Anti-Gay Hate Crimes Surge In Honduras December 22, 2009
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Anti-Gay Hate Crimes Surge In Honduras
by EU News Network
Up to 18 gay and transgender men have been killed in Honduras in the six months since its president was deposed in a coup, human rights advocates say.
That is as many homophopic hate crimes as were recorded in the Central American country the prior five years, The Miami Herald reported Monday.
Activists contend the killings are a result in a breakdown in the rule of law in Honduras since the ouster of former President Manuel Zelaya. The Herald reported that HIV-positive gay activist Walter Trochez was slain last week, just days after escaping a six-hour kidnapping ordeal, in a crime indicative of the dangers facing not only gays but Zelaya’s supporters.
`Walter was afraid,” Reina Rivera, director of the Center for the Investigation and Promotion of Human Rights, told the newspaper. “He was a leader in the (pro-Zelaya) Resistance, but we thought he was in a precarious situation because he was also HIV-positive and gay in a patriarchal, machista and homophobic society.”
“Since the coup, there’s been a noticeable uptick in violence,” added New York attorney and human rights investigator David Brown. “There is a social breakdown and a breakdown in law enforcement.”
Honduran Election Results Still Need To Be Scrutinized, State Department Dashes Hopes that a Transformative Latin America Policy Has Been Born December 17, 2009
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Honduran Election Results Still Need To Be Scrutinized, State Department Dashes Hopes that a Transformative Latin America Policy Has Been Born
by COHA Staff
A growing number of nations in the international community have decided to recognize the recent Honduran elections administered by the country’s unlawful de facto government, citing high rates of voter participation as evidence that a “free and fair” election had taken place on November 29. Believing a basis now exists for national reconciliation, the United States, Panama, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Peru, and El Salvador have all accepted the electoral results. However, their decisions have been based on inaccurate and deceptive electoral figures released on the day of the election by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) of Honduras.
Initially, the TSE claimed a voter participation rate of over 60%. However, a U.S.-backed Honduran civil society coalition, Hagamos Democracia (Making Democracy, HD) submitted a report to the TSE on election night, estimating that the voter turnout was, in fact, only 48.7% of the population. Although the TSE has since revised its official estimates down to 49%, the damage had already been done. The original release of the higher turnout figure came at a critical time and was widely publicized by some of the international media and a number of foreign governments as thoroughly reliable.
In the de facto regime’s quest for legitimacy, establishing a high rate of participation is a crucial step towards its recognition by the international community. Prior to the election, Manuel Zelaya and his supporters called for the ballot to be boycotted, as a scant voter turnout would demonstrate widespread support for the ousted president. Further obfuscating the scenario, the key institutions normally involved in observing elections, such as the UN, OAS, and the Carter Center, all declined to send monitoring teams to Honduras. Without the valuable testimony of well-trained and impartial international observers, validation of the election results hinges on the potentially biased oversight of Honduran election observers in what was bound to be a highly contentious election.
Still, some countries and international organizations are accepting the de facto government’s original reports of high voter participation despite significant evidence to the contrary. However, these governments and organizations should instead be calling for an in-depth analysis by independent electoral monitoring groups to convincingly verify the actual voter turnout rate. Accepting the Honduran government’s findings, as they were presented, will set a dangerous precedent for legitimizing a compromised election that could jeopardize the vitality of democratic regimes throughout the region.
Official numbers and Conflicting Statements by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal:
Ever since the June 28 coup, the TSE has been steadfast in its support of Micheletti, giving rise to suspicions of impartiality. On July 1, two days after the coup, TSE Magistrate Danny Matamoros defended the military’s ousting of Zelaya on the basis of his alleged violation of the Constitution. On September 30, the TSE qualified its support for the de facto regime by requesting that Micheletti cancel the decree suspending civil liberties, suggesting it could affect the outcome of the elections. In the days leading up to the election, at least 90 members of the TSE resigned in protest of alleged corruption behind the Tribunal’s support for the de facto regime. On October 22, tribunal president José Saúl Escobar stated, “If there is a massive participation of Hondurans at the polls, the international community will have to interpret that [as an] expression of sovereign will.” However, the high rate of voter participation that was hoped for never materialized, except in the imagination of those who wanted to throw the election.
On the night of the November 29 election, the TSE released an initial voter turnout figure of 62%, effectively legitimizing the election of Porfirio Lobo to the presidential post. Later that same night, Hagamos Democracia reported a lower rate of 48.7%, claiming 99% accuracy. While TSE publicly acknowledged this lower, more accurate figure, the following day the TSE experienced technical difficulties that “impeded the second verification of the data.” This major gaffe ran contrary to the TSE’s assurances that accurate and efficient tallies would allow the country to know the exact outcome of the election within hours of the close of the polls. In a video newsclip issued by The Real News, highly regarded journalist team composed of Jesse Freeston and Paul Jay asked a high-ranking TSE official where the figure of 62% had originated. The official, who insisted on remaining anonymous, stated that the president of the TSE, Escobar, had fabricated the statistic.
