May, 09 2011, 04:21pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167
Repression in Honduras "Worse than After Coup"
Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras reports a dramatic increase in the ongoing violent repression of human rights in Honduras. This includes government attacks against protests at a "Honduras is Open for Business" conference this weekend, which attracted Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico, among others.
WASHINGTON
Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared in Honduras reports a dramatic increase in the ongoing violent repression of human rights in Honduras. This includes government attacks against protests at a "Honduras is Open for Business" conference this weekend, which attracted Carlos Slim, the richest man in Mexico, among others.
DANA FRANK, dlfrank at ucsc.edu
Frank is a professor of history at the University of California at Santa Cruz specializing in Honduras. She recently wrote a piece for the Nation titled "Open Season on Teachers in Honduras," which states: "In Honduras, it's come to this: when 90 percent of the city's 68,000 public schoolteachers went out on strike in March to protest the privatization of the entire public school system, the government tear-gassed their demonstrations for almost three solid weeks, then suspended 305 teachers for two to six months as punishment for demonstrating, and then, when negotiations broke down, threatened to suspend another 5,000 public schoolteachers. The level of repression in Honduras, after a nationwide wave of attacks on the opposition in March and early April, now exceeds that of the weeks immediately following the June 28, 2009 military coup that deposed President Manuel Zelaya, as current President Porfirio 'Pepe' Lobo Sosa wages war on entire swaths of the Honduran population."
Frank's books include Bananeras: Women Transforming the Banana Unions of Latin America.
See a pair of recent reports from The Real News by Jesse Freeston:
A nationwide consortium, the Institute for Public Accuracy (IPA) represents an unprecedented effort to bring other voices to the mass-media table often dominated by a few major think tanks. IPA works to broaden public discourse in mainstream media, while building communication with alternative media outlets and grassroots activists.
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