Solidarity Action with the People of Honduras

SOA Watch South Florida is taking to the streets! Gather on Saturday, July 25 at the corner of N.W. 87th Ave & N.W. 36th St. in Doral/ Miami for a march to the gate of the U.S. Southern Command. This action is sponsored by SOA Watch: South Florida, Miami for Peace and CODEPINK: Miami. For more info call Ray Del Papa at 754-423-0051 or Linda, at 305-801-0245.

Chavez’s comments that Zelaya had told him he would enter Honduras “in the coming hours” threatened to jeopardize planned talks on Saturday in Costa Rica between the rival sides that both claim legitimacy since the June 28 coup that toppled Zelaya.

Zelaya is currently in Nicaragua, which borders Honduras, and there was no immediate word from him on Friday on his plans. “He’s here in Managua, in the Las Mercedes hotel, it’s no secret,” Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, like Chavez a leftist ally of Zelaya, told reporters late on Thursday.

A unilateral attempt by the deposed president to return home would fly in the face of threats to arrest him by the interim government that replaced Zelaya in the impoverished Central American country.

Chavez’s comments appeared to be a typically incendiary expression of his support for his ally Zelaya.

The United States, which is strongly backing mediation efforts by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, urged states in the region to avoid actions that could push the situation into violence. The Honduras power dispute is already the worst political crisis in Central America since the Cold War.

Roberto Micheletti, who was installed as president by Honduras’ Congress after the coup, has defied international calls for Zelaya to be reinstated and ruled out his return to office. He says Zelaya was removed because he violated the constitution by seeking to lift presidential term limits.

A previous attempt by Zelaya to fly home on July 5 in a Venezuelan plane provided by Chavez was thwarted by Honduran troops who prevented the plane from landing in Tegucigalpa. At least one person was killed in clashes between troops and Zelaya supporters at the airport.

On Friday, supporters of the ousted president, clamoring for his reinstatement, blocked major highways in Honduras, including the northern access into the capital Tegucigalpa.

At the southern entrance to the city, pro-Zelaya protesters lifted their roadblock after police brandishing tear gas canisters gave them an ultimatum.

“We’re going to bring “Mel” (Zelaya) back,” said teacher Noemi Farias as she took part in the pro-Zelaya protests.

“Zelaya said that in the coming hours he’ll enter Honduras. We’re behind him, we have to support him,” Chavez told reporters outside the presidential palace in Bolivia.

Chavez, who had attended a meeting in Bolivia of leftist Latin American allies of Zelaya, gave no more details about how Zelaya intended to return home.

Honduras is a beautiful place with peaceful people. If you care to listen, you will see that they want the world to recognize their right to follow their laws and govern themselves. Mr. Obamo needs to pay attention to what he says and not force who he wants leading Honduras on the Hondurans.

Free Honduras. They want Peace, not Zelaya.

Wake up world!

bbc

Mr Zelaya was forced out of Honduras at gunpoint on 28 June.

The political crisis erupted after he attempted to hold a non-binding public consultation to ask people whether they supported moves to change the constitution.

Opponents said that could have led to the removal of the current one-term limit on serving as president and so paved the way for Mr Zelaya’s possible re-election.

“COULD” does not justfy a coup no matter what u say, unless your saying if some view that a president is not doing what they feel in there interest they can depose them quickly. In which its not a democracy cause the people are dont have the ability to vote and have it count.

If what some state is true than deporting your ex or deposed president seem questionable instead of bring crimal charges against him.

If what some state that this was not a coup, than freedom of speech would not be oppessed, or opposing media stations.

Honduras has a coup government no matter what some try and spin it. and we will see make different way on how to spin it as democratic. But what they dont see is they loss legitimacy when they deported they prez, cracked down on protestors, and media and used the military to silient opponents along with not having a valid reason on they actions. It seems to change day by day.

TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) – Diplomatic efforts to solve Honduras’ crisis after last month’s coup stumbled on Friday, as leftist allies of the ousted president vowed he would return and the interim government showed no sign of budging.

Deposed President Manuel Zelaya stepped up a campaign on Friday to rally international support for his reinstatement, and one of his most vocal backers, Venezuela’s leftist President Hugo Chavez, said Zelaya would return home “by any means”.

