Oscar Arias’ first proposal, unveiled on Saturday, July 18, called for the return of Zelaya as President, limited amnesty for all parties, moving up elections by a month (from November to October), forming a government of national unity, new procedures to ensure the upcoming vote is free and fair, guaranteeing the personal safety of both sides, renouncing any attempt to carry out a referendum to amend the constitution and allowing an international body to monitor implementation of the agreement.

The Zelaya supporters I spoke to in Honduras were opposed to the plan. They did not even sanction the idea of talking to the coup leaders, they didn’t trust Arias and they didn’t want Zelaya to make concessions. “The Organization of American States called for Zelaya’s unconditional return, unconditional; that’s what we want,” said campesino organizer Carlos Zepeda.

To the shock of many both in Honduras and the international community, however, Zelaya agreed to the proposal. But it was rejected by the coup leaders.

Arias then asked for another 72 hours. Again, to the amazement of many, Zelaya agreed.

The international community began putting the screws on the leader of the coup government, Roberto Micheletti. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called him on Sunday, stressing “the potential consequences of the failure to take advantage of this mediation.” The European Union announced that it had suspended about $90 million in aid. In addition, the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank suspended $400 million in aid.

On Wednesday, July 22, when the time ran out, Arias announced another proposal. Like the previous one, it contained the basic premise that Zelaya would return to his duly-elected position as president. The Micheletti government stood firm, vowing that Zelaya will never return as president. And while the peace plan posited that for at least six months, there would be no political prosecutions for people on both sides of the coup, the Honduran Supreme Court said it would not offer amnesty to Zelaya. [The Court had ruled that Zelaya’s attempt to hold a non-binding poll about rewriting the Constitution was illegal.)

Micheletti’s negotiators asked for more time, but Zelaya, for good reason, has had enough. He insists that he will return this weekend. His last attempt to return home, by plane, was met with military tanks blocking the runway. This time, it appears he will return by land. While he has not said whether he will enter via Guatemala, El Salvador or Nicaragua, he has asked his supporters to amass at the borders to receive him. Zelaya’s supporters are ready for his return. Every day since the coup, thousands upon thousands of them have taken the streets. They have been risking their lives confronting the military and powerful elite who have derailed their democracy.

The U.S. government, instead of working with Zelaya to ensure his safe return (the U.S. has 400 soldiers stationed at the Palmerola base in Honduras), warned him not to go back because it could lead to violence. This is, unfortunately, consistent with the U.S. position of talking a good line but doing little.

“The Obama administration has condemned the coup and cut off military aid, but that’s not enough,” said Honduran women’s rights leader Sara Elisa Rosales. “The U.S. could have recalled its ambassador, as the European and Latin American governments did. It could have frozen the assets of the coup leaders and denied them U.S. visas. It could have cut all financial aid. And it could have imposed a trade embargo. In fact, if the U.S. cut commercial ties with Honduras, the coup would fall in a day.”

It’s time for the U.S. government to stop coddling the thugs who have taken over the Presidential Palace at gunpoint. It’s time to cut all ties with coup leaders and help President Zelaya return home immediately. No more mediation. No more compromises. We must make it clear that in the 21st century, the world will not tolerate coup d’etats. We should be standing shoulder to shoulder with Zelaya’s supporters to welcome him home.

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is co-founder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org <http://www.codepinkalert.org> ). She is author of Don’t Be Afraid Gringo: A Honduran Woman Speaks from the Heart.

“Our president’s coming home today, this is going to be a great day,” said Jose Rodriguez, a campesino who came from Santa Barbara with his farmer’s group to join the anti-coup movement. The military tried to stop them from getting to the capital, so they had to divide up and take local buses from town to town. “It took us two days to get here, and we slept outside in the forest last night, but we had to be here,” Rodriguez said.

A group of young girls came with their church from Olancho. They were determined to greet Zelaya, who they said was sent by God to be president. “The Cardinal is against our president, but he doesn’t represent many of us in the religious community. Our pastor is against the coup and so are we,” said Alejandra Fernandez, a 23-year-old university student.

I asked why she supported Manuel Zelaya, or “Mel”, as his supporters call him. “The government said he broke the law and is guilty of 18 crimes,” she said. “Do you know what they are?” She pulled out her cell phone and started to read from a list: He raised the minimum wage, gave out free school lunches, provided milk for the babies and pensions for the elderly, distributed energy-saving light bulbs, decreased the price of public transportation, made more scholarships available for students.

