Canada-Honduras Trade Deal On Track, Critics Decry Worsening Rights Situation

[Judi Lynn]

Canada-Honduras Trade Deal On Track, Critics Decry Worsening Rights Situation
First Posted: 01/ 4/12 05:29 PM ET Updated: 01/ 4/12 06:09 PM ET

OTTAWA - A Canada-Honduras trade deal is coming under renewed fire following a spate of abuses by police in the Central American country, including the recent beatings of protesting teachers, the intimidation of journalists and the murder of two university students.

Trade Minister Ed Fast, who was not available for comment this week, highlighted the conclusion of trade talks with Honduras as one of the federal government's accomplishments in 2011. The prime minister lauded the deal during a trip to the struggling nation last August.

But human-rights abuses and soaring crime continues to plague the country.

Police used water cannons and tear gas on hundreds of teachers who protested missing paycheques in December. The same month, journalists protesting the deaths of 17 colleagues over the last two years were beaten with batons.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2012/01/04/canada-honduras-trade-deal_n_1184624.html?ref=canada-politics

[Peace Patriot]

1. The Honduran coup government's appalling record on human rights...

...makes Honduras an ideal candidate for "free trade for the rich" benefiting U.S. and Canadian fat cats.

Same thing happened in Colombia. Decapitate the labor unions and intimidate, threaten and oppress the surviving advocates of the poor, and Exxon Mobil, Monsanto, Chiquita, Drummond Coal and the entire zoo of corporate looters and bag men prosper from stolen resources and slave labor.

This is the appalling reality of U.S. policy in Latin America, whether run by Pukes or Democrats, and it includes U.S. corporate cronies in Canada, where elections are not obviously rigged, as they are in the U.S., but something is clearly wrong with this corporate-run, unrepresentative, non-progressive Canadian government. It is obscene and shocking, the way Canadian corporations are riding on U.S. war policy (the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and the Pentagon expansion in the Central America/Caribbean/Colombia region, as enforcers of "free trade for the rich" ) .

It is no wonder that the new, EU-type Latin American institution--CELAC--quite pointedly excluded the U.S. and Canada from membership. Both have governments that are exploitative and murderous in their service to transglobal corporate interests, and have proven so, time and again, in Latin America. Honduras is a type case of U.S. murderous interference in this region and provided one of the main reasons for accelerating the formalization of CELAC, with its goals of pulling the region together to defend each other's sovereignty and independence and pursuing "south-south" trade and social justice.

[Bacchus4.0]

2. Honduras is in CELAC, just wanted to point that out n-t

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