Honduras Alerts #27, Day 20 of pro-democracy resistance
BELOW:
- Rights Action notes from Tegucigalpa
- Eye-witness report from July 16 road blocks
- Report: Peaceful Blockades vs. Coup Paralyze Honduras
- Article: “THE HIRED GUN OF ROBERTO MICHELETTI: TORTURER BILLY JOYA”
- Funds are very much needed and being put to good use
- Demands & What to do
FOR INFORMATION FROM HONDURAS, CONTACT:
Grahame Russell (Rights Action): info@rightsaction.org, [504] 9507-3835

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RIGHTS ACTION NOTES FROM TEGUCIGALPA
The amazing resistance of the Honduran pro-democracy movement continues on its 20th day, despite the poverty of the majority and their limited economic resources to carry forth with their protests, despite the repression of the armed forces and the increasing violent witch-hunt in the country; and despite the powerful array of forces against the return of President Zelaya, including most economic elites, most media, the army and police, the hierarchy of the catholic church, most member of congress, the courts …
History is being made, everyday, in Honduras – by and for the poor, and long-excluded (often repressed) majority of Honduras; this struggle at once being one more struggle of the poor, long-excluded and often repressed majority of Latin Americans.
Few if any in the popular movement have any trust in the efforts of Oscar Arias, though they respect the efforts to exhaust this avenue.
Tensions mount, as the popular movement continues to shut down the arteries of the country … read below.
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EYE-WITNESS REPORT FROM JULY 16th ROAD BLOCKS
From: Jonathan Treat [mailto:jonathantreat@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 11:43 PM
After nineteen tense days into the Honduran coup and another midnight to dawn curfew, pro-democracy/pro-Zelaya supporters organized mass mobilizations to close down major transportation arteries into Tegucigalpa for much of today.
While acknowledging the all-too-common practice to over or underestimate the size of demonstrations, depending on particular allegiances or editorial slants, a Reuters story today grossly underestimates the size of the crowds participating in today’s highway closures, writing that “demonstrations by hundreds of Zelaya followers… shut off the northern and southern entrances to the hill-ringed capital Tegucigalpa…”.
At the northern highway entrance to Tegucigalpa alone, there were several thousand demonstrators, being watched by several hundred of military and anti-riot police.
The crowd of demonstrators was well-organized and peaceful—even festive—as they chanted the national anthem and rallied to calls for unity against the de facto government that seized power on June 28 in a military coup.  That illegal takeover has been denounced by the United Nations, the Organization of American States, the European Economic Union and the Obama administration.
Indeed, the only tense moment witnessed by this reporter was when people in the crowd noted what appeared to be police or military sharpshooters positioned on a hillside above the demonstration.  When people in the crowd began pointing and shouting “asesinos!”, the gunman quickly retreated.  At that point, protest leaders attempted to diffuse the situation by announcing over loudspeakers that the demonstration was peaceful, not meant to provoke, and well within the rights guaranteed by the Honduran constitution.
A subsequent hike up the hillside confirmed the presence of armed soldiers monitoring the crowd below.
Protestors in Honduras have good reason to be gun-shy these days—on July 5 at least two people were killed when the military opened fire on a crowd who had gathered on July 5 at the Toncontín International Airport the military opened fire on crowds gathered to receive President Zelaya’s return.  When his flight was unable to land due to a military blockade of the runway, crowds turned angry, and soldiers brutally shot them with tear gas, rubber bullets and live rounds, killing  nineteen year- old Isis Oved Murillo, an unidentified boy estimated to be 8 years-old, and wounding countless others.
On July 11, unidentified gunmen killed two members of the Popular Bloc, a loose coalition of groups coordinating anti-coup protests.  The two murdered men, Roger Iván Bados and Ramón García, were also leaders of the Democratic Unification party, the only large political party that openly resists the de facto government.
In spite of the ominous message that those recent assassinations sends to Hondurans who oppose the military coup, today’s demonstrations made it clear that campesinos, peasants, indigenous peoples, workers, teachers and students—many of the country’s poorest and most marginalized—are determined in their struggle.
Pres. Zelaya’s social and economic reforms—such as an increase in the minimum wage, more spending on education and health care, and the reigning in of the impunity of local elites and transnational corporations—reflect a concrete intent to bring improvements, however modest, to their lives.
