Honduras' Coup Congress Erases Five Basic Liberties

Despite the best efforts of what I call "the Oligarch Diaspora" to flood the Internet with near identical messages that the Honduran coup "is not a coup" and that was a "constitutional succession" (cough, cough) dressed in the blue-and-white flag of Honduran democracy, the coup regime bared its fangs today. And like any vampire, it's coming out at nightfall.

The same Congress that, after the military had kidnapped, beaten and dumped President Manuel Zelaya in Costa Rica, had declared one of its own, Roberto Micheletti as the coup "president" today passed an emergency law stripping Hondurans of the following rights from the country's constitution:

1. The right to protest.
2. Freedom in one's home from unwarranted search, seizure and arrest.
3. Freedom of association.
4. Guarantees of rights of due process while under arrest.
5. Freedom of transit in the country.

Tomorrow morning's papers are already out across the ocean in Europe, and correspondent Pablo Ordaz of the Madrid daily El Pais has reported from Tegucigalpa about the Coup Congress' decree:

"Minute by minute, step by step, Honduras moves farther from its freedoms..."

Read the defenders of the coup and they are united by one powerful feeling: fear. They're afraid of the growing demonstrations in the streets, like the in the capital city this afternoon captured in the video above, where despite the brutal repressions against the people, each day the opposition crowds grow larger, more emboldened, and better organized. In the defiant but smiling faces of the Hondurans opposing the coup you can see the palpable difference between their passion and the lack of it from the passive bumps on a log that attended yesterday's pro coup rally.

The Congressional decree specified that only at night may those five freedoms be disappeared. And so tonight, a new reign of terror begins.

The coup defenders are afraid, they say, of Honduras becoming another another Cuba, or Venezuela, or Nicaragua, of losing their "freedoms" and their "democracy." But today, in one fell swoop their leaders erased those very freedoms, atop all the other ones they've already burned alive - freedom of the press, freedom to elect their own president, among them - and buried democracy with it.

For democracy is not possible unless a people has freedom to protest, freedom from unwarranted invasion of their homes, freedom of association, rights of due process under law, and freedom of travel in its own country.

That's over now, and will be as long as the coup regime remains in power.

The Oligarch Diaspora will not likely blink, comforting themselves with the Kool-Aid that this attack on civil rights and freedoms is not (well, not yet) aimed at them, but, rather, at "those people," the workers, the poor, the farmers, the indigenous, the rebel students and youth, their social organizations, organizer priests, defense attorneys, human rights observers and authentic journalists, the ones that want their democracy back so much that they risk life and limb now each time they say it.

The Oligarch Diaspora will continue spamming the Internet with their hysterical claims that the rest of the world "just doesn't understand," that the coup was "legal" (attorney Alberto Valiente Thorensen made mincemeat of that claim today), that they represent a majority (unsaid is that they are afraid to let that majority vote on a non-binding referendum, revealing that even they know they are not), that "Honduras wants the coup." But if the opposition were so small would the Coup Congress really have needed to enact the State of Siege and its repeal of those five basic freedoms?

But what they don't tell you is that they don't want those freedoms for all Hondurans, just for the ones with money and property and political power and privilege: themselves. The rest must be subordinated to them and controlled, by force if necessary.

And so today, Honduras said goodbye to the following articles of its Constitution:

Article 69: "A persons liberty is inviolable and can only be restricted or suspended temporarily through process of law."

Article 71: "No person can be arrested nor kept incommunicado for more than 24 hours without being placed before a competent authority to be judged. Judicial detention during an investigation must not exceed six consecutive days from the moment that the same is ordered."

Article 78: "Freedoms of association and meeting are always guaranteed when they are not contrary to public order and good customs.

Article 79: "All persons have the right to meet with others, peacefully and without weapons, in public demonstration or transitory assembly, in relation to their common interests of any type, without necessity of notice or special permission."

Article 81: "All persons have the right to circulate freely, leave, enter, and remain in national territory. No one can be obligated to change home or residence except in special cases and with those requirements that the Law establishes."

The Oligarch Diaspora says that the democratically elected president was removed by force because he supposedly "violated the Constitution" by proposing a nonbinding referendum to ask all Hondurans if they wanted the chance to vote about whether they wanted to rewrite it through a Constitutional Convention.
But the coup leaders the Oligarch Diaspora defends just rewrote that same constitution today without any formal process of consulting the people at all.

