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The former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, center, leads a march demanding President Juan Orlando Hernandez's resignation in Tegucigalpa on 5 June. (Photo: Orlando Sierra/AFP/Getty Images)
Honduran Government Denounced for Using 'Dangerous and Illegal Tactics' to Silence Dissent
"Honduras seems to be on a very dangerous free fall where ordinary people are the victims of reckless and selfish political games," Amnesty International warns amid crackdown on mass protests over allegations of election fraud
Dec 08, 2017
As Honduras' right-wing government continues to crack down on dissenting voices amid widespread violence and national protests over allegations of election fraud in last month's presidential election, Amnesty International is calling on officials to immediately stop "deploying dangerous and illegal tactics to silence any dissenting voices," while the nation's former president blames the United States, which backed the 2009 coup that ousted him from power, for creating "a military state."
"Evidence shows that there is no space for people in Honduras to express their opinions. When they do, they come face to face with the full force of the government's repressive apparatus."
--Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International
Efforts to silence opponents of incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez have continued, as protesters pour into the streets in spite of a government-imposed curfew, under which Amnesty says "security forces operated with the greatest impunity."
Even as some members of the Honduran National Police force have started refusing to follow orders to quash protests because, as a spokesperson said, they "don't want to repress and violate the rights of the Honduran people," the violence has persisted.
"Honduras seems to be on a very dangerous free fall where ordinary people are the victims of reckless and selfish political games," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. "Evidence shows that there is no space for people in Honduras to express their opinions. When they do, they come face to face with the full force of the government's repressive apparatus."
Amnesty International sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capitol, following the Nov. 26 election to meet with activists, victims of violence, and police officers. The group has "documented a plethora of human rights violations against protesters and other people" as well as at least 14 deaths since the protests broke out after the election.
Guevara-Rosas urged the Honduran government to "start undoing some of the many wrongs documented in recent days" by "halting all use of illegitimate or excessive force against protesters by security forces, ending arbitrary detentions, and investigating all instances of human rights violations."
In an exclusive interview with Democracy Now!, Manuel Zelaya--who was ousted by a U.S.-backed coup in 2009--urged protesters to maintain their presence in the streets, and called on Hernandez and the Honduran government to count the votes. The former president says the protesters "know that [leftist coalition leader] Salvador Nasralla won the election," but Hernandez, a "reliable" U.S. ally, has remained in power because of U.S. influence over Honduran institutions.
"Since the coup d'etat, the United States has done what it wants with this country," Zelaya said. "They changed all the laws. This is a military state, with laws like Plan Colombia, like the laws in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is what's happening in Honduras. And they've done away with guarantees and with respect. What's being done in this country is unjust."
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As Honduras' right-wing government continues to crack down on dissenting voices amid widespread violence and national protests over allegations of election fraud in last month's presidential election, Amnesty International is calling on officials to immediately stop "deploying dangerous and illegal tactics to silence any dissenting voices," while the nation's former president blames the United States, which backed the 2009 coup that ousted him from power, for creating "a military state."
"Evidence shows that there is no space for people in Honduras to express their opinions. When they do, they come face to face with the full force of the government's repressive apparatus."
--Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International
Efforts to silence opponents of incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez have continued, as protesters pour into the streets in spite of a government-imposed curfew, under which Amnesty says "security forces operated with the greatest impunity."
Even as some members of the Honduran National Police force have started refusing to follow orders to quash protests because, as a spokesperson said, they "don't want to repress and violate the rights of the Honduran people," the violence has persisted.
"Honduras seems to be on a very dangerous free fall where ordinary people are the victims of reckless and selfish political games," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. "Evidence shows that there is no space for people in Honduras to express their opinions. When they do, they come face to face with the full force of the government's repressive apparatus."
Amnesty International sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capitol, following the Nov. 26 election to meet with activists, victims of violence, and police officers. The group has "documented a plethora of human rights violations against protesters and other people" as well as at least 14 deaths since the protests broke out after the election.
Guevara-Rosas urged the Honduran government to "start undoing some of the many wrongs documented in recent days" by "halting all use of illegitimate or excessive force against protesters by security forces, ending arbitrary detentions, and investigating all instances of human rights violations."
In an exclusive interview with Democracy Now!, Manuel Zelaya--who was ousted by a U.S.-backed coup in 2009--urged protesters to maintain their presence in the streets, and called on Hernandez and the Honduran government to count the votes. The former president says the protesters "know that [leftist coalition leader] Salvador Nasralla won the election," but Hernandez, a "reliable" U.S. ally, has remained in power because of U.S. influence over Honduran institutions.
"Since the coup d'etat, the United States has done what it wants with this country," Zelaya said. "They changed all the laws. This is a military state, with laws like Plan Colombia, like the laws in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is what's happening in Honduras. And they've done away with guarantees and with respect. What's being done in this country is unjust."
