Exiled Honduran leader promises border camp

[Joanne98]

Source: AP


LAS MANOS, Nicaragua – Exiled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya sought to increase pressure on his country's interim government, promising to camp out across the border in Nicaragua with his supporters and urging Washington to slap tough sanctions on coup leaders.

Zelaya hugged and clasped hands with dozens of supporters who trickled in on foot to this mountain pass connecting Honduras and Nicaragua on Saturday. Yellow school buses shuttled the Hondurans to spend the night at a gymnasium in the nearby Nicaraguan town of El Ocotal before returning to the border Sunday.

In Honduras, the Defense Ministry posted a statement on the armed forces' Web site saying that it supports "a solution to the problems our country is experiencing, through a process of negotiation within the framework of the San Jose accord," a reference to a proposal made by Costan President Oscar Arias during talks that ended in a stalemate.

Zelaya is demanding he be reinstated as president following the coup, which has been widely repudiated around the globe. The interim government of Roberto Micheletti has opposed Zelaya's reinstatement as president, though not his return, and says that other compromises proposed by Arias are up to Honduras' courts, congress and the national prosecutor investigating charges against the deposed president.

Zelaya, who was toppled by a military coup and flown into exile on June 28, on Saturday made his second symbolic trip in two days to this remote border crossing.

Speaking through a megaphone, the 56-year-old deposed leader told his supporters that he would set up camp and demanded that his family in Honduras be allowed to meet him.

"We are going to stay here this afternoon, tonight and tomorrow," he said.

By late Saturday, some 300 Zelaya supporters had gathered, many having sneaked across the border from Honduras using footpaths through the forest to avoid border guards and military roadblocks. An evening curfew was in effect along the Honduran side of the border.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090726/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/lt_honduras_coup;_ylt=An6Himm1bkv8yhGuAfAwj8ys0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTMyc29zMnVpBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwNzI2L2x0X2hvbmR1cmFzX2NvdXAEY3BvcwM3BHBvcwM0BHB0A2hvbWVfY29rZQRzZWMDeW5faGVhZGxpbmVfbGlzdARzbGsDZXhpbGVk

[timeforpeace]

1. He certainly has a great sense of humor.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Some signs of hope for a peaceful end...

Arias' "San Jose" proposal includes--as the one un-negotiable item--Zelaya's return as president. Arias stated this in public, and made this condition very clear--just a day or two ago. That's when the coupsters walked out. But they are now saying they are willing to talk about it. That's progress on the negotiation front.

The military is interdicting busloads of Zelaya supporters, and doing things like shooting out their tires, and checking peoples' papers, sending some people who have come a long way back home. They are also harassing walkers and have leave to detain anyone at all who is out during curfew (which yesterday was all afternoon into the night). Hondurans are very poor, and Zelaya's support comes mostly from the poor and working class. So this is great hardship for them--organizing a trip, and then getting turned back. Zelaya would have tens of thousands of people around him, if Honduras were still a free country. It is not. Everything is being done to prevent public demonstration of support for Zelaya. Zelaya is aware both of the high level of support within Honduras, and of the hardships and dangers people face in getting to the camp or expressing their support in any way. And I think this the main reason for his caution about crossing the border and penetrating further into Honduras. His supporters would be at even greater risk. His arrest in Honduras would prevent him from helping them, and--as someone else has pointed out--it would allow Clinton to put a puppet government in place--one with a nicer face than the current one--and stop all efforts at reform (including Zelaya's proposal of converting the US military air base to a commercial airport--which would be a blow to our war profiteers--and a better deal for the poor, such as Zelaya raising the minimum wage, at Chiquita International's and other corpos' expense).

Some have criticized Zelaya for not pushing into Honduras at the risk of arrest (or worse). I think it is a very wise decision. There was a report yesterday that the National Police have gone on strike, and have stated that they will not obey orders to arrest Zelaya. One of their motives for this is that they haven't been paid by the junta. So economic sanctions are already starting to work. (They are being strongly enforced by the EU and by almost every government in the western hemisphere except the US and a few of its puppets.)

The Associated Pukes have a way of twisting things around, to be almost unrecognizable from how they really are. For instance, they say, "Zelaya is demanding he be reinstated as president...". Well, so is Oscar Arias, the OAS, the EU, the Mercosur and ALBA trade groups, and the presidents of virtually all Latin American countries. Our own president said that the coup was illegal and that Zelaya is the only president of Honduras we will recognize. Zelaya's "demand" is the whole world's demand. This point gets considerably muffled in this article. The full sentence does not give sufficient weight to this worldwide support, and ends with the "demands" of an illegal government, as if they have equal weight. Judge for yourself:

"Zelaya is demanding he be reinstated as president following the coup, which has been widely repudiated around the globe. The interim government of Roberto Micheletti has opposed Zelaya's reinstatement as president, though not his return, and says that other compromises proposed by Arias are up to Honduras' courts, congress and the national prosecutor investigating charges against the deposed president."

Roberto Micheletti is not the head of an "interim" government. He is the head of an illegal government, which seized power through force, at gunpoint. The world's demand that Zelaya be reinstated is then described as a "compromise" ("the other compromises"). It is not a compromise. It is essential to the proper order of things in a democracy. And if Micheletti had any confidence at all that his various wild charges against Zelaya would hold up to public scrutiny he would have brought them against Zelaya before ousting him at gunpoint, and would bring them against President Zelaya now. But no, he wants an arrested man who has been unlawfully stripped of his power to stand trial in a kangaroo court controlled by Micheletti & Co., while the public is bullied and repressed, and reporters who don't toe the line are arrested and thrown out of the country. But we don't get any of this reality and truth from the Associated Pukes who serve global corporate predators and war profiteers. They make it seem as if there is reasonable argument for the coup's anti-democratic actions, when there is none.

[Judi Lynn]

3. AP and othere are dancing wildly around the point as you've indicated. If Micheletti did have legal

means to successfully take the elected Honduran President to trial he would not have sent military forces to shoot up his home in the middle of the night, and drag him away in his pajamas. Incredibly stupid and brutal.

The challenge still remains: take him to court if you have a legal point, Pinochetti. Instead, he reactivates the leader of the infamous Battalion 316 death squad publicly and keeps the entire population at bay in a stat be of siege.
They are prisoners in their own home, their own land. There have been extrajudicial killings from the beginning: Micheletti's forces use the helplessness of the population during the continuing curfew (over a month, now) hours at the same time they are free to break into peoples' homes and drag them away.

News is circulating now that the illegal government is using a stadium near the border just as stadiums were used by dictators and military juntas in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay to house people they've captured while they torture them, sometimes kill them.

The last torture victim, a Zelaya supporter who went to the border to support Zelaya last Friday night, was found murdered and clearly tortured, dumped into a field on Saturday.

If they had a legal leg to stand on, as you have pointed out, they would not be trying to scare the Zelaya voting public into terrified submission.

[Judi Lynn]

4. 17 pictures taken from the Honduran-Nicaraguan border this weekend:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124845410870279461.html#articleTabs%3Dslideshow