The Sham Elections in Honduras (The Nation)

[struggle4progress]

By Laura Carlsen
December 14, 2009

Angel Salgado lay brain-dead at the public teaching hospital the day I arrived in Tegucigalpa. On the eve of the November 29 elections, which the Honduran (and world) press later hailed as peaceful and fair, the army shot him in the head for accidentally passing one of the many military checkpoints set up around the city ...

The Honduran elections were far from free, fair or peaceful. The coup regime rejected all diplomatic attempts to restore the nation's democracy before holding elections, keeping the constitutional president trapped behind barricades in the Brazilian Embassy. It then pretended that the elections themselves constituted a return to democratic order.

The coup's dictatorial decrees restricting freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of movement held the nation in a virtual state of siege in the weeks prior to the elections. Over forty registered candidates resigned in protest. Members of the resistance movement were harassed, beaten and detained. In San Pedro Sula, an election-day march was brutally repressed.

I arrived to monitor the elections and continue the work I had begun with the International Women's Human Rights delegation in August. The delegation documented assassinations, rapes, beatings and arbitrary detentions over the months that followed the June 28 military coup d'état, working closely with the Honduran coalition Feminists in Resistance ...

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091221/carlsen

[Ken Burch]

1. Honduras is bleeding.

It was beaten to a pulp for daring to defy corporate power. And OUR government, led by the party of "CHANGE", at BEST looked the other way. At worst...Well, judge for yourselves.