They claim they're fighting for their constitution, but they just ripped it apart.

Gone. All gone. Everything they claim to be defending is gone now, destroyed and in tatters at the hands of the very political class that claimed it was protecting them.

And now, with the Congress' invitation to enter the people's door, the vampires begin to come out... tonight.

(Crossposted from The Field.)

Follow Al Giordano on Twitter: www.twitter.com/AlGiordano

Comments

[GoldLeMae]

Please let the public know what else is happening in Tegulicgalpa. I last spoke with reletives in the city on Sunday and have had no contact since. Cell phones are blocked as well as internet access. It is the same as Iran, but less interesting to the American press. The world has the right to know!

[AB88]

I AM SORRY ...BUT YOUR COMMENT IS COMPLETELY UNTRUE!!!.. NO CELLPHONES WERE BLOCKED.. AND THE INTERNET WAS WORKING NORMAL!!!.... YOU CANT COMPARE OUR SITUATION WITH IRAN!.. HONDURAS HAS SHOWN THE WHOLE WORLD WE RESPECT DEMOCRACY AND WILL NOT HAVE COMPASSION FOR ANYONE WHO COMMITS TO ILLEGAL ACTS TRYING TO BE A CHAVEZ!!!!.... it seems people do not know ZELAYA PAID PEOPLE TO FOLLOW HIS IDEOLOGY!...

[cdnnewsjunky]

Hmmmm, as the old bard said, methinks thou doth protest too much!

[GhiaccioPronto]

And the world is responding. The world bank has frozen your loans, The OAS is kicking you out, The UN has condemned you, the ambassadors from the Americas have left, from Europe have left , who is left and who believes you?

[Caliwoman]

Cell phone coverage has been horrible and it has been hard to get calls into Honduras from the Us. I've had to try up to 20 times to reach folks there on both US and Honduran cell phones. They report only pro government meida is allowed to broadcast and military personel are in the stations, others forced off the air. Fascism comes so easily to those elites aftaid to share.

[Ergon]

A non-binding referendum to amend the constitution. Clearly undemocratic
A constitution that protects the vast differences in wealth and landholdings of a tiny racist oligarchy against the wishes of the poor indigenous majority. Definitely democratic
PR firms to spam comments and update Wikipedia with the coup leaders pov: the beauty of the marketplace

[GhiaccioPronto]

It was not a referendum to amend the constitution, it was an initiative to request a future referendum, and entirely legal under article 5

[abouttime]

The ruled. But... Zelaya conceded and changed it according to the ruling. He was then held at gunpoint and removed. Not due process... a coup...
period,

[cdnnewsjunky]

It's spelled c o u p!

[cdnnewsjunky]

Boycott Hondura's.

[mcmchugh99]

It didn't take long for the mask to come off in Honduras, and for the regime to reveal itself as a military dictatorship. Anyone who knows the history of Latin America at all would not be surprised at that, or at the oligarchs and mafias such regimes always protect. It's not going to stand, though, no more than the fascist police state in Iran.

[reyvn77]

Let me share something for all the coup-defenders on this site.
I've lived through two presidential outings in my own native country (a country in SE Asia, guess which). BOTH presidents were violators of the constitution and were known to be plunderers of the national coffers. THE PEOPLE came out and kicked these presidents out. They stormed the presidential palace and demanded the PRESIDENT get out. Both presidents had substantial support within the military but the people faced them down and both of these presidents, though initially elected into office, were voted out in the "parliament of the streets". The military LATER ON, seeing the wide masses of people protesting, decided that to be genuine protectors of the people, they had to turn on the commander-in-chief and withdraw their support.
THOSE were legitimate practices of democracy.
THIS is a coup. People are actually storming the presidential palace to demand the president BACK They're actually voting him IN through the "Parliament of the streets". And though apparently the entire Honduran power structure has decided he shouldn't be president, I hope they at least have the guts to admit that it is THEM, not Zelaya, who are tearing the constitution into shreds.

[Billy Hell]

Thank you for sharing your experiences reyvn. Let me guess...Indonesia?

[abouttime]

Thank you.
Power to the people through unity of purpose and peace!

[ProudNeoCon]

Many countries have processes for removal of the elected president without a consent of population. In US, impeachment/conviction process requires only the consent of 1 out of 3 goverment branches. It was a real possobility that impeachment of President Clinton would procced and he would have been removed from the office even thoug he had support of the majority of people.

