle with cancer, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez did not attend. In the 2005 Summit Chavez pronounced the original summit agenda, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), dead and buried, as Venezuela launched an alternative, the Bolivarian Alliance for Latin America (ALBA).

The only point of North- South tension reported from the Summit was the panel discussion turned debate, facilitated by co-panelist President Santos, between Obama and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, in which Vanity Fair reports that Rousseff referred to the ‘asymmetric relationship’ between the U.S. and Latin America a dozen times.

April 15, Obama and Santos Announce the U.S. Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security

The diplomatic role Colombia played in restoring the U.S. President’s asymmetric relationship in the Summit was backed up by the signing of a political-military agreement aimed at strengthening the U.S.’s military presence in the region. President Santos, who was Minister of Defense under Alvaro Uribe, and President Obama “on the margins” of the Summit on April 15th signed an agreement to establish the U.S. Colombia Action Plan for Regional Security.

The White House described the agreement as building on, ie. expanding U.S. Colombian security operations from Central America to the whole hemisphere and even Africa. The White House referred to the ‘success,’ without describing specific benchmarks to demonstrate ‘success’, of Operation Martillo, launched last year, partnering the U.S. Joint Interagency Task Force- South (JIATF-S) and the Colombian Navy and Air Forces in Central America.

JIATF-S, a unit under the U.S. military’s Southern Command (SouthCom), left Panama for Miami 19 years ago when the U.S. left the Canal Zone. Last year JIATF-S came back to Panama providing “Operational Support” in a newly reopened U.S. military base which serves as the Center of Operations for the Central American System for Regional Integration’s Regional Security Strategy (SICA-COSR).

COSR will most likely be the regional center for the JIATF-S’s C4I border surveillance program, which creates technology canals of radars and other electronic surveillance equipment linked to Colombian and Mexican border control technology.

The White House also mentions that the Colombian National Police are providing assistance and training through the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) to all of Central America except Nicaragua, Central America’s only ALBA member since the 2009 military coup in Honduras. In December 2011, Panamanian President Martinelli announced that the US and Colombia were partnering in creating a border control school for the region’s police and military in Panama.

CARSI is being implemented through SICA’s Regional Security Strategy, which is promoted by a ‘group of friends,’ spearheaded by the United States and the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) in Washington, DC, but which also includes, among others, Colombia, Chile, Brazil and Germany. SICA- ESCA is expected to have an annual budget of over US$1 billion, provided by the Group of Friends, mostly in the form of 22 loans from the IADB.

From Central America to the Hemisphere: Biden’s Lunch with Central American Presidents While General Fraser Explained SouthComs Agenda to Congress

In preparation for the 6th Summit of the Americas, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Mexico and Central America on March 4, 5 and 6. He began in Mexico where the State Department’s Merida Initiative partnered with President Felipe Calderon’s drug war in 2006, and has resulted in an estimated 50,000 deaths.

On Tuesday March 6, Biden lunched in Tegucigalpa with all the presidents of Central America mainly to discuss CARSI, the Central American version of the Merida Initiative. The same day the Commander of the US Southern Command, General Fraser, presented his annual address to the Armed Services Committee in the House of Representatives, focusing strongly on Central America.

In the context of Biden’s visit, the US ambassador to Honduras, Lisa Kubiske, commented that the diminishing engagement of the US in the Middle East means that US Armed Forces can increase their commitments in Central America, a scenario that is already taking shape.

Fraser explained that the US agenda in the hemisphere is stability, and spoke extensively about Central American crime gangs as a threat to stability in the region, which he claimed require a military response and assistance from the State Department in training and funding police forces. Another threat to stability he described were alleged protests and unrest in certain ALBA nations, while he expressed concern about overtures from the Iranian government to Venezuela.

He also asserted that “criminal activities extend into the Venezuelan government,” ironic given Biden’s presence in Honduras where deep implications of government officials and security forces in organized crime, including gangs, have been completely overlooked by the U.S.

The politically charged discourse behind the ‘drug war’ underscores the fact that since 2006 the U.S. has established a massive military presence from Mexico to Colombia, in what looks like a move to insure that the independent governments of South America don’t spread north, and now, apparently, the U.S. and Colombian security agenda is throughout the Hemisphere.

At the 5th Summit of the Americas, the Left Controlled Central America

In 2009 Biden also visited Central America to prepare for the Summit, but the cards were stacked very differently. Left leaning governments, many affiliated with former revolutionary movements, had taken control of Central America through elections.

Daniel Ortega, the leader of the Sandinista movement, was president of Nicaragua, firmly staked out in office with a large base of support and a political pact with the opposition. Mauricio Funes of the FMLN political party, born from the revolutionary movement, had just been elected president of El Salvador. Guatemala’s president, Alvaro Colom, who had undertaken his first presidential bid in 1999 as the candidate for another revolutionary movement turned political party, the URNG, brought some URNG associated political figures into his administration.

In Honduras, Manuel Zelaya had led his nation into joining ALBA, and consolidated an overwhelming base of support. Panama was ruled by Martin Torrijos, son of the “leftist” de facto military leader Omar Torrijos (1968-1981) whose 1981 death in a plane crash is widely speculated to have been the work of the CIA. A year before the 5th Summit of the Americas Torrijos had met with Raul Castro in Cuba to discuss signing an energy agreement. Oscar Arias, then President of Costa Rica, though a firm US ally is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and many consider him a moderate.

