Repression in Honduras

I doubt very much that there will be much more in the way of reporting. On CNN the only news of Honduras was that it had broken off relations with Argentina or that is all I saw and that was just on the streamer at the bottom.
The Amnesty report has photos and testimonials that are from a demonstration several weeks old on July 30. As the article notes there has been more repression since then. All of it goes unreported. Any peep of opposition from Iran and it is front page news but the free mainstream press doesn't need to be censored. News from Honduras is virtually nil at present.
Even Amnesty is not up to date. Amnesty reported two deaths but there have been at least ten verified deaths already. An OAS rights group is also in Honduras. The Honduran govt. has already said that their report will be biased since it comes from the OAS. It is a bit surprising they were even let into the country. There is no movement at all as far as negotiations are concerned although there are supposed to be representatives from the OAS coming later this week. As long as Micheletti refuses to countenance the return of Zelaya the meetings seem pointless. The coup govt. has already weathered two months. In another two months there will be presidential elections. Although many Latin American states claim they will not recognise a president elected under the coup there will probably be pressure from the U.S. to do so.
This is the first post since my blog has been officially declared not to be spam. This is the second time that Blogger scam detector has flagged my blog! At least things get cleared up quickly.


August 19, 2009

Huffington Post.


Robert Naiman
National Coordinator of Just Foreign Policy.
Posted: August 19, 2009 11:12 AM

There has been very little attention in the U.S. press to repression in Honduras under the coup regime. Hopefully, that will now change: Amnesty International issued a report today documenting "serious ill-treatment by police and military of peaceful protesters" in Honduras, warning that "beatings and mass arrests are being used as a way of punishing people for voicing their opposition" to the coup.
An Amnesty International delegation interviewed people who were detained after police and military broke up a peaceful demonstration July 30. Most detainees had injuries as a consequence of police beatings.
Esther Major, Central America researcher at Amnesty International, said:
Detention and ill treatment of protesters are being employed as forms of punishment for those openly opposing the de facto government, and also as a deterrent for those contemplating taking to the streets to peacefully show their discontent with the political turmoil the country is experiencing.
U.S. media often rely heavily on international human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to report on human rights abuses. So it will be interesting to see how much U.S. press coverage the Amnesty report gets.
If the repression under the coup regime were more widely known, it would be much more difficult for representatives of that regime to peddle their story in Washington that their government is "democratic" and "respects the rule of law." How is the coup's hired gun Lanny Davis going to spin Amnesty's report on police repression of peaceful dissent against the coup?
Amnesty urgently calls for the "international community" to seek a resolution to the political crisis. But not all members of the "international community" have equal say. Last week, the president of Brazil called on the United States to use more political influence to help solve the crisis. Brazil's foreign minister said President Zelaya's return would depend largely on the position of the United States.
No one is calling on the U.S. to send the Fourth Fleet to Honduras. The Obama Administration has modest policy levers it has not employed. Rep. Grijalva and 15 other members of the House have written to President Obama, urging him to speak out about the repression in Honduras and to cancel U.S. travel visas and freeze U.S. bank accounts of leaders of the coup regime to pressure them to accept a compromise for President Zelaya's return.
The coup regime "must be disabused" of the notion that it can "run out the clock" until a November presidential election, wrote the New York Times in a recent editorial. The U.S. must be prepared to exert more pressure on the coup regime if it refuses to accept a compromise for President Zelaya's return, the Times said.