I think you are confusing the rule of majority with a rule of law. Now, I am not specialist in Hondurian Constituional law so I do not know if the action taken were proper or not. But to claim that it was a coup when supreme court and congress are backing the action is hard

[reyvn77]

"Many countries have processes for removal of the elected president without a consent of population. "

I agree. I disagree that the military storming into the presidential residence and essentially kidnapping its duly elected president should be one of those legitimate processes.

I am not confusing the rule of the majority with a rule of law. I am simply saying that in most cases, the power of the law should always emanate from its people, not the other way around. Granted also that the supreme court had ordered his removal (which is of doubtful legality, of course), I don't see why they found it necessary to remove Zelaya from the country (I don't know, I mean if he's such a criminal that nobody likes, shouldn't they have kept him at home and jailed him?) and come up with lies such as the phony "resignation letter" instead of being up front about it. Not withstanding, of course, the fact that the president also legally FIRED the general who led the coup. What's HIS reason for still serving?
something stinks, and it's not democracy.

[EmanuelWazar]

The thing is that you would be right,....

...if the factual accusations against him where true. This is a matter of fact.

Fact A.

Zelaya did not at any point, ever, in the entirety of his administration specially promote presidential reelection or extended term limits.

Fact B.

The SC barred Zelaya from administrating a BINDING referendum. Ergo, he submitted a NONBINDING referendum to the people. It is a slight BUT VERY IMPORTANT distinction.

Fact C

Even allowing for Zelaya having committed the crimes he was accused of, for which he had NO trail, it is against the Honduran constitution to exile him WITHOUT due process.

Fact D.1

The suppression, and oppression of journalist, protectors, opposition leaders, and individual Hondurans as well as the suspension of their rights and freedoms is well outside the scope allowed in the constitution and ONLY properly understood to exist soley under MILITARY LAW.

Fact D.2

Therefor the coup has been an extra legal operation exercise by the military which factually, and materially suspended the rule of law in Honduras.

[politicscorner]

The coup showing its true colors.

[GhiaccioPronto]

they did that at their first press conference, when they pathetically lied about the presidents letter of resignation.

[hoosier96]

Why is this being called a coup? El Presidente wanted to be dictator for life and the Supreme Court and the Congress (the judicial branch and the legislative branch) stood up against him. It is a great example of the beauty of checks and balances.

Had Bush declared suddenly that he wanted to change the constitution based on polling, extend his term indefinitely, and gone to the military to ask for their alligience, you people would be going ape-sh&%.

[GhiaccioPronto]

Why is this being called a coup? The president was elected, and the guys who pointed guns at him were not.

[hoosier96]

They were directed by elected officials to point guns at him.

[Al Giordano - Huffpost Blogger]

Consulting with the voters of a country via a non-binding referendum about whether *they* want to democratically hold a Constitutional Convention is not an attempt to be "dictator for life," nor is it in the slightest dictatorial.

You seem to not be aware of the facts: President Zelaya obeyed the Supreme Court order against a *binding* referendum. Proof positive of that is he changed it to a non-binding consultation. The court never issued any ruling against that.

But the coup-defenders are intentionally confounding the two different matters dishonestly, to make it seem as if the court ruled against the non-binding referendum, which it never did.

The wording of the referendum said nothing about ending presidential term limits. Here is the full text of that non-binding ballot question, translated to English:

"Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constitutional Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?"

Stick to the facts, please. Making up fictions is what is losing your side global and national support.

[Zatara]

It was in fact a BINDING referendum. Zeleya made it Binding when he printed the article on the governmental news "La Gaceta", I believe was on the 26 of June. Check your sources Mr. Giordano.

He would have called for a referendum that same day as results were being counted and he would have dissolved Congress and the Supreme Court.

Please also mention he was funding this project, running it himself and counting the votes himself with money from tax payers and Hugo Chavez's back pocket. Evidence also documented by the courts.

He was paying every single supporter of this pet project of Chavez with money from tax payers. It hasn't been calculated yet how much money was spent, since they are still trying to sum it all up. But just a fact, he had 60 Million lempiras in his office in cash. Also Rixi Moncada from the ENEE who has a warrant on her arrest had, 250 thousand lempiras in cash in her hotel room. This Mr. Giordano is what we call "buying consciences". That is not democracy.