Zelaya, and the man put in his place by the June 28 coup, Roberto Micheletti, failed to reach any accord or even meet face-to-face in mediation talks in Costa Rica on Thursday.

They left behind low-level delegations to try to advance a dialogue, but there appeared to be little progress on Friday and hopes seemed to be fading for a quick solution to the crisis in Honduras, one of the poorest states in the Americas.

Venezuela’s firebrand leader Chavez pronounced the Costa Rica talks “dead before they started”. He called for a total trade embargo on Honduras.

Speaking in Caracas, Chavez also criticized U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration for engineering the talks mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, saying there could be no negotiations with “a usurper” in Honduras.

Chavez’ comments seemed likely to rekindle fears that he and other leftist allies of Zelaya, like Cuba and Nicaragua, might seek to help the ousted president regain office by force or by popular insurrection.

Zelaya, who made an abortive Chavez-backed attempt to fly home last Sunday and has been advised by Washington to negotiate rather than try to force the issue again, said he was working on “peaceful, non-violent methods” to return to office.

The ousted president declined to reveal what other actions he planned, saying “I’m not going to tell my strategies to the press any more.” But unlike Chavez, Zelaya was full of praise for the Obama administration.

He was speaking in the Dominican Republic and was due travel to Guatemala on Saturday before returning to Washington.

This was forwarded to me from a friend. I think your readers might benefit from it…

Under the Honduran Constitution, what really happened here?
By Octavio Sanchez*
If you are not familiar with the country’s history and the Honduran constitution it is almost impossible that you would understand what happened here this past weekend. In 1982 my country adopted a new Constitution to allow our ordered return to democracy. After 19 previous constitution -two Spanish ones, three as part of the Republic of Central America and 14 as an independent nation- this one, at 28, has been the longest lasting one. It has lasted for so long because it responds and adapts to our changing reality, as seen in the fact that out of its original 379 articles, 7 of them have been completely or partially repealed, 18 have been interpreted and 121 have been reformed.
It also includes 7 articles that cannot be repealed or amended because they address issues that are critical for us. Those unchangeable articles deal with the form of government, the extent of our borders, the number of years of the presidential term; two prohibitions -one to reelect presidents and another one to change the article that states who can’t run for president- and one article that penalizes the abrogation of the Constitution.
In these 28 years Honduras has found legal ways to deal with its own problems. Each and every successful country around the world lived similar trial and error processes until they were able to find legal vehicles that adapt to their reality. France had 13 Constitutions between 1789 and the adoption of the current one in 1958 which has passed 22 constitutional revisions. The USA had one before this one which has been amended 27 times since 1789 and the British –pragmatic as they are- in 900 years have change it so many times that they have never taken the time to compile their Constitution into a single body of law.
Having explained that, under our Constitution, what happened in Honduras this last Sunday? Soldiers arrested and took out of the country a Honduran citizen that, the day before, through his actions had stripped himself of the presidency of Honduras.
These are the hard facts. Last Friday Mister Zelaya, with his cabinet, issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the “Public Opinion Poll to convene a National Constitutional Assembly” (Presidential Decree PCM-020). The decree was published on Saturday on the official newspaper. With this event, Mister Zelaya triggered a constitutional protection that automatically removed him from office.
The key legal elements for that constitutional protection to be triggered are the following ones. Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. In Honduras, you have 365 articles that can be changed by Congress. When Zelaya published that decree to regulate an “opinion poll” about the possibility of convening a national assembly he acted against the unchangeable articles of the constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.
How is that kind of intent sanctioned in our Constitution? With the immediate removal of those involved in the action as stated in article 239 of the Constitution which reads: “No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.” Notice that the rule speaks about intent and that it also says immediately –as in instant, as in no trial required, as in no impeachment needed.
This immediate sanction might sound draconian, but every country knows its own enemies and it is the black letter of our supreme law. Requiring no previous trial might be crazy, but in Latin America a President is no ordinary citizen, it is the most powerful figure of the land and historically the figure has been above the law. To prevent that officer from using its power to stay in office Honduras has constitutional rules such as the mentioned one.
I am extremely proud of my compatriots. Finally, we have decided to stand up and become a country of laws, not men. From now on, here, no one will be above the law.

