Honduras update
(Compiled today by CIP Intern Hannah Brodlie)
- The Organization of American States delegation to Honduras has still not been permitted to enter the country. Costa Rican President Oscar Arias announced today that he will not be going to Tegucigalpa in protest, after speaking with Chilean advisor to the OAS, John Biehl, a longtime associate.
- Deposed President Manuel Zelaya met yesterday with an unknown representative from the Micheletti government. He said afterwards that the administration had taken “an extremely hard” stance and that the government’s positions were “totally outside any possibility of agreement.”
- Honduras continues to come up in world leaders' speeches at the United Nations General Assembly.
President of Paraguay Fernando Lugo Mendez: I must firmly express that the violent rupture of the constitutional process in Honduras, constitutes a tremendous step backwards for the re-democratization of Latin America. The golpistas and their accomplices who gave a ringing slap right in the face of the Continent’s democracy are responsible for the human sacrifices and the enormous civic deterioration that they have caused up until today. I express here the explicit solidarity, mine and of my people, with Manuel Zelaya and the people of Honduras, who are suffer this prehistoric coup with resistance and valor. President of El Salvador Carlos Mauricio Funes: We must end, together, any possibility of returning to the times of authoritarianism or of military or civil-military dictatorships. We must not permit the coup in Honduras to be a precedent that endangers the achieved successes in regards to the stability and regional democratic institutionality. The de-facto government of our brother country has ignored the clamor of the international community, that Honduras return as soon as possible to constitutional order, through dialogue and political negotiation, in a mark of full respect to Human Rights and and the fundamental liberties of the honduran people. While constitutionality is not reestablished in Honduras, via the immediate reinstitution of President Zelaya and the creation of national unity government under the spirit of the San Jose Accords, the electoral process being prepared in our brother country lacks legitimacy and the transparency necessary to ensure trustworthy results that can contribute to resolving the crisis in our brother country. President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner I must confess to you all that when I arrived to this city to participate in this Honorable Assembly, I had thought to begin my presentation with a strong appeal to the need to rebuild multilateralism and cooperation as the two basic instruments to be able to overcome what today constitutes, without a doubt, the central theme in the global discussion, which is the overcoming of the social and economic crisis. But some events that occurred, between Monday and Tuesday, made it so that I begin my presentation telling you all that in Tegucigalpa, Republica de Honduras, the Embassy of my country, the Argentine Republic, almost two days ago that they cut off the electricity. And it certainly is not for not having paid the bills, but rather for much more serious reasons: next to the Embassy of Argentina exists a television channel that would transmit the news of the arrival of President Zelaya to Honduras, of the repression, of the marches in favor of democratic reinstitution, and this has been one of the causes. We have had, in any case, more luck than the embassy of our sister Republic of Brazil, to which in the first few hours they not only cut off the electricity, but also the water, for sheltering the constitutional president Manuel Zelaya. I must tell you, as a Latin American, that not in Chile during the dictatorship of the General Pinochet, nor in Argentina during the dictatorship of general Jorge Rafael Videla, perhaps the two most bloody dictatorships of Latin America, was there similar behavior with embassies that actively work granting asylum to refugees.