Tehran and Tegucigalpa: A Tale of Two Capitals

[faceless]

[luke]

thanks faceless, i never check his press tv shows so good to know he's covered the situation in honduras on there - its a shame he hasn't covered it on this talksport show. i guess he has more freedom on press tv to cover what he wants than he does on talksport - i remember the other week when he mentioned couchtripper he said he no longer gets to choose the subjects that are covered

[luke]

Honduran abuses rampant after coup

Suspicious deaths. Beatings. Random police shootings. Life under the de facto government of Honduras at times feels uncannily like Latin America's dark past of military rule.

In the three months since soldiers overthrew leftist President Manuel Zelaya and marched him out of the country in his pajamas, international and Honduran human rights groups say security forces have committed a litany of abuses.

They link at least 10 deaths to de facto rule under Roberto Micheletti, who was named president after the June 28 coup. The government admits three people have died in protests.

Amnesty International said in September that Honduras risks spiraling into a state of lawlessness where police and military act with no regard for rights.

Repression of protests against the coup increased after Zelaya slipped back into the country on Sept 21, took refuge in the Brazilian embassy and called his backers onto the streets.

Honduran human rights group Cofadeh said it had numerous reports of police firing guns in poor areas of Tegucigalpa.

Some shootings occurred during night-time curfews enforced by Micheletti.

Unemployed Angel Manuel Osorto broke the curfew to go out to borrow money for medical treatment for his pregnant wife and his 13-year-old son Angel David was hit in the lower back when a policeman fired a pistol from a motorbike.

"As we walked home a police patrol rode up shooting. One bullet hit him," said Osorto. "Thank God he is alive."

That same night a Zelaya supporter was shot dead. Five more were hospitalized with bullet wounds. "People are terrified to go out at night. I am scared of the authorities," said Osorto.

The curfew has been lifted in Honduras, but Micheletti has put in place an emergency decree allowing the army and police to break up protests. And they do so with gusto, firing gas at almost any small demonstration.

Tegucigalpa police chief Leandro Osorio denied abuses and said left-leaning rights groups are biased in favor of Zelaya.

"They will say there are lots of injured people in the hospital, but that's not true," he told Reuters.

RIGHTS GROUP TEAR GASED

Honduras did not suffer the same level of state-sponsored violence as South American nations under military regimes or neighbors Guatemala and El Salvador during Central America's civil wars in the 1980s. But veteran rights activist Bertha Oliva says in some ways things are worse now.

"Before, they hid the dead. Now they do it in public, challenging every principle of human rights," said Oliva, who formed human rights group Cofadeh when her husband, a left-wing activist, was abducted in 1982.

Two days after Zelaya's return, police fired tear gas into Cofadeh's office where about 150 people were gathered to report beatings by soldiers and police dispersing protesters from the streets of Tegucigalpa.

The Washington-based Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the attack. It said there had also been some cases of violence against people and property by protesters.

"The human rights situation in Honduras has worsened substantially in the sense that the controls and repression of protests have risen exponentially," the commission's president Luz Patricia Mejia told Reuters.

One 22-year-old medical student who declined to be named says she and other members of her leftist, pro-Zelaya group have received threats by text message. One recent message read: "The best communist is a dead communist."

Last week, the student says masked, armed men tried to force her into a black car with dark windows. She escaped, but broke a ligament in her arm struggling to free herself from one of the men's grip.

"The idea was to torture me for information about my organization, I am sure of that," she said, her arm in a cast and dark rings around her eyes from the stress. (Writing by Frank Jack Daniel, editing by Anthony Boadle)

from http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN12151282

plus check ny times on us lobbyists hired to get support for honduran coup regime - dems & repubs!

[luke]

Trampling on Honduran democracy
The election in Honduras has the blessing of the US, but not the people, their president or the rest of the world

On Sunday, Honduras's coup regime, with the support of the US, is staging a presidential election of a special kind. Voters will have a choice of two candidates: the coup supporter Porfirio Lobo or the coup supporter Elvin Santos. The anti-coup candidate, Carlos Reyes, has withdrawn his nomination and condemned the election as fraudulent.

"Cash discounts" will be offered to anyone who can prove they voted, courtesy of the country's coup-supporting big business federation. Trade unions and social movements calling for a boycott of the election are facing mafia-style threats, with the regime's chief of police boasting that he has compiled a blacklist of "all those of the left". "We removed the so-called head [the president, Manuel Zelaya], and we know everyone, from A to Z, that forms part of these groups."

