The Second Honduran Coup Came Today Because the First One Failed

By Al Giordano

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

On the morning of June 28, coup regime soldiers stomped into the offices of Radio Globo and Channel 36 in Tegucigalpa and silenced their transmitters. The two networks filed court orders to be able to get back on the air. And for the past three months they’ve each been subject to written orders from the Honduras regime to cease broadcasting (the journalists, in turn, refused to be censored) and to paramilitary attacks that poured acid on their transmitters, and yet they and their journalists heroically got themselves back on the air rapidly.

On this morning, three months later, it was déjà vu all over again, as those same military troops reenacted the battle of June 28, busting down the doors of both broadcasters and this time removing their transmitters and equipment. And soldiers have surrounded both houses of media to prevent the people from retaking them.

This time, due to yesterday’s coup decree, there is no legal recourse for the journalists. Under the decree, if a judge even looks at a motion from those media, he, too, can be rounded up, arrested and detained. And if another media reports what happened, it, too, can be invaded and silenced by force.

Today’s “do over” of the June 28 Honduras coup proves two big truths.

First: that the original coup failed to establish control over the country and its people. More than 90 days of nonviolent resistance have demolished what little support the coup regime had inside and outside of Honduras, and left them only with their small core of oligarchs and security forces to defend their putsch against the majority.

And second: That despite all the regime’s Orwellian talk of how it was a “legal” coup, how it was executed to defend the Constitution, and how the continued broadcasting of critical media proved it was not a dictatorship, its intention all along was far more sinister: to erase democracy and its most basic freedoms in order to establish autocratic control by a few over 7.5 million Honduran citizens and the lush natural and human resources in that land.

A significant portion of the Honduran population has gone underground overnight. Tipped off that last night their homes would be raided and they would be hauled off to the soccer stadium in Tegucigalpa where the regime already holds at least 75 citizens incommunicado – reports of the use of torture are all the more credible because the regime won’t allow any attorney, doctor or human rights observer inside the stadium to inspect – other rank-and-file Hondurans opened their homes to resistance organizers throughout the country. They are hiding from the regime, but they are in constant contact with each other, and with our reporters.

Another part of last night’s wave of state terror came in the form of this provocation: Key human rights leaders and attorneys were notified anonymously of an alleged roundup of dissidents at a particular police station in the capital. They rushed down to look for the detainees, only to be greeted by the very nervous and heavily armed station police who had, simultaneously, received an anonymous phone call telling them that a mob was on its way there to burn down the station. Fortunatel
y, cooler minds prevailed and once the human rights attorneys explained to the police the message they had received, both sides figured out it was an attempt trick them into a violent confrontation.

That the regime has to try and fool and manipulate its own police forces provides an indication that not all of them are thrilled with the latest decree and events.

This is what the coup plotters always wanted: the prohibition of constitutional rights and total authoritarian power in their hands. They tried to have it both ways for three months – defending themselves to the world with their absurd “the coup is not a coup” doublespeak – but that failed. Now they’ve gone to Plan B, which unmasks them for what they are: terrorists, and enemies of democracy and freedom.

Their first coup failed in only three months. That’s why the date of September 28 now enters the history books as the second coup attempt in Honduras of 2009. The second resistance is out there, regrouping, figuring out its next moves, and when those moves come, probably soon, we’ll be reporting their words and deeds, despite the fact that the coup regime has also just made that reporting illegal, too.

Similarly, our longtime friend and colleague, the Brazilian cartoonist Latuff, author of the image above, doesn't take orders from golpistas either. Today he makes public his email address - carlos.latuff@gmail.com - and offers support and his talents at image-making to all members of the Honduran resistance as the next phase of the struggle begins.

The second coup - today's - came because the first one failed miserably, as this one will, too.

Fuente: narcosphere.narconews.com

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