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Coup's Impact on Honduran Women
Ms. Magazine's inaugural cover featured President Obama in Superman pose, ripping open his suit coat and dress shirt to reveal a T-shirt that proclaims: "This is what a feminist looks like." Photoshop tricks aside, Honduran women need this to be true. They need the Obama administration to fully grasp the plight of Honduran women and their families and then act decisively on their behalf.
Since the June 28, 2009 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya from office, the de facto regime has tried to stanch the flow of incriminating information coming from Honduras. But human rights organizations and grassroots delegations keep working to focus the Obama administration's gaze on the dire situation, particularly for Honduran women.
Mourning, Organizing
The Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (COFADEH) began investigating abuses immediately after the coup, searching hospitals and jails. Their July 15 report documents 1155 human rights violations during the first two weeks of the coup. These include 1046 illegal detentions, 59 beatings, 27 assaults on reporters and the independent press, and four executions. Three of those killed are named: Isis Obed Murillo Mencías (19-years-old), Gabriel Fino Noriega (radio-journalist), and Caso Ramon Garcia.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued their first and most comprehensive report on the Honduran crisis on August 21. Consistent with COFADEH's findings, the IACHR charged the coup government with "disproportionate use of public force, arbitrary detentions, and the control of information aimed at limiting political participation by a sector of the citizenry."
A scant six weeks after that IACHR report, at the end of September, the National Front Against the Coup in Honduras (FNR) estimated more than 100 coup fatalities - an appalling escalation.
But if the violence appalls, it is not unprecedented. During the 1980s, the Battalion 3-16 death squad was responsible for forced disappearances, detentions, and torture in Honduras. COFADEH warns that members of the Battalion are returning to positions of power and influence. A particularly notorious Battalion leader, Captain Billy Joya Améndola, is now special security adviser to "Interim President" Roberto Micheletti.
And it should be noted, the notoriety of Battalion 3-16 reaches back to the U.S. Army School of the Americas (SOA), where 19 Battalion members were trained, as were the generals who deposed President Zelaya.
Gender Violence
Women often pay a special price during military conquests, and Honduran women have paid dearly for demanding a return to democracy. The IACHR notes that, "in the context of the demonstrations and the repression and detentions carried out by police officers and members of the military, women were especially subject to acts of violence and humiliation because of their gender."
Salvador Zuniga, of the Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), believes the June coup was prompted in part by a socially conservative religious reaction to feminist organizing around reproductive rights. "What I can say is that the feminist compañeras (companions or comrades) are in greater danger than any other organization," he says.
A young mother named Irma Villanueva made her own story public in mid-August. She told Radio Progreso how she had been arrested at a recent demonstration and then raped by four policemen. One of the rapists implied they were punishing Villanueva for her political activity: "[N]ow you're going to see what happens to you for being where you shouldn't be."
Villanueva is not alone. Honduran Feminists in Resistance, a group formed immediately after the coup, reported to the Latin American Herald Tribune on September 3 that they had documented 19 cases of rape committed by Honduran police. Honduran feminists believe that this number is probably conservative.
Yet despite and perhaps because of all this, Women's Human Rights Week was vigorously observed in Honduras in August. An international fact-finding mission participated, speaking with representatives of the European Union and United Nations in Honduras, local authorities, lawyers, academics, human-rights workers, and popular organizations. The mission reports that, according to the special prosecutor for women, 51 Honduran women were murdered in the month of July; the mission calculates that "femicide has increased by at least 60 percent."
Women Respond
The Feminists in Resistance wrote Obama a rather "tough love" open letter in July. "Mr. President, Honduras was among the countries in the world that saw with great hope your arrival to the presidency...We applauded your expressed desire to establish [a] new type [of] relations with the region." But six months and many deaths later, their great hope is on hold. There is suspicion of U.S. actors, rogue or otherwise, having been complicit in the coup. At the very least, the Feminists in Resistance see the Obama administration's response to the coup as weak and "leading to a situation of violence in our country that we do not deserve."
And U.S. activists have appealed to Secretary of State Clinton as an advocate for women. Women of Steel, an organization within the United Steelworkers, wrote Clinton on August 31, asking her "to denounce this violence (against Honduran women) just as you have recently denounced such violence in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
Clearly, the Honduran crisis is a real opportunity for Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to prove their human-rights and feminist mettle. Conversely, a failure of resolve toward the illicit and abusive coup regime could do lasting harm to Obama's and Clinton's political credibility - and cost many more Honduran lives.
16 Comments so far
Show AllThat's what I thought. I should have read your comment before posting a response to this biased article.
Sioux Rose
Just as numerous minority figures (Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Clarence Thomas) prove fealty by emulating the power figures situated at the top of the status quo hierarchy, too many women (like Hillary) take on the worse traits of the pro-war military-state, a/k/a global corporate capitalism without conscience when they assume positions of "leadership." I'm sorry that Ms. Magazine has fallen for Obama's supposed charms; and I would be surprised if Hillary sided with the women of Hondurus, rather than the unofficial policy of behind-the-scenes elites.
So long as our nation bows in homage to the twin dark gods of Mammon (Wall st & the lobbyists who buy our politicians' favors) and Mars (the MIC and its make-war propaganda systems), those who pass by the gatekeepers to assume key positions will obey and "honor" the dark powers that are calling the shots.