The pro-Zelaya National Front of Resistance against the Coup calculated a 65-70% rate of abstention by counting the number of voters entering polling stations and comparing that figure to the number of individuals who were registered to vote. At the press conference announcing the official results, the TSE claimed a preliminary count of 1.7 million votes, which out of 5.07 million registered voters in Honduras, amounted to a turnout of 34%. This would constitute the lowest rate of participation in Honduras’s history, and would mean that Lobo’s 54% victory actually represents only 19% of the voting population. Furthermore, while TSE Magistrate Matamoros described long lines of voters outside the polling stations, reporters on the ground in Honduras, like Joseph Caldwell of Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition (TASSC), gave accounts of many polling centers being sparsely populated on election day. In its initial report on election night, Hagamos Democracia also acknowledged the “problems that were in evidence – especially abstention” and stated they that further investigation should follow.
Human Rights Abuses
Multiple sources maintain that the coup regime has resorted to gross violations of human rights in a misguided attempt to quell the social unrest resulting from its illegitimate hold on power. Since the June 28 coup, violence and human rights violations have been increasingly commonplace in the country prior to, during, and immediately after the elections. “The crisis in Honduras does not end with the election results, the authorities cannot return to business as usual without assuring human right safeguards,” stated Javier Zúñiga, the head of the Amnesty International delegation in Honduras. The recent murders of Zelaya supporter Walter Trochez and human rights defender Santos Corrales García indicate that the elections have not changed the underlying situation on the ground.
During its visit from November 24-December 4, Amnesty International uncovered substantial evidence of human rights abuses at the hands of the authorities, including cases of excessive force, arrests of demonstrators by the police and military, unnecessary and excessive use of tear gas, violence against detainees, harassment of activists, journalists, lawyers and judges, and political killings. The more conservative human Rights Watch also has issued a series of similar statements, and has called for the international community to look into the many violations that have taken place since the coup. Even Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela admitted at a State Department briefing on December 11, 2009 that the de facto government had been responsible for human rights abuses.
Since the beginning of its enforced rule, the Micheletti regime abruptly curtailed civil liberties and was guilty of repressing the opposition media. Micheletti’s emergency decree, issued shortly after Zelaya’s surprise return to Honduras in September, banned public gatherings, severely restricted the press, and justified arbitrary arrests by the military. The de facto government, in an attempt to silence any voice of the opposition, cancelled a series of critical radio programs including La Bullaraga, Entre Caos, and Tiempo de Hablar on the popular radio station Radio Cardena Voices. In addition, Canal 36, Radio Catracha, Cholusat Sur Radio and Radio Globo, news outlets that are known to support Zelaya’s reinstatement, were also shut down by the emergency decree. As a result, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights identified these as groups needing protection. Leading up to the election, the military restricted marches, enacted national curfews that confined residents to their homes between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m., and also shut down the country’s borders for 30 out of the 50 during the campaign period.
COHA has received firsthand accounts of human rights violations during the elections that detail with great precision the violence that has been taking place in Honduras. Joseph Caldwell from TASSC witnessed the violence firsthand while preparing a report on human rights abuses in Honduras. On the streets of San Pedro Sula Caldwell watched as police tanks, water trucks, and tear gas canisters were used to repel a peaceful march conducted by the resistance movement. As Caldwell detailed in his account, “a Reuter’s photographer was injured in the massive display of repression. Dozens of cells phones captured the police beating anyone they could catch with their batons.” As a result of the widespread violence and repression, Amnesty International’s Zuñiga stated, “Justice seems to have been absent on Election Day in Honduras.” This sentiment also resounded in an article by correspondent Laura Carlsen of the Washington-based Center for International Policy, who said that in her observation of the elections, they were “not free, fair, or peaceful.”
Election Observation
Three crucial organizations that consistently participate as observers in elections throughout the hemisphere—the OAS, the UN, and the Carter Center—chose to abstain from sending delegations to Honduras because the election would take place under an illegitimate coup government. On December 4, Secretary General Insulza of the OAS stated, “an election does not erase, on its own, the forced deposition of the constitutional President, his expulsion from the country and his seclusion, even today, under precarious conditions in the enclosed Embassy of a sister country.” In the same meeting, however, the U.S. and Costa Rican ambassadors to the OAS commended the elections; Carmen Lomellin of the U.S. cited that in her assessment, “nearly two-thirds of registered voters” qualified the election “remarkably free, fair, and transparent.” The Miami Herald reports that the Carter Center opted not to participate because the country had not established a “national unity government” and because the congressional vote to restore Zelaya was not scheduled to take place until after the elections. Similarly, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s official spokesman Farhan Haq told Prensa Latina that it would play no role in the Honduran elections because of the lack of a consensus to finding a resolution to the crisis.
In the absence of formal election oversight, monitoring delegations were mobilized by the far right International Republican Institute (IRI) as well as the more moderate National Democratic Institute (NDI), organizations mainly funded by the U.S. government to purportedly advance democracy and support democratic institutions in the developing world. With grants from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the IRI and NDI each sent approximately 20 international experts from the United States, Europe, and Latin America to monitor the conduct and proceedings on election day. In a preliminary statement, the IRI praised the “credible and peaceful” elections, as observed by their delegates at over 100 polling stations throughout the country. While the NDI preliminary report also praised the overall transparency and professionalism of the elections, the organization diverged from the IRI on the question of credibility. The NDI was careful to qualify its observations as strictly informal, as their mission did not fulfill the standards of the Declaration of Principles for International Election Observation.