Central America Turns to the Right, with a Big Push from the North

Just three months after the 2009 Summit, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was deposed in a coup broadly understood in Honduras to have been backed by the U.S. government. Guatemala’s Alvaro Colom was succeeded by Otto Perez Molina, a retired general and a firm US ally. Mauricio Funes, an outsider in the FMLN political party, has made many concessions to US interests, particularly in relation to security matters recently sweeping all FLMN aligned appointees from top security positions and replacing them with former military.

Panama’s Torrijos was succeeded by the right wing Ricardo Martinelli, who comes from one of Panama’s oldest economic and political oligarch families, and in Costa Rica Laura Chinchilla is considered right wing and very pro US. Daniel Ortega remains in office, though his 2011 reelection has been the focus of intense criticism from the State Department, former diplomats, and the media.

Political Opportunism: Drug Legalization Call from Guatemala’s Perez Molina

With three months in office, Perez Molina has leapt into the spotlight by promoting a debate around legalization of drugs, donning the hat of reformer as opposed to his previous fame as a former military intelligence chief implicated in war crimes like torture and genocide. Even before Perez Molina assumed office, in December 2010, he surprised all by advancing a call for dialog about the possibility of “depenalization,” ie. legalization, of drugs.

The strangeness of Perez Molina’s position stems from his wholehearted embrace of militarization in the framework of the war on drugs. During the first two months of his presidency his new appointees on repeated occasions have criminalized social protest, stating that those who block highways are backed by organized crime and drug traffickers.

On February 14, 2012 Guatemala’s Vice Minister for Security, former colonel Julio Rivera Clavería, referred to the leaders of the Sasiguan, Cunen indigenous community, which opposes the construction of a hydroelectric dam on their lands by the Italian energy company ENEL, as drug traffickers. On February 14 Sasiguan residents caught three police officers leaving the scene after the destruction of over 50 acres of crops, the latest in a series of actions harassing and intimidating the community. The three were detained and taken to the community’s traditional indigenous leaders. Rivera led a force of 600 soldiers to “rescue” three security guards, accusing community leaders of being drug traffickers.

Perez Molina has also enthusiastically promoted use of the Guatemalan military’s special forces unit, the Kaibiles, in anti-drug policing, while placing Kaibiles in the highest three command positions in the military. On April 6, 2011 Guatemalan Vice Minister of Security Mario Castaneda reported that current and former Kaibles were training members of the Zeta drug gang and participating in drug smuggling, while noting that a series of weapons robberies from military bases in Guatemala and Honduras had benefited Zetas.

The Mexico–Guatemala- Colombia Axis: Creating Latin America’s “Independent” Block Favoring Northern Businesses Interests

With his forceful yet polished personality, Perez Molina is quickly projecting regional leadership advancing statements that appear to confront US policy, like that Guatemalan troops are capable of fighting the drug war and that he did not intend to ask for US troop support. Strong words for a man who visited SouthCom together with his vice president and three highest ministerial appointees in November, even before taking office, to pave way for cooperation. In 1994 he was reported by an investigative journalist to have been a CIA asset, and he has been extremely close to the US embassy as his frequent appearances in Wikileaks documents attest.

Perez Molina is an adept politician and there is a lot of political capital to be garnered from appearing to challenge the US in Latin America, especially on drug policy. It is not lost on Latin Americans that the US is the main supplier of weapons to the region’s drug cartels, that it is US and Canadian consumption that drives the drug trade, and that most of the casualties in the US’s drug war are Latin Americans, and their democracies.

The first acting president in Latin America to clearly call for legalization was Colombian President Santos in November 2011, though in August 2011 Mexico’s President Felipe Calderon stated that if the US could not curb consumption it must implement ‘market based solutions’ to the importation of drugs to the States, solutions not involving illegal border crossings.

The Drug War Must End, But Is there a Hidden Agenda?

On February 23, 2009 the Wall Street Journal launched the current legalization debate, publishing a powerful op-ed by former presidents Fernando Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria and Ernesto Zedillo of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico respectively, asserting that “Prohibitionist policies based on eradication, interdiction and criminalization of consumption simply haven’t worked,” and calling for a review of US led drug war policies, noting that the “alarming power of the drug cartels is leading to a criminalization of politics and a politicization of crime. And the corruption of the judicial and political system is undermining the foundations of democracy in several Latin American countries.”

The US’s drug war in Latin America is criminal and must end. But the call to ‘debate’ drug policy is being advanced by the same US aligned political figures that have most embraced the militarization of the region in the name of the drug war.

The US’s agenda in Latin America is regaining hegemony. But US allies have been lacking political personalities capable of garnering strong support in their home countries. Openness to dialog or even limited reform on drug policy, which appears to challenge Uncle Sam’s agenda, could go a long way in gaining popular support, generating an apparently ‘independent’ block of right leaning political figures to challenge the South American lineup, while continuing security operations to impose transnational business interests through repression and criminalization.

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Honduras resistance launches political party as repression continues

15 Aug

By Felipe Stuart Cournoyer and John Riddell.

A National Assembly of the Resistance, uniting more than 1,500 delegates from across Honduras, voted June 26 to launch a new political party, the Frente Amplio de Resistencia Popular (Broad Front of Popular Resistance—FARP).