Those on the blacklist have good cause to be concerned. Since Zelaya was overthrown by the military in June, 4,000 people have been arrested, hundreds beaten and hospitalised and dozens charged with sedition. Yet more have been kidnapped, raped, tortured, "disappeared" and assassinated.

Independent media has fared little better. Anti-coup TV and radio stations have been raided by the army and forced off air; their broadcasting equipment confiscated or destroyed with acid. In one case, journalists leapt from third-floor windows to escape the soldiers.

Yet Hondurans have continued marching, striking, blocking roads – and meanwhile getting used to day and night curfews, the smell of tear gas and the grief for friends and family members murdered by the coup regime. They have been struggling, not merely to protest at the trampling of their democratic rights, but also because of the hope which Zelaya had begun to inspire.

In a country marked by malnutrition and widespread illiteracy, in which 10 families control most of the economy and the media and dominate the state apparatus, Zelaya had begun a process of economic and political empowerment for the impoverished majority. This included a doubling of the minimum wage, the introduction of free school meals and the provision of agricultural machinery for small farmers.

In line with demands from trade unions and social movements, Zelaya had proposed a referendum on constitutional reform to be held on the same day as a new president was elected. This proposal has been ludicrously misrepresented as an attempt by Zelaya to extend his term in office; a charge that is logically impossible to sustain but that, with the help of much of the international media, became the central justification for the military takeover.

In the first weeks following the coup it looked like Barack Obama's pledge to "seek a new chapter of engagement" with Latin America might actually have some substance. Obama spoke of the "terrible precedent" that would be set if the coup was not reversed, and in July the US gave its backing to the San Jose accord, a Costa Rican-brokered compromise that would see Zelaya back in office, albeit as head of a "unity government" and with him promising to shelve the constitutional referendum.

Although this would have left much of the power in the hands of the army and other state institutions controlled by the elites – hence the reason the accord garnered US support – Zelaya took the view that it was the best deal he was going to get and signed. But the coup leaders refused, fearing that Zelaya's return would unleash an unstoppable momentum for democratic reform. Instead they resolved to run out the clock on the Zelaya presidency by hanging on until this month's scheduled elections, and then to bank on US recognition of the new government.

However, to the chagrin of the regime, the US administration, itself divided over whether to support or oppose the coup, announced further measures to isolate the de facto government. More aid was suspended, visas to the coup plotters were revoked, and critically Hillary Clinton's state department declared that the US would "not be able to support" the outcome of the elections because of concerns that they would not be "free, fair and transparent".

Following a state department visit in late October, the regime finally caved in and signed a deal which provided the mechanism for Zelaya's return to office. But behind the scenes, Clinton was already preparing to sell out Honduran democracy.

For weeks, the hard right of the Republican party, under the leadership of Senator Jim DeMint, had been threatening to block Democrat nominees for key posts in Latin America. Clinton wanted a way out of the impasse, and DeMint, a fanatical supporter of the Honduran coup, offered her a trade-off: we will agree your nominees, he told her, if you will agree to recognise the outcome of the Honduran election, regardless of whether Zelaya is returned to the presidential palace.

Clinton, never a fan of leftwing Latin American leaders, was happy to acquiesce.

When the state department broke the news of its volte-face to a stunned international community, the coup leaders immediately understood the message. With US recognition now in the bag, they were no longer under pressure to reinstate the legitimate president. Zelaya and the head of the OAS were furious, but the San Jose deal was effectively dead, killed by the very same state department that had played such a key role in imposing it.

So Sunday's election goes ahead with the blessing of the US, but not of the Honduran people or their president. With the rest of the world refusing to recognise the legitimacy of the outcome, the forces inside and outside the US administration that conspired to wreck Obama's vision of a new era in regional relations still have to contend with popular opposition to the coup. In this most conservative of central American nations, a historically passive population has been galvanised into political action on an unprecedented scale. Here in Honduras, the resistance movement says with well-founded confidence, nobody surrenders.

from http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/26/honduras-democracy-election-us

[luke]

It's the politics, stupid: why aid isn't the answer in Honduras
Ousted president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was improving the lives of the poor when he was the victim of a coup. Political reform, rather than aid alone, is the key to development

You could be forgiven for thinking, as you read development blogs and articles, that we are all on the same side. You're likely to read about partnerships, win-wins, and technological breakthroughs. Disputes and conflict? Those are on the international relations pages.

