Violence Against Demonstrators Follows Contested Result in Honduras Elections
Violence Against Demonstrators Follows Contested Result in Honduras Elections
Wednesday, 27 November 2013 13:10 By Sarah Blaskey and Jesse Chapman, Truthout | News
"What we want is to defend our rights and that they be respected. And the only way that our rights will be respected is to perform our duty, and our duty is to be here [protesting]," said one young man, eyes still streaming from the clouds of teargas that engulfed his school.
Jose (name changed for security purposes) is a student of the Autonomous University in Tegucigalpa. He and a few thousand of his fellow students were tear-gassed and beaten November 26, 2013, when they peacefully demonstrated, alleging fraud in the presidential election that took place two days earlier in Honduras.
Most of the protesters supported the newly formed, left-leaning Party of Liberty and Refoundation (LIBRE) in the elections. They say their presidential candidate, Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, wife of deposed president Manuel "Mel" Zelaya, was the true winner. Their assertions of fraud are based on exit polls and numbers that were called in by table observers at all of the voting centers that projected Castro would win by a margin of up to 5 percent.
However, with 68 percent of the total votes counted at this point, the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), charged with overseeing the elections, declared an irreversible lead for the hyper-conservative Nationalist Party, which currently runs the country.
More:
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/20293-violence-against-demonstrators-follows-contested-result-in-honduras-elections