On Friday October 30th, a U.S. brokered, Agreement for National Reconciliation and the Strengthening of Democracy in Honduras was signed between President Zelaya and coup regime leader Micheletti. Among many sectors, the deal is being hailed as a triumph for democracy in Honduras.
Text of the Agreement Signed on October 30, 2009
By Negotiating Teams of the Elected Government of President Zelaya and Coup Regime of Roberto Micheletti, Tegucigalpa, Honduras,
The Agreement: Just the Beginning of the Struggle
Before 6a.m. on 28 June 2009, the Armed Forces of Honduras forcibly removed elected president Manuel Zelaya from his home and left him in his pajamas on a runway in Costa Rica. Electricity and media channels were cut off in Tegucigalpa, and turned back on in the afternoon to reveal the head of the National Congress, Roberto Micheletti, being sworn in as president. It was a coup d’etat, the third in the hemisphere in this decade, the first in Honduras since 1978, and it would not slip by quietly.
Here is a copy of the accord which was signed between President Zelaya and Micheletti. Unfortunately it is only available in Spanish.
“Statistics and Faces of the Repression”
Violations of Human Rights in the framework of the coup d’état in Honduras.
Tegucigalpa, Honduras – October 22, 2009
I am a veteran human rights defender. As I prepared this second human rights report since the coup in Honduras, I have felt profound distress. Perhaps because I had begun to think that during the long process of the last decades, we had made some small advances in the area of human rights.
Perhaps it is because I look to the past in order to see the future, and to evaluate and to value the present – – that today, over 100 days since the fateful coup on June 28th, I realize that something has shaken the Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras, COFADEH to the core, and nothing is the same. Immediately after the coup we knew that we had regressed 25 – 30 years, maybe more.
Comuniqué No. 32
The National Front of Resistance to the Coup d’etát, facing the imminent signing of a negotiated agreement between the commission representing the legitimate President Manuel Zelaya Rosales and the representatives of the de facto regime, communicates the following to the Honduran people and the international community:
October 2009
What follows in italics is a letter received by a friend of the Quixote Center from Senator John Cornyn of Texas in response to her letter advocating respect for human rights and constitutionality in Honduras. I have responded below to Senator Cornyn’s reply, paragraph by paragraph, in an attempt to expose the misinformation being touted by some members of the U.S. Congress. This document may be useful to U.S. Citizens hoping to engage their representatives on Honduras.
Dear _______:
This report from COFADEH, the most prominent Human Rights organization in Honduras was released on October 22. It includes violations reported to them which happened between July 16th and October 15th. It documents 21 assassination, four of those assassinated were teachers. There were 4,234 denunciations of violation of fundamental liberties and there are 114 people who have been accused of sedition.
A group of individuals in Washington DC got together and posted approximately 100 crosses which bore the words "End the Coup" and "Close the SOA" in heavily trafficked urban areas, mostly near metro stops. Several crosses stayed up for a full week before they were taken down.
They used zip ties to quickly strap these home-made and hand-painted crosses into place.
Washington DC – A large number of protesters representing different organizations which are opposed to the de facto regime in Honduras gathered in front of the offices of Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, the DC based lobbying firm which has a contract with the government of Roberto Micheletti to clean up the image of the coup regime in the United States and internationally.