The crowds today were upbeat in spite of the daunting, dangerous situation they are facing, and determined not to step backwards--particularly if it means a return to a painful and murky past of oligarchies and military dictatorships.  They are speaking loudly and clearly—they want what the international community has unanimously stated they deserve—a return to the rule of law, and the immediate, safe return to power of  their legally-elected president.
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DAY 19: PEACEFUL BLOCKADES VS. COUP PARALYZE HONDURAS
Posted by Al Giordano (http://www.narconews.com/) - July 16, 2009
On a roadmap of Honduras, in the lower center is the capital city of Tegucigalpa, with only four routes connecting it to the rest of the country and the continent.
Narco News can confirm, together with reports in other media, that at least three of those four routes - the three most important - have been successfully shut down by peaceful occupations by a citizenry opposed to the coup d'etat regime, as well as vital arteries in the country's northern coastal regions.
The most important - which links Tegucigalpa to the second largest city, San Pedro Sula to the Northwest - is blocked five kilometers outside of the capital, in the town of El Durazno, reports the French Press Agency (AFP): "There are also blockades in the Eastern Highway, between Juticalpa and Limones (150 kilometer east of the Capital), between Santa Rosa de Copán and the borders of Guatemala and El Salvador (450 kilometers to the Northeast and in Choloma, in the highway to Puerto Cortés (250 kilometers to the north)..." (Chomula is an industrial center for multi-national sweatshops, where the workers have taken up the struggle to topple the coup regime.)
"All the protests will be peaceful," social leader Rafael Alegría told the pro-coup daily La Prensa. Israel Salinas of the United Workers Federation of Honduras (CUTH, in its Spanish initials), the largest bloc of labor unions in the country, confirmed earlier this morning that its members had targeted and would join in the blockades nationwide: “In Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and other areas where the conditions exist to execute these blockades at strategic points, that will be done." Hours later, the CUTH and other social organizations have complied with their promise.
La Prensa also confirmed: "The San Pedro Sula-Santa Rosa de Copán Highway is blocked at Gracias Lempira." Radio Globo just confirmed that report, counting the blockaders "in the thousands."  Reporter Brian Flores of the daily El Libertador in Tegucigalpa phoned in to Radio Progreso to confirm that the highway southbound from Tegucigalpa toward El Salvador is totally cut-off.  Radio Globo confirms that the northern, southern and western routes from and to Tegucigalpa are paralyzed.
Union organizations in Nicaragua and El Salvador have announced that they will close the border routes with Honduras in solidarity with the Honduran blockades.
If you study the map, of the few highways in Honduras that connect its commercial centers, the confirmed reports indicate that the popular protests have already shut down the veins and arteries of country's economy. It is highly likely that other roads and highways are also now under blockade, but we are taking great pains to report only those ones upon which we have been able to confirm. Readers unfamiliar with the condition of secondary roads in Honduras may not be aware that once one of these main highways is shut down, there are no alternate routes.
This is the strategy that, from 2003 to 2005, toppled three repressive presidents in the nation of Bolivia, one after the other.
Update 2:14 p.m. ET, 12:14 p.m. in Tegucigalpa: AP has a report in Spanish confirming much of this information. Rafael Alegria of Via Campesina - one of the 30 social organizations participating in the blockades – tells reporters: "You can verify, here, that there is not a single machete knife, pistol or rifle. This is a peaceful march."
Update 2:25 p.m. ET, 12:25 p.m. in Tegucigalpa: in the highway to Catacamas (in the eastern part of the map), a coup military convoy plowed forward over the peaceful blockaders and one of its trucks ran over two people, according to a live report right now on Radio Globo.
2:36 p.m. ET, 12:36 p.m. in Tegucigalpa: Prensa Latina reports that among the locations to which the blockade has successfully closed ingress and egress is the national park at Copán, site of excavated Mayan ruins and the crown jewel of Honduran tourism.