The assembly was convened by the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (National People’s Resistance Front—FNRP), the main coordinating body of popular struggle since a right-wing coup overthrew the democratically elected government of President Manuel Zelaya two years ago, on June 28, 2009.

The new party is to function as an arm of the Resistance Front in the political-electoral arena and will contest the 2013 presidential elections.

The delegates met under large suspended banners displaying the images of ALBA presidents—Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Daniel Ortega (Nicaragua), Raúl Castro (Cuba), and Evo Morales (Bolivia), alongside those of Francisco Morazán, Simón Bolívar, Che Guevara, and Fidel Castro. Honduras was illegitimately removed from the ALBA alliance by the coup regime established in 2009.

At the assembly, Zelaya, who returned from exile on May 28, urged the FNRP to guard its unity. It must embrace all sectors affected by the cruelty of the existing system, which has devastated the lives of millions of Hondurans, he said. Zelaya stressed that Honduras needs deep structural reforms. The Honduran resistance, pressing forward in every field of activity, is capable both of taking political power and setting in motion the convening of a constituent assembly, he said. (See report by Dick and Miriam Emanuelsson.)

According to a July 10 report by the Nicaraguan left-wing website radiolaprimerisima.com, “The president of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo, has initiated a discussion with a number of political parties on convening a Constituent Assembly. This proposal is similar to the one advanced by Ex-President Manuel Zelaya, which caused his ouster on June 28, 2009.”

Zelaya took part in this discussion, which was held in the Presidential Palace in Tegucigalpa. Zelaya insisted that it is the people who have the sovereignty to convoke a constituent assembly, not the state authorities. The Cartagena Accord accepted a framework in which the people must be consulted, he said, calling on organizations of teachers, peasants, workers, and various social sectors to demand their inclusion in the process.

Death squads still active

Zelaya returned to Honduras as part of the May 22 Cartagena Accord, which included provisions to rein in the coup regime’s campaign of terror against resistance and social activists. This repression included close to 100 political killings in 2010. As we warned in our May 24 report on the accord, the Cartagena agreement did not halt death-squad activity.

According to Bertha Oliva of COFADEH (the Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras), only a few days after the accord was signed, a death squad struck down a close associate of Xiomara Castro, Zelaya’s wife and political partner, along with another victim. Oliva was interviewed June 24 by Todd Gordon and Jeffery R. Webber (see “Imperialism and the Future of Honduran Resistance.”)

“Security forces can torture, and nothing will happen,” Oliva said. “They can detain and assassinate their opponents, and nothing will happen.”

On June 5, three peasant activists were assassinated near their San Esteban cooperative, Oliva reports. The same day, security guards working for Miguel Facussé, a large landowner notorious for illegal expropriation of peasant lands, entered the National Agrarian Institute and opened fire on peasants who had taken refuge there, seriously wounding one of them. On June 10, government and private security forces invaded several other peasant cooperatives in the Bajo Aguán region.

During their visit to Honduras, Gordon and Webber met many other activists who had recently received death threats.

Nor is repression directed only at the grass roots. On June 15, Gordon and Webber say, Zelaya’s former chief of staff, Enrique Flores, who had returned from exile on the same plane as the former president, was placed under house arrest—a clear violation of the Cartagena Accord.

Assessing Cartagena

According to Gordon and Webber, the urgent struggle against this murderous repression has been rendered more difficult by the Cartagena Accord, which “is likely to cast a democratic veneer over these atrocities, à la Colombia.” The accord “is best understood as a blow to the Honduran Resistance, one that is likely to undermine efforts to continue building a grassroots movement genuinely capable of challenging political and economic power in the country.”

Gordon and Webber concede, however, that this is not currently the prevailing view in the resistance.

They analyze the movement as divided into three wings: the “official resistance,” composed of the forces that broke with Zelaya from the capitalist Liberal party (“a persecuted branch of former members of the ruling class”); a militant wing, Refoundational Space, which is critical of the Accord; and “a third and oscillating force … composed principally of popular classes and oppressed groups.”

In the lead up to the accord and since Zelaya’s return, Gorden and Webber say, “momentum within the Resistance has moved from Refoundational Space to the official wing of the Frente.”

This “momentum” was evident at the Resistance Front’s June 26 conference. Delegates of COPINH (Council of Peoples’ and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras), a major component of Refoundational Space, argued against the decision to launch a political party in conditions of ongoing capitalist pillage and repression in the country. In their view, “To fall into the trap of participating in the 2013 elections would be a huge mistake.” (Berta Caceres of COPINH in an interview by Gordon and Webber.)

Yet the resolution launching a political party to participate in electoral activity was approved by a 90%-95% majority at the Resistance Front’s June 26 assembly.

Gordon and Webber question the fairness of debate in the assembly. Most speakers were “selected from the officialist camp”; Zelaya’s personal authority weighed heavily on the gathering; discussion was “truncated,” they say.

Dick and Miriam Emanuelsson note, however, that the four resolutions presented during this discussion had been fully discussed by base organizations and committees of the Resistance Front in urban barrios and on a municipal and departmental level. Opponents of launching a political party were able to make their arguments before the assembly, but they did not convince many, and the vote to launch the FARP was greeted with general jubilation. There is no basis to question grassroots delegates’ understanding of the different strategic choices before them or their capacity to evaluate them.