The NDI delegates noted that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal offered funding to many international delegations and, in violation of accepted observation standards, “a number of observers accepted this offer.” The report also made reference to the “forcibly dispersed” protest in San Pedro Sula, which was not included in the IRI report. The NDI mission worked in collaboration with Hagamos Democracia, its civic partner in the region, acting as part of a coalition of Honduran civil society organizations, which altogether organized 1,400 Honduran volunteers to monitor the elections. However, due to the small size and short duration of these missions, their limited observation efforts cannot be considered an authoritative assessment of the elections according to widely acknowledged international standards.
U.S. Response
Despite substantial evidence pointing to deeply disturbing discrepancies in the official voter turnout, State Department officials have continued to cite a 62% voter participation rate, and maintain that the figure legitimizes the election, and should be looked upon as a positive step towards democratic reconciliation. On November 29, the day of the election, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly announced that his agency commended the election. Shortly after the election results began to be released, Kelly speculated, “Turnout appears to have exceeded that of the last presidential election. This shows that given the opportunity to express themselves, the Honduran people have viewed the election as an important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country.” However, this interpretation of the results rests precariously on the authenticity of elections staged by a coup regime in the absence of formal international observation standards.
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela also has commended the election. On November 30, he stated, “We see this election as a very important step forward for Honduras, and I would like to commend the Honduran people for an election that met international standards of fairness and transparency despite some incidents that were reported here and there.” Valenzuela, who many had hoped would champion progressive policies in Latin America, instead has continued to emphasize the State Department’s line that the election is a step towards democratic reconciliation. “We see, again, the elections as a necessary step forward, but not a sufficient one…because the elections provide the Honduran people for a way out,” said Valenzuela. When asked if the U.S. recognizes Lobo as the president-elect of Honduras, he skillfully sidestepped the question, diplomatically stating that “the United States takes note of the election,” and that Washington recognizes that Lobo won the election.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has praised what she calls Lobo’s victory, stating that, “We [the United States] stand with the Honduran people and we will continue to work closely with others in the region who seek to determine the democratic way forward for Honduras.” Moreover, State Department officials adamantly stressed that the campaign and lead-up to the election had developed well before the June coup, perhaps a statement meant to provide additional justification for the elections to be recognized.
In an interview with the COHA regarding the discrepancies in the reported abstention rate, a representative from the State Department acknowledged that the agency received its figures from the TSE, but emphasized the informal nature of the numbers they cite. The representative also stated that the number of Honduran nationals who currently live outside of the country significantly added to the abstention rate. Furthermore, the State Department representative recognized that although the official election figures are not scheduled for release until December 30, their sources signal that the NDI, IRI, and other NGOs all agree that Lobo had at least a 15-20% lead against his opponents. Zelaya’s call to abstain from voting in the elections may also have affected the congressional race. The Liberal Party, to which Zelaya and Micheletti both belong, was voted out of its majority in Congress, and now holds a mere 44 seats, compared to 62 after the last elections.
Recognizing elections that the region’s three most respected legitimate and unbiased election observation teams refused to even attend must raise eyebrows. Furthermore, it sets a dangerous precedent in Honduras and for other democratically-elected governments in Latin America. The lack of impartial international observers, the undeniable human rights abuses that took place during the campaigning period and election, as well as the TSE’s apparent fabrication of high voter turnout figures for strategic political purposes, all evidence that the Honduran elections were something significantly less than free, fair, or transparent. The United States and the international community must look beyond selectively chosen information to independently and objectively evaluate the legitimacy of Honduras’s elections. The Obama administration must make a definitive break from the Latin American policy of its predecessors by rejecting the tainted truth offered by elections sponsored by the Micheletti government.
Honduras Election Analysis December 9, 2009
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With the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) nearing completion of its first pass through Honduras’ election results, a more subtle (albeit still incomplete) analysis has become possible. What is certain is that the National Party won an unprecedented victory. What remains in question is precisely why. Answering this question requires a closer examination at voter participation trends in previous elections and inferential analysis of what took place in 2009. Below, I first present the results, before offering a hypothesis to explain them.
The Results
Porfirio Lobo and the National Party won a landslide victory at every level of government. In the presidential elections, the National Party took upwards of 55 percent of votes cast, while the Liberal Party–long the numerically dominant party in Honduras–could not even muster 40 percent. In the Congress, the National Party won over 70 seats of a total of 128. And, in the mayoral races, the National Party has carried more than 200 of 298 municipalities. The final tallies may differ in a handful of races, but the general trend–a National Party routing of the Liberal Party–will hold.
To put this trouncing in perspective: since political liberalization and civilian elections in 1981, no presidential candidate has received 54 percent of valid votes (not to speak of total votes cast). Furthermore, consider the last time that the National Party won the elections (only the second time since 1981). The winning presidential candidate, Ricardo Maduro, won with less than 50 percent of votes cast (52 percent of valid votes), and the National Party obtained neither an outright majority in Congress (it got 61 seats) nor among mayoralties (it won 148 of 298 municipalities).
