Honduras Coup - Day 166 - December 10, 2009

• Zelaya Vows to Stay in Brazil Embassy 'Until the End'
  By Blake Schmidt and Eric Sabo - bloomberg.com : December 10, 2009
  Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya vowed to stay at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa "until the end" after the interim government refused to let him leave the country as long as he claims a right to power.
  
  
• She played dead to survive the massacre
  By El Tiempo - Translation by Charles Utwater II : December 10, 2009
  The only survivor of the massacre in which five young men died, flattened by gunfire, on Sunday night stated that she made herself [appear to be] a corpse when one of the four individuals pulled her by the hair after they fired to see if she responded and was still alive. The young mother of four children, Wendy Molina (32), who was impacted by several bullets on her body, none potentially lethal, left the Escuela Hospital hours after the attack.
  
  
• Zelaya Denounces Pressures to Resign
  By prensa-latina.cu : December 10, 2009
  Honduran Constitutional President Manuel Zelaya denounced pressures from the de facto regime to resign in exchange for his exile in Mexico. Zelaya told the local station Radio Globo that the regime efforts to make him step down have failed again. They rejected a request from Mexico to grant him a tourist visa.
  
  
• Honduran Coup Regime Erects Superficial Reality Around Elections
  By Belén Fernández - upsidedownworld.org : December 10, 2009
  A few days prior to the November 29 elections in Honduras, Francisco Varela—the homeless man regularly stationed outside the drive-through of one of the ubiquitous Espresso Americano establishments in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa—acquired a campaign T-shirt for National Party presidential candidate and soon-to-be victor Porfirio (Pepe) Lobo. The shirt boasted a slogan associating Lobo with immediate change; prospects for such things in Honduras were however called into doubt by the fact that the recent attempt by Honduran President Manuel (Mel) Zelaya to hold a nonbinding public opinion survey in order to gauge popular desire to rewrite the Constitution had been met with a coup d’état.
  
  
• The Canadian Press Disappears Honduras
  By Joe Emersberger - zcommunications.org : December 10, 2009
  Even the Canadian press noticed when, on June 28, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was driven out of his house at gunpoint by soldiers and forced onto a plane to Costa Rica. The Honduran Congress promptly read out a forged letter of resignation and named Roberto Micheletti as the new president. These crimes were perpetrated because Zelaya attempted to conduct a non binding poll that would have established how the public felt about initiating constitutional reform. The Supreme Court ruled that the opinion poll was illegal and ordered Zelaya's arrest after he refused to obey its preposterous ruling.
  Various Canadian newspapers wrote editorials about the coup, but, as noted in a previous CMM alert, there was something very odd about them. None denounced the Supreme Court for making it illegal to ask Hondurans the following question "Do you agree that in the general elections of November 2009 a fourth ballot box should be installed to decide whether to convene a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a political Constitution?"
  It is worth repeating that this was a non binding poll. Regardless what was asked, or how the public voted, no laws would have been changed. Even if it had been binding, it would only have led to another question being put to the public at the same time as Zelaya's successor was elected.
  
  
• Breakdowns in Negotiations Over Zelaya's Status in Honduras? Shocking!
  By alterdestiny.blogspot.com : December 10, 2009
  Wow. Efforts between Micheletti and Zelaya to come to a negotiated conclusion over something ended in no results, miscommunication, and a dogmatic refusal to bend to any type of agreement on the part of Micheletti? This has never happened before! More seriously, Greg is saying (and the Times article backs this up) that Zelaya isn't opposed to leaving; he just doesn't want it to be as a political asylee. The fact that the Micheletti government has decided to stonewall on a point that means very little to it (it's gone in a few weeks), but so much to Zelaya, is just symbolic of how incompetent and authoritarian the Micheletti regime has been.
  
  
• Zelaya: leaving on a jet plane?
  By weeksnotice.blogspot.com : December 10, 2009
  After a deal with Mexico (or, as La Prensa calls it, the "Aztec country") that came very close to allowing Mel Zelaya to leave Honduras, the coup government nixed it because Zelaya refused to seek political asylum. Zelaya, though, said he is still open to the idea of leaving as long as it does not involve asylum.
  
