Thousands of Zelaya supporters renew protests in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Focus News Agency

Thousands of Zelaya supporters renew protests in Honduras
26 February 2010 | 02:02 | FOCUS News Agency

Tegucigalpa. Thousands of supporters of ousted Honduras president Manuel Zelaya took to the streets of the capital Thursday for the first time since President Porfirio Lobo took office last month, AFP reported. Lobo, who was elected in controversial polls held under the de facto regime, took power on January 27 and granted Zelaya safe passage to the Dominican Republic.

Zelaya, a centrist who swung to the left while in office, had spent several months holed up in the Brazilian embassy after secretly returning to the Central American nation.

Thursday's protesters called for reform of the constitution and denounced corruption and rights abuses since Zelaya was ousted last June.

Some 10,000 people set off from the capital's main university but were blocked by soldiers from nearing the presidential palace and diverted to the parliament in the city center instead, according to organizers. Six teachers' unions backed the protests and called for classes to be suspended nationwide.

Read more: http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n211320

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Thousands of Hondurans March in Anti-Coup Protest

In Honduras, thousands of supporters of the ousted former President Manuel Zelaya took to the streets Thursday for a march in the capital Tegucigalpa. It was the first major demonstration since the inauguration of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo last month. Protesters called for constitutional reforms, payments of back wage to teachers, and an end to attacks on Zelaya supporters. The National People’s Resistance Front says one of its supporters was shot to death this week at her home in front of her two young children. The victim, Claudia Brizuela, was the daughter of a radio host critical of the coup that ousted Zelaya last year.

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/26/headlines#6

Photos of the march

http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/1_10.jpg http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/2_9.jpg

http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/9_6.jpg http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/5_9.jpg

http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/7_8.jpg http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/2_9.jpg

http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/8_7.jpg http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/9C_1.jpg

http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/9D_2.jpg http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/9f_2.jpg

[Joanne98]

1. GO HONDURAS!

[DissedByBush]

2. Oh, that's funny

Protesting mistreatment of political opponents by holding up a photo of a person famous for summarily executing his political opponents.

[COLGATE4]

3. Shhh. Their minds are made up -

don't confuse them with the facts.

[Flaneur]

5. Sorry, Che means something different to the LA left than he does to you.

But who am I going to listen to? Hmmm...

[DissedByBush]

7. When it comes to Che

People rarely listen to the facts. They listen to the legend instead.

[Judi Lynn]

4. HONDURAS: No Calm for Lobo on Home Front

HONDURAS: No Calm for Lobo on Home Front
By Thelma Mejía

TEGUCIGALPA, Feb 26, 2010 (IPS) - Less than a month into his term, Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is facing street protests, complaints of human rights violations, and criticism of the truth commission he set up to investigate the Jun. 28 coup that overthrew President Manuel Zelaya

Thousands of Zelaya supporters took to the streets Thursday to demand reforms of the constitution and an end to attacks on backers of the ousted president, denounce corruption and rights abuses since the coup, and protest the high cost of living and soaring poverty levels.

Several teachers unions demanding payment of back wages also took part in the protests organised by the National Front of Resistance Against the Coup, now known as the Popular Resistance Front.

In addition, the demonstrators were protesting Wednesday's murder of social activist Claudia Brizuela, the daughter of Pedro Brizuela, a veteran leftist leader who was a founder of the now-defunct Communist Party of Honduras and is a member of the Popular Resistance Front in the northern city of San Pedro Sula.

The 36-year-old Brizuela was shot dead in her home by unidentified gunmen. Her father said her death "is clearly a message aimed at intimidating my family and the Popular Resistance Front.

"We are living in a police state that carries out surveillance on and persecutes the members of the resistance against the coup, and the death of my daughter can only be interpreted in this context," Brizuela told the local media.

According to the Committee of Families of the Detained-Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), rights violations have continued under Lobo, despite his promise to ensure full respect for human rights.

COFADEH activist Mery Agurcia told IPS that the activist's murder was similar to previous "selective killings used to eliminate supporters of the people's resistance movement.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50470

[Overseas]

6. Hope they can get their elected leader back. //nt

[Mudoria]

17. They have an elected leader.

Zelaya's term is up regardless and he cannot be re-elected.

[Peace Patriot]

8. K&R! Thanks for posting! nt

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[EFerrari]

10. That elderly lady is holding a sign that says, I don't forget or forgive murderers.

http://axisoflogic.com.nyud.net:8090/artman/uploads/1/7_8.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

11. Honduras's 'Bloodless Coup': What You're Not Seeing on TV By Avi Lewis

Honduras's 'Bloodless Coup': What You're Not Seeing on TV By Avi Lewis
October 26, 2009

I arrived in Honduras one week after ousted president Manuel Zelaya returned to begin his long spell of internal exile in the Brazilian embassy. With my crew from Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English TV, I went straight from the airport to a funeral. A week later, on our last night of filming, we attended another funeral. The first was for a 24-year-old woman, the second for a 50-year-old schoolteacher, and both active in the resistance to the coup. According to their families, both were killed for it.

The coup regime in Honduras is winning. Tepid pressure from the Obama administration is making it easy for the de facto government to run out the clock until the highly compromised elections in just five weeks. Whether or not international observers bless that vote, a new government will take power in Honduras and declare the stain of the coup removed, democracy restored. Absent the kind of meaningful sanctions Washington has so far been unwilling to impose, the status quo will triumph: the backers of the coup will go unpunished.

Unsurprisingly, the US mainstream media is not reporting the story of what is really going on in Honduras. The de facto government and its backers invested $400,000 (that we know of) in bipartisan lobbying, and succeeded in implanting a deeply distorted narrative of events--a nouveau cold war story starring Hugo Chávez as puppet master and Zelaya as marionette. Meanwhile, the voice of the social movement struggling to reform its country's constitution in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere has been all but ignored.

And the killing continues. Two more alleged political murders in the last two weeks while what scant reporting there was fixated on the negotiations between Micheletti and Zelaya, a surface story that serves the coup regime's strategy and is largely irrelevant to the deeper issues at play.

In Honduras, people are dying while the world looks the other way. Real international pressure--especially from the United States--is the only force that could stop that now. But time is running out.

More:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091109/lewis

[scottsoperson]

12. brazil has a socialist president

and a thriving economy.

[scottsoperson]

13. i think the honduran constitution

is not clear on how an impeachment is supposed to take place.

[scottsoperson]

14. violence is not

the solution.

[Judi Lynn]

15. The Sham Elections in Honduras By Laura Carlsen

The Sham Elections in Honduras 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.

On December 2 Angel died, joining scores of other victims of the Honduran coup regime. That same day, the Honduran Congress--emboldened by its public relations victory in the elections--voted against reinstating the elected president, Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted from office on June 28 after serving for three and a half years. The vote confirmed Latin America's first successful twenty-first-century coup, and crowned the failure of US diplomacy to restore constitutional order in the impoverished Central American nation.

Honduran National Party candidate Porfirio Lobo won handily November 29 over the runner-up from the badly divided Liberal Party. Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela immediately recognized Lobo as the elected president, hailing the elections as "a significant step in Honduras' return to the democratic and constitutional order after the 28 June coup." The country's coup-controlled press trumpeted the vote as proof that democracy was alive and well in Honduras. The international press endorsed the "generally peaceful" elections, with the New York Times calling them "clean and fair."

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.

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

[scottsoperson]

16. the usa did a 911

to chile.