CPJ alarmed by wave of anti-press attacks in Honduras

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Committee to Protect Journalists

CPJ alarmed by wave of anti-press attacks in Honduras
April 6, 2011 5:11 PM ET

New York, April 6, 2011--The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on law enforcement in Honduras to stop attacking or prohibiting journalists from covering social unrest in the country. The attacks have come amid a national teachers' strike that has turned violent.

Teachers, farmers, and anti-government activists demanding education reforms, and an increase in wages in the capital, Tegucigalpa, have clashed with police, The Associated Press said. The confrontations, which left at least one teacher dead and dozens of protesters injured, have spread to other parts of the country, local press reports said. Members of the anti-government group known as the National Front of Popular Resistance, formed after the coup that ousted former President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, demanded the return of the exiled leader.

"We are alarmed by the attacks on Honduran journalists and the number of injuries," said Carlos Lauría, CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas. "The authorities must ensure that journalists can cover these protests and they should conduct a thorough investigation into abuses by local law enforcement and bring those responsible to justice."

At least seven journalists have faced harassment, detention, and violent attacks in the past two weeks while reporting unrest throughout Honduras, CPJ research found.

Read more: http://www.cpj.org/2011/04/cpj-alarmed-by-wave-of-anti-press-attacks-in-hondu.php

[DCKit]

1. My S.O. and family are from El Salvador

You will get no argument, ever, from me.

[harmonicon]

2. it's sickening how little Honduras has been covered since the coup.

It's as if once the new government was in place, ordained by the US, everything would just go back to how it was before; move along. Nothing to see here.

Yet this shit is still going on. I'm pretty sure that we could make a rule of thumb that any government that is against journalists and school teachers is a bad government.

[Judi Lynn]

3. An Inconvenient Truth in Honduras

An Inconvenient Truth in Honduras
By Rodolfo Pastor Campos, April 7, 2011

At the same time that the police and the Honduran army were brutally repressing popular protests of teachers, students, and resistance members for the sixth day in a row, Julissa Reynoso was greeting Honduran President Porfirio Lobo at the presidential palace. According to the press release issued by the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Reynoso was there to recognize President Lobo’s achievements regarding national reconciliation, human rights, and the return to democracy in Honduras.

That same day, in Washington DC, the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States held a series of three hearings regarding the ongoing crisis in Honduras. National and international human rights organizations, renowned human rights activists, and the direct victims of the repression and political persecution presented the cases one after the other. Representatives of the Honduran government were also present to receive the reports and answer the accusations.

Documents, pictures, videos, and statistics of the beaten, the arbitrarily detained, the tortured, and the executed were all presented to the commission. The commissioners then listened to the Honduran government’s presentation before reaching their initial conclusions. By the end of each of the three sessions, the commission clearly and severely condemned the government’s violent abuse of human rights activists, peasants, teachers, students, journalists, and other members and supporters of the popular resistance movement.

President Lobo’s representatives provided no credible response or convincing argument backed up by facts for any of the evidence presented to the commissioners. As they scrambled to justify a state policy of repression and persecution, the government representatives ended up contradicting themselves. When the commissioners inquired about the total number of police officers charged with human rights abuses since the coup, the Honduran government representatives could not provide one. When the commission asked about the number of public prosecutors appointed to defend human rights, the government claimed "around 18," but the commission subsequently determined on a visit to the country that only two had been appointed. The commissioners contrasted the explanations given by the Honduran government’s officials with the results of the commission’s own recent findings while in Honduras, making it obvious that the official presentation was at best deceiving if not outright fictitious.

More:
http://www.fpif.org/articles/an_inconvenient_truth_in_honduras?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FPIF+%28Foreign+Policy+In+Focus+%28All+News%29%29

[rabs]

4. This was the hearing in Washington

where the woman from the attorney general's office, representing the lobista regime, told the commission that the woman teacher who was killed by a police-fired teargas cannister had died because she had been dying of a heart attack SINCE TWO DAYS PREVIOUS.

She said it was a straight face.

It was hard for the members of the human rights commission to keep a straight face.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Absolutely astonishing. How can anyone be that blatantly deceitful?

She should have been arrested! Duct tape wrapped across her mouth. Hog tied. Fired out of a cannon.

It makes your heart sink knowing a government like that actually is running Honduras now, with the blessings of the U.S. Government, which is also appropriating large bales of U.S. taxpayers' dollars and sending it to them just for the hell of it.
A little money to make it worth their while for the privilege of keeping control of their airbase which they actually need for civilian air traffic, considering their main airport is the second most dangerous airport in the world.