Please inform people of the facts and don't exaggerate the lies.

[politicscorner]

Thanks for helping hoosier96 and others like him/her get a clue.

[abouttime]

Great response to a belief that the main stream media allowed to take fruition because they could not, (did not) rebutt staements clearly lies, by the coup plotters.
Thanks.
"Propaganda screams obscenity - all is phony " - Bob Dylan

[abouttime]

This was categorically and without prejudice a military coup. The coup leaders stand alone in stating that Zelaya violated the Constitution, claims easily rebutted. If under Honduras's laws this were true, then impeachment proceedings would take process. However, ot must be clear that many, hundreds of people are missing, and martial law imposed, civil liberties at risk.
The international community is clear in its demands for the return of Zelaya, including the United Nations, The Organization of American States, many countries in the EU and The United States.
duh...
The truth is in the pudding and the Honduran people must find a way to fight back as the World is watching. Almost everyone demands the return of democracy to Honduras!
Peace on Earth is a compassionate demand!

[Billy Hell]

Says who President Zelaya wanted to be a dictator for life? That propaganda has already been debunked!

Quote: He invoked article 5 of the Honduran “Civil Participation Act” of 2006. According to this act, all public functionaries can perform non-binding public consultations to inquire what the population thinks about policy measures. This act was approved by the National Congress and it was not contested by the Supreme Court of Justice, when it was published in the Official Paper of 2006.

In line with article 239 of the Honduran Constitution of 1982, Zelaya is not participating in the presidential elections of November 2009, meaning that he could have not been reelected. Unquote.

http://www.counterpunch.org/thorensen07012009.html

[PR one]

The reason is because we are not a Banana Republic. We do not remove our Presidents and Exile them at gun point.

[Peacein09]

Why should anyone be surprised? After the Patriot Act was passed here, we lost all the same rights. And our media became a Bush propaganda machine designed to make loss of civil liberties look patriotic. National security and religion became the reasons for torture, indefinite detention, repression of protest in any form, and bombing a country who had done nothing to us. Democracy is always a threat to the ruling elite here and abroad. Before we can help others regain their democracies, we need to regain our own.

[pokemon]

The difference is we are well armed civilians.. so everyone stop bitching about guns.

[Al Giordano - Huffpost Blogger]

I agree that the Patriot Act was a travesty, but this turn of events in Honduras is more extreme.

It would be as if, in the US, the Patriot Act was then used to round up every Democratic party official, union organizer, human rights observer and liberal journalist, as well as removing any TV or radio station that criticized the act.

The use by the Honduran coup government of this disappearance of rights is being used on a much more massive scale than anything that happened under the Patriot Act in the US.

[GhiaccioPronto]

It would be as if, in the US, Donald Rumsfeld installed his own president and kept his job, when Bush fired him.

[Ergon]

I've got two comments pending

[Ergon]

Make that 3

[Tasies]

Yeah, Giordano. Why didn't the Army storm the White House and exile Nixon to Uruguay after Watergate?

[DanBest]

To Zatara. No one has a right to overturn a democratically elected president. It's why we call it democracy. You can't honor the notion of democracy and not play by it's rules. If they don't like Zelaya then they can vote him out in the next election. The situation now brings their democracy to a halt until the coup supporters decide otherwise. A coup is a coup, no matter how you want to interpret it.
And dial back the commnunist histrionics. This isn't the 50s.

[Zatara]

To explain it better take this hypothetically:
Imagine Obama announced that he was going to hold a referendum on legalizing a third term for himself. Imagine that even his attorney general Eric Holder advised him that it was illegal. Imagine that the Supreme Court ruled that holding the referendum was unconstitutional. In spite of that, let's imagine that Obama coerced the FEC to hold the referendum any way. Then we found out that the referendum was being financed by Hugo Chavez. What should the Joint Chiefs do? That is exactly what has occurred in Honduras to a tee. The Honduras Attorney General and their Supreme Court did exactly that. Their Generals did what they had to.

[Billy Hell]

In your example, Obama would be impeached LEGALLY. However, there are legitimate methods to follow for changes to the constitution, even a complete rewrite...like a Amendment Convention.

What Zelaya did was NOT illegal...this point has been argued ad-nauseam already and if you think for one second that the Obama administration and the constitutional experts it has available haven't carefully considered the ramifications of Zelaya's actions, before they condemned the Honduras Coup, you're making a big mistake!