Watch:
As Honduras' right-wing government continues to crack down on dissenting voices amid widespread violence and national protests over allegations of election fraud in last month's presidential election, Amnesty International is calling on officials to immediately stop "deploying dangerous and illegal tactics to silence any dissenting voices," while the nation's former president blames the United States, which backed the 2009 coup that ousted him from power, for creating "a military state."
"Evidence shows that there is no space for people in Honduras to express their opinions. When they do, they come face to face with the full force of the government's repressive apparatus."
--Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International
Efforts to silence opponents of incumbent President Juan Orlando Hernandez have continued, as protesters pour into the streets in spite of a government-imposed curfew, under which Amnesty says "security forces operated with the greatest impunity."
Even as some members of the Honduran National Police force have started refusing to follow orders to quash protests because, as a spokesperson said, they "don't want to repress and violate the rights of the Honduran people," the violence has persisted.
"Honduras seems to be on a very dangerous free fall where ordinary people are the victims of reckless and selfish political games," said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International. "Evidence shows that there is no space for people in Honduras to express their opinions. When they do, they come face to face with the full force of the government's repressive apparatus."
Amnesty International sent a delegation to Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capitol, following the Nov. 26 election to meet with activists, victims of violence, and police officers. The group has "documented a plethora of human rights violations against protesters and other people" as well as at least 14 deaths since the protests broke out after the election.
Guevara-Rosas urged the Honduran government to "start undoing some of the many wrongs documented in recent days" by "halting all use of illegitimate or excessive force against protesters by security forces, ending arbitrary detentions, and investigating all instances of human rights violations."
In an exclusive interview with Democracy Now!, Manuel Zelaya--who was ousted by a U.S.-backed coup in 2009--urged protesters to maintain their presence in the streets, and called on Hernandez and the Honduran government to count the votes. The former president says the protesters "know that [leftist coalition leader] Salvador Nasralla won the election," but Hernandez, a "reliable" U.S. ally, has remained in power because of U.S. influence over Honduran institutions.
"Since the coup d'etat, the United States has done what it wants with this country," Zelaya said. "They changed all the laws. This is a military state, with laws like Plan Colombia, like the laws in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is what's happening in Honduras. And they've done away with guarantees and with respect. What's being done in this country is unjust."
Watch:
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LATEST NEWS
Over 100 Children Have Died of Severe Hunger Amid Israeli Siege: Gaza Health Ministry
"People are being starved, children are being killed, families have lost everything," said the United Nations agency for Palestinian Refugees.
Aug 11, 2025
The Gaza Health Ministry announced on Monday that more than 100 children in Gaza have died of severe hunger during Israel's siege of the territory.
As Al Jazeera reported, the Hamas-run Health Ministry said that a total of 222 Palestinians have died from hunger during the siege, including 101 children. The vast majority of these deaths have come in just the last three weeks when the hunger crisis in Gaza started to garner international media attention, the ministry said.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East on Monday emphasized the direness of the situation in a statement calling for a cease-fire to allow more aid into Gaza.
"People are being starved, children are being killed," the agency said. "Families have lost everything. Political will and leadership can stop an escalation and end the war. Every heartbeat counts."
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed that there is no starvation crisis in Gaza and has said such reports are part of a "fake" propaganda campaign waged by Israel's enemies.
However, it isn't just the Gaza Health Ministry warning of a hunger crisis in the region, as international charity Save the Children last week said that 43% of pregnant and breastfeeding women who showed up to its clinics in Gaza last month were malnourished, which represented a threefold increase since March, when the Israeli military imposed a total siege on the area.
The latest numbers about starvation in Gaza come as the Israeli government is pushing forward with a plan to fully invade and occupy Gaza, which experts have warned will only exacerbate the humanitarian crisis among its people.
"If these plans are implemented, they will likely trigger another calamity in Gaza, reverberating across the region and causing further forced displacement, killings, and destruction," said Miroslav Jenca, the United Nations assistant secretary general, over the weekend.
'Playing With Fire': Gavin Newsom Warns Trump He Will Wipe California GOP Off the Map
"If you will not stand down I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states," said Newsom.
Aug 11, 2025
Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday put U.S. President Donald Trump on notice that he is not messing around when it comes to plans to ruthlessly redraw his state's congressional districts.
In a letter sent to Trump, Newsom warned that he is ready to take the gloves off should Texas go through with a mid-decade gerrymander that independent analysts have estimated could net Republicans five additional seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.
"You are playing with fire, risking the destabilization of our democracy, while knowing that California can neutralize any gains you can hope to make," he said. "This attempt to rig congressional maps to hold onto power before a single vote is cast in the 2026 election is an affront to American democracy."
Newsom—a likely presidential candidate for 2028—emphasized that he believes congressional maps "should be drawn by independent, citizen-led efforts," but he said that the actions of Texas Republicans were leaving him with little choice.
"If you will not stand down I will be forced to lead an effort to redraw the maps in California to offset the rigging of maps in red states," he said. "But if the other states call off their redistricting efforts, we will happily do the same. And American democracy will be better for it."