In fact, after both the 2001 and 2005 elections, the winning party won only a plurality in Congress, forcing it to form coalitions to pass legislation. For the next four years, the National Party will not face this obstacle. This could further marginalize the three smaller parties (Democratic Unification party, UD, the Christian Democratic Party of Honduras, DC, and the Innovation and Unity Party, PINU). Moreover, the UD’s very existence stands in question, given sharp internal divisions about whether to participate in the elections (the party decided to participate only a week before the election) and the party’s predictably miserable showing.
The municipal results are equally stark. In the 2005 elections, the Liberal Party won 167 (56 percent) of the countries’ municipalities, even though Manuel Zelaya received under 50 percent of valid votes cast nationally. As of inauguration day in January, the Liberal Party will have lost roughly 80 municipalities, a sea change for this small country. In these elections, even many previously “safe” municipalities for the Liberal Party, like El Paraiso (department of El Paraiso) and Trinidad (department of Santa Barbara), went to the National Party.
Explaining the Landslide
So, how can one explain these results?
The first part of the explanation is what Hondurans refer to as a voto de castigo (punishment vote) against the Liberal Party. Voters blamed the Liberals for letting their internal squabbling culminate in a coup, the subsequent internal instability, and Honduras’ international isolation. Those without firm party affiliations–a rising group, given massive party de-alignment since 2001 in Honduras–swung toward the National Party, providing the Nationalists with a major advantage.
But the voto de castigo alone seems unlikely to have delivered such an unprecedented victory for the National Party. The other part of the story, as I began to discuss in my last post, was turnout. As I have noted before, turnout has been declining in Honduras since 2001. There is now a bit more data on 2009 turnout levels (though results are still tentative), which permits more analysis than was possible last week. According to CNN, the TSE has quietly reduced its reported turnout from 61 to 56 percent, still a bit higher than the 55 percent level in 2005. Nonetheless, the TSE has not explained the discrepancy with Hagamos Democracia’s statistically-representative quick count, which estimated turnout at 47.6 percent, with a margin of error of less than two percent.
Furthermore, the TSE has acknowledged cases of ballot-stuffing and other irregularities in 9 percent of the scrutinized actas (records from each polling station), which are currently under investigation. These cases would not be sufficient to swing the election, but they would affect turnout results.
Finally, candidates who have been keeping vigil over the counting process have raised concerns over the repeated turning off and restarting of the computing system. With observers (their own neutrality in question) gone since early last week, no independent sources have been present to gauge the transparency of the counting process, which suggests that we will simply never know whether turnout was greater or lower than in 2005.
Meanwhile, the TSE is trying to use an accounting trick to make turnout appear much higher than in previous elections. Since 1.2 million Hondurans lived outside the country, they have argued (and the pro-Micheletti media has parroted) that the true number of eligible voters should be 3.4 million, not 4.6 million. This attempt to change the denominator is a cynical accounting trick. While it is true that virtually all emigrants will not vote (despite absentee voting stations in the U.S.), similar numbers of Honduran emigrants were included in the voter registry in previous elections. Given that all analysts of this election have been primarily interested in comparing voter turnout with previous elections, no good justification exists for using the lower denominator that the TSE has promoted.
This still leaves unanswered the question of why, in addition to the voto de castigo, the National Party swept these elections. My hypothesis is that, though 2009’s voter turnout figures may have been roughly comparable to 2005 figures, who turned out in the two elections differed substantially.
In the 2005 elections, as the Latin American Public Opinion Project’s reports (LAPOP) have shown, the five most frequently-given explanations for not voting were, in ascending order: not being in the registry, illness, not liking the candidates, lack of interest, and not having identification to be able to vote. Demographic variables also had an impact. Multiple-regression analysis revealed that the following variables increased the odds of voting: paying attention to the news, identifying with a party, perceiving higher levels of corruption (a counter-intuitive result), perceiving that one’s economic condition had improved in the past four years, and being Catholic.
In this election, disgust with the removal of Manuel Zelaya and fear of potential violence were almost certainly two principal predictors of abstention. And, whereas Liberal Party members were more likely to vote than National Party members in 2005, this pattern likely reversed in 2009. With the split in the Liberal Party and the coup, Liberals were less likely to vote, while Nationalists–united around their candidate, Porfirio Lobo, and against Manuel Zelaya’s call for a boycott–turned out in droves. This hypothesis is consistent with journalists’ election-day reports of less turnout in lower-income Zelaya strongholds in Tegucigalpa. It is also squares with my own pre-election interviews in the department of El Paraíso, a traditional Liberal Party stronghold, where many Liberals expressed ambivalence about voting, while Nationalists more often shared their excitement. To Nationalists, suffrage this year was a more patriotic act than ever before. They were also thrilled for their vote to count as a rejection of Manuel Zelaya.
A full analysis of this hypothesis may have to wait until the next round of LAPOP surveys (scheduled for next year), which should incorporate these additional factors in analyzing voter turnout. For now, when it comes to voter turnout and explaining the National Party landslide, inference is the order of the day.
