Honduran president sorry for 1980s death squads

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N0560110.htm

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, Nov 5 (Reuters) - Honduran President Ricardo Maduro has broken a long official silence and apologized for the deaths and forced disappearance of hundreds of left-wing opponents at the hands of the U.S.-trained military during the 1980s.

It was the first time a leader of this Central American nation has acknowledged the political repression led by death squads made up of army soldiers and police.

"I must painfully recognize the responsibility of the state and ask the families to forgive these reprehensible actions," Maduro said in a speech on Thursday night. He added that such repression should "never happen again".

During the 1980s, Honduras' armed forces cracked down on left-wing activists. Suspects were dragged from their homes and off the streets and held in secret cells where they were tortured. Human rights groups say dozens were killed and at least 184 were never seen again.

Central America was a Cold War battleground during the 1980s, with civil wars in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, and U.S. advisers gave extensive training to the Honduran military.

more

[Fenris]

1. Best headline ever.

[Obviousman]

2. this is a repulsive period of our history

reagan should have bee put in jail for his adventures in latin america

[shraby]

4. Hitler would have been "sorry" too.

No amount of "sorry" will ever bring back the people they killed.

[Say_What]

12. Hate to say it but this IS our history. Repeated in country after country

around the globe and now being carried out in Iraq. Not to mention Afghanistan and the mess we are responsible for in Haiti.

<clips>

America's Allies
THE FRIENDLY DICTATORS
Meet the Friendly Dictators - three dozen* of America's most embarrassing "friends", a cunning crew of tyrants and corrupt puppet-presidents who have been rewarded handsomely for their loyalty to U.S. interests.

Traditional Dictators seize control through force and often are self-styled "Generals." Constitutional Dictators hold office through voting fraud or severely restricted elections and are frequently mouthpieces for the military juntas which control the ballot boxes. Both types of dictators are covered here, along with a few tyrannical kings. but don't look for "enemy dictators" (communists and the like) in this set of cards. These are America's allies, strange and undemocratic as they may be.

Friendly Dictators often rise to power through bloody CIA-backed coups and rule by terror and torture. Their troops may receive training or advice from the CIA and other U.S. agencies. "Anti-communism" is their common battle cry and a common excuse for political repression. They are linked internationally through extreme right-wing groups such as the World Anti-Communist League (see card 17). Strong Nazi affiliations are typical - some have been known to dress in Nazi paraphemalia and quote from Mein Kampf, while others offer sanctuary for actual Nazi war criminals.

Friendly Dictators usually grow rich, while their countries' economies go down the drain. U.S. tax dollars and U.S. backed loans have made billionaires of some; others are international drug dealers who also collect CIA paychecks. Rarely are they called to account for their crimes.

http://home.iprimus.com.au/korob/fdtcards/Cards_Index.html

[PSU84]

3. I'm sure the dead will be thrilled

to hear it.

[daleo]

5. So, what was this guy doing at the time?

I am not that up on my Honduran politics and history, but I recall how the Reagan administration supported and trained the central American death squads. Is it to late to drag poppy to the dock?

[salinen]

6. Wait till Ollie

hears this.

[kikiek]

7. The true legacy of Ronald Reagan and Bush I and of course

Thepiece of human crap Ollie North.

[peacetalksforall]

8. Amazing. I'm reading this 'confession and apology' now and a little

while ago I read that Brazilians are sending an envoy to South Africa to talk to Aristede about the devestation in Haiti.

Do you know that South Africa, Brazil, and one other country (memory tired this evening) formed a triad to study and work for peace?

The U.S. isn't a part of it.

Can you see any representative of this regime talking to anyone about peace?

Rays of hope and peace. There is a God.

[Judi Lynn]

9. Interesting that our ambassador to Honduras at the time

is favoring Iraq with his gracious presence even as we post:

....During a recent press conference, President Bush recently scolded a reporter to not undermine the importance of our allies contributions in Iraq. There is much evidence that they may have withdrawn due to his recent appointment of John Dimitre Negroponte to Ambassador of Iraq. To the people of the Honduras, the mention of his name alone undoubtedly conjured up bloody memories of the CIA-backed death squads and countless atrocities.

"The Honduran military committed hundreds of human rights abuses since 1980, many of which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned," the IG (Inspector General of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency) acknowledged. "CIA reporting linked Honduran military personnel to 'death squad' activities." One CIA cable released with the report identified the "Honduran Anti-communist Liberation Army," a secret military squad that engaged in "surveillance, kidnappings, interrogations under duress, and execution of prisoners who were Honduran revolutionaries." - excerpt

Not to mention the murder of approximately 70,000 people in El Salvador , and 40,000 Nicaraguans , as well as 30,000 Guatemalans .

How closely can all of those atrocities be tied to Bush's nominee for the position of Iraqi Ambassador? As Ambassador to the Honduras, it is possible that he was merely asleep the entire time he was on duty, and it was merely negligence which allowed his assigned country to become a major staging and training grounds for the Reagan-Bush cabinet's Iran-Contra affair. Negroponte may not have meant to misrepresent the abuses by the CIA backed military in his reports, and it may have been only accidental that the years of obfuscation thwarted any possibility of proper Congressional oversight of illegal CIA covert operation.