At this point humanity faces the trifecta of economic implosion (the US has led in this debacle by disseminating pseudo-fiscal "products" like derivatives throughout the global banking system), environmental collapse (the capitalism on steroids agenda has reduced every tenable ecosystem to its generate-instant-profits equivalent), and war as established state policy (the nefarious trafficking in arms, an "opportunity" which the U.S. distinguishes itself through; and this practice is a most certain GUARANTEE of more wars, violence, and intensified levels of aggression)... that our ship of state under this "new superman" is not veering away from the abyss produced by these three tragic fates suggests that M.A.D is still the operating principle in this land of the not-so-sane.
Money and male authoritarian domination can be a toxic mix indeed. I'm surprised to see women in power paying no attention to the Honduran women suffering. Women wanting to emulate power figures is an interesting explanation but it leaves me to wonder why women just can't be women even when in power.
This article looks familiar. Nonetheless, it is biased and talks only about women suffering. There is no justification in ignoring the greater price men pay by having to do their dirty work of fighting, bleeding, and dying. Could we get some numbers on the Hondorun men so that we know for sure that it's the women more than the men who suffer the most? Fewer women go into fighting than the men and some women societally pressure their men into combat or else. Where's the mourning for men?
In any society where there's war, history has always shown women to be the greatest casualties. Of course guys suffer too but women make up the bread and butter of any society. Now about those numbers, I'll see what I can do to bring it up for you. Stay tuned.
There's plenty of mourning to go around for ALL the men, women and children impacted by wars, especially imperialist wars. Women and children are generally the victims, rather than the perpetrators.
I don't know why this article is being re-posted-- it's still listed in Friday's (Oct. 23) articles. But one re-run deserves another:
______________________________________
"Clearly, the Honduran crisis is a real opportunity for Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to prove their human-rights and feminist mettle."
______________________________________
Either I'm becoming more sensitive to this, or there really ARE more and more articles written in the present but reflecting an odd lag in perception.
The Nobel Committee may as well have been down in a Biosphere all year; CD publishes articles almost daily in which pundits claim Obama is on the verge of some momentous opportunity, or equally on the verge of letting some momentous opportunity slip away.
The rhetorical hook of the "critical moment" is becoming a more interesting artifact than the putative crises hung upon it.
Team Obama has been content to let Zelaya and the people of Honduras twist slowly in the wind since the coup, except for some listless and feeble finger-wagging towards the coup leadership.
Why is it hard for me to believe that Obama and Clinton's hearts are burning-- or are even capable of being kindled-- over the plight of women in Honduras, Afghanistan, or anywhere else? Excluding, possibly, personal friends or relatives of the womanly persuasion.
· Yr Obd't Servant
Unless there is a counter coup that returns President Manuel Zelaya to office I shall refuse to buy anything from those coup backers, Dole and Chiquita.
I wouldn't even take a Viagra from Bob Dole if he was GIVING them away!
· Yr Obd't Servant
Most of us have mothers.
Their organization in Latin America has been part of their revolution on behalf of Reagan's "disappeared".
Listening to your mother does not necessitate being a "mother's boy," a macho term of denigration. One is wise to listen to one's parents. We could learn from their mistakes.
Sorry if I appear too judgmental, but the United States needs to keep HANDS OFF the continent to our South and enable them to evolve their own economies. History shows that when we intervene, we destroy. They are our nearest neighbors.
They don't need to change. We do. I allege this virtually categorically. After all, when Madeleine Albright of the Clinton Administration was asked about half a million deaths of children in Iraq, she said this was Okay. Cost of doing business. This was before Bush II invaded Iraq.
Not only men are psychopaths, even if most psychopaths are men.
You can be sure that others are keeping tabs, and I wish them only the best. We need to keep tabs on who are guilty of war crimes and worse. History is a bitch.
-30-
CAPITALISM ---- INTELLIGENCE DICTATORSHIP
Empire USA and Honduras, like all capitalist governments,
has a rich ruling class that pays an intelligent
middleclass to force a 50% laboring class to work
for starvation wages.
So the Honduras coup dictatorship could be resolved in three ways:
(1) Ruling class could give up power and establish democratic equality.
(2) Intelligent middleclass could revolt and then be the new ruling class,
a classic revolution such as the French Revolution of 1776.
(3) Slow and careful thinking laboring class could organize a government
of their own, a Constitution to their liking and force their rulers into submission.
Hey Alabama_john---
I don't mean to be picky or anything, but I suspect it was the American Revolution of 1776, and the French Revolution of 1789.
In any case, it was essentially the culmination of the European Enlightenment, the coming together of the most brilliant of the English- and French-speaking peoples, and it has all been downhill since. (Ben Franklin's Leyden Jar experiments with kites preceded 1776 as did his invention of the lightning rod.) And to think they were still riding horses and carrying swords on their belts. Quaint, eh?
Meanwhile, where's that CD commenter who keeps quoting Robespierre? Or the nonexistent CD commenter who keeps uttering from the nonexistent bible: "Thou shalt not eat thy neighbor nor thy neighbor's wife. Eat the State instead. It is the fatted calf"?
It shall come to pass!
-30-