Honduras asks US, Colombia, and Spain for help in solving journalist killings

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Newswatch

Honduras asks US, Colombia, and Spain for help in solving journalist killings
Last updated: Jan 7, 2011 Date published: January 7, 2011

President Porfirio Lobo’s government has asked for the help of the United States, Colombia, and Spain to help investigate the killings of ten Honduran journalists who died in 2010, El Heraldo reports.

According to EFE, Lobo asked the Security Ministry to “coordinate actions with international investigation agencies in friendly countries.” Last week, the Journalists’ Guild said that FBI agents were helping to investigate recent crimes against media workers.

Earlier this week, the vice-minister of security, Armando Calidonio, told Proceso Digital that none of the killings were related to the journalists’ work. However, the Committee to Protect Journalists says that three of these attacks were in “direct reprisal for their work.”

In 2010, Honduras became one of the most dangerous countries in the world to practice journalism, and international organizations have urged the government to do more to find and charge the perpetrators.

Read more: http://www.newswatch.in/newsblog/8694

[Peace Patriot]

1. Cosmetics--just like the phony "martial law" election by which the U.S. put Lobo in power.

I guarantee you that we will never find out who HIRED the death squads that are killing journalists as well as teachers, community activists, trade unionists, human rights workers, anti-coup organizers and others in Honduras.

In Colombia, once the death squad operatives who could nail their political handlers were identified and given shortened sentences in exchange for their testimony, the U.S. ambassador William Brownfield and Bushwhack tool, Alvaro Uribe, arranged for their "midnight" extradition to the U.S. on mere drug charges, where they were "buried" in the U.S. federal prison system--out of the reach of Colombian prosecutors and over their objections--by complete sealing of their cases (an unusual procedure), even to the erasure of case numbers, in U.S. federal count in Washington DC.

Similarly, once Colombian prosecutors had moved against Uribe's spy chief, on Uribe's massive illegal domestic spying (including spying on judges and prosecutors), she was whisked out of the country and given overnight asylum (very unusual) in the U.S. client state of Panama. She was their chief witness against Uribe. Six other spying witnesses against Uribe have also fled Colombia and asked Panama for asylum, and whether they get it or not will probably depend on the CIA's judgement of how damaging their testimony may be against Bush pet, Uribe. In addition, I think that some or all of these prosecution witnesses may have information on Bush Junta/ U.S. military crimes in Colombia. I suspect that Panetta--a Bush Sr crony--has been given the task of cleaning up Junior's bloody trail.

However, this item--Lobo's request of two scofflaw countries (the U.S. and Colombia), and Spain (which once owned Latin America) for help in "solving" these convenient removals of pesky journalists--is interesting as a "tell" for Obama/Clinton/Panetta policy in Latin America. The U.S. faces a wall of opposition to U.S. bullying and interference in Latin America and may be into cleaning up the images of U.S. client states to make them more effective operatives of U.S. interests. For instance, I think Panetta ousted the filthy dirty Uribe in Colombia--a leader with ties to Bush and some 70 of whose closest political associates are under investigation for spying, bribery, ties to the deaths squads, drug trafficking, and other crimes, and who was trying to distract people from his filthy dirty ways by threatening war on Venezuela. The CIA is clearly protecting Uribe but they wanted him out of the way. I think Panetta also directed the new CIA pick for president of Colombia--Uribe's former Defense Minister, Manuel Santos--in his immediate request for a peace pow-wow with Chavez. Santos and Chavez smoked the peace pipe and re-opened the Colombia/Venezuela border to trade.

These actions don't mean a change in U.S. policy on Latin America. Brazil's outgoing president, Lula da Silva, just specifically stated, in public, in his last speech, that there has been "no change." But they do represent a more realistic assessment of the chances for U.S. overthrow of the Chavez government in Venezuela and other U.S. targets (Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina). More ground work needs to be done. More multi-millions of U.S. tax dollars to rightwing groups through agencies like the USAID. More U.S. "war on drugs" militarization. More infiltration of death squads from Colombia to Venezuela, in the re-opened borders. More "dirty tricks." More psyops. More demonization. More CIA "talking points" feeding headlines in the corpo-fascist press. The Bushwhacks failed, spectacularly, to overthrow the Chavez government. These "softer" methods may work 'better,' and/or can prep Venezuela for a Bush II oil war when Diebold/ES&S works its special magic on the 2012 presidential election (as it did in putting the Pukes in charge of Congress in 2010).

Lobo appealing for this help, in the journalist murders, is meant to mollify somebody--probably the journalists of the corpo-fascist press, who don't mind others getting killed in the wars that they help promote but don't like being targeted themselves. They can get very uppity about it. Lobo NOTABLY leaves out any mention of the HUNDREDS of peaceful, innocent civilian leftist activists who have been murdered by the rightwing death squads that the coup regime likely imported from Colombia, nor the thousands who have been imprisoned, tortured, raped and harassed by the U.S.-installed Lobo government and its U.S.-funded military. Corpo-fascist journalists DON'T CARE about such activists--only about themselves. Sickening but true. Don't care, or put their concern aside in order to keep their jobs. NOT ONE FUCKING WORD has been published in the corpo-fascist press about all these OTHER political murders in Honduras.

