October 5, 2009
Today marks 100 days since a military coup was carried out against President Zelaya in Honduras. It also marks 100 days of massive, sustained, nonviolent resistance on the part of the Honduran people who are saying no to this brazen attempt to return to the days of dictators.
Every day brings more acts of threats and repression. Today a denunciation was reported to the Honduran Human Rights group COFADEH that an Italian-Argentinean artist named Maria Luisa Fiaso, who is in currently in the country with the Artistic group Zapayasos, was threatened twice between last Friday night and Saturday.
This morning, Juan Barahona, who represented the national civic committee against the coup and served as one of the three negotiators assigned to represent President Zelaya, resigned from the negotiations. He had been asked to sign on indicating his agreement with a statement that renounced the call for a Constituent Assembly. He indicated that he was never and would never be in favor of such a statement. He was replaced by Rodil Rivera, an advisor to President Zelaya.
October 13th- Last night Augstina Flores Lopez was released on bond after having spent 21 days in jail. The day that President Zelaya returned to Honduras, Augstina joined a multitude of people from her community of La Esperanza and headed to Tegucigalpa to see the President. The following morning, the police attacked the crowd with tear gas, water cannons and their long clubs. Augstina was sitting on a curb when the police came up and began beating her with their clubs in her face and on her back. They eventually arrested her and charged her with criminal destruction of property and sedition.
The International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) today asked that the European Union “act in a consistent way” against the coup in Honduras and asked that the Foreign Ministers of Twenty Six countries to not recognize the electoral process underway. FIDH, in an open letter to the EU “again invited that the EU expel all of the members of the diplomatic corps of Honduras who have aided the coup d’état and that they establish migratory restrictions for any officials or business people who have aided the de facto government” of Roberto Micheletti.
We write this in order to denounce that on October 7th at 6am three army patrols broke down the doors and stormed the first Garifuna hospital in Honduras, located on the Atlantic Coast.
The same day the ‘dialogue’ brokered by the OAS has supposedly begun- the police and army continue to repress people on the streets of Honduras without cause.
Micheletti told the OAS mission yesterday that there will be elections in November unless you invade us. He also said that “you don’t know all of the truth and you don’t want to know it.” As the negotiations began, riot police attacked a group of people who were marching from the U.S. to the Guatemalan Embassy.The Spokesperson for the State Department Philip Crowley said that “time is running out” to resolve the Central American crisis and the time to sign an agreement “is now”. He said that the message of the U.S.