According to the assembly decisions, the new political party will not replace the resistance front. Membership in the party will be individual; forces with divergent views on the party remain united in the Resistance Front.

Combined strategy

Gordon and Webber conclude their analysis with a quotation from Tomás Andino, a Refoundational Space delegate at the Resistance Front assembly:

“The same powers that were responsible for the coup d’état remain in place…. [A]re we to expect that these forces that came to power through force are going to give up that power through voting? No! … [T]he only strategy available to the people is to rise up…. If we simply move toward participation in elections we are going to be lost.”

If the Resistance Front majority were proposing to replace a strategy of mass action with sheer electorialism, Andino’s point would be well taken. In fact, this majority argue for maintaining the grass-roots struggle for a Constituent Assembly and democratic rights alongside participation in the coming elections. Andino and the Refoundational Space delegates were unable to convince many that such a combined strategy would be unviable.

There are some in Honduras and elsewhere who believe that electoral action will have a negative effect, no matter how it is conducted. But in several Latin American countries in recent years, including Bolivia, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, an integration of electoral action with grass-roots initiatives has had some positive results.

Gordon and Webber have contributed to building our understanding of the Honduran resistance, which deserves close study internationally. But there is no need for us pass judgment at this stage on the debate among Honduran activists.

Whatever our views on the discussion there, we have a joint responsibility to continue building opposition to the repression in Honduras and to ongoing pillaging of the country by imperialist powers and their corporations.

Source

Who’s Killing the Journalists of Honduras?

28 Jun


Editor’s Note: June 28, 2011 is the two-year anniversary of the coup in Honduras.

The small town of San Marco, near Honduras’ western border with El Salvador and Guatemala, has no distinguishing factors that set it apart from the other tiny villages and hamlets that dot the rural region of Ocotepeque. Its dusty streets and pretty white church give off an air of sleepy, country tranquility. But to journalist José Alemán, in late March of 2010, the town’s streets were anything but idyllic as he tried to evade gunmen sent to kill him.

It was Friday March 26, 2010, around six a.m., when Alemán left the room he had rented in the town. While riding his bike, a blue automobile appeared and attempted to cut him off. Alemán skirted his way by the truck and dodged uneasily down another street, only to have the automobile reappear and edge closer to him. Spinning his bike around, Alemán fled from the scene to the relative safety of the main park in San Marco Ocotepeque where he was to meet a friend for breakfast.

Throwing his bike in the bed of his friend’s truck, the two headed out for breakfast. While at a nearby gas station another of Alemán’s friends showed up with some news.

“They’re looking for you,” said the friend.

“Who?” asked Alemán.

“Some men, they’re looking for you to kill you.”

Still shocked by the news, only minutes later Alemán received a call from a neighbor informing her that the men in the blue vehicle had stopped by his room, looking for him and saying that they were going to catch “this dog.”

“I never believed that this was true because I’ve lived here for 10 years and have never had a problem,” Alemán told The Latin America News Dispatch. Fearing for his life, Alemán headed to the local police station, but after hours of waiting without any news, he left for the relative safety of a hotel room nearby.

The following day, against advisement from his friends, Alemán headed to work at the Radio América studios. Shortly after reporting on a shootout between police and a group of unidentified assailants, the station’s phone rang. Picking up, he heard a mocking voice say “keep talking, keep talking.”

That Sunday, while the devout Christian Alemán was out, gunmen entered his home, ransacked the place and peppered it with bullets. Hearing the news, Alemán quickly packed up and fled into hiding. “Thank God I’m a Christian and it wasn’t His will that I die in my room that day,” he added.

Alemán was fortunate to escape the attempt on his life, given that he works as a journalist in Honduras. Since 2008, ten journalists have been murdered in the country and many more wounded, including the March 2011 attack on radio station director Franklin Meléndez. Honduras, which was labeled by Reporter’s Without Borders as the most dangerous country in the world for journalists in 2010, has also seen the killing of 60 lawyers, 155 women, and 59 gays, lesbians or transgender people since 2008, giving the country the ominous title of holding the highest murder rate in the Western Hemisphere, according to The Miami Herald.

“Violence against media workers is increasing in Latin America,” said Tracy Wilkinson, Mexico City bureau chief of The Los Angeles Times. “Sometimes it’s politics…but very often it’s the rise of well-armed, well-organized criminal gangs, whether drug traffickers or run-of-the-mill smugglers, who don’t want journalists snooping around their lucrative businesses.”

The murders began on the evening of March 3, 2010 when Joseph Ochoa, a journalist for the Canal 51 TV station, was killed in Tegucigalpa during an attack allegedly aimed at fellow journalist Karol Cabrera. On March 11, David Meza Montesinos, a radio journalist who reported receiving threats for a story on drug trafficking, was shot dead by gunmen in an ambush close to his home in the Atlantic coast city of La Ceiba. Three days later Nahúm Palacios, news editor of Televisora de-Aguán-Canal 5, was shot in his car in Tocoa, Honduras. Then on March 26, 2010 Bayardo Mairena and Manuel Juárez, both radio journalists, had their car shot up and then gunmen “finished them off with shots fired at close-range,” according to Reporters Without Borders.

