How time flies. A little over two weeks since the last post. And this will be brief.
The main story is violence against teachers. HSN (that’s Honduran Solidarity, not Home Shopping) reports here in Upside Down World:
On Friday, Aug. 27, police and military troops surrounded the National Pedagogical University, responding to thousands of teachers and members of trade unions, peasant organizations and other organizations supportive of the teachers gathered on the university grounds. The police and military forces sprayed tear gas from trucks and beat protesters with truncheons before firing canisters of tear gas into the University grounds. As people were overcome by the gas and tried to leave, they were beaten and many detained. Among the injured were two well-known reporters from Radio Globo, one of the few independent radio stations in the country. Among those seriously affected by the gas were a number of children and pregnant women.
On Thursday, the police and military attacked the same group at a massive protest near the presidential residency…
Adrienne, of course, has been giving the issue plenty of play (here, linking to a Xinhua police riot slideshow; more photos here; an article by Feminists in Resistance on the attack on non-university teachers here; a picture of a van used by paramilitary troops to fire on teachers here; film of demonstrators clashing with police outside the presidential palace here). RNS has a bit more here on the absurd charges that the teachers’ strike is being promoted by foreign influence. Also see Karen Spring. And a number of institutions remain occupied and on strike.
RAJ also has this article on the role of money in the coup d’etat:
Yesterday, El Libertador published a formal statement by the Frente de Resistencia about the “harmful contracts for renewable energy” granted to “the golpista oligarchy”. The contracts in question are for thermal generation of electricity. The Honduran National Congress has, according to this report, approved the concession of more than 50 watersheds for this purpose to private companies….
El Libertador claims that the concessions for energy generation rely on forged signatures of mayors of affected towns, and thus that they were “negotiated” without consultation of the citizenry.
Another very important story is the murder of a journalist. He’s the tenth killed this year by AP’s count, but the ninth since March according to the Committee to Protect Journalists :
Honduran radio reporter Israel Zelaya Díaz was found shot to death on Tuesday along a rural road near the northern city of San Pedro Sula, the latest in an alarming string of journalist murders in the country….
Zelaya, 56, a radio reporter for the San Pedro Sula-based broadcaster Radio Internacional, was last seen alive on Tuesday around 2 p.m. as he was talking with a man in a taxi at a gas station, the daily Tiempo reported. Local police found Zelaya’s body later that day with two bullet wounds to the head and one to the chest…
Why, it’s so bad The Miami Herald woke briefly from its snooze to condemn the slaughter (via Adrienne). And UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova has also called on Honduras to do, well, something.
And God has been letting the air out of Brother John’s tires in order to introduce him to some very nice people. Brother John noted this article at a MilNews site, Black Anthem, on the US charm offensive against Guadalupe Carney. Who, if not African American, names their website Black Anthem? Someone who loves metal, I guess. Adrienne thinks this limited assistance was targeted on Guadalupe Carney because it’s a resistance center. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a means to do some snooping.
The Resistance has collected 1 million signatures in favor of a Constitutional Convention, according to El Libertador. The head of the police agency DNIC, Walter Romero, died in a hail of 27 gunshots in San Pedro Sula. The human rights group COFADEH claims that death squads reminiscent of the Mano Blanca 14/-88 have emerged, with torture prisons in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. The Mano Blanca first appeared in Guatemala in 1966. The Secretary General of the farmers’ rights group ANACH, 45 year old Santos Remigio Ávila was murdered with a shot to the head. Radio Uno in San Pedro Sula was forced off the air by sabotage of its electrical system.
There’s more but, alas, no more time.
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Added: It should be noted that Guadalupe Carney is named for the Jesuit priest, Father Carney, known as Guadalupe. He was disappeared permanently in that Contra wars. The penny hadn’t dropped on this for me until I was trying to figure out exactly where it is (near Trujillo, which is on the northern coast near Roatan), which happens to be nowhere near where US troops would have a relationship with the community. Also an interesting fact: Google Maps refuses to call it Guadalupe Carney.
