news update
May 2011
As we wrote in last month’s update, the teachers began striking in March when the Lobo administration announced plans to localize (“municipalize”) the public schools: handing them over to local municipalities. Many activists see this as an attempt to privatize public education as similar “municipalizations” of services like public water systems have led to the municipalities selling them to private contractors.
Due to the massive protests, the state has made massive use of the police to push back demonstrators and fight them with tear gas and water guns, as well as suspending hundreds of teachers from work and also arresting many of them; one protesting teacher has died so far. This aggressive response pulled even more teachers to the streets and intensified the protests. Many witnesses from Tegucigalpa and other big Honduran cities agree in denouncing recent months as being the most violent since the military coup in June 2009.
But even after the government finally backed down in April and accepted some of the teachers’ unions demands, the strike formerly ended, but the conflict is still not resolved: the law over the school municipalization is still pending. In the latest news, 50 teachers have gathered to start a hunger strike in front of the National Congress.
But despite these turbulent times and the increased repression, some other news also sends a ray of hope to all the activists of the FNRP (popular resistance movement) who are struggling to finally overcome the coup since 2009. The Honduran Supreme Court just declared null and void two court decisions against ousted President Manuel Zelaya for alleged corruption. This is a very important step on the way to finally allow Zelaya to come back to his country and join all the resisters from the FNRP in their struggle for a more just country, the end of repression and a new constitution.
In this monthly news bulletin:
1. Court Ruling Opens Way Home for Zelaya
2. Will teachers and government settle?
3. In Central America US-backed militaries arm the drug cartels?
4. Honduras among Hardest Hit by Food Crisis
5. Rights abuses may catch up with Aguán landowner
6. Peasants of the Aguan River Valley Surrounded and Attacked by Military and Police
7. Honduras: Challenge human rights abuses
1. Court Ruling Opens Way Home for Zelaya
Tegucigalpa, May 3 - A Supreme Court decision to annul judgments against former President Manuel Zelaya paved the way on Tuesday for his return to Honduras, almost two years after he was deposed by a coup.The Appeals Court on Monday declared null and void two court decisions against Zelaya for alleged corruption after soldiers conspired with the oligarchy to kidnap the president and take him to Costa Rica in June 2009.The court said it overturned the rulings because they were in violation of due process, given that the defendant was not able to have access to investigative and jurisdictional agencies to exercise his right to self-defense."That ruling is a first step for Zelaya to return home soon," Dagoberto Suazo, a member of the National Popular Resistance Front, told reporters.The Justice Ministry had accused Zelaya of contracting publicity illegally and diverting funds for a campaign to hold a referendum on constitutional reform. The referendum was planned for June 28, the same day as the coup.
Source: http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=285330&Itemid=1
2. Will teachers and government settle?
A meeting on April 14 between the Honduran government and teachers’ union representatives in Tegucigalpa seemed to be heading towards a settlement of a month-long national strike by 60,000 teachers over pension issues and a decentralization plan that they say would lead to privatization of the schools. The strike, which has continued with some interruptions since Mar. 7, has been characterized by militant demonstrations on the teachers’ side and violent repression from the police and military, with the death of an assistant principal at one protest and several attacks on journalists covering demonstrations. At least two government cabinet meetings included debates between ministers on the human rights situation and its possible effect on Honduras’ international standing
At the Apr. 14 meeting the teachers reportedly got the government to back down on the firings and substitutions of some striking teachers and the suspension of 702 others. According to Edwin Oliva, president of the Honduran Professional Guild of Teachers’ Improvement, there was also agreement on a new way of regulating the national public school system, on a new General Law of Education and on respect for the Statute of the Teacher, a sort of bill of rights for education workers. The government also agreed to release teachers who had been arrested in demonstrations, and to review the financial situation at the National Institute of Teachers’ Social Security (Inprema), which handles teachers' pensions and has been a subject of dispute between the government and the unions at least since last August. Issues that remained unresolved included the government’s monitoring committee for Inprema and deductions from teachers’ salaries for the days they were out.