Independent investigation needed into Honduras human rights abuses December 3, 2009
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Independent investigation needed into Honduras human rights abuses
3 December 2009
At the end of a 10-day visit to Honduras during the country’s presidential elections, Amnesty International has called for an independent investigation to ensure all those responsible for human rights abuses are brought to justice and the victims given reparations.
“The crisis in Honduras does not end with the election results, the authorities cannot return to business as usual without ensuring human rights safeguards,” said Javier Zúñiga, head of the Amnesty International delegation in Honduras.
“There are dozens of people in Honduras still suffering the effects of the abuses carried out in the past five months. Failure to punish those responsible and to fix the malfunctioning system would open the door for more abuses in the future.”
During its visit to Honduras, Amnesty International’s delegation documented numerous cases of human rights abuses carried out since last June, when President Manuel Zelaya was forced into exile.
These included killings following excessive use of force, arbitrary arrests of demonstrators by police and military, indiscriminate and unnecessary use of tear gas, ill treatment of detainees in custody, violence against women, harassment of activists, journalists, lawyers and judges.
The organization found that members of the military assigned to law enforcement duties were involved in committing serious human rights violations such as killings following excessive use of force, arbitrary arrests and illegal raids.
Amnesty International also found that the civilian de facto authorities failed to do anything to prevent the indiscriminate use of tear gas against protesters. In some cases gas canisters were thrown inside offices.
Most people interviewed said that after being injured or made ill by the gas, they were too scared to seek medical assistance as police and military entered hospitals in order to intimidate them.
On 23 September, Marta (not her real name) was attacked by police while she was taking part in a demonstration. She was hit with a tear gas can, which burned her leg and caused her to have breathing problems. While she was hiding from the gases in a church, police caught up with her and hit her so badly they broke her arm. She didn’t go to the hospital until several days later because she was scared the police would harass her there. Her arm still hasn’t recovered and the burn to her leg is still visible.
“We spoke to people who still had eye irritation and burns to the skin several weeks after having been affected by tear gas,” said Javier Zúñiga. “Not only did police use gas against peaceful protesters and in enclosed buildings, doctors were not given information about the chemical substances used in the cans to enable them to treat victims properly.”
“The security forces’ use of tear gas raises questions about the level of training received that could have minimized the risks of serious injury or death,” said Javier Zúñiga.
Representatives of human rights organizations, journalists, lawyers and judges told Amnesty International about the threats and harassment they received for being seen as opposed to the de facto authorities.
Members of a national judges association were called to a hearing to account for their participation in peaceful demonstrations.
“During the crisis, institutions in Honduras have blatantly failed to protect basic human rights,” said Javier Zúñiga. “It is particularly worrying that in Honduras the conditions which enable human rights abusers to go unpunished exist.”
Amnesty International urged the future Honduran government to:
Repeal all legislation, decrees and executive orders issued by the de facto authorities;
Ensure the military return to their barracks and that their law enforcement function is withdrawn;
Ensure that all members of the security forces are held accountable for human rights abuses committed between 28th June and end of November;
Develop a National Plan for the protection of human rights.
“It is essential that the international community does not forget people in Honduras by giving a blank cheque to the new authorities over-looking the abuses of the past five months,” said Javier Zúñiga.
Call on Honduras to hold security forces accountable for human rights abuses
Low turnout in Coup Elections December 2, 2009
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COMUNICADO DE PRENSA HPLD December 1, 2009
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COMUNICADO DE PRENSA
HPLD / 003-09
Washington DC, EEUU
1 de Diciembre de 2009
HONDURENOS EN WASHINGTON EXPRESAN INDIGNCION A LA POSTURA DE EEUU DE RECONOCER LOS COMICIOS FRAUDULENTOS
WASHINGTON, DC, 1 de Diciembre de 20009.-
Hondureños por la Democracia, organización de base con sede en Washington, DC se expresó esta mañana después de las declaraciones en las que Arturo Valenzuela, Vicesecretario de Estado de EEUU para América Latina, reconociera la victoria de Porfirio Lobo como ganador de los comicios llevados a cabo en Honduras y cuyos resultados serán desconocidos por la mayoría de países de Latinoamérica, organismos internacionales como el Grupo de Rio, la Organización de Estados Americanos y las Naciones Unidas, así como entes de la sociedad civil de EEUU y la mayoría del pueblo hondureño debido a la atmosfera de intimidación y temor en la cual se realizaron dichas elecciones.
Mario Ramos, vocero de Hondureños por la Democracia, expreso su indignación que EEUU reconozca como legítimas las elecciones llevadas a cabo prácticamente con las armas apuntadas en contra del pueblo hondureño. “La democracia no se impone, se gana, dijo el Señor Ramos.
Hondureños por la Democracia junto a organizaciones de base en Honduras, organismos de Derechos Humanos y medios independientes internacionales, han reportado un creciente número de actos represivos e irregularidades que llevan a la irrevocable conclusión que las elecciones hondureñas no fueron “libres y justas” así como el Departamento de Estados de EEUU pretende hacer creer al pueblo americano y a las naciones hermanas del hemisferio.