Cosmetic. Won't result in prosecution of the masterminds, just the low level thugs, if that--and then they will be extradited to a U.S. federal prison and will never be heard from again.

But word may be leaking up a bit through the corpo-fascist hierarchy that things are not right in Honduras, that ordinary people (like us) are spreading the word, and therefore a bit of "grooming" is in order, to get a headline or two that creates the impression that Honduras' fascist regime gives a fuck about journalists.

[maryf]

2. thoughtful post.

Cosmetic makes sense. thanks.

[EFerrari]

3. Like when Arnold said he would investigate himself for sexual harrassment.

A farce.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Journalist gets death threats from Armed Forces lieutenant colonel

Journalist gets death threats from Armed Forces lieutenant colonel
Date published: January 8, 2011

Esdras Amado López, the editor of the Canal 36 news programme "Así se informa", reported that a member of the Honduran Armed Forces threatened to kill him on January 5, near the Honduran Institute for Social Security (Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social), just south of the capital Tegucigalpa, according to Comité por la Libre Expresión (C-Libre).

In a phone interview with Radio Globo, López said that after seeing the press badge that he was wearing, Lieutenant Colonel Méndez went behind his car and took photos of the journalist, while a bodyguard filmed him using a cell phone. López said he was on his way from the airport accompanied by a second vehicle containing his professional equipment. He said he was just ahead of a green "Force" vehicle, the type of vehicle that fired teargas bombs during the June 2009 coup d'état.

When he realised he was being photographed, López parked his car and questioned Méndez as to why he was taking the photos. The lieutenant colonel then got out of his car with a gun in his hand and start insulting López. The journalist said he called the station so that they could air exactly what the lieutenant colonel was saying to him. Méndez asked López why he was being offensive and then told him he was part of the Resistencia (Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular) and would pin López between his car and the one carrying his equipment.

López described Méndez as a man with little hair but a big moustache and that he was a member of the joint heads of the armed forces (Estado Mayor Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas). He said the lieutenant colonel told him that he was going to continue taking pictures and that he was not afraid of anything López or Canal 36 might do.

More:
http://www.newswatch.in/newsblog/8708

[conspirator]

5. Asking 3 fascist countries to save journalists. That's like asking a fox to guard your hens n/t

[Judi Lynn]

6. In Honduras, the Holiday Season Brings Repression

Published on Tuesday, January 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
In Honduras, the Holiday Season Brings Repression
by Dana Frank

As we settle into our warm winter naps in the United States, a new wave of military repression is sweeping through Honduras, directed at the campesino movement. In December troops moved in and once again attacked the poorest of Honduras' rural poor, who have been standing up for their rights with astonishing bravery since the June 28, 2009 military coup. Up here in the North we can turn cozily aware from their plight. But as we sleep, our tax dollars are at work funding the Honduran army, police, and ongoing illegitimate government.

For decades, the campesinos (peasants) of Honduras have been struggling for basic land rights, confronting a handful of elite oligarchs who have been gradually seizing their lands through extralegal means. And for decades, the campesinos have refused to starve, using collective action to demand meaningful land reform. The center of campesino struggle remains the Aguan Valley, in the Northeast corner of the country, where the country's richest and most powerful man (and the most important figure behind the coup), Miguel Facussé, has taken over much of the land in the lower Aguan Valley and planted it with African palms. He has his own private army, works closely with narcotraffickers in the region, and in many ways is more powerful locally than the Honduran national government.

Beginning last December, 2009, almost 10,000 campesinos, organized in the Movimiento Unificado de Campesinos de Aguan (the Unified Movement of Campesinos of Aguan, MUCA) and other groups have been staging "recuperations" of lands illegally seized by Facussé. The resulting repression has been brutal: in the past year as many as 20 campesinos have assassinated by police, the army, paramilitaries, and Facussé's private troops. In April, 2010, President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo Sosa sent in around 3,000 troops into the Aguan Valley to repress the campesino movement. Only after an international outcry did he pull out some of the troops and promise a small bit of land to the protesters.

Now a new wave of repression is terrorizing the region. On November 15, Facusse's hired assassins shot and killed five campesino activists in the Aguan Valley community of El Tumbador. The government has made no attempt to investigate the crimes. Completely thwarted on the legal front, on December 7, 2,500 organized campesinos from three different associations began a sit-in blockading the main highway running through the Aguan Valley, to demand an end to the ongoing militarization of the zone and justice for those murdered.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/11-3

[Mudoria]

7. Seems to be a problem elsewhere as well

http://cpj.org/killed/americas/venezuela/

can't say I've seen any posts lamenting these folks.