George W. Bush nominated Estrada to a position on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on May 9 2001; the court is very influential, and is widely seen as a stepping stone to the Supreme Court. He received a unanimous “well-qualified” rating from the American Bar Association. Democratic Senators opposed the nomination, noting Estrada’s lack of any prior judicial experience at the local, state, or federal level. Democratic Senators also objected to the refusal by the Office of the Solicitor General to release samples of Estrada’s writings while employed there. Republicans, however, stated that the Democratic concerns were actually just an attempt to deny Estrada a circuit court seat because of his conservatism.
A bipartisan group of former Solicitors General wrote a letter objecting to the Democrats’ demand for memos that Estrada had written while he was with the office. While not addressing past instances where such memos had previously been released, the letter argued release of prior memos by government employees to the public would endanger the Solicitor General Office’s ability to provide confidential legal advice to the Executive Branch. Some observers claimed that the Democrats also wished to avoid giving Bush points with Hispanic voters. The Democrats hotly contested this; however, internal memos to Senate Minority Whip Richard Joseph “Dick” Durbin mention liberal interest groups’ desire to keep Estrada off the court because his Latino heritage made him “especially dangerous” as a potential future Supreme Court nominee. Karl Rove has published a copy of this memo on his website.
On March 6, 2003, there was the first of several failed cloture votes on Estrada. Fifty-five senators voted to end debate on his nomination and allow a final confirmation vote, and forty-four senators voted not to end debate. After twenty-eight months in political limbo and a protracted six month long battle using the filibuster, Estrada withdrew his name from further consideration on September 4, 2003.

Do you remember him?

Something clearly has gone awry with the rule of law in Honduras — but it is not necessarily what you think. Begin with Zelaya’s arrest. The Supreme Court of Honduras, as it turns out, had ordered the military to arrest Zelaya two days earlier. A second order (issued on the same day) authorized the military to enter Zelaya’s home to execute the arrest. These orders were issued at the urgent request of the country’s attorney general. All the relevant legal documents can be accessed (in Spanish) on the Supreme Court’s website. They make for interesting reading.
What you’ll learn is that the Honduran Constitution may be amended in any way except three. No amendment can ever change (1) the country’s borders, (2) the rules that limit a president to a single four-year term and (3) the requirement that presidential administrations must “succeed one another” in a “republican form of government.”

In addition, Article 239 specifically states that any president who so much as proposes the permissibility of reelection “shall cease forthwith” in his duties, and Article 4 provides that any “infraction” of the succession rules constitutes treason. The rules are so tight because these are terribly serious issues for Honduras, which lived under decades of military rule.

As detailed in the attorney general’s complaint, Zelaya is the type of leader who could cause a country to wish for a Richard Nixon. Earlier this year, with only a few months left in his term, he ordered a referendum on whether a new constitutional convention should convene to write a wholly new constitution. Because the only conceivable motive for such a convention would be to amend the un-amendable parts of the existing constitution, it was easy to conclude — as virtually everyone in Honduras did — that this was nothing but a backdoor effort to change the rules governing presidential succession. Not unlike what Zelaya’s close ally, Hugo Chavez, had done in Venezuela.
It is also worth noting that only referendums approved by a two-thirds vote of the Honduran Congress may be put to the voters. Far from approving Zelaya’s proposal, Congress voted that it was illegal.

The attorney general filed suit and secured a court order halting the referendum. Zelaya then announced that the voting would go forward just the same, but it would be called an “opinion survey.” The courts again ruled this illegal. Undeterred, Zelaya directed the head of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vasquez, to proceed with the “survey” — and “fired” him when he declined. The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and ordered Vasquez reinstated.

Zelaya had the ballots printed in Venezuela, but these were impounded by customs when they were brought back to Honduras. On June 25 — three days before he was ousted — Zelaya personally gathered a group of “supporters” and led it to seize the ballots, restating his intent to conduct the “survey” on June 28. That was the breaking point for the attorney general, who immediately sought a warrant from the Supreme Court for Zelaya’s arrest on charges of treason, abuse of authority and other crimes. In response, the court ordered Zelaya’s arrest by the country’s army, which under Article 272 must enforce compliance with the Constitution, particularly with respect to presidential succession. The military executed the court’s order on the morning of the proposed survey.

