[News] Honduras - Behind the Coup Regime Curtain

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Behind the Coup Regime Curtain

Posted by 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/al-giordano>Al 
Giordano - October 3, 2009 at 9:15 am
By Al Giordano
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3496/behind-coup-regime-curtain

D.R. 2009 Latuff, Special to The Narco News Bulletin.

Reading the international press wires from 
Honduras in recent days, too many give the 
impression that Honduras coup “president” Roberto 
Micheletti has lifted last Sunday’s decree that 
suspended constitutional rights of free speech, 
press, assembly, transit and due process.

No such thing has happened. The decree, in all 
its repressive brutality, is still in full force.

While a handful of far right wingnut US 
Congressmen visited the coup regime in 
Tegucigalpa yesterday blabbering about 
“democracy” and “freedom,” their favored regime's 
troops were busting up even the smallest 
nonviolent expressions of free speech a few blocks away in Tegucigalpa.

Here’s <http://www.milenio.com/node/295961>a 
ground-level report from yesterday by journalist 
(and Narco News contributor) Diego Osorno, who 
landed in Honduras this week as correspondent for 
the daily Milenio of Mexico City:

“One by one they gather until there are nineteen 
of them. If they become twenty, they would be 
violating the ‘State of Siege’ decree that has 
been law here in Honduras since last Sunday. That 
law punishes, with prison, all public 
demonstrations and criticisms of the de facto government.

“All of them are women, carring placards with 
grievances against Roberto Micheletti
 This was a 
symbolic protest at one of the five barricades 
that the Honduran Army erected around the 
Brazilian embassy, where President Manuel Zelaya 
has refuge. Some of the nineteen women are farmers and others are students


“Ten minutes later thirty police officers, who 
seemed to be looking for war, interrupted them. 
They carried firearms, tear gas grenade 
launchers, bulletproof vests, masks, shields and 
sticks to combat the modest demonstration.

“’Get out of here,’ the commander ordered.

“There are fewer than twenty of us, you can’t 
tell us to go,’ said one of the women


“’Get out already, Señora, out of here.’

“A dozen of the police placed themselves behind 
the women and began to push them toward the 
avenue, recriminated for violating the 
‘presidential decree,’ a euphemism for the 
restriction of civil rights throughout the country
”

Providing an example of what else these citizens 
in civil resistance are up against, the pro-coup 
media then takes the demonstrators’ attempt to 
remain within the coup decree’s 20-person limit 
on public assemblies, and portrays it as a sign 
that the resistance has lost steam. The daily 
Heraldo, for example, covered that same 
demonstration 
<http://www.elheraldo.hn/Especiales/Honduras%20en%20contra%20de%20la%20ilegalidad%20del%2004%20de%20septiembre%20de%202009/Ediciones/2009/10/03/Noticias/Manifestaciones-en-cercanias-de-la-Embajada>with 
these dishonest words:

“The security lines remain, and an important 
number of national and international journalists, 
and, of course, demonstrations, which are already 
almost insignificant for the number of participants.

“In yesterday’s case, in the morning hours, about 
ten members of feminist groups placed themselves 
in front of the Brazilian embassy, and the 
National Police asked them to voluntarily leave the area.”

The difference between those two conflicting news 
reports marks the distinction between a 
simulating media and authentic journalism. 
Because we already know the work of journalist 
Osorno, his faithfulness to the true facts, his 
attention to detail, his ability to count, and 
his long experience reporting from conflict zones 
such as the one outside the Brazilian embassy in 
Tegucigalpa, it’s crystal clear to us which of 
those versions more accurately portrayed what happened.

The daily newspapers owned by the coup-plotting 
oligarchs - in the daily Heraldo’s case it is 
owned by Jorge Canahuati Larach, who also heads 
the same Latin American Business Council (CEAL, 
in its Spanish initials) that hired US lobbyist 
Lanny Davis to lie and spin in defense of the 
coup regime from Washington, DC – every day’s 
publication brings another sick joke: a new way 
of distorting the events on the ground. In 
today’s Heraldo the efforts by members of the 
civil resistance to stay within the twenty-person 
limit on public assemblies imposed by the coup 
dictatorship is thus portrayed as supposed evidence of dwindling opposition.

Got it? A regime limits public assemblies to less 
than twenty participants, and when participants 
in the civil resistance attempt to creatively 
work around that limit, the regime's simulating 
media portrays their obedience to the letter of 
the decree as reflective of an alleged lack of support.

And yet the mere existence and continuance of the 
decree indicates that public opposition to the 
coup regime is so wide and overwhelming to it 
that only by suspending basic freedoms is the 
regime able to hang on to power for a little bit longer.

Most of the international media isn’t much 
better. Headlines in recent days have implied 
that the totalitarian decree has already been 
lifted. BBC: 
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8288241.stm>“Honduras 
Thaw Paves Way for Talks.” AP: 
<http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD9B3EQO00>“Signs 
of thaw in Honduras standoff.” Fox: 
<http://www.myfoxboston.com/dpp/news/international/Honduran_Regime_Says_It_Will_Restore_Rights_66953448>"Honduras 
Regime Says It Will Restore Rights.” These 
headlines and many others like them have been 
going on for five days now, and yet the decree 
remains in place. As with the doublespeak that 
shouts "the coup is not a coup," now we have the 
latest version: "the decree is not a decree." The 
sheer gullibility of the international media 
organizations that take dictation from a regime 
that has over more than three months demonstrated 
that it almost never does what it says it is 
doing provides yet another example of why 
journalism is in a crisis of credibility, and why 
its official outlets, having lost public trust, 
are increasingly an endangered species.

It’s possible that in the coming days, the coup 
regime may announce cancellation of the decree, 
in order to give one last dying gasp push to the 
illegitimate "elections" it has scheduled for 
November 29, but the smart reporters – in 
contrast to the dishonest or gullible ones - will 
look at the regime's deeds, not its hollow words, 
when assessing how to report the next media stunt.

Unless that announcement is accompanied by the 
immediate physical return of the transmitters and 
equipment of the TV and radio stations that the 
regime seized last Monday morning, the withdrawal 
of the police and military troops occupying those 
media offices, and the release of the political 
prisoners rounded up in the days since then, any 
announced cancellation of the decree will likewise be nothing but empty words.

Nothing suggests that the official media outlets 
will have learned by then to tell the whole truth 
and nothing but the truth. But – because 
<http://authenticjournalism.org>you make it 
possible - authentic journalists will still be on 
the ground, breaking the information blockade, 
letting you know what is really happening behind the coup regime curtain.




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