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<h1><b>Seven Million Hondurans Under House Arrest as Micheletti Writes of
"Democracy</b></h1><font size=3>September 22, 2009 at 1:52 pm<br>
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<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3444/seven-million-hondurans-under-house-arrest-micheletti-writes-democracy" eudora="autourl">
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3444/seven-million-hondurans-under-house-arrest-micheletti-writes-democracy<br>
<br>
</a></font><font size=3>By Al Giordano<br><br>
<img src="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/userfiles/embassy1.jpeg" width=600 height=400 alt="[]">
<br><br>
<i>Hondurans in civil resistance surrounded the Brazilian Embassy in
Tegucigalpa yesterday to greet their returning president. This morning,
coup regime troops attacked them violently, sending 24 wounded to
hospitals. D.R. 2009 Mariachiloko, Chiapas Indymedia.<br><br>
</i>The Honduran coup regime’s 26-hour martial curfew upon the entire
country effectively places 7.5 million Honduran citizens – men, women,
children and elders – under house arrest. They are prohibited from going
to work, to the store, or to walk down the street to visit a neighbor.
Anybody on the street is subject to arrest, for violation of the
curfew.<br><br>
If this happened to you, what would you call it?<br><br>
The stated pretext for this heavy handed maneuver is nothing more or less
than that the regime, its “president,” and its security forces have been
embarrassed before their countrymen and the world. Yesterday morning’s
claims by coup “president” Roberto Micheletti that news reports could not
possibly be true that legitimate President Manuel Zelaya was back in
town, that the regime’s intelligence forces had his every step followed
and “knew” he was “in a hotel suite in Managua,” became egg on
Micheletti’s face when Zelaya appeared from the rooftop of the Brazilian
Embassy in Tegucigalpa yesterday to greet a multitude of citizens that
want their elected president restored.<br><br>
The military curfew has no practical reason. It will not bring the
expulsion, anew, of Zelaya from national territory. It will not hasten
his capture by the regime. And it does not make the regime any more
legitimate. To the contrary, it demonstrates, again, its repressive,
anti-democratic and usurper character. It is a desperate act meant to
punish the entire Honduran people for, after 86 days, not “getting with
the program” and backing the coup. It is a tantrum by the man-child
Micheletti to lash out and insist, “I’m in charge, here,” but it only
serves to underscore, again, that he is not in control of the country or
its people.<br><br>
Thousands violated the curfew blatantly last night keeping watch outside
the Brazilian Embassy. In the morning, the coup’s security forces
entered, shot tear gas canisters at the crowd (and over the Embassy wall)
and violently attacked the peaceful protesters. Local hospitals report 24
wounded from the invasion. National Police, additionally, waged a
separate attack on the human rights organization COFADEH (family members
of the disappeared and detained) at 8 a.m. this morning, launching tear
gas missiles through its glass windows.<br><br>
Radio Globo now reports that the same Supreme Court that contorted the
Honduran Constitution to create a legaloid curtain around the June 28
coup d’etat is now meeting to cook up its latest kangaroo jump: a court
order to invade the Embassy – under International Law, Brazilian
territory – to capture (or assassinate) President Zelaya. So large and
irrational is the regime’s obsession with the presence of one solitary
man in the country that it confines every citizen to his and her home and
tears up the Constitution, again.<br><br>
In a whining attempt to claim victory out of what is the coup regime’s
single most stunning defeat to date, Micheletti had his US handler Lanny
Davis whip up an
<a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/21/AR2009092103111.html">
op ed column</a> published last night in the Washington Post. Here’s a
quick translation from its hurried English to plain talk: <i>“I did
nothing wrong and why doesn’t anybody in the world understand me?”</i> It
is the speech of a child to mommy and daddy after he is caught stealing
from the candy store again. From the first sentence, when he complains
that, “Manuel Zelaya has surreptitiously returned to Honduras,”
Micheletti seems to think that the world has forgotten that Zelaya very
openly attempted to enter his own country twice this summer – announcing
where and when in advance – and it was Micheletti who blocked an airport
runway and sent troops to the border to keep the elected president out,
even as he insisted that he wanted to place Zelaya under arrest.<br><br>
“The international community has wrongfully condemned the events of June
28 and mistakenly labeled our country as undemocratic,” Micheletti
lamented at the very hour he was ordering the 26 hour curfew. How could
anybody possibly think that a warden that orders 7.5 million people to
remain locked in their homes could somehow be “undemocratic?”<br><br>
“Coups do not allow freedom of assembly, either. They do not guarantee
freedom of the press, much less a respect for human rights,” wrote
Micheletti, as his troops readied this morning’s attack on a free
assembly and a human rights office, and just hours after he accused
independent TV and radio stations of “media terrorism” for having
reported the truth that Zelaya had returned (see Belén Fernández’s
related report from Tegucigalpa today:
<a href="http://narconews.com/Issue60/article3820.html">Radio Globo and
Channel 36 Announce the Return of Zelaya</a>).<br><br>
Micheletti’s column is easily recognizable to readers in the United
States as coming from the same script that his lobbyist Lanny Davis used
last year to insist, long after Secretary Clinton had lost the Democratic
presidential nomination, that she was, in fact, winning. And it comes off
just as pathetically.<br><br>
Meanwhile, in the regime he calls a “democracy,” seven and a half million
people are confined to their homes. Micheletti isn’t a “president.” He’s
a two bit warden, coming to grips with the painful reality that he is
neither a head of state, nor ready for prime time.<br><br>
<b>Update 2:46 p.m. Tegucigalpa (4:46 p.m. ET): </b>Further showing his
grand commitment to "democracy" and law, Micheletti's security
forces are presently reading the search and seizure order through a
megaphone to the Brazilian Embassy. It could be a bluff, but if Zelaya
doesn't fall for it (and The Field predicts he won't), and the coup
troops invade the Embassy, all hell is going to break loose on an
international level, just as the United Nations General Assembly begins
its most important session of the year in New York.<br><br>
Brazil's foreign minister, in New York, has called for an emergency
meeting of the UN Security Council. The US State Department has called on
the de facto regime to respect Brazilian territory, as President Obama
has just appointed US Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA), leader in the US
Congress against the Honduran coup, to the US delegation at the UN
session, perhaps an indication of some plans afoot up there.<br><br>
Is the coup regime <i>that</i> desperate and stupid to commit an act of
war against Brazilian territory? (Two words to ponder: Blue helmets.)
We'll shortly find out, and report it here.<br><br>
<b>3:18 p.m.:</b> Micheletti
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/africaCrisis/idUSN22485448">
blinks</a>:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>Honduras' de facto leader, Roberto Micheletti, said on Tuesday he has
no intention of confronting Brazil or entering its embassy where ousted
President Manuel Zelaya has taken refuge to avoid arrest.<br><br>
<dd>"We will do absolutely nothing to confront another brotherly
nation. We we want them to understand that they should give him political
asylum (in Brazil) or turn him over to Honduran authorities to be
tried," Micheletti told Reuters.<br><br>
</dl>Meanwhile, at least two popular barrios in and around Tegucigalpa
have defied, en masse, the curfew order and chased National Police out of
their communities: El Pedregal and Colonia Kennedy. They've erected
barricades and declared the coup regime and its security forces non
grata.<br><br>
<br><br>
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