Blog
honduras - state of emergency
“We have all experienced being followed, being beaten, feeling impotent while our friends are being beaten. They do whatever they want and we are totally defenseless. We’re glad you are here, so we will not feel so alone.”
This afternoon I spent three hours in a small room with a group of community organizers and coup-resistors and frightened campesinos in Comayagua, a small city about two hours from Tegucigalpa. Unlike in the capital, the people who have refused to play along with the golpistas in Comayagua cannot hope for any anonymity. Their names and faces are recognized by everyone in the community - including the police and military. They have faced massive, brutal and unrelenting repression since June 28th, and they fear that it will only get worse in the coming days.
The meeting was primarily set up so that members of the community could speak to representatives of COFADEH about what they’ve experienced and what they should do about it. But it was much more than that. I’m unable to adequately describe it at the moment, so I will simply say that to meet and speak with these impossibly courageous people was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. That they continue every day to find the courage to resist what has become a totalitarian police state in spite of the tremendous personal risk they face is a kind of heroism that I am not equipped to illustrate. So I will let their voices speak for themselves:
“The police keep telling us they will come to our homes and take us away, and it makes us want to run. But we have worked too hard for too long to build the homes we have. They know who I am, the police are just up the road. I have three sons and we are scared, we hardly leave our house.” – Francisca, high school teacher.
“On July 30th, a lot of us were captured and detained – they kept 12 of us. They tried to charge us with ‘sedition’ so that we would not be allowed to post bail. When lawyers from Tegucigalpa showed up, they changed the charges to say that we assaulted police and stole their guns. They said that because one of the police officers lost his gun, so he blamed us for it. We don’t have guns, we don’t even like guns. I’ve never had one.” –Rosner, human rights advocate and community organizer.
“Right now, police are evicting people without warrants – everything is being taken from them, even their machetes. A campesino needs a machete, but they don’t care. They are doing it without any orders, because they do anything they want now, this is happening just north of here. Six days ago, they evicted 5 groups, over 400 people. They came with tractors and mowed down their entire fields of crops, all of it gone.” – Maria Jesus, campesino organizer.
“The golpistas know that the people are against them. If tomorrow comes and they don’t get the results they want, they will take it into their own hands and make it the way they want. So it is possible that they may come after us tomorrow evening. I’m not talking about detention, I’m talking about being grabbed and disappeared.” – Mauricio, community member.
“There’s no point in coming all this way, all these marches and struggles, if we don’t take care of the little things. I know I am obsessed with this! But please do not eat the junk food, the fast food. We should learn how to consume less, to undermine the next coup government by buying local juice instead of Coca-Cola. Support our own community, not Coca-Cola Inc!” – Gustavo, community member.
“We were in the north, meeting with people against the coup, we told them Sunday you should stay in your home, voting is to stain your hands in blood. They wanted to be able to vote for the mayors in their communities. We told them that the two parties are the same and it doesn’t matter who you vote for because they are all golpistas now. They agreed and decided not to vote.”
The danger these people face is real and immediate. In fact, we found out later that one woman was supposed to be at the meeting and didn’t show up - she had been detained and beaten by police and is still being held. At the same time, another group of police and military wrote up an obviously fake search-and-seizure warrant and used it to justify an assault against a co-operative campesino education and community center, an hour north of Comayagua. Over 50 men in fatigues stormed the small facility, cuffed and kicked Julio, the watchman, and ransacked the building. They kicked doors, smashed windows, stole three laptop computers and over 4000 lempiras from the strongbox.
It is entirely possible that things would have been even worse if we didn’t show up to stop them. Though we were most certainly outnumbered, the presence of a few gringo human rights observers seemed to be enough to convince them to grab their things and take off. But the impunity with which police and military are roaming the country is frightening. I spoke to the director of the campesino group, who said, “we represent the poorest people here. We help them to sell their product, but we also teach them why they are poor. For this, we are a threat. Now, they have information on anyone who has ever worked with us and all of those people are in danger.”
Honduras is in a state of emergency. The state has hired 14 private security companies, over 15,000 mercenaries, and given them army fatigues and a month’s salary for this weekend’s work. All criticism of the regime is being silenced, all critics are being terrorized or killed. The editor of El Libertador, one of the few papers brave enough to criticize the coup, fled the country three days ago after his daughter was murdered in Guatemala in a political assassination very poorly disguised as a mugging. Last night, a young man was shot and killed by the military in Tegucigalpa.
But just wait – by 6:00 pm tomorrow, you will be hearing about the ‘fiesta democratica’ in Honduras. It is absolutely imperative that pressure be brought against the governments of the other OAS states and especially Canada and the US, whose records on the coup and the crisis in Honduras have been shameful at best. This is not democracy, it is state terror and it will be yet another declaration of moral and political bankruptcy if our governments legitimate it. So write to your damn politicians.
Tyler Shipley is a graduate student and activist from Toronto, Canada. He is in Tegucigalpa with a delegation organized by Rights Action reporting on the resistance to the coup and the Nov. 29 elections. Read more by Tyler Shipley.
Thanks Tyler. I have no intention of forgetting Haiti either. Unfortunately, When criminals are allowed to do crime, they don’t suddenly stop. No consequences mean that there will be negative consequences for innocent people who the criminals target. In the case of the U.S. empire, and those empires allied with it, people everywhere are the enemy. And they can slave for capitalists in sweatshops or go die, often violently since soldiers and police need to get their fun and sex somehow.
I’m more free here in Canada than bravers souls in Latin American countries. So I guess I should at least yap about how corporatocracy leaders are happy to victimize any who they can in their effort to create business opportunities for capitalists, especially American investors. The more distant the people, the more vicious the attack, since the most important elites prefer to live in nice, orderly neighborhoods and countries.
Yes, I’m peaceful and I belieive in law and order. Unfortunately, That’s what dogs count on, as they break every written and unwritten law so as to dominate in society. The sheep are left with their integrity ‘and’ victim status intact. Once the dogs dominate in society by bold acts of lawlessness that they practice while condemning it, they can then dictate and take, as is their wish. That’s so much easier, they believe, than pulling together with the rest of the planet to make a civilization that works for everyone. Well, It’s easier for dogs who have chosen to eschew basic morality and principles that accord with a moral, productive and noble life, who have no intention of changing their minds about that.
#1. Posted by Arby in Toronto, Canada on December 3rd 2009 at 2:28am
I can’t edit my post when there’s no edit button, now can I? :-(
#2. Posted by Arby in Toronto, Canada on December 3rd 2009 at 2:31am
The Center for Media Research has released a study by Vertical Response that shows just where many of these ‘Main Street’ players are going with their online dollars. The big winners: e-mail and social media. With only 3.8% of small business folks NOT planning on using e-mail marketing and with social media carrying the perception of being free (which they so rudely discover it is far from free) this should make some in the banner and search crowd a little wary.www.onlineuniversalwork.com
#3. Posted by somaie on December 15th 2009 at 12:21am