Source: http://weeklynewsupdate.blogspot.com/2011_04_01_archive.html
See the 20-minute video, “Honduran Teachers Get Shock Treatment” http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=6635
In other news:
Honduran Teachers Resume Talks with Govt
Tegucigalpa, Apr 26 (Prensa Latina) Honduran teachers are expected to resume negotiations with government in the wake of President Porfirio Lobo’s announcement that he would take part in the talks
Minister of Strategy and Communication Miguel Angel Bonilla said the president is taking into account the teachers’ demands in order to put an end to the conflict. On April 15 the crisis with the teachers entered a period of goodwill when an agreement was reached with the Executive, proposing a new order in the national public education system, as well as a new General Education Law.Both parties expect the conflict will be resolved in two days. (http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=283558&Itemid=1)
Tegucigalpa, May 8 (Prensa Latina) Honduran teachers announced they would continue their hunger strike until the government reinstates the jobs of more than 300 suspended teachers. The teachers began their hunger strike on Wednesday.
At least 50 teachers from the capital have joined the strike, and teachers from other parts of the country are expected to arrive in the coming hours. The strikers are demanding the reinstatement of 305 teachers who were suspended for several months after participating in the protests of March and April. Also, they are demanding the payment of back wages, an end to the privatization of education (http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=286639&Itemid=1)
3. In Central America US-backed militaries arm the drug cartels?
Military officers in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador have been selling significant amounts of heavy weaponry to drug trafficking organizations in Colombia and Mexico, according to US diplomatic cables and criminal charges filed in a US court against a retired Salvadoran captain. The sales have been made possible by what US diplomats called "lax controls" by military authorities and also by the authorities' failure to bring criminal charges against officers who have been caught.
Some of these weapons were among those supplied by the US government to rightwing Central American armies at a time when they were fighting leftist rebels and social movements. The US is now spending $1.6 billion over a three-year period on a cooperation agreement known as the Mérida Initiative to fight drug trafficking in Central America and Mexico.
Secret US diplomatic cables from Oct. 2, 2008 and Oct. 17, 2008—released by the WikiLeaks group and acquired by McClatchy Newspapers—discuss 50 light anti-tank weapons (LAWs) that "were originally transferred to Honduras in 1992 as part of a US Foreign Military Sales program." The Honduran military cannot account for 26 of the 50 LAWS. According to the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), three of these weapons turned up Mexico City in January 2008, one was found in Ciudad Juárez in the northern Mexican state of Chihuahua in April 2008, and six were recovered in March 2008 on Colombia's San Andrés Island, east of Nicaragua's Atlantic coast.
Read more at: http://www.ww4report.com/node/9840
4. Honduras among Hardest Hit by Food Crisis
Tegucigalpa, May 4 (Prensa Latina) Honduras is considered one of the four Latin American countries most affected by the latest global food crisis, according to a report from the Inter-American Development Bank. The Honduran basic family basket is the most expensive in Central America, and the continuing increases in world prices will make it even more so, the report said.This rise in prices will also have an impact on the inflation rate, which will exceed five percent in 2011, bank experts affirmed.The other nations most affected are Bolivia, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala.According to the latest Inter-American Bank and UN statistics, current global prices have now broken the records of the previous food crisis in 2008.
Source http://www.plenglish.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=285599&Itemid=1
5. Rights abuses may catch up with Aguán landowner
On April 8 a German development bank, DEG, cancelled a previously approved loan to Grupo Dinant, a large Honduran company that produces snacks, other food products and cooking oil. Shortly afterwards, EDF Trading, a wholly-owned subsidiary of a French energy firm, cancelled a contract to buy carbon credits from a Dinant subsidiary, Exportadora del Atlántico, under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) for carbon trading. Although the two European companies didn’t explain why they were backing out of their Honduran deals, the moves appeared to result from an international campaign around allegations of human rights abuses in northern Honduras’ Lower Aguán Valley by Dinant’s founder, wealthy landowner Miguel Facussé Barjum.