  
• Roadblock
  By hondurascoup2009.blogspot.com : December 10, 2009
  The chaos of information surrounding the trip Manuel Zelaya planned to take to Mexico has settled, and the story is now fairly clear. It is true that Mexico offered, and both Manuel Zelaya and the de facto government of Honduras initially accepted, that Zelaya would leave the Brazilian embassy with a safe conduct (solicited by Mexico, not Zelaya) and then reside in Mexico as an honored guest for some period of time. Why it fell apart is instructive.
  It fell apart because Zelaya would not sign a declaration authored by the de facto government. Carlos Lopez Contreras, the de facto Foreign Minister, said "There was an understanding that Zelaya would subscribe to a declaration...that he respected the Guaymuras pact, and respected in a like manner, the decision of the National Congress in the sense that it confirmed the end of his mandate."
  They want Manuel Zelaya to recognize their authority and give up his claims to authority, to give them legitimacy. He shouldn't, and he won't.
  As he said last night, "I could be here 10 years, I have my guitar."
  
  
• Honduras: Ousted pres. must go as private citizen
  By Freddy Cuevas, AP - google.com : December 10, 2009
  Honduras' coup-installed government said Thursday that there will be no deal for ousted leader Manuel Zelaya to leave the country unless he goes as a private citizen – not as the country's president. "This attitude of humiliation toward President Zelaya, to want him to sign documents (saying he is not president), is something I have never seen," Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said. "It is totally unacceptable."
  
  
• Manuel Zelaya refuses to leave Honduras as asylum seeker
  By Rory Carroll - guardian.co.uk : December 10, 2009
  A dispute over political asylum today hindered a plan to fly the ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya to exile in Mexico. The leftist leader was set to leave his Brazilian embassy refuge in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa, in a deal with the country's de facto rulers which would have ended an at times surreal three-month siege. The plan unravelled after Zelaya insisted that he travel to Mexico as a "guest" rather than asylum seeker, as the latter category would curb his efforts to be reinstated as president. He told Honduran radio he would leave on condition he could continue political activities. "I want to leave as a distinguished guest, not as political refugee like the interim government wants."
  
  
• For Some Hondurans, Elections Change Little
  By Mike Alberti and Lauren Sutherland - upsidedownworld.org : December 10, 2009
  On the eve of Honduras' "free and fair" elections, a handful of men and women from the community of Guadalupe Carney, Honduras, held a silent vigil. Earlier that day, someone in a neighboring community had received a call from a family member in the army: troops were surrounding Guadalupe Carney on all sides, in preparation for an "arms raid." A call was put in to Guadalupe Carney's local radio station, and word spread quickly through the community grapevine. In a small, bare concrete room lit by a single candle, these residents waited in fear into the next morning – Election Day.
  
  
• On Presidents and Precedents: Implications of the Honduran Coup
  By Joseph Shansky - upsidedownworld.org : December 10, 2009
  President Obama was elected partly because of his promise to a large Hispanic constituency to give both new attention and new respect to Latin America. Judging from the US role in the military coup in Honduras, he must think that one of the two is enough.
  
  
• Honduras de Facto Govt Bars Zelaya's Mexico Trip
  By prensa-latina.cu : December 10, 2009
  The impediment of the Honduran de facto government for constitutional President Manuel Zelaya to travel to Mexico as distinguished guest was denounced Thursday by local press. According to La Jornada daily, Zelaya's trip to Mexico was aborted, because the Roberto Micheletti regime once again made a third country look ridiculous, this time Mexico. First, the Honduran putschists approved the Mexican request, made it known, a Mexican plane took off for Tegucigalpa, and then everything came to an end, the paper noted.
  
  
• Public Denunciation by OPLN
  By quotha.net : December 10, 2009
  The Political Organization "Los Necios" ("The Stubborn Ones") (Organización Política Los Necios, OPLN), denounces before the national and international communities that on December 5th (Saturday), the starting date for our first political training module in our organization's school, two men in civilian clothes arrived in a motorbike with no plates near the Loyola Center building in the Guadalupe de Tegucigalpa quarter, and, acting suspiciously, were filming the building and some of our schoolmates, who stood at the entrance.
  
  

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