Development, it is implied, is about managing things better, coming up with good ideas, all working towards the common goal of poverty eradication, as agreed by our heads of state.

Wrong. Development is political. Almost all of my friends who are involved in development in poor countries are also engaged in politics, whether at grassroots or national level.

Progress against poverty may sometimes be a "win-win" (such as better ways of organising industry, technological advances in health or energy), but very often it involves a "win-lose": win for the poor, lose for the wealthy (although they win in the long term from living in a more equal society and world). That means that rather than supporting development efforts, those with power and wealth often fight to keep what they have, rather than see it distributed more fairly.

This becomes most obvious when violence is involved. Let's take a recent example. The 2009 coup in Honduras, in which the elected president Manuel Zelaya was removed at gunpoint, was covered as a foreign affairs issue by the international relations experts in the media commentariat.

Two years on and another group of experts, from the development sector, look at the Honduran statistics for health, education and overall poverty as we look at progress towards the . Two parallel discussions take place, when the issue is really one and the same. In Honduras, as in most countries, it is not aid, or internationally-agreed targets, or bright experts turning up from the west with good ideas about trade policy, that are going to make a difference for the poor. It's politics, stupid.

The coup ringleaders claim that they acted in the interests of the people by scuppering plans for illegal constitutional reform. This is, of course, nonsense. They acted to prevent the redistribution of wealth and opportunity.

Honduras, home of the famously low-wage maquilas, or factories, which produce 65% of its exports and make the country so attractive to multinationals, is incredibly unequal. In 2005, the richest 10% earned 47% of the country's income, and that isn't even looking at land and asset wealth. In 2006, after a year of Zelaya's government, they only earned 42.4%, still very unequal, but a step in the right direction, with the poorest 10% earning 2.5%, up from 2.1%. (These statistics and others further down come from the Center for Economic and Policy Research).

In 2001, according to World Bank-supported think-tank Sedlac, more than 64% of Honduran households lived below the poverty line. In 2005 it had reached 66%. But two years into the his administration, Zelaya had brought poverty down to 60.2 percent. Still high, but moving in a good direction.

Against strong opposition, including a tense legal battle in the courts, Zelaya increased the minimum wage (the lowest in Central America apart from Nicaragua) by 60%, and even then it didn't cover the basic basket of goods considered necessary to escape poverty.

He abolished school fees, allowing up to 450,000 more children to go to primary school, and oversaw a 25% increase in children receiving free school lunches (about 200,000 extra kids). In a country of only 7 million people, where over half are under 18, you can see how significant these numbers are. No wonder Zelaya became so popular with the poorest sectors of Honduran society.

Perhaps this was government largesse, unsustainable in the longer term? Was the economy faltering? No. Urban unemployment fell from 6.5% in 2005 to 4% in 2007, according to the Consejo Monetario Cetroamericano. Economic growth averaged 5.6% in the first three years of Zelaya's tenure, faster than the previous administration.

So what has happened since the coup? Growth has stalled and the economy is now in recession, shrinking by over 3% last year. This is down to a combination of a recession in the US, a key trading partner, the drying-up of loans from governments and organisations that do not recognise the present regime, and the impact of stringent security controls to keep unrest in check – Jesus Canahuati, vice president of the Honduran chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, estimated that the five-month curfew imposed by the de facto regimecost the economy $50m per day.

In today's Honduras, development is a civil rights issue. To protest about wages or labour rights, education or health standards, is to be at risk of reprisal. The opposition claims that 50 people have been killed for political reasons since the coup. Land occupations by poor farmers, which were under negotiation in the Zelaya administration, were met with a military response under interim leader Roberto Micheletti, with dozens of arrests.

Meanwhile, the energy that civil society and NGOs should be put into reducing poverty is spent on fighting simply to have a voice and to stave off reprisal and recrimination. The same old elite is reasserting its grasp on Honduras, preventing a fair distribution of land, wealth and the trappings of slow economic progress.

What should be done? The Brazilian government, mindful of the precedent set by the Honduran coup in a continent historically beset by coups, insists on the full establishment of human rights and the return of Zelaya to public life. What is really needed is an open debate drawing the poorest into a discussion about the future of the country. Predictably, this is not high on the present regimes to-do list. Instead, the elites fight over the spoils.

The challenge for those of us living outside Honduras is discover we can do to help the country develop and reduce poverty. There are a number of answers, but, please, don't say more aid.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/global-development/poverty-matters/2010/nov/11/honduras-politics-poverty-aid