Along with other big landowners, Facussé has been engaged in a longstanding, often bloody dispute over land in the Lower Aguán region claimed by campesino families living in the area. In a recent incident, five private guards killed five campesinos
A number of environmental and human rights organizations have been working to publicize Honduran activists’ charges of human rights violations by Facussé and Dinant. They are now putting pressure on the United Nation’s Clean Development Mechanism Executive Board to reject Dinant as a recipient of CDM carbon credits.
Read more at: http://www.ww4report.com/node/9813
6. Peasants of the Aguan River Valley Surrounded and Attacked by Military and Police
Lower Aguan Valley, Honduras: A strong contingent of military, police, and private security guards of the landowner and palm oil producer René Morales, have surround more than 300 peasant farmers from the cooperative La Trinidad, a member group of the Movimiento Auténtico Reivindicador de Campesinos del Aguán (MARCA). On April 30, these peasant families reoccupied the land, which they recognize as their own, and since then they have faced many attempts to remove them, leaving two people wounded.
“Fifteen minutes ago they stopped firing,” said Julián Hernández, one of the leaders of MARCA. “Soldiers from the Fifteenth Infantry Battalion, police and private security guards attacked us at five in the morning and tried to remove us from the land, but they couldn’t.”
“They fired on us with high-caliber weapons and we have two companions wounded. Hey have us surrounded, and we’ve been one week without being able to leave. Our food and water are running out, and at any moment they could attack us again,” Hernández explained with concern to the news agency SIREL.
More than sixteen years ago, the cooperatives associated with MARCA began legal action to recover the lands they recognize as their own and which, they claim, were usurped by René Morales, a Nicaraguan landowner and palm-oil producer.
In the face of the inefficiency, and in many cases, collusion with the landowners, of the judicial authorities, members of MARCA decided this past April 30 to recover the lands belonging to the cooperative La Trinidad, on the left bank of the Aguan River near Trujillo…
Read more at: http://climate-connections.org/2011/05/05/peasants-of-the-aguan-river-valley-surrounded-and-attacked-by-military-and-police/
7. Honduras: Challenge human rights abuses
As violence increases against human rights defenders, teachers, union leaders and others who oppose the Honduran government, three U.S. representatives have prepared the following "Dear Colleague" letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling for the U.S. government to take a stronger stance toward the Honduran government until it responds more adequately to the escalating violence. Please ask your US representative to sign this important letter.
We write to express our deep and continuing concerns about the protection of human rights, freedom of expression and the rule of law in Honduras. We urge you to ensure that U.S. policy towards Honduras is based on a more vigorous U.S. response in support of human rights. We share the concerns expressed by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in March 2011 regarding "the disproportionate use of force to quell public demonstrations against the policies of the current government, the lack of an independent judiciary and the situation of human rights defenders."
We are greatly concerned about the threats and violence directed against human rights defenders, activists, opposition leaders, members of the LGBT community and journalists in Honduras … As you are aware, the IACHR singled out Honduras in its 2010 Annual Report, released on April15, as one of four countries in the hemisphere whose human rights situation warrants special attention. Precautionary measures issued by the IACHR are generally not being implemented by Honduran authorities. Moreover, members of the security forces are implicated in many incidences of threats, harassment, attacks and extrajudicial executions.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) cites 10 journalists killed since March 2010 in total impunity… The International Federation of Journalists reported that 10 of 29 journalists killed in Latin America in 2010 were in Honduras, and along with CPJ, has named Honduras one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a journalist…
In March, nationwide protests by teachers, parents and students in reaction to proposed budget cuts and withholding of teachers' pension funds were met with excessive use of force by police. Widespread use of tear gas affected teachers, students, journalists and bystanders, and the Honduran human rights group COFADEH reported that tear gas canisters were being fired directly at protestors and that police used live bullets…
Read more at: http://www.maryknollogc.org/newsnotes/36.3/Honduras.html