Responding to the Honduran Coup

[Judi Lynn]

March 24, 2010

Fasting in Tegucigalpa
Responding to the Honduran Coup
By ROSIE WONG

As a 30-year-old Australian who had previously travelled to Guatemala and El Salvador, I decided to respond to an email listserv request for international observers in Honduras after the June 2009 coup.

I felt compelled to go to the country after reading about U.S.-backed repression and massacres in the region in the 1980s. There were clear parallels between that period and the current situation in Honduras. To date, Honduras has seen the assassination of around 150 members of the nonviolent resistance, thousands of illegal detentions, and hundreds of beatings and injuries, as well as violent illegal closures of alternative media, 10 reported cases of rape, and dozens of sedition charges against protesters. I thought that a larger international presence could only be positive and hoped that the accompaniment process would increase the safety of Honduran activists, even if only by a little.

Though I arrived in Honduras during a period of relative calm, there were constant signs that the situation could erupt at any moment.

My driver from the airport, a member of the resistance, pointed out that the helicopters overhead were deployed to frighten protesters. A friend called and told him that he received a death threat on Facebook. Ubiquitous anti-coup messages were being painted over on a daily basis. A journalist I met at the supermarket told me that Honduras was in “big trouble,” and needed an election to make things better.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/wong03242010.html

Editorials:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=525780&mesg_id=525780