Dr. Luther Castillo, who was named "Honduran Doctor of the Year" in 2007 by Rotary International, has just sent out an alert through the non-profit group MEDICC, that he and his staff at the Indigenous Garifuna Community Hospital have received an order from the de facto Honduran government to leave the Hospital and discontinue their work there. The government has announced that it is downgrading the standing of the hospital and will be taking over with "new management."
Dr. Castillo examining child (courtesy of CambioMilwaukee)
In the meantime, the de facto government has stopped paying the salary of the staff -- which includes locally-trained nurses and 10 physicians -- and will no longer guarantee medicines or vital supplies. In spite of this, the Hospital staff have vowed to stay and continue their work, serving the poor in the Garifuna indigenous region of Ionia and surrounding area.
As Dr. Luther Castillo explained to MEDICC, "We will not abandon our people. These are the poorest of the poor, the invisible poor. They are the real victims of the coup." The coup government has made Dr. Castillo's ability to continue his work on behalf of the poor particularly difficult, putting out a warrant for his arrest and capture right after the coup. Yet, Dr. Castillo perseveres.
This act on the part of the Honduran de facto government shows its true intentions in carrying out the coup against President Zelaya -- to roll back the modest social reforms Zelaya put in place to alleviate the suffering of the poor in that country.
As MEDICC explains, the Garifuna Community Hospital opened in December of 2007 under an agreement with the government of President Zelaya and in accordance with an International Labor Organization covenant that supports locally-managed health services for indigenous and tribal peoples. According to Dr. Castillo, the hospital has treated 175,000 cases since that time, providing such services as birthing, surgeries, hospitalization, dental care, laboratory tests and other outreach and prevention services. Now, the de facto Honduran government is threatening the lives of the poor in the Ionia coastal department and surrounding area by its move to oust the staff of this hospital.
While the coup government has claimed that it is protecting the Honduran constitution, this claim has never held weight. As Conn Hallinan explains succinctly in a recent article in Foreign Policy in Focus:
That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups, and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982, and the one-term limit allows the brass-hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.
Hallinan goes on to explain that Zelaya is "at best a liberal reformer whose major accomplishment was raising the minimum wage [by 60%]. "What Zelaya has done has been little reforms," Rafael Alegria, a leader of Via Campesina, told the Mexican daily La Jornada. "He isn't a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn't harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously." Or, as an AP article from August 6, entitled, "Honduran Coup Shows Business Elite Still in Charge," put it well: "Honduran President Manuel Zelaya was ousted in a military coup after betraying his own kind: a small clique of families that dominates the economy."
Now, the coup government is attempting to roll back Zelaya's modest reforms, threatening the lives of the poor living on the margins in the process. As Dr. Castillo explains, the current actions of the coup government with respect to the Gardifuna Community Hospital threaten to "condemn to death many of our old people, and stop all outreach and prevention services."
In the end, condemning the poor and the vulnerable to further marginalization, and even death, is part of the plan of the current regime in Honduras, for they intend not only to attack Zelaya himself, but also, and maybe even primarily, those who support him. And, Zelaya finds most of his support among the poor who, according to U.S. AID, make up 65% of the Honduran population.
This calls to mind the words of the repressive Guatemalan general, Rios Montt, who once explained his philosophy of fighting the insurgency in Guatemala as follows: "The guerrilla is the fish. The people are the sea. If you cannot catch the fish, you have to drain the sea." Carrying out this philosophy, Montt carried out death squad activities against the Guatemalan people, killing thousands of Guatemalans, most of them indigenous, in the process.
In the case of Honduras, the coup government, with such individuals as Billy Joya at the helm -- Joya, who ran death squad activities in the 1980's quite similar to those directed by Rios Montt in Guatemala, is now the "special security adviser" to the Honduran coup government -- similarly wants to drain Honduras of the sea of Zelaya supporters to prevent Zelaya and his modest reform government, or any other reform government for that matter, from ever returning.
And, just as social activists and their families were disappeared in the 1980's by the death squad (Batallion 3-16) linked to Billy Joya, the Committee for the Families of the Detained & Disappeared (COFADEH) as well as an international delegation led by the Quixote Center are reporting recent incidents of disappearances by the Honduran Armed Forces, such as the disappearance of 24 year-old Samuel David Flores Murillo on July 26. As the Quixote Center reported in a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Honduras, Samuel is the son of long-time activist Margarita Murillo, herself a survivor of twenty-two days of detention and torture in the 1980's. This is a frightening portend of the direction to which this coup government is headed.
Dan Kovalik is on the Board of Global Links which has provided the Garifuna Community Hospital with a great portion of its medical supplies since its inception in 2007. To continue to support the staff and work of this hospital, go to Global Links and donate to the Honduran emergency medical relief fund.
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Honduras Military Coup Engineered By 2 US Companies?
By John Perkins
8-19-9
http://www.rense.com/general87/engin.htm
of course they are local lords hired by the US and european multinational corporate interests, trained by the school of americas, and armed to the teeth by the US military industry.
lenny daivs, a neo-con lawyer and the clintons' longtime advisor, is the lawyer for the coup government.
you do the rest of the math.
With friends like that, this regime in Honduras is a very bad apple in my book.
First, the entire medical profession just went on strike - closing the hospitals and health care facilities across Honduras (teachers too, depriving children of education) - taking their political struggle out on the most vulnerable Hondurans. The military medics are responding to this strike and trying to ensure that medical services are maintained. An article that addresses hospitals and doesn't at least explain the current situation with the strike is either uninformed, or intentionally disingenuous. Did these doctors strike? Or are they the only hospital that refused to participate?
Second, one of the constitutional prohibitions is against CHANGING term limits regardless of who is on the ballot. Also, if Zelaya were able to run in 4 years, that would still count as extending his rule - which would also be in violation.
Third, Article 373 of the constitution spells out that the ONLY legal way to change the constitution is through a 2/3 approval of legislature - ratified an the subsequent legislative session by another 2/3 vote. And like term limits, this provision can not be changed.
Fourth, and probably most important, Article 375 of the constitution specifically prevents dissolving the constitution - because that was the first move every dictator who came along before 1982 took to cement their ideology and eliminate legal opposition. This very clearly and specifically prohibits what Zelaya tried to do - regardless of term limits.
You may not like the Honduran law, but it is dishonest to say Zelaya was
I do not think Micheletti has the interest of the people of Honduras at heart either. Social injustice in Honduras is at the order of the day.
All I am saying is that Zelaya has become and advocate for the people after the fact. All these reforms he so loudly proclaim are more cosmetic than anything else. It would be interesting to see what an audit of his economic empire would turn up.
This is such a perfect illustration of what the coup is really all about. Even Zelaya's modest reforms were enough to threaten those who would concentrate power and wealth in a few hands and pockets. President Obama cannot ignore this and retain credibility.
Zelaya wanted to violate the constitution. There was a temporary injunction against the referendum (issued May 23) and a scheduled trial to debate the legal grounds of what he proposed to do. Rather than follow legal procedure - Zelaya unilaterally placed the presidency above the judiciary and tried to seize power (irrespective of the term limit issue) and force his will regardless of legality.