Carter Center Calls On Honduras to ‘Rectify’ Zelaya’s Ouster

[struggle4progress]

Source: Faster Times

October 24, 2009 Blake Schmidt

The Atlanta-based Carter Center called on Honduras to “rectify offenses committed against due process” when president Manuel Zelaya was detained and exiled in June, according to a statement today following a visit to the Central American country.

The center, a nonprofit democracy watchdog founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, expressed concern that the country’s political crisis could undermine November 29 elections ...

“The irregular situation Honduras is living could impair electoral rights of competing candidates and voting citizens,” the center said ...

Read more: http://thefastertimes.com/centralamerica/2009/10/24/carter-center-calls-on-honduras-to-%E2%80%98rectify%E2%80%99-zelaya%E2%80%99s-ouster/

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Delegation of Carter Center arrives in Honduras
www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-24 12:24:28

TEGUCIGALPA, Oct. 23 -- The delegation of the Carter Center Friday arrived in the Honduran capital to promote a prompt settlement of the political crisis in the country.

The Carter Center, led by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, said on Friday in a statement that the delegation was accompanied by the "Friends of the Inter-American Democratic Charter," which is composed of former presidents, prime ministers, and Cabinet ministers from the Western Hemisphere who seek to promote democracy.

"The mission came to Honduras to directly know about the situation in the country and to promote and support a prompt negotiated exit from the political crisis," it said.

The delegation is formed by former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, former Guatemalan Foreign Minister Jorge Santistevan, Carter Center's Director for the Americas Jennifer McCoy and Assistant Director for the Americas Marcelo Varela ...

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/24/content_12313937.htm

[mdmc]

1. thanks for the links

I am always interested in what The Carter Center is up to..

[chisymbolrho]

6. Links

Right. Good links to good info.

[mdmc]

7. welcome to du

peace out

[clear eye]

2. Glad to see Zelaya hasn't been left to swing in the wind completely.

Remember he was booted out plain and simply for trying to make his country's economy work for the majority of citizens. If that is allowed, democratically elected national leaders everywhere will in future have the choice between governing only for the benefit of the elite, or try to do the right thing and be deposed.

[Peace Patriot]

3. A Junta-run election will put "lipstick" on this pig of a coup.

There are only four weeks until the election, and the country has been under martial law for four months. Many leftist activists have been arrested, beaten, tortured, raped, and some have been murdered. The police and the military are everywhere, and there is no freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of transit or habeas corpus protection.

An election under these circumstances may suit Bushwhacks just fine--it's their kind of "election"--and none other than James Baker, the "fixer" of Florida 2000, is all for it (WaPo op-ed last week). But anyone who believes in democracy can only contemplate this brutal farce with disgust. And it will in no way solve the crisis in Honduras, where a huge leftist democracy movement is demanding fundamental reform of Honduras' political/government system.

The issue of a return to the rule of law, and reinstatement of the rightful, elected president, Mel Zelaya, is the current focus of the crisis, but it is not what the problem in Honduras is all about. The problem is rule by the rich elite and the military, in the interests of U.S. global corporate predators and war profiteers. Honduras is a U.S. client state, like Colombia--and is more and more resembling Colombia, a country with one of the worst human rights records in the world. Brutal rule by the rich is enforced in both places by billions of U.S. tax dollars in military aid, and the U.S. military is present in both countries, in Honduras at the Soto Cano U.S. military base (where the Junta plane carrying the kidnapped president stopped for re-fueling, while the U.S. military stood down), and in Colombia at numerous military bases (seven new ones recently established).

Mel Zelaya has been robbed of four months--going on five months--of the only term allowed him in the Honduran Constitution--a Constitution written by Reagan's henchmen in the 1980s, which limits the president to ONE (4 year) term, in order to prevent a president from achieving sufficient power to challenge the oligarchy and the military on behalf of the poor majority. That has not, and will not likely, be rectified. Zelaya was doing things like raising the minimum wage. All that--good government policy to help the poor--has been brought to a violent halt, and undone. The candidates of the two main parties are front men for the coup. The left is dealing with murders and wounds (one congressional candidate has broken bones, inflicted by the police), a complete lack of justice, four months with no media, no money, of course (while John McCain has larded $43 million U.S. taxpayer dollars on rightwing groups in Honduras, through the International Republican Institute of the USAID), and cannot conceivably mount effective political campaigns in the next four weeks, even if all illegal and unconstitutional restrictions on them were lifted tomorrow.

The international community has said that it will not recognize this election, and it should not. The election needs to be postponed for four months, and Zelaya restored to office to finish the full term that he is entitled to. This is what the Honduran people want, as opinion polls have already established (Zelaya has a 67% approval rating!) Once that is done, independent outside organizations, such as the OAS and the Carter Center, need to be brought in to poll the Honduran people on the following:

1. Whether or not to restart the entire election process, at the nomination stage, and what timeframe would be fair to all parties?

2. Whether or not to form a Constituent Assembly (constitutional convention) to discuss and amend the Honduran Constitution, with all segments of society participating. (--the original plebiscite that Zelaya proposed as an advisory vote; this time it should be binding).

This is what is needed to restore peace and tranquility, and the rule of law, to Honduras. It cannot be quick. Why should it be? The Junta has thrown the rulebook out, and committed many atrocities. This cannot be mended by a Junta-run election, even if Zelaya is restored to office. The rich elite has ripped Honduran society to pieces. It needs REAL mending. And a country-wide discussion of the fundamental law of the land would be an excellent way to put "Humpty-Dumpty" back together again in a new and better way.

[bkohatlanta]

4. This all grew out of the protection the Republicans Offered to Rios Montt.

Rios Montt a Protestant General in Guatemala overthrew the Guatemalan government in the late 70's. He proceeded to commit atrocities throughout the country. He exterminated 250,000 Catholic Mayan Indians, men, women, children and babies, so he could take their land and give it to the Fundamentalist soldiers who made up his private army and death squads. Now, Guatemalans want to try him as a War Criminal. But they can't because they said the Republican Party and American Televangelists are protecting him. That becomes very easy to believe considering the pictures of Rios Montt with Ronald Reagan, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.

[struggle4progress]

5. Rios Montt was not in power in the late 70s but during the Reagan era, in the early 80s

[bkohatlanta]

8. Well, in a sense that is correct, but

The actual Coup of Rios Montt occurred in March of 1982.
There is now considerable evidence that Montt was chosen by Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson to start an Evangelical Religious War In Latin America from which they expected to profit. In 1978 Montt publicly became a born again Christian in a ceremony in Reagan's California.
Pictures of Montt, Reagan, Robertson and Falwell date from that time.
Many people believe that is also when Montt was chosen to overthrow the Leftist Government of Guatemala by the CIA which eventually paid for his Coup and the Extermination of Mayans. He used death squads of Fundamentalists to torture and murder 250,000 people and steal their land.

Maybe not in power, but laying the plans for mass murder, death squads, religious persecution, torture, rape and murder takes a great deal of planning, which started in California in the late 1970's.

Try him in Nuremberg, then find out who has been protecting him. Then try them in Nuremberg.

[Odin2005]

9. We need more pressure on these fascists.