Suddenly a crowd gathered around us and started chiming in. “He fixed the roads,” said one. “He put schools in remote rural areas, like my little village, that never had them before,” added another. “He let anyone go into the Presidential Palace and converted it from an elite residence to the people’s house,” said another.

“You see?” Alejandra smiled. “He is guilty of even more then 18 crimes. That’s why the elite classes can’t stand him and why we want him back. This is really a class struggle.”

The march wound its way through the streets of Tegucigalpa, gathering more and more people along the way. The massive crowd sang and chanted slogans like “No somos cinco, no somos cien. Prensa vendida, cuentenos bien” (We’re not five, we’re not 100, you sold-out press, count us well”) —referring to the fact that the mainstream press has been ignoring or grossly undercounting the movement that had been holding street demonstrations every day since the June 28 coup.

“I’ve never had anything like this in my lifetime,” said an ecstatic Miriam Nunez, a 46-year-old teacher from Tegucigalpa. “Look around you — you can’t even see the beginning or the end of this march! It’s full of teachers, students, campesinos, union workers, indigenous people. One thing the coup succeeded in doing is bringing together the social movements in a way that never exited before in this country.”

What made the march particularly exciting is that as it approached the airport, there were rows and rows of soldiers and police in riot gear blocking their path. Each time the security forces tried to stop the crowd, there would be negotiations with the police, who would finally back down and allow the protesters to get closer and closer to the airport.

Luis Sosa, a university professor and anti-coup leader, was one of those negotiating with Police Commissioner Mendosa. “Mendosa and I went to school together 20 years ago and we play soccer together every Sunday. So he knows that if his men get rough with us, there will be hell to pay next Sunday,” laughed Sosa. “But seriously, we’re trying hard to maintain discipline among our ranks — taking sticks and rocks away from people who want to provoke violence — and the police say that as long as we are peaceful, they’ll let us go all the way to the airport.”

Sure enough, the crowd made it to the airport peacefully and waited patiently for Zelaya’s plane to arrive. Suddenly, a plane flew in low and circled around the airport. The crowd went wild, cheering and jumping up and down, but became angry when they saw that the plane was not able to land. Military vehicles and soldiers were on the runway, making it impossible for the pilot to maneuver safely.

On the far end of the airport, a group of mostly young people tried to get through the fence to make their way to the tarmac. According to Al Jazeera cameramen Alfredo Delara, some of them started throwing stones and bottles at security forces. The troops responded by lobbying tear gas and then firing their weapons in the air. Suddenly, at least one soldier pointed his weapon directly at the crowd.

“A young boy was hit right in the head, his brains gushing out; he was killed instantly,” said Delara. “His mother came running, screaming hysterically ‘My son, my son, they’ve killed my son.’” Others in the crowd were wounded and it was reported that another person was killed.

Between the violence and the fact that President Zelaya was forced to fly on to El Salvador, the crowd became despondent. The organizers tried to keep up their hopes. “Perhaps the United Nations will send peacekeepers,” one of the leaders shouted through the sound system. The crowd cheered and yelled, “We want the blue helmuts, we want the blue helmuts.”

“Can you believe this?” asked indigenous leader Berta Caceres, her eyes welling up with tears. “Now they are killing our people. Where will this end? We need the international community to step in and stop the crazy people who have stolen our country.”

Meanwhile, another piece of news circulated—that the government had just moved up the curfew from 10pm to 6:30pm. The crowd rushed to disperse, fearing they could be arrested for violating the curfew. But they vowed to keep up the fight. “We will be marching again tomorrow, come join us,” the leaders announced. “This struggle is not over.”

“If they think that were are going to give up, they are badly mistaken,” Caceres said. “The events of today make us more determined than ever to overthrow this terrible coup.”

Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of Global Exchange (www.globalexchange.org) and CODEPINK: Women for Peace (www.codepinkalert.org ). She is part of a delegation an International Emergency Delegation to Honduras that includes members of Nonviolence International, Global Exchange, CODEPINK and Rights Action. For more information or to join the delegation, contact Andres@nvintl.net.

