This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Honduran Repression Continues Unabated - by Stephen Lendman
Earlier articles explained the June 28, 2009 coup and aftermath, the latest accessed through the following link:
For Hondurans, the event marked a new beginning, not an end to their dark history. Widespread killings and human rights abuses followed and a sham November election, installing Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo Sosa president, a US-friendly stooge heading a fascist regime. The nation's military is firmly in control against popular resistance, street violence and death squad terror its repressive tools. The Obama administrative stands firmly supportive. It blessed the coup, the new government and provides aid, all for hardline rule, none for popular needs.
Activists and journalists are especially threatened. Honduras is one of the most dangerous countries anywhere for those speaking openly about government corruption, human rights abuses, and despotism, the latest casualty - Radio Internacional reporter Zelaya Diaz, shot dead on August 24 along a rural San Pedro Sula road. According to press reports, he died from two bullet wounds to the head, another in his chest. Like similar past incidents, an investigation, if it occurs, will be whitewashed. No one will be held accountable.
Though not openly threatened, an earlier suspicious fire damaged Diaz's home, a message perhaps demanding he stop reporting on politics and crime. Since March alone, eight journalists have been killed, a disturbing pattern against others stepping too close to honest reporting about what Hondurans most need to know - the truth about their corrupted, brutal regime.
Despite the UN General Assembly's June 30, 2009 condemnation of the coup "by acclimation," 90 nations have now restored diplomatic ties, normalizing relations after the October 30 Tegucigalpa-Jose Accord (the unfulfilled agreement to form a National Unity/ Reconciliation Government) and Lobo's election - business as usual triumphing over the rule of law and democratic freedoms, Washington always in the lead, pressuring others to go along.
Resistance, however continues. On August 27, Honduras Resists reported that protests and police repression filled Tegucigalpa streets, the nation's capital, for the third straight day. Security forces surrounded the National Pedagogic University where teachers, students, unionists, campesinos, and other activists gathered inside demanding social justice.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
3
