HONDURAS UPDATE SEPTEMBER 18 2009

Emile Schepers

1. ZELAYA TO SPEAK AT U.N. NEXT WEEK. Honduran President Manuel Zelaya will address the U.N. on the first day of debates next week. This is the opening of the new session of the General Assembly, and a number of other heads of state will be there, including Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

2. MICHELETTI ACCUSES ZELAYA'S U.N. AMBASSADOR OF TERRORISM. In an interview with Fox News, de facto coup president Roberto Micheletti accused Honduras' ambassador to the U.N., Jorge Arturo Reina Idiaquez, of "placing bombs in the 1980s". Mr. Reina, who I believe is the brother of former progressive Honduran President Carlos Roberto Reina Idiaquez, denied this but pointed out that at the time (i.e. the beginning of the 1980s) there was a military dictatorship which had imprisoned both him and his brother (presumeably, he means the future president), the implication being that it was quite legitimate to fight against such a regime. President Reina, who, after leaving office, committed suicide in 2003 due to a terrible illness from which he suffered, had tried to do some of the things that Zelaya was also trying to do when he was overthrown. He, too, had to battle with the oligarchy, the military and, we assume, various agencies of U.S. imperialism. He also was a member of the Liberal Party, and had to fight right wing elements in that party, just as Zelaya has had to do. The news on Micheletti accusing ambassador Reina of being a terrorist has not been played up on Fox news or other U.S. ultra-right media today yet; we should be ready to deal with it if they try to make it a slimecause.

3. PROGRESSIVE MEDIA ACCUSE COUP REGIME OF SABOTAGE. Prensa Latina is reporting that executives of Channel 36 TV, the only progressive, anti-coup TV station in Honduras, are accusing "pirate" groups contracted by the coup regime of sabotaging their transmissions. They accuse the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) and also HONDUTEL, the publicly owned central telecommunications company of Honduras, of complicity in this. (In Honduras and other poor countries, the question of who controls telecommunications is a big deal. Before the coup, there was conflict between the Zelaya government which wanted to keep HONDUTEL under public control, and various people pushing privatization in the interests of transnational telecommunications monopolies). The accusation is that these people have been creating interruptions in Chanel 36's sattelite signal. The idea seems to be to block news that differs from the point of view of the Micheletti gang.

4. AND NOW THEY'RE GOING AFTER THE JUDGES. According to another Prensa Latina item, independent judges in Honduras complain that they are being persecuted by the Supreme Court for having opposed the coup. The complaint, on the part of the Association of Judges for Democracy of Honduras (Asociacion de Jueces por la Democracia de Honduras -- see, you can learn Spanish just by reading this blog, though I still haven't figured out how to put in the special diacritical marks) says that the Supreme Court has initiated disciplinary actions against nine judges for helping to provide legal recourses for people opposed to the coup, or for participating in demonstrations or publicly denouncing the expulsion of President Zelaya. Judges who have given favorable rulings to people protesting the coup have been transferred or fined. I might add that before the coup was in the air, the US State Department had issued a report on the Honduran Supreme Court which criticized it for being partisan instead of impartial. No kidding. It is now 100% committed to the coup regime, which means it will end up 100% discredited as a judicial body.

More tomorrow, same place.