We started out with a briefing by the Network of Sustainable Development (Red de Desarrollo Sostenible) a 15-year-old organization devoted to the exchange of information about sustainable development. It has now become a center for exchanging information about the coup. Using blogspot, facebook, twitter, myspace, flickr and youtube, the Network’s network is abuzz with hour-by-hour accounts of political developments. Their communication system has become a critical way for Hondurans to get information, since the coup leaders have muzzled the press.

The Network has a history of being objective and staying above politics, but the staff is outraged by the coup. “This was just over the top,” said National Coordinator Raquel Isaura, who is being targeted by the right for some anti-coup internet messages posted under her name. “A military coup in this day and age must be condemned by all sectors of civil society.”

Like many Hondurans, Network Director Candalario Reyes Garcia is deeply worried about the future. “In the 80s we were terrorized by the death squads called Batallion 316. These same death squad leaders are still in the military today and if they take control of this country, we’re in for some truly dark days ahead.”

Demonstrations against the coup have been taking place all over the country, but they are not reported in the news and protesters are beaten and tear-gassed by the military. Some movement leaders have been arrested, others are in hiding. The military has also prevented demonstrators from converging on the capital, Tegucigalpa. We met Juan Amilcar Colindres, a professor at the National University of Agriculture in Catacamas. The day after the June 28 coup, he helped organize 8 busloads of people—students, professors, community members—to go protest in front of the Presidential Palace. They were stopped enroute by the military, who insisted that they turn back and ended up shooting at the bus tires to disable the vehicles. “When the soldiers started shooting, people ran into the woods, terrified. The military destroyed 13 tires and we had to pay over $1,500 to repair the buses. Worst of all, we were never able to reach the capital to demand the return of President Zelaya. The same thing has happened to groups all over the country.”

When I asked Colindres why his group supported Zelaya, he said that for the first time in decades, the government of President Zelaya increased the budget for public universities and increased scholarships for the students. “We have a lot of poor students who were helped by this government. We don’t want the elite to take back the government and use it, as they have in the past, to enrich themselves and impoverish the people.”

Our last visit of the day, which went on for hours, was a fascinating gathering with members of the indigenous community, Lencas and Garifanos. This group was lucky to have made it to the capital, where they are camping out in a school auditorium. Entire families, from babies to grandmas, participate in roving protests every day. They keep moving so the military doesn’t know where they will be from one day to the next.

One by one, these very humble and poor people told us about their situation, their beliefs, their fears and their dreams. Valentina Dominquez, a primary school teacher, said, “Our people are suffering from poverty, and President Zelaya tried to help. He raised the minimum wage and in the schools, he made sure that all the children were given snacks. He made school registration free and increased programs to help the 20% of Hondurans who don’t know how to read or write. That’s why we made our way to Tegucigalpa to defend his government and overturn the coup. But we are repressed by the military and have no one to defend us but God,” she cried. “That’s why we need help from the outside community.”

Teresa Reyes, with the organization of black Hondurans called OFRANEH, said this new regime was terrorizing the people. “On the day of the coup, they cut the electricity, blacked out the news, and told us not to leave our houses. We were scared, we are scared, and we’re exhausted—some of us have been walking for days to get here. But even so, we were determined to keep protesting.”

Salvador Zuniga, one of the heads of the Civil Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH), talked about the extreme poverty and illiteracy in Honduras, and the desire of poor communities to participate in determining how the nation’s resources are used and distributed. Honduras is notorious for a small group of families controlling most of the resources, from the media to the mines. “With the vote that was supposed to take place on Sunday, President Zelaya simply wanted to ask the people if they liked the idea of rewriting the Constitution, of setting up a new legal framework for determining how decisions get made. The powerful elite in this country was terrified that this process would result in a new economic model at the service of the people, as we have been seeing in other countries of Latin America. That’s why they organized the coup, to maintain their stranglehold on the economy.”

Melicio Intibuca, an elderly farmer, was terrified that Honduras would revert to the past days of military dictators.  “If Zelaya doesn’t return, the repression will get worse. These people don’t respect the life of the President, so do you think they’ll respect the life of us poor people? Already our people have been killed, wounded and are in hiding. That’s why we’re appealing to you, in the international community. The United States should cut off all aid to this government and demand the return of Zelaya. Please, don’t let us return to those dark days of death squads and violence.”

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of Global Exchange and CODEPINK. ]]> http://codepink.org/blog/2009/07/hondurans-call-out-for-help-from-the-international-community/feed/ 1