Report Back from the SOA Watch Honduras Delegation: Honduras is Open for Plunder May 12, 2011
Posted by rogerhollander in Honduras, Human Rights, Latin America.Tags: extrajudicial executions, Honduras, honduras coup, honduras government, honduras military, honduras repression, human rights, porfirio lobo, roger hollander, School of the Americas, soa, soa watch, violent repression
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This photo says it all. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledging US taxpayer dollars and support for the illegal and repressive regime of Porfirio Lobo in Honduras. The American taxpayer is financing the repression you will read about below. SHAME
Honduras is Open for Business Plunder
A delegation of ten SOA Watch activists, accompanied by Fr. Roy Bourgeois, has just returned from Honduras, a country devastated by a 2009 coup led by SOA graduates. Over nine days the delegation met with with a broad spectrum of society in the capital, as well as in towns and farms on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts.
From start to finish the days were marked by testimonies of extrajudicial executions, violent repression, death threat and harassment aimed at individuals and sectors of society opposing the coup and current illegal regime of Porfirio Lobo.
From our first morning – when a body was dumped at the headquarters of the striking teacher´s union – to just hours before our departure flight, when we learned of a campesino deaths in a community we visited, the days unfolded with a litany of tragedy. There were, quite simply, not enough hours in the day to meet with the numbers of people and organizations that wanted to share with us their concerns and fears.
As we prepare to leave, we find ourselves profoundly concerned by this increase in human rights violations, the involvement of government security forces, and the total impunity that reigns in the country. The severity and extent of repression of the Lobo regime in recent months exceeds that of the 
first weeks under the initial coup regime of Micheletti.
We are especially concerned about the clear complicity between government security forces and the private security guards that protect large landowners and corporations. The country´s wealthiest citizens are literally locked in a battle with the poorest ones, using Honduran security forces to do their dirty work. All this is made possible because of guns, tear gas, tanks and ammunition purchased with US aid to the country´s military and police.
Finally, we return in awe of the extraordinarily brave and profoundly committed community of human rights activists in Honduras. We feel a renewed commitment as an SOA Watch movement to accompany the Honduran people in their struggle for dignity and for life.
Please read more about the delegation in Lisa Sullivan’s report , “Honduras is Open for Business Plunder”
For more information about upcoming delegations to Costa Rica, Colombia and Haiti, email Lisa Sullivan at LSullivan@soaw.org
Urge your Representative to also pressure President Obama to shut down the School of the Americas (SOA/ WHINSEC) by executive order and to also sign on to the Congressional sign-on letter to Secretary of State Clinton regarding the situation in Honduras.
This article calls Lobo’s presidency an “illegal and repressive regime”.
It claims that:
“The severity and extent of repression of the Lobo regime in recent months exceeds that of the first weeks under the initial coup regime of Micheletti.”
This is clearly ridiculous to anyone who is informed. How many radio stations has Lobo shut down? How many curfews has he instituted? How many prostests has he forbidden?
I hope your readers take the trouble to challenge your point of view and not accept it blindly.