The case of Franklin Meléndez highlights that these attacks on journalists are not isolated incidents and have carried over into 2011. Along with Meléndez’s confrontation, five journalists in March were attacked by police officers while covering protests in the country’s on-going teachers strike. “Honduras is a very dangerous country for journalists right now,” said Ricardo Trotti of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA).

These murders and attacks have shocked and dismayed the journalism community, as Honduras battles to be the focal point of violence in a region of the world normally dominated by bad news from Mexico. “This unprecedented level of violence against the Honduran media has obviously created fear and unease,” said Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, in a telephone interview. “The murders of five reporters [last March] has inevitably caused widespread self-censorship, and prevented local journalists from reporting on sensitive information, such as crime, local corruption and national security.”

Self-censorship, due to fear of retaliation from the Honduran government or drug-traffickers, has become a major issue within the Honduran journalism community. “Any murder has the effect of intimidating the press corps and causing some journalists to pull their punches and not report what they see as the truth,” Wilkinson said. “This is disastrous for society, which ends up being ill-informed. In a way, not knowing what is really behind the killings ends up creating a multitude of possibilities and a multitude of reasons for journalists to be afraid.”

“In Honduras, it’s a crime to tell people the truth,” Alemán said, adding that when journalists report on certain issues such as drugs or corruption, editors will tell them to work on something else so they don’t draw attention to the press.

Aleman’s manager at the El Tiempo newspaper, Rubén Escobar, agreed that self-censorship is a fact of life in Honduran journalism. Escobar blamed fear of drug traffickers operating in the country for much of the self-censoring. “There are some media outlets that have stopped covering the actions of the drug-traffickers,” he said. “Self-censorship has begun to become widespread.”

Even the President of the Honduran Journalism Association asked reporters to be careful with the information and quotes they are given, according to Escobar. “This is equivalent to self-censorship,” he added.

While many blame drug-trafficking organizations that use Honduras as a stopover point between South America and Mexico for the spike in violence against media workers, others point a finger at the Honduran government and their crackdown on opposition journalists after the June 2009 coup. “Are the Honduran government’s promises to the U.N. and O.A.S. to improve the situation of the media being used as a smokescreen for targeted attacks on outspoken or opposition media?” Reporters Without Borders said. “We have every reason to suspect this, given the latest events and the total absence of protection for the most exposed and vulnerable media.”

The coup took place on the morning of June 28, 2009 when about 100 soldiers stormed the presidential palace in Tegucigalpa, forcibly removed then-President Manuel Zelaya from the premises and flying him to San José, Costa Rica. Citing a plot by Zelaya to eliminate presidential term limits and create a socialist state in the vein of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, the National Congress later that day voted to remove Zelaya from office and swore in Speaker of Congress Roberto Micheletti as president.

In the next few months, there were mass protests and violence between demonstrators and police. Many countries, including the United States, refused to recognize the interim government and the United Nations called for Zelaya’s reinstatement. During the turmoil, Zelaya snuck back into Honduras in September and holed himself up in the Brazilian Embassy. Under this atmosphere, Honduras held elections on November 29, 2009. Porfirio Lobo, of the conservative Partido Nacional, won the election and was installed as president two months later on January 27, 2010. That same day, Zelaya flew into exile to the Dominican Republic, after Lobo and Dominican President Leonel Fernández worked out a deal to ensure Zelaya’s safe passage out of Honduras.

Members of Honduras Resiste

President Lobo is in a difficult position when it comes to the violence against journalists, as he is under constant watch from the coup’s military leaders to rule the way that they see fit. If he relaxes his tough stance on Zelaya supporters he runs the risk of being ousted himself, said Adrienne Pine, a professor at American University and Senior Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. “There’s nothing Lobo can do, even he wanted to,” she added. “It’s horrifying,” she added.

Some of the reporters killed were outspoken critics of the post-coup government, leading some to speculate that the Honduran government is solely responsible for the murders of these journalists. “Honduras is unique. In other parts of Latin America where violence against the press is endemic – Mexico, for example –it’s tied to drug trafficking. In Honduras, at least as far as CPJ can determine, the violence against the press appears to have a political dimension,” Simon said. “That’s an extremely alarming development for the entire region.”

“Of the ten journalists killed, seven were known members of the resistance,” said Gerardo Torres of Honduras’ National Front of Popular Resistance (FNRP, in Spanish). “If this were any other country, everybody would hear about this. When they kill ten journalists in Honduras, nobody knows.”

Torres, an outspoken critic of the coup and the current Lobo government, said that all these murders have gone unprosecuted and that while the Honduran government blames drug-traffickers and common criminals, the government itself is committing these murders.

Many people, including Torres and Pine, believe that the Honduran government is deeply entrenched in drug-trafficking. “The violence is from the administration, but the administration is totally immersed in drug trafficking,” Pine said.

If the government does not tacitly support the drug traffickers, they at least let them operate freely due to bribes and corruption and might hire them out to do the government’s dirty work. The parties in power are subcontracting the killings of journalists and dissidents out to gang members or even private security agencies that have links to paramilitary groups, Pine added.

Others, such as the IAPA, don’t believe that the government is so entrenched with drug traffickers and see the problem mainly resulting from reporting on the drug trade. Mexico, in the midst of President Felipe Calderón’s drug war, is a hotbed of violence toward media workers and some fear that the violence has spread into Central America, which is a key region in the drug smuggling routes from South America to Mexico.

