cyu
14th October 2012, 20:41
[Not sure if this has been posted yet]
Coming Soon. To a Neighborhood Near You.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3881-left-international-solidarity-in-post-coup-honduras
While Zelaya was under siege in the embassy, the de facto regime held elections that were widely understood in Honduras to be a farce - an illegitimate and fraudulent process designed to regain international recognition. The elections were held in a climate of state terror and violent silencing of critical media and public protest that was manifest in hundreds of targeted assassinations, disappearances, detentions and all manner of violent assaults.
Since the military regime was relying on the election process to legitimate its rule over the country, it released fraudulent numbers inflating the total number of ballots cast, though it was patently obvious to anyone in Honduras that the overwhelming majority of Hondurans had made it clear that they considered themselves to be living under a dictatorship. Nevertheless, a handful of foreign governments – with Canada taking the lead – used the opportunity to heap legitimacy on the coup government.
The militarization of Honduras under the U.S. occupation in the 1980s, and the repression and death-squad activity that accompanied it, significantly weakened much of the radical left and the impressive campesino organizing that had characterized the period from the 1950s-1970s. As a result, there was limited capacity to muster up opposition to the imposition of neoliberalism in the 1990s,
The state and its armed forces act with total impunity on behalf of private capital, which encompasses both the expansive narcotics cartels and the transnational corporations that, together, make up the most powerful classes in Honduran society. We have no doubt that police are carrying out killings, that they are protecting the politicians but not the people.
mostly female workers in Canadian-owned maquiladoras work eleven-hour shifts, avoid getting up to go to the bathroom for fear of not meeting their quotas, and are injected with painkillers by company doctors in order to prolong their ability to work; as their bodies collapse, they are dropped into lower wage categories, and when the painkillers are no longer enough, they are often fired for their lack of productivity.
more U.S. and Canadian troops are amassing in this country under the auspices of ‘training exercises’ and ‘counter narcotics’ projects.
since the coup, twenty-three journalists killed, with no investigation. Some sixty campesinos in the Aguán, more than sixty people from the LGBT community, some forty-seven lawyers, never any investigation. “Three, four, five, six or more youths killed every single day.” And these are the lowest estimates, counting only the assassinations that can be incontrovertibly and directly tied to political repression. since the coup, there have been more than three hundred women killed every year, and far from being investigated by the police, the attacks are often carried out by them: Many times it is in police stations where women are raped and attacked.
Coming Soon. To a Neighborhood Near You.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/honduras-archives-46/3881-left-international-solidarity-in-post-coup-honduras
While Zelaya was under siege in the embassy, the de facto regime held elections that were widely understood in Honduras to be a farce - an illegitimate and fraudulent process designed to regain international recognition. The elections were held in a climate of state terror and violent silencing of critical media and public protest that was manifest in hundreds of targeted assassinations, disappearances, detentions and all manner of violent assaults.
Since the military regime was relying on the election process to legitimate its rule over the country, it released fraudulent numbers inflating the total number of ballots cast, though it was patently obvious to anyone in Honduras that the overwhelming majority of Hondurans had made it clear that they considered themselves to be living under a dictatorship. Nevertheless, a handful of foreign governments – with Canada taking the lead – used the opportunity to heap legitimacy on the coup government.
The militarization of Honduras under the U.S. occupation in the 1980s, and the repression and death-squad activity that accompanied it, significantly weakened much of the radical left and the impressive campesino organizing that had characterized the period from the 1950s-1970s. As a result, there was limited capacity to muster up opposition to the imposition of neoliberalism in the 1990s,
The state and its armed forces act with total impunity on behalf of private capital, which encompasses both the expansive narcotics cartels and the transnational corporations that, together, make up the most powerful classes in Honduran society. We have no doubt that police are carrying out killings, that they are protecting the politicians but not the people.
mostly female workers in Canadian-owned maquiladoras work eleven-hour shifts, avoid getting up to go to the bathroom for fear of not meeting their quotas, and are injected with painkillers by company doctors in order to prolong their ability to work; as their bodies collapse, they are dropped into lower wage categories, and when the painkillers are no longer enough, they are often fired for their lack of productivity.
more U.S. and Canadian troops are amassing in this country under the auspices of ‘training exercises’ and ‘counter narcotics’ projects.
since the coup, twenty-three journalists killed, with no investigation. Some sixty campesinos in the Aguán, more than sixty people from the LGBT community, some forty-seven lawyers, never any investigation. “Three, four, five, six or more youths killed every single day.” And these are the lowest estimates, counting only the assassinations that can be incontrovertibly and directly tied to political repression. since the coup, there have been more than three hundred women killed every year, and far from being investigated by the police, the attacks are often carried out by them: Many times it is in police stations where women are raped and attacked.