Jul
Sister Cities
On 3rd Anniversary, Salvadoran and Solidarity Organizations Denounce Honduran Coup
On June 27th, about two hundred people from around El Salvador, gathered in front of the Honduran embassy in San Salvador to denounce the coup in Honduras and demand an end to U.S. support for militarization in Latin America. After the rally and press conference in front of the embassy, protesters marched down to the Salvador del Mundo monument where performances by student drumming collectives and Honduran and Salvadoran bands continued into the night. The protest came just days after Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo was removed from power by a the Paraguayan legislature and Supreme Court, an act widely condemned by other Latin American presidents, including El Salvador’s Mauricio Funes.
The event, which was covered by local radios, newspapers and television channels, as well as international news outlets like TeleSur and CNN en Español, featured the participation by telephone of illegally removed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya. Manuel Zelaya thanked the protesters for their support and urged them to continue the fight to defend democracy in Latin America.
Click on these links to see coverage by TeleSur, the Diario CoLatino and La Prensa Grafica.
Click here to see more photos of the event.
The event was made possible thanks to the donations of members of the Sister Cities network and donations of food from the FMLN.
Below is the press release read at the event by members of the Movement of Popular Resistance, a member of the Honduras resistance movement in exile in El Salvador and Jan Morrill, of the Sister Cities network.
Three Years After the Coup and a Few Days after the Removal of President Fernando Lugo, the Struggle of the People of Honduras and Paraguay is also Our Own Struggle
Press Release signed by Movement of Popular Resistance October 12th, FESPAD, Sister Cities, Share and Voices on the Border
As popular organizations of the Salvadoran social movement and North American organizations in solidarity with El Salvador and Honduras, we declare the following:
- We reiterate our opposition to the coup of June 28th, 2009 against the government of former President Manuel Zelaya, because it was an attack not only against the Honduran people, but also against all those fighting for a just distribution of wealth, for more participatory democracy and for the right of Latin American countries to be sovereign and independent of U.S. imperialism.
The alliance behind the coup inside of Honduras is made up of the business class, their business associations and their media networks; the military and the police; traditional parties and their representatives in the legislative and judicial branches and the hierarchies of different churches. However, the coup in Honduras had a decisive external actor: the U.S. government which acted with the complicity of the 1% and the governments of the 1% of Latin America.
- We also condemn the political trial launched by the Paraguayan House of Representatives and Senators of the Republic that resulted in the ouster of President Fernando Lugo. We consider this to have been a new kind of illegal coup. And, we reject the media manipulation of the murders of 17 people killed in a conflict over land ownership in Curuguaty, Paraguay. This situation was really a trap set by the right of Paraguay in order to destroy a process that was opening up space for popular protest and organization.
We support the position of President Mauricio Funes, who refused to recognize the new government that emerged from the parliamentary coup in Paraguay and we urge him to maintain firm in this position.
We reject any form of coup d’état, like the one made against the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, in April 2002, and reversed by the Venezuelan people 48 hours afterward, the coup against the former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009, the attempted coup against Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa in September 2010 and the current parliamentary coup against Fernando Lugo in Paraguay. These events hurt the young democratic institutions of Latin America and show the continued influence of United States foreign policy.
- We condemn the ever increasing militarization of Central America by the U.S. government. Honduras is the site of the Palmerola airbase, the largest military base in Central America, which was used in the 80’s to launch attacks against the government of Nicaragua and revolutionary movements in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. In the 2009 coup, Manuel Zelaya was flown out Honduras from this same U.S. airbase and expatriated to Costa Rica.
In April 2010, the U.S. Southern Command launched a new military base in the Honduran Mosquitia region, where on May 11th, agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency killed four civilians traveling down the Patuca River. These victims, including two pregnant women and a child, and seven other civilians were seriously injured.
The militarization we see in Honduras has been extending across Central America under the pretext of the war against drug trafficking and organized crime. The Obama administration has pledged $107 million for regional security in Central America, while cutting financial support for health and education programs. This re-militarization strategy is focused on territorial control and military dominance over Latin American countries that will follow the United States foreign policy agenda.
On June 28, U.S. organizations and citizens will be on the streets in 10 cities around the country denouncing the military takeover in Honduras, increased militarization in Central America and the role the U.S. government. We join this effort and urge the U.S. government not to interfere in the politics of other countries, and to demand an end to military aid for Central America.
- We denounce the rise in human rights violations committed by the coup-government of Porfirio Lobo against popular leaders and activists of the Honduran Resistance movement. There are daily reports denouncing persecution, death threats, torture, abductions, disappearances and murders. Since the coup, over one hundred members of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), 87 people affiliated with peasant organizations in the Lower Aguan, 24 journalists and 20 activists of the gay community have all been murdered and their cases have remained in impunity.
- We implore President Mauricio Funes to show more independence and firmness in his dealings with the authoritarian and repressive regime of Porfirio Lobo. We demand that just as Funes called for the Honduran government to be allowed back to SICA and the OAS, that he now push Lobo the agreement he signed in which he pledged to uphold the democratic and human rights of the Honduran people and punish the violators of those rights who remain in the Honduran government in full impunity.
- Three years after the coup, as solidarity organizations and supporters of the struggle of the Honduran people, we congratulate our Honduran brothers and sisters for their courageous and tenacious resistance against the coup dictatorship. We also congratulate the resistance for building a political party, the LIBRE party, through which it can fight back against the Honduran oligarchy. Similarly, we declare our solidarity with the Paraguayan people, and express our sincere wish for an end to these attacks on democracy in Latin America.
San Salvador, June 27th, 2012