[GhiaccioPronto]

You have it backwards, and you are going to have to prove it. The AG and supreme court are taking the orders, not the Generals. Why is Velasquez still in power?

[DannyRose]

Formal impeachment procedurs would have been initiated, not kidnapping and deportation in the middle of the night.

Clearly a coup.

[GhiaccioPronto]

In the United States we can amend or change the constitution, including to allow for a third term, the limit of two terms was through an amendment.

[DanBest]

Dude, that's a straw man and you know it. This is America, not Honduras. There is no justification for a coup, not even under the scenario you creatted and I don't buy your take on the situatiion. Those who initiated the coup would, of course, justify it under extraodinary measures and I don't think they met that standard. We agree to disagree. I stand with democracy. You stand with a military coup. I think you are on the wrong side of this.

[hoosier96]

Oh, wait! You forgot the IMPEACHMENT PROCESS we have in our own country. This process is not performed democratically but by elected representatives. It's not as if we have a general vote in the country as to whether or not our leader should stay or go (unless it is an election year).

[jsgaetano]

Typical conservative mindset. They would rather see their country burn than not be in charge.

[halrivers]

Good article, yet the referred to article by Pablo Ardaz is less supportive of Zelaya's position, suggesting that the opposition to the coup is weaker inside Honduras than internationally and that Zalaya was not missed.
Ordaz claims that "Los tres que más afloran en las conversaciones son los de dividir a la población, enfrentarse a todas las instituciones y, sobre todo, supeditar el país a los intereses del presidente venezolano Hugo Chávez. Ni siquiera los vecinos de la colonia Tres Caminos lo echan de menos."
The three [reasons the population disliked Zalaya] that surface in conversations were dividing the population, confronting all instituions, and above all, subverting (subetitar) the country to the interests of Venezualan President Hugo Chavez."
Now, these are rather vague notions and represent coup talking points, but Ardaz quotes them without offering any counter examples.

[Grant Morrison]

..

WHY aren't our Marinies in Honduras NOW, locking these petty dictaors up and restoring the SLIVER of democracy those people had. This is just the return of the garbage that Ronald Regan kept in place.

THIS is the reason we have Nicaragua. BECAUSE OF US. If we would have said NO to the United Fruit Company and NO to the clampdown of the landed classes against the POOR we'd have FRIENDS in Central America not DICTATORS, drug dealers and MASS GRAVES.

It's 1982 all over again.

.

[Zatara]

They are already here. They have a base in Palmerola. Which Zelaya didn't want. He wanted to kick out the US soldiers and use the base as an airport.

US Soldiers have been in Honduras since the 1980's.

[Grant Morrison]

..

Yes, I KNOW. WE are the reason Honduras has been held back in the 1950s for thirty years.

We only intervene when the dictators are on their way out.

.

[Billy Hell]

For the time being the Pentagon has suspended all joint activities with the honduras military.

[Meggie]

This is a direct flip flop from the view righties took the first day of this Honduran incident.

So, which side should we be on in Honduras? The ousted president who had not yet stayed past his elected term? The military government that ousted him because WE perceived he needed to be ousted and we needed to meddle in Honduran affairs? Or the military government today that is now showing what all military coups do - they are an unelected dictatorship?

How about we just butt out and mind our own business? "Our" Marines are currently in the two previous republican wars that we're still not out of - Afghanistan and Iraq.

[TParrish]

Hmm. it seems that everybody wanted to change the constitution, they just differed on what changes to make.

[GhiaccioPronto]

What a piece of work, an amendment for every day of the year, and two for holidays. But I don't think anyone cares about the constitution, this is about who is in charge. An elected leader tried to fire the top general, which in Honduras is not possible.

[1dogs2]

So where are yesterday's posters who tried to persuade us that a coup is not a coup? That the coup was not unconstitutional? Crickets.

[Billy Hell]

I was wondering that myself, but I guess they'll be out in full force later.

[GChurch]

FYI: I just saw this related article: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/breaking-news/story/1122536.html

[PR one]

We all know that the Miami Herald is not a left wing newspaper. So for this to be happening in Hondura at this moment indicates the the situation is worsening. Soon those in favor of the Coup will be saying that all this measures, the suspension of Civil Rights are necessary for the safety of the people. Like saying that in order to save the Village it was necessary to destroy it.