and who recounts some of the many methods that the coup regime is using to intimidate and silence a rising national rebellion. They have cut off bus service in rural areas to prevent coup resisters from meeting and networking--this is a great hardship in poverty-stricken rural Honduras with its difficult terrain between villages--and they have stationed military troops at schools to intimidate teachers and scare them into ending their strike, and above all, ending their outreach to other anti-coup groups. The threat of death, if you speak out against injustice, is a serious violation of human rights. And, in Honduras, with its history of death squad killings, intimidation tactics like these clearly convey the threat of death. Giordano's report is from Saba, Honduras.
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3381/learning-curve-teachers-vs-honduras-coupDiscussion here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x21591There are small communities like the one Giordano describes all over Honduras where opposition to the coup is as strong as it is in the main population areas, but where activists are in even more serious peril because of their isolation and the lack of media presence. NarcoNews identifies another similar situation, in Guadalupe Carney, near Trujillo, Honduras.
http://narconews.com/Issue59/article3777.htmlDiscussion here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x21592One of the methods of intimidation here is coup disinformation about the farmers of Guadalupe Carney, to whom Zelaya had given title to their farm land, and who were attacked by a group of 15 thugs with AK-47s last August, hired by a former army colonel and landowner who claims this additional land but has no title to it. The coup is slandering these campesinos as
armed foreigners--Venezuelans, Cubans, Nicaraguans--obviously a preliminary to evicting them from land that is legally theirs. In other words, local fascists are using the coup and martial law to undo progressive advances that Zelaya had enacted to help the poor. He led enactment of an agrarian reform law in 2006, which legalized land ownership for 700,000 peasant farmers.
Zelaya also helped the teachers, by raising their salaries, and the coup is now threatening to rescind the raise in their meager pay. The coupsters have also accused the teachers of being funded by "Venezuela."
I have to laugh at that--though I know this is not funny. The coup is targeting people and groups and setting them up to be 'disappeared'--tortured, beaten, robbed, killed. It's not in the least funny. But I HOPE Venezuela is funding them! These are dirt poor people standing up for themselves, fighting oppression and theft and the goddamned U.S. Empire. If ever poor people needed assistance, it is the poor people of Honduras, right now. And if ever Venezuela's national security was at risk, it is now, from the coup in Honduras. It is aimed like a dagger at Venezuela (and its oil). So I would find it not in the least objectionable if Venezuela and other democracies all over the world directly supported these courageous people. They are standing up for the rule of law and for democracy--at great risk to themselves, and at great personal cost, I'm sure, with their pitiful incomes and subsistence farming.
In fact, why doesn't the U.S. give that $6 BILLION in military aid, that it is larding on the corrupt narco-fascists running Colombia, to the poor of Honduras? If our government believed in democracy, that's what it would do. But no, we are not only propping up the worst government in the hemisphere with billions of dollars, we are also pouring multi-millions into rightwing, coup-supporting political groups and big business groups in Honduras, through the USAID-NED and other agencies.
The mind-boggling mind-twist of the coupsters is that it's okay for them to get multi-millions larded on them by the U.S., and some kind of a crime for dirt poor Hondurans to get aid from Venezuela or Cuba. How's that for "Alice in Wonderland" logic?
Anyway, the layers of human rights violations are deep. The Honduran government is at war with its people. And it is only going to get worse until this illegitimate government is removed.
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