The U.S. State Department listed Honduras, along with Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, on its list of 20 “major illicit drug transit or major illicit drug producing countries.”

With Mexican cartels now holding sway in much of the region, they can recruit from local criminal groups to help with the shipment of drugs as well as form groups to carry out murders and kidnappings of rivals and critics.

“As Mexico and Colombia continue to apply pressure on drug traffickers, the countries of Central America are increasingly targeted for trafficking of cocaine and other drugs primarily destined for the United States,” U.S. President Barack Obama said in a statement on the State Department website.

Whether it’s organized crime, the government, or a mix of both, what cannot be debated is that these murders have struck fear into the hearts of Honduran journalists and cause them to censor much of their work. Will Honduras become like Mexico, where as The New York Times reported, many journalists have stopped covering drug murders and shootouts because they fear retribution from the cartels?

“It’s a climate of fear,” Aleman said. “You can’t trust anyone, only God, because in the end you’re alone.”

Source

The Honduras Coup: Is Obama Innocent?

28 Jun


By Michael Parenti

Is President Obama innocent of the events occurring in Honduras, specifically the coup launched by the Honduran military resulting in the abduction and forced deportation of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya? Obama has denounced the coup and demanded that the rules of democracy be honored. Still, several troubling questions remain.

First, almost all the senior Honduran military officers active in the coup are graduates of the Pentagon’s School of the Americas (known to many of us as “School of the Assassins”). The Honduran military is trained, advised, equipped, indoctrinated, and financed by the United States national security state. The generals would never have dared to move without tacit consent from the White House or the Pentagon and CIA.

Second, if Obama was not directly involved, then he should be faulted for having no firm command over those US operatives who were. The US military must have known about the plot and US military intelligence must have known and must have reported it back to Washington. Why did Obama’s people who had communicated with the coup leaders fail to blow the whistle on them? Why did they not expose and denounce the plot, thereby possibly foiling the entire venture? Instead the US kept quiet about it, a silence that in effect, even if not in intent, served as an act of complicity.

Third, immediately after the coup, Obama stated that he was against using violence to effect change and that it was up to the various parties in Honduras to resolve their differences. His remarks were a rather tepid and muted response to a gangster putsch.

Fourth, Obama never expected there would be an enormous uproar over the Honduras coup. He hastily joined the outcry against the perpetrators only when it became evident that opposition to the putschists was nearly universal throughout Latin America and elsewhere in the world.

Fifth, Obama still has had nothing to say about the many other acts of repression attendant with the coup perpetrated by Honduran military and police: kidnappings, beatings, disappearances, attacks on demonstrators, shutting down the internet and suppressing the few small critical media outlets that exist in Honduras.

Sixth, as James Petras reminded me, Obama has refused to meet with President Zelaya. He dislikes Zelaya mostly for his close and unexpected affiliation with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. And because of his egalitarian reformist efforts Zelaya is hated by the Honduran oligarchs, the same oligarchs who for many years have been close to and splendidly served by the US empire builders.

Seventh, under a law passed by the US Congress, any democratic government that is the victim of a military takeover is to be denied US military and economic aid. Obama still has not cut off the economic and military aid to Honduras as he is required to do under this law. This is perhaps the most telling datum regarding whose side he is on. (His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, is even worse. She refuses to call it a coup and states that there are two sides to this story.)

As president, Obama has considerable influence and immense resources that might well have thwarted the perpetrators and perhaps could still be applied against them with real effect. As of now he seems more inclined to take the insider track rather than an actively democratic stance. On Honduras he is doing too little too late–as is the case with many other things he does.

Source

The Real Reagan

22 Jun

The centennial of Ronald Reagan has just gone by. The former President is highly praised in the media, but in reality there is much evidence that Ronald Wilson Reagan did far more to harm the people of this country and this world than to better their conditions. Both at home and abroad, his legacy is one of gross economic injustice and interventionist foreign policy that led to widespread human rights abuses and mass murder. Reagan’s indifference to and the aiding and abetting of foreign atrocities committed in the name of anti-communism place a shadow of doubt on his “democratic” character as well as the methods he used to supposedly win the Cold War. During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, United States support for anti-democratic regimes abroad reached an all-time high, culminating in massacres and even genocide.

Memorial for the 1000 men, women and children killed in the El Mozote massacre in El Salvador, committed by death squads funded by Reagan

The United States government, with President Reagan’s blessing, gave hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to dictatorial and fascist regimes in Latin America. Military governments and death squads received weapons, training and financing for decades even as they committed horrid atrocities.

“The death toll [resulting from US/CIA funding] was staggering — an estimated 70,000 or more political killings in El Salvador, possibly 20,000 slain from the contra war in Nicaragua, about 200 political ‘disappearances’ in Honduras and some [200,000] people eliminated during a resurgence of political violence in Guatemala” (Parry).

Member of the feared Kaibil counterinsurgency squad of Guatemala's army. Responsible for genocide, funded by Reagan.

In Guatemala particularly, there was an internationally-recognized genocide of Maya inhabitants, who were seen as collectively subversive supporters of leftist guerrillas. “The one consistent element in these slaughters [in Central America] was the overarching Cold War rationalization, emanating in large part from Ronald Reagan’s White House” (Parry). All of these movements’ activities were well-known, and yet the Reagan administration’s policy remained unchanged.