It would seem from this that Zelaya’s arrest by the military was legal, and rather well justified to boot. But, unfortunately, the tale did not end there. Rather than taking Zelaya to jail and then to court to face charges, the military shipped him off to Costa Rica. No one has yet explained persuasively why summarily sending Zelaya into exile in this manner was legal, and it most likely wasn’t.

This illegality may entitle Zelaya to return to Honduras. But does it require that he be returned to power?

No. As noted, Article 239 states clearly that one who behaves as Zelaya did in attempting to change presidential succession ceases immediately to be president. If there were any doubt on that score, the Congress removed it by convening immediately after Zelaya’s arrest, condemning his illegal conduct and overwhelmingly voting (122 to 6) to remove him from office. The Congress is led by Zelaya’s own Liberal Party (although it is true that Zelaya and his party have grown apart as he has moved left). Because Zelaya’s vice president had earlier quit to run in the November elections, the next person in the line of succession was Micheletti, the Liberal leader of Congress. He was named to complete the remaining months of Zelaya’s term.

It cannot be right to call this a “coup.” Micheletti was lawfully made president by the country’s elected Congress. The president is a civilian. The Honduran Congress and courts continue to function as before. The armed forces are under civilian control. The elections scheduled for November are still scheduled for November. Indeed, after reviewing the Constitution and consulting with the Supreme Court, the Congress and the electoral tribunal, respected Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga recently stated that the only possible conclusion is that Zelaya had lawfully been ousted under Article 239 before he was arrested, and that democracy in Honduras continues fully to operate in accordance with law. All Honduran bishops joined Rodriguez in this pronouncement.

True, Zelaya should not have been arbitrarily exiled from his homeland. That, however, does not mean he must be reinstalled as president of Honduras. It merely makes him an indicted private citizen with a meritorious immigration beef against his country.

Miguel A. Estrada is a partner at the Washington office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher. A native of Honduras, he was a member of the official U.S. delegation to President Zelaya’s 2006 inauguration.

I do see thousands of his supporters in the streets – especially on the BBC and non-US news sites. That doesn’t translate into popular indifference to me.

Other Hondurans may fear to comment as the right-wing death squads are still within recent memory.

Tomorrow, on Friday, July 10, Representatives Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and James McGovern (D-MA) will introduce a resolution in the House of Representatives that is calling for the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya as president of Honduras.

Call your Representative and ask her or him to sign on as an original co-sponsor of the resolution! The Capitol Switchboard number is: 1-800-473-6711. All original co-sponsors need to be added before 5pm today. Here is some suggested language for your call:

“Please tell Representative _________________ that I urge him to be an original co-sponsor of the Delahunt/McGovern resolution to oppose the military coup by graduates of the School of the Americas in Honduras. The resolution calls for the reinstatement of democracy in that country. Please contact Cliff Stammerman or Ben Dailey in Delahunt’s office before close of business today as that will be the closing of original cosponsors.”

As for the statements from SOA Watch: one can never assume that what SOA Watch claims is true, either about SOA, or WHINSEC (which replaced SOA) or about its students. Many of the individuals on SOA Watch’s lists of notorious graduates NEVER attended SOA, so one cannot automatically assume, in this instance, that this “institutional” or “military supported coup” was led by SOA “graduates.” Among SOA Watch’s other propaganda: students who are innocent of the abuses which SOA Watch claims they perpetrated (e.g., the student who reported to authorities a murder which SOA Watch claims he participated in, or the student who, with fellow SOA graduates, brokered a peace agreement among Central American nations, whom SOA Watch claims showed no respect for the Geneva Conventions).

One British human rights researcher has said that SOA Watch is very “convenient” for the Pentagon, as focuses attention on SOA (now WHINSEC) (which is considered to have the finest human rights training in the Western hemisphere), deflecting attention from other schools which keep their training secret.