Entre los actos represivos más visibles se reportan:
Un mes previo a las elecciones Las Fuerzas Armadas de Honduras enviaron un memorándum a los alcaldes de los 298 municipios del territorio hondureño en el cual solicitaban un listado de los miembros locales del amplio movimiento social autodenominado Frente Nacional en contra del Golpe de Estado comprendido por sindicatos de trabajadores, asociaciones de maestros, artistas, intelectuales, así como de grupos de feministas, campesinos, pueblos indígenas, y afro-hondureños.
El día previo a las elecciones miembros de las Fuerzas Armadas y de la Policía Nacional allanaron sin orden legal alguna las oficinas de una cooperativa de 42 organizaciones de campesinos y de mujeres localizada en Siguatepeque en el centro del país. Los entes represivos se llevaron computadoras que contienen datos privados de los empleados como ser nombres, número de cédula, número de placas vehiculares y direcciones de sus hogares.
El día domingo 29 de noviembre (día de las ilegitimas elecciones) durante los comicios una multitud de 500 personas manifestándose pacíficamente en la ciudad de San Pedro Sula, fueron violentamente dispersos por fuerzas militares y policiales causando heridos, detenidos, y una persona desaparecida.
Hondureños por La Democracia y otros entes de la sociedad civil de EEUU con las que ha establecido relaciones estrechas bajo el marco del golpe de estado del 28 de junio y las elecciones fraudulentas del 29 de noviembre, aseguran que el reconocimiento de los comicios por parte de EEUU no conllevará a la paz. “Existen divisiones muy profundas en el país que el endoso de las elecciones por parte de EEUU no podrá resolver” dijo el Señor Ramos.
“Es necesario que si van a insistir en actuar unilateralmente, los EEUU condicionen el reconocimiento de las elecciones a que se garantice la seguridad personal y el paro de hostigamiento al presidente democráticamente electo Manuel Zelaya Rosales y las personas que se encuentran en la embajada de Brasil en Honduras, que se disuelvan por completo los ataques políticos hacia el Presidente Zelaya disfrazados de falsos cargos en su contra y que se detenga las persecuciones a ex funcionarios de su gobierno,
la investigación y enjuiciamiento a los responsables de violaciones a los derechos humanos y el apoyo incondicional del gobierno de EEUU para asegurarse que el Congreso Nacional de Honduras proceda a autorizar una asamblea nacional constituyente representativa de la sociedad multicultural y altamente variada que es Honduras”, agregó el Señor Ramos.
Mario Ramos Sergio Moncada
mramos@porlademocracia.org smoncada@porlademocracia.org
+ 240.515.0046 + 1 202.431.1729
Action at DC coup elections December 1, 2009
Posted by hondurasemb in Coup d'etat.comments closed
Photos from Mario Ramos of today’s action at DC coup elections
Mon, 11/30/2009 – 00:55 — AP It was actually quite a scene. A crowd of golpistas, led by an incredibly hostile, obviously wealthy sampedrano representative of the National Party by the last name of Talbot who was really aggressively harassing me in the morning as I sat quietly by myself (I asked him to please leave me alone ten times, and he only did so when I called 911), tried to get a rise out of the protesters by shouting at them, claiming that Chavez and Patricia Rodas and Castro had paid for the protest, and rather desperately singing the national anthem. A few of the drunker among them let out repetitive and slightly Turretic WHOOPS with awkward regularity. But we had learned our lesson in the morning, when the election organizer called the police on two Hondurans for Democracy, making the patently absurd claim that they had been blocking the path to the entrance, and demanding that the police enforce their imaginary law-get this-that no one was allowed to say anything bad about the elections within 50 meters of the polling site. They also claimed that the Hondurans for Democracy were telling people to not vote- of course false. Turns out the golpistas forgot to get a permit for anything, although they kept bragging about the State Department’s approval, and so although the cops seemed to want to get rid of us, the best they could do was ask us to move to a different part of the sidewalk. But to prevent their making similar ridiculous accusations to try to get people arrested when the larger crowd came, the compañeros decided the best course of action would be to demonstrate in a crystal clear fashion that they were not there to harass anyone, but rather to show how the voices of Honduran people are being silenced–following non-violent Resistance protesters, taping their mouths shut (and staying off the sidewalk). That’s what you see in Mario’s photos below. Here is a picture (from another friend) of the man who was harassing me (with the sombrero on). A few people down, holding a drink in one hand and identity card in the other is one of the drunken whoopers.
One more anecdote: when I went over to inform the two privately hired guards (one of whom, an older gentleman, spoke neither English nor Spanish) who had called the metropolitan police on us earlier for being on the public sidewalk, that if Señor Talbot harassed me again I would call the metropolitan police on him, they ran inside (afraid of me?) and sent out the election representatives–one bad cop, who yelled at me that I was trespassing, and one good cop, who assured me they meant no disrespect, and that it wouldn’t happen again. Mr. Good Cop election guy came down a bit later, quite happy with himself, to assure me and two Honduran friends sitting with me that everything was on the up & up. “I heard someone say you had questions about the legality of these elections,” he said. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that everything here is perfectly legal. Craig Kelly was just here from the State Department [true, we saw him], and he came to congratulate us on how transparent our elections were. And he said he had just been in touch with the ambassador in Tegucigalpa, and he was happy to report there is no violence in Honduras, so everything is going very well.”