The social effects of Reagan’s free market economic policies are rarely discussed in any serious manner in the mainstream media. Praise of the economic miracle that supposedly happened during his presidency is lavish. However, there is much evidence that Reagan’s policies only contributed to the well-being of a small percentage of the population of the United States. “While the richest one percent of the U.S. population saw its financial wealth grow 109 percent from 1983 to 2001, the bottom two-fifths watched as its wealth fell 46 percent” (Smith). In addition, “between 1983 and 1998 the average household net worth of the poorest 40% in the U.S. declined 76%” (Smith). In the eyes of many scholars in economics, Reagan’s presidency was marked by “a mean-spirited, economically unsound, and socially destructive policy agenda” (Miller).

The Nicaraguan Contras, funded by Reagan, committed horrid atrocities.

Many praise Reagan’s tax cuts as creating an economic boom, but in fact “most low-income taxpayers missed out on the Reagan tax cuts […] [f]or the richest 1%, on the other hand, the Reagan tax cuts were pure elixir” (Miller). Any serious study of economic data from the period indicates that “Reaganomics” failed to achieve its stated economic boom. “When mainstream economists, such as Barry Bosworth and Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution, checked out the effects of the 1981 tax cut, they found […] men didn’t work much more at all; although women did work longer hours, their earnings failed to improve” (Miller). While the voodoo economics of the Reagan era certainly helped out those who were already well off, the “economic boom” wasn’t felt so much by working people.

Reagan meeting with the Afghan Mujahideen.

Most will also remember the greatly increased military spending of the Reagan era, including CIA operations worth billions of dollars. In 1979, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Soon after, “[d]uring the tenure of President Ronald Reagan, military aid to the [Afghan] mujahideen was greatly expanded and included various sophisticated munitions including advanced Stinger anti-aircraft missiles” (Lansford 3). Under the rule of Islamic fundamentalism brought about with Reagan’s help, Afghanistan has seen little improvement since, has legalized rape and supplies 80% of the world’s heroin trade.

This aggressive and interventionist foreign policy was pursued by the Reagan administration from its very beginning—in 1983, the Reagan White House invaded the small country of Grenada, an act which was condemned by the U.N. General Assembly as a violation of international law.

American troops occupy Grenada to overthrow the government.

That same year, the Reagan administration bombed Libya and funneled huge sums of money to the Nicaraguan Contras, anti-communist death squads responsible for well-known atrocities in the Nicaraguan Civil War. Reagan was also a hard-line supporter of Israel and approved of its aggressive war against Lebanon.

Reagan supported Israel's 1982 bombing of Lebanon

Clearly, Reagan’s foreign and domestic policy cannot be reconciled with his media portrayal as a purveyor of human rights, justice and freedom. In fact, “[f]rom his eight years in the White House, [….] there are grounds to regard Reagan as the single worst purveyor of mass atrocity in the western hemisphere during the twentieth century. Very little of this surfaced in the nauseating encomiums to Reagan in the US media following his death in 2004” (Jones 146-147).

Reagan, who was allowed to die peacefully in his bed, could easily be counted as one of the greatest criminals of the 20th century, and certainly did not deserve the mantle of a fighter for democracy.

Works cited

Jones, Adam. Genocide: A Comprehensive Introduction. 2nd. Routledge, 2010. 146-147.

Lansford, Tom. A Bitter Harvest: US foreign policy and Afghanistan (Us Foreign Policy and Conflict in the Islamic World). Ashgate Publishing, 2003. 3.

Miller, John. “Ronald Reagan’s Legacy.” Dollars and Sense. July 2004.

Parry, Robert. “Reagan and Guatemala’s Death Files.” Latin American Report. The Consortium, 10 June 1999.

Smith, Sam. “Bottom Line: The True Costs of Reagan and Extreme Capitalism.” Progressive Review Online.

Ex-Honduran President Zelaya Will Return Between May 27 To May 29

18 May


Former Honduran President Manuel Zelaya will return to Honduras between May 27 and 29.

His legal advisor, Rasel Tome said Zelaya will arrive at Toncontin International airport in the capital, where thousands of Hondurans will gather to welcome him in a reception organised by the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP).

Zelaya is returning a few days before the 41st Assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in El Salvador, which begins June 5.

While two trials on corruption charges against Zelaya were annulled, the FNRP insists that the government is responsible for his personal safety once in Honduras, where his wife recently denounced a conspiracy to murder him, Tome said.

Zelaya has been living in the Dominican Republic for more than a year after Honduran soldiers kidnapped him and sent him to Costa Rica on June 28, 2009.

Honduras was expelled from the OAS, which set the safe return of the former Honduran president as a condition for re-entry, sources said.

