Regime change in Honduras brings more repression

On Jan. 27 Jose “Pepe” Lobo was inaugurated as the new president of Honduras. His inauguration was the product of illegitimate elections held under a coup d’état, with pervasive repression of the opposition forces and with only 30 percent of eligible voters participating in the elections.

The inauguration ceremony was held in a stadium that holds 35,000 but was almost empty. Only three other heads of state attended: Ricardo Martinelli from Panamá, Leonel Fernández from the Dominican Republic and Ma Ying-jeou from Taiwan. Colombia, Peru, Malta, Japan and the United States sent representatives.

The resistance, led by the Popular National Front of Resistance (FNRP), filled the streets with more than 300,000 people who marched to show their opposition and non-recognition of the new government. They also bid farewell to their beloved legitimate leader, President Jose Manuel Zelaya. After four months housed in captivity in the Brazilian Embassy, Zelaya would fly to the Dominican Republic accompanied by the president of that country.

In a moving ceremony, resistance leader Juan Barahona received the legitimate presidential sash from Zelaya. In his speech, “Honduras has changed forever,” Barahona laid out the tasks ahead for the resistance: organizing, mobilizing and formulating ideology in order to strengthen the resistance “as the instrument of the peoples’ power for the conquest of power.” This, said Barahona, must be done in a very unified way and inclusive “of all the exploited, oppressed and marginalized of our nation, with no exception whatsoever.” (www.redaccionpopular.com)

The new Lobo government has started as a furiously repressive one, similar to the fascist Álvaro Uribe regime in Colombia. In fact, Uribe was the first president to visit Lobo after his inauguration, in order to sign security cooperation agreements. Other treaties have since been signed by the two countries in matters of defense, surveillance, terrorism, kidnapping, drug trafficking, etc. Colombian paramilitaries have been operating in Honduras in coordination with the country’s army and police. They were invited by the previous, fraudulent Micheletti government, of which Lobo’s regime is the continuation.

Illustrating the repressive character of the new regime and its declaration of war against the resistance, several peasants from the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguán were shot and injured by army and police on the day of Lobo’s inauguration.

On Feb. 2, two videographers who cover the resistance were temporarily abducted and tortured. The following day, the body of 29-year-old union leader Vanessa Zepeda was found after being disappeared and tortured. On Feb. 10, Edgar Martínez, his spouse, two brothers and a friend were temporarily kidnapped and tortured. Two women were raped.

On Feb. 11, two men raided the home of Porfirio Ponce, resistance leader and vice-president of STYBIS, the beverage industry workers union whose Tegucigalpa headquarters serves as the resistance’s main office. The men took Ponce’s computer and spilled blood on his bed as a warning. Ponce was in charge of hosting an International Action Center solidarity delegation to Honduras from the United States in October.

Hermes Reyes, member of the Artists Movement in Resistance, was temporarily disappeared and tortured on Feb 12. Three days later, Julio Fúnez Benítez, an active member of the resistance and the Union of Workers of SANAA, the National Service of Water and Sewage Systems, was shot dead by two paramilitaries on a motorcycle.

This is the government that the United States recognizes as “the road to democracy” in Honduras, just like it does with paramilitary president Uribe in Colombia.

Despite this criminal repression, the resistance is determined to prevail. Their slogan is “¡Resistimos y Venceremos!” (We resist and we will win!) It is the task of all progressive people around the world to follow the direct request of the resistance: Expose these crimes and refuse to recognize the government of Pepe Lobo.

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