Content Courtesy of Quotha by Adrienne Pine and HPLD
No Fair Election In Honduras Under Military Occupation November 26, 2009
Posted by hondurasemb in Coup d'etat, Press Freedoms.comments closed
As the Honduran election approaches this Sunday, let’s be clear about the conditions under which it is taking place. Human rights abuses are rampant, freedom of speech is under attack, and the election process is in the hands of the very people who perpetrated the coup. Clearly, no free and fair election is possible under the repressive thumb of the military coup that has been in place for five months.
While the 23 nations of the Rio Group from Latin America and the Caribbean have condemned the election and announced they will not recognize its outcome, the Obama administration still insists it will recognize the results — once again isolating the United States from those who are upholding democracy in the hemisphere.
President Obama should join the rest of the world and immediately declare the elections fraudulent and demand the immediate restoration of President Manuel Zelaya, the withdrawal of the Honduran military, and a delay of the election until three months after Zelaya has been full reinstated.
Imagine a “free and fair election” under the conditions in Honduras today (and imagine if this were taking place in the United States):
The same Honduran military,which perpetrated the June 28 coup forcing President Manuel Zelaya out of the country, and which has brutally occupied the country for five months, physically controls the ballots, the ballot boxes, the computers that tabulate the results, and the dissemination of the outcome.
The legitimate President of the country is being held captive in the Brazilian Embassy under draconian circumstances, and has denounced the elections as fraudulent.
The leading opposition candidate, the independent Carlos H. Reyes–who has a real chance of winning a free and fair election–has withdrawn his name from the ballot in protest. Throughout the country, hundreds of candidates for congress and municipal office, including those from the mainstream parties, have announced they are withdrawing from the election. They include the mayor of San Pedro Sula, the nation’s second largest city.
All three trade union federations, the leading human rights organization, women’s groups, organizations of indigenous and African-descent peoples, the gay and lesbian movement, and the campesino movement–united in the National Front Against the Coup d’Etat–have denounced the election as fraudulent.
The coup government has made it illegal to advocate not voting.
Peaceful demonstrations are routinely teargassed. As the Committee of Families of the Disappeared (COFADEH) has documented, dozens of people have been killed, over 600 beaten, and over 3,500 illegally detained, including lawyers who have shown up to secure the release of detainees. Opponents of the coup continue be threatened, illegally arrested, and beaten in their homes.
The military has recently instructed all mayors in the country to compile a list of persons in their jurisdiction who oppose the coup.
The two presidential candidates remaining in the election from the traditional parties of the oligarchy, Elvin Santos from the right wing of the Liberal Party, and Porfirio Lobo Sosa from the National Party, both initially supported the coup.
No free and fair election can take place under these circumstances. Only when the legitimate President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, has been fully restored to office for three months, only when the military has been pushed back into its barracks, and only when civil liberties are completely restored can an orderly transfer of power to a new administration take place. By persuading coup leader Roberto Micheletti to briefly step aside in the week before the election, the U.S. State Department has tried to whitewash the election at the last minute. But that doesn’t change the fact that the Honduran military and the oligarchs, who perpetrated the coup and who have dictated the nation’s politics for decades, are still brutally repressing the people of Honduras.
The vast majority of Hondurans aren’t fooled. After five months of military repression, they know the difference between a fraudulent cover for the continuation of the coup regime, and a truly free and fair election under the rule of law. So does the European Union, the Organization of American States, and the Rio Group. They understand well the dangerous precedent the Honduran coup represents.
President Obama should refuse to recognize the results of the election and bring an end to the embarrassing isolation of the United States from the rest of the world.
Elections in Honduras Ought Not Be Blessed by U.S. Policymakers November 26, 2009
Posted by hondurasemb in Press Freedoms.comments closed
During my last visit to Honduras with a delegation that included Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky, we met a man named Jose David Murillo. Jose’s son, 19-year old Isis Obed, was shot and killed on July 5, as he and thousands of others clamored for the return of President Manual Zelaya who’d been deposed in a military coup a week earlier and was trying to land at Tegucigalpa’s airport in a chartered airplane.
Jose learned of his son’s fate when he called him on his cell phone that day; someone from the morgue answered and told him the phone’s owner was dead. For me, he had a message: We’ve pinned our hopes in God and international justice, he said, because our internal justice system is not working.
Jose’s words still echo in Honduras, even as the country prepares to vote for a new president, a new Congress and mayors on Sunday. Since the military rustled Zelaya from bed at gunpoint on June 28, and hustled him into an airplane that took him to Costa Rica, human rights groups say that more than twenty people actively opposed to the coup have been killed and hundreds have been injured.
Thousands of individuals opposed to the coup have been subjected to arbitrary arrest and many charged with political crimes such as “sedition.” In Honduras, our delegation met numerous people who’d been beaten by police and the military, and one 13-year old boy who’d been shot in the stomach by security forces. A mother came to us in tears, wondering when her son would be able to return from exile after his role in the resistance had put him in danger and forced him to flee.