That's the ticket.

Although the sheer number of mass murders filtered through into U.S. reports, it was only the occasional murder of an Archbishop, that group of nuns, or a Seattle man down there helping to construct a water supply that made headlines.

The widespread use of American aerial surveillance to direct the Contra murderers to villages where only women and children were present to be killed, the routine use of torture, the encouragement of drug-smuggling into the U.S. to provide funding for the U.S.-backed forces all were revealed only after Negroponte had left his post as U.S. Ambassador to the Honduras. And who could forget the Honduran Anti-communist Liberation Army's ever popular practice of dropping victims from helicopters while they were in flight?
(snip/...)

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/04/con04178.html


Nosferatu John Negroponte

[GRLMGC]

10. Oh ok

I'm from El Salvador and my family left the country because of this. Oliver North should be in jail. No, he should have gone through what so many people went through because they were the opposition. But no, he gets a show on Fox News and his opinion counts. Anytime anything about that period is brought up, it makes me angry. I'm sorry if this was offtopic.

[kikiek]

13. Wow. Not it wasn't off topic. I cannot imagine being there at that time.

I am glad you were able to get out. I remember thinking at the time that the young people who were disappearing were my age. Young adults being pulled out of their and disappearing. It was repulsive. Then to find out we funded it and trained them. I am so ashamed.

[Say_What]

11. Shut down the School of the Americas November 19-21, Fort Benning, GA

<clips>

This November, join Ruby Sales, prominent civil rights activist and native of Columbus, Georgia; Carlos Mauricio and Neris Gonzales, torture survivors and plaintiffs in the successful lawsuit against Salvadoran generals now living in the US; Betita Martinez, long time Chicana activist and historian; Bob King, vice president of the United Auto Workers; Sr. Diana Ortiz, founder of Torture Abolition Survivors and Support Coalition International, Kathy Kelly, Nobel Peace Prize nominee and founder of Voices in the Wilderness, Sr. Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and many more dynamic speakers gathered on stage in front of the main gates of Fort Benning.

Join, also, rousing musicians from around the country, including many of the long-time musicians that have been an essential part of our November presence: Charlie King and Karen Brandow, The Chestnut Brothers, Pat Humphries and Sandy Opatow, Francisco Herrera, Jon Fromer, David Rovics and Llajtasuyo. Newcomers to the stage this year include Kim and Reggie Harris, Utah Phillips and Chicago-based ska/reggae band Los Vicios de Papá.

Resistance to the School of the Americas (SOA/WHINSEC) and the oppressive foreign policy that it represents -- policy that has caused untold suffering for the people of the Americas -- continues to grow in every sector of society. Although renamed, the school and its graduates continue to kill and operate with impunity. For over a decade, thousands have gathered at Fort Benning each November to remember the victims of graduates of the school and to demand its permanent closure.

From November 19-21, 2004 we will again unite our voices at the gates of Fort Benning -- home of the "School of Assassins" -- to transform the culture of violence and exploitation that has dominated US foreign policy for decades. The kinds of policies that have kept the doors of the SOA open for so long are out of alignment with the values of our society.

http://www.soaw.org/new/article.php?id=763

[burrowowl]

14. KICK!

[amandabeech]

15. And a Chilean general is ready to come clean about the Pinochet

years.

A left-leaner just won the presidency of Uruguay.

No doubt Fox will lose re-election.

Latin American is turning leftward after the right-leaning governments proved incapable of improving conditions for the average citizen.

Bush this week proclaimed renewed interest in Latin American. With all that's going on down there, I would expect a return to CIA interventionism. This time, however, I expect that our Latin American friends will be ready.

[hatrack]

16. Gee, isn't that just so . . . SPECIAL

"I'm really sorry for all the torture and murder and disappearances. Really, I'm deeply sorry, and I apologize if anyone was offended by these actions."

Fuck off, asshat.

[struggle4progress]

17. kick for our current ambassador to Bagdad

:kick:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Not only John Negroponte but also

Eliot Abrams (lizardly liar) has a job in the Bush Jr. administration.

I was in the anti-intervention movement, and to this day, most Americans don't know 1/4 of what went on in Central America during the 1980s.

I recommend the John Sayles movie Men with Guns. which takes place in an unnamed Central American country. However, nearly every event portrayed in the movie (with the obvious exception of the magic realism at the end) actually happened in El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras. (Great soundtrack, too).

[Judi Lynn]

19. Thanks for the movie recommendation.

It's not by accident so many Americans don't know much. Beyond the obvious slow-witted Americans who lie blissfully upon the system, like babes upon the bosom of a sociopath, believing everything their gummint tells them, never taking a moment to think anything over, there are a lot of people who have been deliberately misinformed who WILL catch on eventually!

By the time most of us find out, it's 30 or 40 years down the road and the people who created the suffering are well out of harm's way.
Of the ones who finally learn, there are very few who give a damn, anyway, since it didn't affect them personally.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

20. Oh, well then. He's sorry. Allrighy now, let's move along folks

Leave the poor old man to his ghosts.

Nothing to see here. He's sorry.

Off ya go.