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Proposed Amnesty Serves to Whitewash Honduran Coup, CEPR Co-Director Says
Vote Expected Next Week to Absolve Honduran Military of Crimes, Even as Murders Continue
WASHINGTON - The international community should offer no support for planned amnesty for the perpetrators of the Honduran coup, Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, said today. Noting that both ousted President Manuel Zelaya and coup leaders previously agreed on a deal to resolve the crisis that did not include amnesty for crimes, Weisbrot cautioned that current efforts to grant amnesty to the coup leaders would be merely an attempt to "whitewash the coup."
(photo by flickr user prendio2, uploaded on October 13, 2009) "The
international community should remember that this is a regime that not
only dealt a deadly blow to Honduran democracy through a military coup,
it has also attempted to turn back time to a dark period of bloody
dictatorships, death squads, disappearances, tortures, and murders,"
Weisbrot said. "Only international pressure will stop these abuses."
The Honduran congress is expected to vote early next week to approve amnesty for the perpetrators of the June 28 coup d'etat that ousted President Manuel Zelaya - who is still recognized as the legitimate president by the international community - and then imposed a dictatorship. This week the Attorney General, Luis Rubi, stated that armed forces head General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez and other military chiefs had violated Honduras' constitution by forcibly deporting Zelaya, but stopped short of charging them for removing Zelaya from power or for other crimes including the killing of unarmed demonstrators and other serious human rights violations.
In reaction to the Attorney General's charges against the military leaders, President Zelaya issued a statement Wednesday saying that Rubi is supporting the "impunity of the military by accusing them of lesser crimes and abuse of authority, and not for serious crimes they have committed: treason, murder, human rights violations, torture," and that "it is clear what is being done are preparatory acts for the impunity of the military and to avoid punishment for the material and intellectual authors of the military coup."
Since seizing power, the dictatorship has committed an array of human rights abuses including killings, beatings of demonstrators, detentions of hundreds of people, and attacks on media outlets. International human rights groups including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders have documented and condemned these human rights crimes since the dictatorship seized power.
This violence continues to the present. As recently as January 6, the Garifuna radio station Faluma Bimetu was burned down in an arson attack. Reporters Without Borders stated that the station "has often been threatened because of its opposition to last June's coup d'état and to real estate
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14 Comments so far
Show All"The Honduran Congress is expected to vote early next week to approve amnesty for the perpetrators of the June 28th coup....."
This amnesty proposal did not fall magically from the sky. Nor is legislation of this type something that spontaneously bubbles up from the grassroots, with broad consensus support among existing legislators spontaneously arising.
Somebody allied with the coup plotters had to draft and introduce this amnesty bill. Other members of the Honduran legislature can speak up and oppose it (which is likely to be a courageous civic act). At least the people in the streets will know who is on their side, and who has betrayed their democracy.
As a north American, I keep wondering however when Robert Gates will be called upon to step forward and explain how this coup, engineered by alumni of the School for the Americas, was able to take place at all during during Gates' watch as head of the Department of Defense.
If the conspirators were past or current United States DIA or CIA assets inside the Honduran military establishment (as has been widely reported), then Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is clearly the person who has the responsibility to investigate and report to the President and Secretary of State on what happened, how it happened, and what the options are from here for the Obama White House in terms of remedy.
True, international diplomatic posturing and condemnation of the coup in support of Zeyala is important. But the role of the US intelligence community in the overthrow of this democratically elected government needs to be clarified for Hondurans, Yankees, and Latin Americans generally.
As a career CIA spy now exercising top civilian control over the Pentagon's worldwide intelligence network, Mr. Gates should be able to get to the bottom of the Honduran coup quite quickly. Is somebody ever going to ask him to do so?
Bill from Saginaw
Most Americans don't even know a coup happened in Honduras.
Therefore there's little to no public pressure on Gates or the administration to do anything other than twiddle their thumbs and quietly assist their new accomplices. (I'm sure the amnesty idea came from some right-wing think tank in the U.S.)
If Americans have heard anything about the coup it was probably the propaganda proclaiming it was a constitutional removal of a president who was intent on breaking Honduran law.