Source

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Honduran People Struggle Against Coup Government

1 Oct

The Events in Honduras

On June 28th 2009, the Honduran army arrested Honduras President Manuel Zelaya in his home compound. He was forced to resign his position and board a plane to Costa Rica to live in exile. Zelaya attempted to begin a non-binding national poll about a referendum that would gather an assembly to revise the Constitution of Honduras. In response, the Supreme Court issued a warrant for his arrest. Soldiers entered the Presidential compound and forced Zelaya to board an airplane out of the country. An extraordinary session of the Honduran Congress was convened later that day to remove Zelaya from office and install the Speaker of the Congress, Roberto Micheletti, in his place. They used a signed “confession” letter that Zelaya claims he did not write as evidence. Latest Developments

The coup met with strong resistance as thousands of Hondurans took the streets in front of the Presidential Palace and clashed with the guards. The UN unanimously voted to condemn the coup and call for Zeleya’s reinstatement. However, only a single year later the new government is claiming to have recognition from 50 countries. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has publicly called for Honduras to be re-admitted into the OAS. The pro-US comprador Honduran bourgeoisie controlling the country have been universally supportive of the coup. It is also well-known that US forces under the Obama Administration have intimate contacts with the coup leaders and have supported their efforts. The private businesses in Honduras are known to force their workers to protest to show support for the coup government in order to counterattack the antigolpistas, or people who are against the coup. President Roberto Micheletti ordered a curfew in response to continued protests. The curfew originally lasted for forty-eight hours from June 28th to June 30th. This curfew law was not published in the official journal La Gaceta and was not approved by Congress. Originally the curfew ran from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. but was extended, changed or renewed several times in ways Amnesty International and the International Observation Mission called “arbitrary.” On the first of July, Congress issued an order which extended restrictions between 22:00 and 05:00 local time and suspended four constitutional guarantees, including freedom of transit, due process and freedom from unwarranted search and seizure. Clearly, the Honduran government was doing everything it could to stop the antigolpistas from taking a stand, including supporting the puppet movement called “Unión Cívia Democrática” or the Civil Democratic Union, as well as only allowing pro-coup media sources to function in order to combat the antigolpista resistance. While the worldwide capitalist governments have decided that this crisis is over now that Lobo has been elected as president, the Honduran people disagree. The largest grassroots organizations, such as the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP) are still fighting and still functioning despite suffering under repression from the government. More than thirty FNRP activists have been killed. We at the APL declare this organization to be a form of resistance for Honduras and urge solidarity.

To see the latest news about the resistance, please visit: http://www.resistenciahonduras.net

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The Right-Wing Coup in Honduras

6 Jul
The Leader of Honduras, Now in Exile

The Leader of Honduras, Now in Exile

A military coup has just been staged in Honduras. The coup leaders kidnapped the democratically elected president Manuel Zalaya in the middle of the night, forged a resignation letter and declared Roberto Micheletti, a legislator, as the country’s new president. In addition to forcing Zelaya into exile in Costa Rica, the ambassadors of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were reportedly kidnapped and beaten, before being released. Meanwhile, the country’s private television stations are spreading misinformation, clearly cooperating with the coup-makers.

It hardly requires a crystal ball to see that this brazen, undemocratic move is an attempt to reverse the country’s growing association with the continental left-wing shift. Zelaya has led Honduras into the ALBA bloc, increased social spending, and advocated for a new constitution that provoked outright hostility from the country’s pro-U.S. elite. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has already pointed to the hidden hand of the CIA in the Honduras coup, calling it an attempt of the country’s oligarchy to return it to a “banana republic” at the service of Washington.

Honduras, one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, has long been subjected to the CIA’s dirty wars. In 1954, when the CIA orchestrated a coup against Jacobo Arbenz, the left-wing nationalist President of Guatemala, they dropped bombs in Honduras to incite a border confrontation. The coup resulted in the murder of over 100,000 Guatemalan civilians — blood on the CIA’s hands. In the 1970s and 1980s, the CIA financed ultra-right paramilitaries in a grotesque covert war against the left in Central America, including Honduras.

We've Seen This Before, Haven't We? The Fascist Pinochet After 1973 Chilean Coup

The coup has been led by military figures trained in the School of the Americas: a Pentagon-operated training facility in Georgia for assassins, torturers and paramilitaries, which has produced the continent’s most murderous dictators. If the coup succeeds, it will undoubtedly be because it has received under-the-table acceptance from Washington.

Whether it will succeed is another question. Tens of thousands of Hondurans have poured into the streets calling for Zelaya’s reinstatement. Among the chants were “Traitors” and “Out with the Bourgeoisie!” The failed 2002 coup in Venezuela showed that the organized masses have the power to overturn the fascists’ attempts to seize power.

The working people of Honduras also now have greater regional allies than they did in the past. Latin America of today is different from that of the Cold War, or even from seven years ago when the coup was attempted against Hugo Chavez. The left-wing tide has allowed many countries to break with decades of neo-colonialism and set a more independent foreign policy. A brazen right-wing coup, once standard fare in the region, now faces the prospect of isolation from its neighbors. The countries of Latin America have pledged unanimously to only recognize Zelaya as the legitimate president of Honduras.

There is no way these far-right elements in the Honduran military could have acted without the green light from some section of the U.S. government, but global outrage against the coup could change the calculations in Washington.

Source: http://la.indymedia.org/calendar/event_display_detail.php?event_id=7605&day=3&month=7&year=2009

While the American Party of Labor does not support the Liberal Party of Honduras, as it is run by capitalists, this military coup is thoroughly reactionary and flies in the face of national self-determination. The people united can overthrow the violent military government taking shape and establish a proletarian dictatorship in Honduras if the people and the working class are lead under revolutionary leadership. The coup is a right-wing and backward force. What the people of Honduras, and the people of the world need is a revolutionary movement.

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