Honduran Dictatorship Is A Threat to Democracy In
the Hemisphere
By Mark Weisbrot
This
op-ed was distributed by McClatchy Tribune Information Services on November 18,
2009, and published in the Sacramento Bee (CA) and other newspapers. If
anyone wants to reprint it, please let CEPR know, by replying to this message.
A small
group of rich people who own most of Honduras and its politicians enlist the
military to kidnap the elected president at gunpoint and take him into exile.
They then arrest thousands of people opposed to the coup, shut down and
intimidate independent media, shoot and kill some demonstrators, torture and
beat many others. This goes on for more than four months, including more than
two of the three months legally designated for electoral campaigning. Then the
dictatorship holds an "election."
Should other countries recognize the results of such an election, to be held on
November 29th? Latin America says absolutely not; the United States is saying,
well, "yes we can"- if we can get away with it.
"There has been a sharp rise in police beatings, mass arrests of
demonstrators and intimidation of human rights defenders," since President
Zelaya slipped back into Honduras and took refuge in the Brazilian embassy, wrote Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch, the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, and human rights
groups worldwide have also condemned the violence and repression perpetrated by
the Honduran dictatorship.
On November 5, the 25 nations of the Rio Group, which includes virtually all of
Latin America, declared that they would not recognize the results of the
November 29th elections in Honduras if the elected President Manuel Zelaya were
not first restored.
Why is it that Latin American governments can recognize this threat to
democracy but Washington cannot? One reason is that many of the governments are
run by people who have lived under dictatorships. President Lula da Silva of
Brazil was imprisoned by the Brazilian dictatorship in the 1980s. President
Michele Bachelet of Chile was tortured in prison under the brutal Pinochet
dictatorship that was installed with the help of the Nixon administration. The
presidents of Bolivia, Argentina, Guatemala, and others have all lived through
the repression of right-wing dictatorships.
Nor is this threat merely a thing of the past. Just two weeks ago the President
of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, had to fire most of the military leadership because
of credible evidence that they were conspiring with the political opposition.
This is one of the consequences of not reversing the Honduran military coup of
June 28th.
Here in the United States we have been subjected to a relentless campaign of
lies and distortions intended to justify the coup, which have been taken up by
Republican supporters of the dictatorship, as well as by hired guns like Lanny
Davis, a close associate of Bill and Hillary Clinton. Perhaps the biggest lie,
repeated thousands of times in the news reporting and op-eds of the major
media, was that Zelaya was overthrown because he was trying to extend his term
of office. In fact, the non-binding referendum that Zelaya proposed had nothing
to do with term limits. And even if this poll of the electorate had led
eventually to a new constitution, any legal changes would have been far too
late for Zelaya to stay in office beyond January 29.
Another surreal part of the whole political discussion has been the attempt to
portray Zelaya, who was merely delivering on his campaign promises to the
Honduran electorate, as a pawn of some foreign power - conveniently chosen to
be the much-demonized Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. The anti-communist hysteria of
1950s McCarthyism is still the model for these uncreative political hacks.
What a disgrace it will be to our country if the Obama team follows through on
its current strategy and recognizes these "elections!" It's
hard to imagine a stronger statement than that human rights and democracy in
this hemisphere count for zero in the political calculations of this Administration.
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