Europe's not going to do a damn thing either.
Latin America will have to sort this one out on their own.
I wish them luck.
Much like the Bush Junta self-amnesty
Who ran Chiquita when it was called United Fruit? Still the same gangsters, eh? Boycott bananas!
It is beyond sad that Obama has made so many horrible appointments in the areas of the economy and foreign policy. Keeping on a Republican holdover like Gates only signals continuation of the duopolistic imperialistic policies of Bush.
Gates is the guy who, while serving in the Reagan Administration, proposed bombing that great threat to our security, Nicaragua.
And yes, thanks to our corporate media many Americans don't even know that Honduras even exists (unless they read the name on a sweat shop-made t-shirt) let alone there's been a coup there and the US complicity in it.
"We the People" are not going to do anything about Honduras. "We" are going to bitch and moan and do nothing except maybe write a letter to the editor or call our reps. This is important but minimal in impact.
Let the South American poor solve their problems. They have much more experience and much more courage than "we" do.
The most "we" can do is watch and learn and hope that when it comes to standing up for democracy, "we" can emulate them.
I do not completely agree.
When the Sandinistas were trying to maintain a fresh revolution under proxy attack, American opinion kept Congress from voting funds for direct, aboveboard war, forcing Reagan to send spooks like Ollie North to deal cocaine and arms to to fund depredations for General Electric, et alia.
Granted, letting Ronnie, Bush I, and Ollie off without so much as a criminal trial is nothing to brag about, but anything Americans can do to bring their government and corporations to heel would help courageous people the world over.
Checking the actions of some courageous and successful revolutionaries will verify the importance of American public opinion to progressive and insurgent movements. Check with Subcommandante Marcos in Chiapas or the writings of Tomas Borge or Omar Cabezas in Nicaragua.
In my limited contact with insurgents abroad, I have found them deeply concerned and profoundly informed about the opinions of American civilians.
Perhaps that is part of what we might learn from them.
The monster that is America is gradually swallowing the whole world.
Driven as it is by militarism, imperialism, religious fanaticism and corporate greed, America uses many different strategies to gain control. What is happening in Honduras is being repeated all over the world.
My latest post shows how. Don't miss it!
www.dangerouscreation.com
Looks just like a bit of recent US history.
"Since seizing power, the dictatorship has committed an array of human rights abuses including killings, beatings of demonstrators, detentions of hundreds of people, and attacks on media outlets."
And just like amnesty for the Bush Administration and the thugs at Blackwater, the Obama crew will likely go along with this as well. Yes, let's keep looking forward. Mistakes were made. No use dwelling on the past. Mustn't rock the boat now, must we?
It's the American thing to do.
The Obama Administration was well aware of and a backer of the coup before it happened. Support for the Honduran coup and the continuing military buildup in Columbia are the initial steps of the corporate driven world (read: IMF, World Bank, WTO, and the transnational corporate interests) to turn back the growing anti-capitalistic and anti-American governments in Central and South America and end their socialistic tendency to support the people over the wealthy who have ruled there for centuries. These are the spots where America (and the interchangeable Republican and/or Democratic oligarchy supporters) will try to stop the slow revolution developing and to turn back the clock.
The School of America trained coup leader, Micheleti, was being advised by former Bill Clinton administration higher ups, and the US stance has been a wary one that is trying to appear to support the rule of law, all while undermining it of course. The empire is intact, and watch the trouble to be fomented in Venezuela to create an incident between it and the US armed Columbia. Same old, same old--just a continuation of the Bush policies. Makes no difference what Party is in power--the corporate agenda and empire that wars on working people and the middle and poor class continues unabated.
the who showed up, in of all places, chattanooga, tennesse, at its memorial auditorium in 1968. "meet the new boss, same as the old boss", or how'd that go? obama must go. 2012. new hampshire. democratic primary. who's gonna show up and win?
Whom would you support? The progressive community, in which Common Dreams is in the forefront, should start generating ideas about a candidate who can actually win, not just allow another Bush or Obama to be installed.