Honduras: over the edge
The best summary of the roller coaster of events over the last two days is by Laura Carlsen. Her post yesterday, when Zelaya returned to the capital and connected with his cabinet and his supporters in and outside the Brazilian embassy, conveyed clearly the hopeful possibilities of the development.The coup regime has responded by dropping even the facade of constitutionality, declaring a curfew beginning at 4 pm yesterday with no legal process whatsoever. Since then they've extended the illegal curfew, declared a state of emergency, suspended the constitution, and have begun attacking coup opponents both at the embassy and throughout the country. Carlsen has the cogent summary and the vivid details.
The shameful silence of our own government is now intolerable. If it continues through the end of this day, no one will be able to deny our complicity. There's already a lot of blood on our hands; please read and act to prevent more. Update: 5:30pm, 22 Sept - This inadequate, equivocal crap is only a baby step up from tacit endorsement of the coup regime's response. There is no mention -- much less condemnation -- of the illegal curfew, the assault on peaceful protestors, and the suspension of the constitution. Instead, the State Department "appreciates" Micheletti's "promise" to respect the Vienna convention protecting diplomatic sites, even after the coup regime has already violated it by cutting power, water, and phone to the Brazilian embassy.State Department 202-647-4000. Demand that the U.S. government publicly recognize and condemn the coup regime's abuses against peaceful political expression, media, and diplomatic integrity, and that stronger actions be taken to sanction the coup participants.
Update 2: 6:15pm, 22 Sept - One ray of optimism: Giordano says (no source) that the administration has invited Rep. Bill Delahunt, sponsor of the strongest anti-coup resolution in Congress, to join the UN delegation in New York. He's certain to be a voice for effective measures; good on whoever had that idea. Brazil has asked for a Security Council session on the crisis; another good idea.
News reports from those in touch with Hondurans and on-the-scene observers as well as the now-intermittent internet transmissions from Radio Globo and other media under siege:
RAJ/RNS, Adrienne Pine, Al Giordano, DailyKos posters 1 2, 9/24 UN, 9/24 OAS, and Charles the indispensable.
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Labels: Honduras, human rights
posted by Nell @ 12:47 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Nell: Thanks for the info and links. They are very informative, as usual.
This strikes me as a bold and intelligent move by Zelaya, and I hope it succeeds in making clear the dishonesty of Micheletti et al. I would bet the Honduran military is apoplectic, and the U.S. State Dept, intel agencies and their NGO fronts, and the military must be quite peeved with Brazil too. This is supposed to be OUR hemisphere! (To be a broken record, I don't think of the U.S. government or even the "Obama administration" as necessarily just one indivisible thing. Sometimes yes, sometimes no.)
I Google-Newsed Zelaya and Honduras yesterday to see what else was being said, and one of the first things I pulled up was a little blurb from Commentary magazine, I think, saying (not surprisingly, though of course absurdly) that the military had thwarted a coup by Zelaya back in June. That's about as Newspeakian as you can get, so I hope your posts and the links find an audience. They certainly merit one.
I see we have a terror alert today, and I doubt its real purpose has much to do with Honduras this time--more likely McChrystal's annoyance at not having more troops in Afghanistan already or the Netanyahu meeting--but we really can't know what it's about, which irritates me. It would probably take about two hours in our media to turn Zelaya into a widely reported sponsor of terrorism, which any Google search can show has already happened to Chavez.
So keep up the good work.
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