Newsom's office followed up this letter by sending a Trump-style all-caps post on X that reiterated the redistricting threat and finished up by writing, "THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION IN THIS MATTER."
Democratic Texas state lawmakers last week fled the state in order to deny the GOP-led Legislature quorum to vote on a new congressional map that would take a hatchet to many districts currently held by Democratic representatives. Newsom has responded by threatening to undo his state's independent redistricting process through a special ballot initiative this fall so that the California Legislature can redraw the state map with a strong partisan gerrymander.
Most of Trump's Net Worth Comes From 'Crypto Empire': Report
According to an investigation by Accountable.US, 73% of Trump's net worth may now come from crypto, which his administration is working to dramatically deregulate.
Aug 11, 2025
Over his nearly seven months as president, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has been taking a sledgehammer to regulations on cryptocurrency. A new report sheds further light on the reasons why.
The president may be profiting far more from his "rapidly-growing crypto empire" than was previously known and has used it to dramatically increase his net worth, according to an investigation released Thursday by the anti-corruption group Accountable.US.
While a report from Bloomberg on July 2 estimated the billionaire president's crypto holdings to total about $620 million of his nearly $7 billion net worth, Accountable examined other investments that had not previously been reported.
"President Trump's net worth," the group estimated, "could roughly be $15.9 billion, with about $11.6 billion in uncounted crypto assets." This would mean crypto accounts for 73% of his net worth.
Accountable reached this number by including investments that either had not yet occurred or were not public at the time of previous reporting.
These included roughly 22.5 billion tokens issued by Trump-owned WorldLiberty Financial Inc., which are estimated to be worth about $2 billion in value, but had not yet become tradable.
Other analyses, it said, also excluded the $7 billion in value of the new $TRUMP memecoins released in late July 2025.
"Two Trump-affiliated companies owned 80% of the $TRUMP venture as of May 2025 and were estimated to have collected over $324 million just in fees since January 2025," the report said.
Accountable also factored the holdings of Trump Media—the company that owns the president's social media app Truth Social. In July, the company bought $2 billion in Bitcoin and reserved another $300 million for Bitcoin options, and also announced the launch of its own set of NFTs.
As part of what they called "Crypto Week," Republicans passed multiple industry-friendly pieces of crypto legislation in July, the GENIUS Act and the CLARITY Act, which Accountable says allow Trump to directly profit.
The GENIUS Act purported to create a regulatory framework for so-called "stablecoins," which are pegged to existing financial assets like the U.S. dollar and are poised to become part of the portfolios of increasing numbers of companies. However, as Nikki McCann Ramirez wrote for Rolling Stone in June:
One of Trump's priorities has been the normalization of these so-called stablecoins — a type of asset that his family is now hawking.
Despite the moniker, stablecoins can be extremely unstable. A 2023 study published by the Bank for International Settlements found that of 60 stablecoins analyzed in their review, all of them had become de-pegged from their underlying asset at least once.
The 2022 crypto crash was triggered by the failure of Terraform Lab's Terra/Luna "algorithmic" stablecoin—the collapse of which saw $45 billion erased in the span of a week.
The bill places only very light regulations on stablecoins, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has warned that since he controls such a large percentage of the stablecoin market, their uptake into the broader economy could "create a superhighway for Donald Trump's corruption."
"As soon as the players understand that Trump's intervention is a real possibility, then the stablecoin market is no longer about a careful review of whether there are adequate dollars to back up a particular stablecoin, or whether the stablecoin issuer has an AAA rating," Warren said.
"Instead, the whole game becomes one of trying to engage the president to weigh the end and make one set of coins more valuable, and therefore another set of coins less valuable," she added. "It's corruption, but it's also a market manipulation that ultimately drains away any development...It undermines all the markets at that point."
But the CLARITY Act, which has been passed by the House and now awaits consideration in the Senate, is "the real prize" for the industry. It would dramatically narrow the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) ability to regulate cryptocurrencies—most notably by recategorizing many assets as commodities instead of securities, which places them under the much smaller and less-resourced Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).
Trump would be one of the foremost beneficiaries of this bill, which would exclude digital assets like his $TRUMP and $MELANIA "meme coins" from SEC regulation.
It would also likely affect the classification of Bitcoin, which Trump Media has explicitly acknowledged would benefit the president. "If Bitcoin is determined to constitute a security," the company said in a June SEC filing, it could "adversely affect" the price of Bitcoin and the price of Trump Media's holdings.
Not only does this benefit Trump, said Accountable.US executive director Tony Carrk, but the legitimization and entrenchment of these unstable assets has the potential to make the whole economy less stable.
"Eerily reminiscent of the risky behavior that gave us the 2008 financial collapse, Donald Trump is ushering in a new era of casino-like speculation on Wall Street with highly volatile crypto trading in retirement accounts," Carrk said.
"While the Trump family stands to win either way with crypto investment product fees," Carrk added, "throwing such a wild card into the financial system with little to no guardrails could lead to history repeating itself—with everyday Americans footing the bill when things inevitably go south."
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