Military Coup in Honduras

On Sunday, June 28th, a military in Honduras removed the democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya from office. Zelaya was placed into military custody and immediately flown out of the country to Costa Rica.

Since then, Honduras has been in a state of military rule. President Zelaya attempted to re-enter the country on Sunday, July 5th by flying into the Tegucigalpa Airport, but was prevented by the military blocking the landing strips. Over 100,000 people rallied to support President Zelaya and greet him when he entered the country. They were met by Honduran soldiers who fired machine guns into the crowd, as well as tear gas and other "less-lethal" weapons. 19-year-old Obed Murillo was killed at the scene.

Most of the media in Honduras is controlled by powerful elites backing the coup and journalists covering the story from a balanced perspective or from an anti-coup perspective have been having heavy repression. Paramilitary groups murdered a journalist leaving Radio America on Friday July 3rd. Other journalists are facing intimidation and death threats. Pro-coup forces threatened a journalist and his family with a revolver pointed from tinted windows. The head of channel 36 and director of Radio Global have both gone into hiding. Another Radio Global journalist jumped three stories when soldiers came for him on the day of the coup. The journalist had been tortured in the 1980's and feared that it would happen again. Channel 11, which has mostly reported from a pro-coup perspective had their building bombed when they made some efforts towards a more balanced approach.

On the first night of the coup, a curfew was imposed starting at 9:00pm and that was recently lowered to 6:30pm. The curfew not only prevents people from gathering and assembling (which are constitutionally protected rights), it also allows the military to raid houses without respecting the rights of the citizens.

Although the Honduran people are facing extreme repression, brutality and intimidation, many are continuing to stand up and rebel against the coup government. Teachers enacted a country-wide strike and have continued despite threats from the coup-government. Blockades have been set up on a mass scale across the country's highway system.

U.S. officials have publicly condemned the events and called it a coup, but have not officially declared it a coup. This means that the Foreign Assistance Act, which prevents any U.S. aid to countries in a military coup, has not been put into effect. The state department says it has "taken some actions to hit the pause button" on certain assistance programs but has not specified which. The U.S. has a long history of repression in Latin America and Honduras. The School of Americas, located in Ft. Benning Georgia, trained the leader of the coup, General Vasquez, as well as the head of the air force, General Suazo.

For more information, check out these web pages: Democracy Now Interview with Andres Conteris, narconews.com.