2:40 p.m. ET, 12:40 p.m. in Tegucigalpa: Congressman and presidential candidate in the upcoming November 29 elections Cesar Ham, exiled under death threats from the coup regime (and errantly reported dead for some hours in the early days of the coup) has just landed at the Toncontin International Airport. "We have returned anew with much enthusiasm and desire to accompany our people to reestablish the democratic order in our country and to demand the immediate and unconditional return of President Zelaya," he told reporters upon arrival.
4:09 p.m. ET, 2:09 p.m. in Tegucigalpa: The human rights organization Comité para la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos en Honduras (Cofadeh) reports that between the coup of June 28 and July 11, the regime committed more than 1,000 documented violations of the human rights of citizens. The 1,155 documented violations 1,046 illegal arrests of Honduran citizens. Those numbers include only very serious cases, and only those that the human rights organization has been able to document, and do not include acts of intimidation and threats, which have also been widespread.
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THE HIRED GUN OF ROBERTO MICHELETTI: HISTORY OF THE TORTURER BILLY JOYA AMÉNDOLA
by Gennaro Carotenuto, Giornalismo Partecipativo. Translation by Adrienne Pine, Wednesday, 15 July 2009, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1993/68/
The blood of those who lived through the dirty wars of the 80s in Central America will freeze on hearing the news that the special adviser to the de facto Honduran president is named Billy Joya Améndola.
In order to understand the political culture of the coup junta over which Roberto Michalatti resides is necessary to review the CV of Joya Améndola.
In the 80s Billy Joya Améndola was one of the principal leaders of the Intelligence Battalion 316, in charge of the kidnapping and disappearance of political opponents and founder of the "Lince" and "Cobra" death squads. In this capacity he became one of the principal perpetrators of kidnappings, tortures and assassinations in Honduras, and he has been accused with certainty of at least eleven extrajudicial executions under the pseudonym "Doctor Arranzola."
Furthermore, he is accused of the kidnapping and torture of six students, four of which continue to be disappeared. The students were kidnapped the 27th of April of 1982 from the house of the assistant of the Attorney General of the country, Rafael Rivera, violating the immunity of the second most powerful judge in the country, using methods from the Argentinian dictatorship.
Even if there isn't definitive proof that Joya Améndola received instruction in the United States, there is proof that he worked in Argentina under the orders of one of the principal repressors, Guillermo Suárez Mason, known among other things for being the principal organizer of child-kidnappings during the last Argentinian dictatorship. Furthermore he obtained a scholarship from the Honduran army to study in Augusto Pinochet's Chile.
Afterwards, from 1984 to 1991 he served as a go-between for the Honduran army, the Argentinian repressors and the United Statesians during the dirty war.
The Spanish government has sought the extradition of Joya Améndola various times since 1985 through Interpol, but nonetheless the Honduran judicial system (the same one that has filed 18 legal complaints against Mel Zelaya) never once responded. Despite this, when a judge in Tegucigalpa accused him of kidnapping and torture in 1994 and issued an arrest order for him in 1995, it was in Spain where he took refuge and remained as an asylum applicant until he was expelled in 1998. During those years he worked as a catechizer in a school in Seville.
Today he is the right arm of Roberto Micheletti.
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WHAT TO DO:
AMERICANS AND CANADIANS SHOULD CONTACT YOUR OWN MEDIA, MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, SENATORS & MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT, TO DEMAND:
• unequivocal denunciation of the military coup
• no recognition of this military coup and the ‘de facto’ government of Roberto Micheletti
• unconditional return of the entire constitutional government
• concrete economic, military and diplomatic sanctions against the coup regime
• respect for safety and human rights of all Hondurans
• application of international and national justice against the coup plotters, and
• reparations for the illegal actions and rights violations committed during this illegal coup
FUNDS ARE VERY MUCH NEEDED FOR THE ‘PRO-DEMOCRACY’, EMERGENCY RESPONSE IN HONDURAS:
Rights Action staff in Honduras are providing emergency relief funds, every day, to community development, campesino, indigenous and human rights organizations for: food and shelter, transportation and communication, urgent action outreach and human rights accompaniment work. Make tax deductible donations to Rights Action and mail to:
UNITED STATES:  Box 50887, Washington DC, 20091-0887
CANADA:  552-351 Queen St. E, Toronto ON, M5A-1T8
CREDIT-CARD DONATIONS: http://rightsaction.org/contributions.htm

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