The de facto government of Roberto Micheletti, the former head of the Honduran Congress who the military installed as president, has issued various decrees restricting freedom of assembly and authorizing the military and police to shut down opposition media outlets and, in one instance, to confiscate their equipment. The opposition media is back on the air, but regular interruptions of television and radio transmissions continue. Meanwhile the threat of another shutdown looms due to a recent decree that prohibits any statement by the press that threatens “national security.”
Investigations into the abuses have run into obstacles as well. Following Murillo’s shooting, the de facto government’s human rights representative said the military had not used any live ammunition to quell the pro-Zelaya forces, but investigators from the attorney general’s office found 167 shells where the army was stationed that day. Many other investigations into abuses have stalled or been thwarted by security forces and government personnel.
Human rights groups have also faced down threats and direct assaults. During one peaceful demonstration days after the coup, security forces tossed tear gas into the offices of COFADEH, the human rights group that served as our hosts during our stay.
President Zelaya returned to the country in September, sneaking past security forces and into the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa. However, his efforts to foster an accord, which have included the help of the Costa Rican government, the Organization of American States and the U.S. State Department, have met with derision and, some would say, ridicule.
The most recent accord, brokered by U.S. diplomats, called for Zelaya’s return to power, but the vote on his reinstitution never occurred in the obstinate pro-Micheletti legislature. They played for time until the clock before the election ran out.
It’s within this atmosphere of murder, fear, reprisals and recrimination that the de facto government is readying for elections on Sunday. Yet I wonder how fair these elections can be when the democratically elected president sits in a virtual prison, or how free they can be when thousands wonder whether their opposition will lead to new mass arrests, charges of “sedition,” or outright repression.
Worse still, I am concerned about what type of precedent the United States government would set if it recognizes the winner of an election designed, in part, to erase a bloody and unjust military coup.
If our government blesses this election, and the majority of governments in our hemisphere do not, we will be divided from our allies and our credibility as advocates for democracy will be compromised once again.
Instead, we should be standing for a restoration of the democratic order, implementation of the San Jose Accord, ending the violations of human rights, and full respect for civil liberties and an independent media. We should also stand in full support of a national dialogue in Honduras so that all citizens can debate their nation’s democratic institutions and discuss steps that are needed to reform and improve them without interference from the Honduran government.
Circumstances in Honduras present before the coup-a debate over how marginalized sectors in society could gain political, social, and economic inclusion – are also present in nations across the hemisphere. It is urgent that U.S. policy makers avoid creating the impression that democratic gains obtained at the ballot box can be taken away at the whim of the military or powerful economic interests with the apparent acquiescence of the United States of America.
In the days after the military coup, Isis Obed told his father that the time to rise up was now. I agree. It’s our time push for the right solution in Honduras, one that reinforces democracy, human rights and sends a message to the region that the U.S. is working with it to resolve these issues.
Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas (CDA), visited Honduras during the national election campaign with a Carter Center Delegation in October and with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky earlier this month.
Embajada de Honduras en Washington no participará en organización de elecciones en EEUU November 25, 2009
Posted by hondurasemb in Coup d'etat.comments closed
Washington (AFP) La embajada de Honduras en Washington, que reconoce al depuesto presidente Manuel Zelaya, afirmó que no participa en la instalación de mesas de votación el domingo en Estados Unidos y duda de la transparencia de ese sufragio, señaló este martes el embajador Eduardo Reina a la AFP.
La instalación de las mesas de votación en seis ciudades estadounidenses para que voten los hondureños “se está haciendo por personas privadas designadas por los partidos sin supervisión específica” de la embajada, señaló Reina en conversación telefónica con la AFP.
Las urnas dependen directamente del Tribunal Supremo Electoral de Honduras y de los partidos políticos, quienes han designado a sus representantes para estar en las mesas, explicó Reina.
“Quién lo va a cuidar, quién va a preservar si son los listados de votantes, quién va a dar fe (…) de la identidad de las personas”, se preguntó Reina, al mostrarse preocupado por la posibilidad de que el régimen de facto intente “inflar” los resultados.
Las urnas, que se instalarán en Miami, Nueva York, Washington, Los Angeles, Houston y Nueva Orleans, “ni siquiera cuentan con la protección del gobierno de Estados Unidos”, dijo Reina.
Se estima que un millón de hondureños viven en Estados Unidos.
Según el Tribunal Supremo hondureño, en las elecciones generales del 29 de noviembre podrán sufragar hasta 2.000 personas en cada una de las seis urnas en Estados Unidos.
En las anteriores elecciones, en 2005, cuando fue electo Manuel Zelaya, 11.500 hondureños votaron en Estados Unidos.
Mientras, la congresista republicana Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (Florida, sureste) anunció que visitará el domingo la mesa electoral en Miami.
“Aplaudo al pueblo hondureño por su determinación pacífica”, dijo en un comunicado Ros-Lehtinen, quien apoya al régimen de facto de Roberto Micheletti.
Estados Unidos ha dicho que reconocerá los resultados de las elecciones si éstas cumplen con estándares internacionales.
La ONU y la OEA retiraron su apoyo electoral a Honduras.
