Anti-coup resistance is continuing in Honduras, despite ongoing repression. There are strong indications the regime is preparing for greater repression in the lead-up to the November 29 elections, which it is seeking to use to legitimise its rule.
Elected President Manuel Zelaya was overthrown in a military coup on June 28. Since then, mass resistance from the poor majority, led by the National Resistance Front against the Coup (FNRG), has continued unabated. Zelaya and the FNRG are calling for a boycott of the poll and urging other governments and international institutions not to recognise the outcome.
Honduras Resists blog said: "Channel 36, the only television channel that has continued broadcasting the truth about the coup in Honduras, has been taken off the air again in the run-up to the elections."
On November 26, it said: "The campaign of terror carried out by the dictatorship against the popular sectors is coming … Today is the burial of the body of the teacher Luis Gradis Espinal, a teacher from the resistance of the south of the country.
"His body was found yesterday, tied and executed, after having been reported disappeared by his family. Witnesses are sure that he was detained by the police and military."
Honduras Resists said: "In the city El Progreso, the police are carrying out intense operations in the homes of the leaders of the Resistance … In the city Danli, several young people were kidnapped by the army causing terror among the population who fears for their lives …
"The police this week imported a huge arsenal of arms including 10,000 tear gas grenades, 5000 rubber bullets and a new anti-riot tank worth [US]$12 million."
Popular resistance is continuing. Honduras Resists reported: "University students have taken over the National Autonomous University and reached an agreement with the rector for there to be no more classes. The University was to be a center for voting and is now under control of the Resistance."
Honduras Resists concluded: "The oligarchy needs to eliminate the political opposition to consolidate its new project of domination, that elimination can only occur through terror, killing and genocide.
"Nonetheless, they once again commit the same error that they committed on the eve of the 28th of June.
"They underestimate the creative capacity, the transformational capacity of the struggle, the combativeness of a people that has identified its enemy and understands, this time even more clearly, that a path towards national liberation, towards the re-founding of Honduras, has begun."
The article below is abridged from a November 21 statement on the growing repression released by the Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH).
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The Committee of Family Members of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH) expresses its worry to the national and international community about the deterioration of the human rights situation in Honduras that deepens day by day and takes on new forms.
There is a new wave of death threats, political persecution, illegal detention, torture, militarisation of areas of the main cities and incursion of cars without licence plates with tinted windows driven by heavily armed people with their faces covered by masks into neighbourhoods identified with the FNRG.
The environment of repression and uncertainty, which has been re-enforced with the order given on November 16 by the sub-secretary of service networks of the health ministry that orders the preparation of a "contingency plan" to cover health services 24 hours a day from November 19 to December 4.
The plan will include a halt on anticipated appointments without putting the health of patients at risk, reprogramming of selective surgeries scheduled for those dates and dealing with the shortage of medicines and medical supplies.
These measures appear to be related to the illegitimate electoral process on November 29, which is accompanied by militarisation and para-militarisation. The military reserves will be used to support the armed forces in watching over the electoral sites, which already included 16,000 soldiers and 14,000 police agents.
In the western departments of the country, the army reservists are distributing fliers to intimidate the population in resistance. They call members of the resistance irrational criminals, and call marches and sit-ins inhuman and not appropriate for civilised people.
The security forces are equipping themselves with new repressive tools, a completely armoured vehicle has been bought to disperse protests, the riot police unit is equipped with video cameras and a high capacity water cannon, in addition to a mechanism to leave whoever gets hit by the water marked for 48 hours.
The armed forces have initiated selective registration of people in highways around the country. We are seeing the incursion of airships in the departments of the Atlantic zone of Honduras.
COFADEH expresses to the international community its worry for the security of the social activists who are struggling for the re-establishment of the democratic order.
COFADEH asks the international community to stay alert about human rights and demands that the Honduran state guarantee the life and integrity of the Honduran population and foreign residents of the country.
We don't forget the acts or the actors. Neither forget nor forgive.