U.S.-TRAINED POLICE ARE HUNTING DOWN AND ARRESTING PROTESTERS AMID POST-ELECTION CRISIS IN HONDURAS

[Judi Lynn]

Sandra Cuffe
February 20 2018, 11:40 a.m.

IT WAS THE middle of the night when they broke down the door. The children, aged 3 and 6, and their parents were all fast asleep in their home in Pimienta, a town 18 miles south of San Pedro Sula, in northwestern Honduras.

“They arrived at three in the morning,” said the mother of two whose home was raided. U.S.-trained and supported special forces agents, known as TIGRES, as well as criminal investigation officers searched the family home, flipping over the beds and ripping pillows apart while she and her children watched. Her partner had already been handcuffed and taken outside.

“My kids were frightened and crying,” she told The Intercept outside a San Pedro Sula courthouse. “They treated us like criminals, pointing their weapons at us.”

According to Honduran law, search warrants should only be executed between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., but there have been numerous reported cases of nighttime raids by security forces over the past several months, as the Honduran government cracks down on protests against the contested elections that delivered the presidency to incumbent Juan Orlando Hernández in November.

More:
https://theintercept.com/2018/02/20/honduras-election-protest-tigres/

[pangaia]

1. Ah, the ole Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC),

Previously known as The School Of The Americas.

Nice guys and gals..

While we bitch about the Russians....


Vicious circle, I guess.

[ffr]

2. Hey, there's an idea. tRump would love it there!

I'll chip in to pay for his one-way plane ticket. He can rule over them.

Sorry Honduras.

[Judi Lynn]

3. Memory refresher, NY Times, 2009:In a Coup in Honduras, Ghosts of Past U.S. Policies

In a Coup in Honduras, Ghosts of Past U.S. Policies
By HELENE COOPER and MARC LACEY
JUNE 29, 2009



The riot police dispersed supporters of the ousted president on Monday near the presidential palace in the capital,
Tegucigalpa. Credit Esteban Felix/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Monday strongly condemned the ouster of Honduras’s president as an illegal coup that set a “terrible precedent” for the region, as the country’s new government defied international calls to return the toppled president to power and clashed with thousands of protesters.

“We do not want to go back to a dark past,” Mr. Obama said, in which military coups override elections. “We always want to stand with democracy,” he added.

The crisis in Honduras, where members of the country’s military abruptly awakened President Manuel Zelaya on Sunday and forced him out of the country in his bedclothes, is pitting Mr. Obama against the ghosts of past American foreign policy in Latin America.

. . .

The United States has long had strong ties to the Honduras military and helps train Honduran military forces. Those close ties have put the Obama administration in a difficult position, opening it up to accusations that it may have turned a blind eye to the pending coup. Administration officials strongly deny the charges, and Mr. Obama’s quick response to the Honduran president’s removal has differed sharply from the actions of the Bush administration, which in 2002 offered a rapid, tacit endorsement of a short-lived coup against Mr. Chávez.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/americas/30honduras.html?_r=0

[GatoGordo]

7. You omitted the part about WHY Zelaya was removed from office. An oversight on your part?

"During a more formal meeting afterward, they discussed Mr. Zelaya’s plans for a referendum that would have laid the groundwork for an assembly to remake the Constitution, a senior administration official said.

But American officials did not believe that Mr. Zelaya’s plans for the referendum were in line with the Constitution, and were worried that it would further inflame tensions with the military and other political factions, administration officials said."

They were absolutely counter to the Honduran Constitution, the Honduran Supreme Court and what the National Congress had told Zelaya time and again... but like his pals in Cuba and Venezuela, laws and constitutions don't apply to radical leftist revolutionaries.

[Judi Lynn]

4. Los Angeles Times: The Latin America mistake

The Latin America mistake
Memo to Secretary Kerry: Stop funding the bad guys in Honduras.
February 12, 2013|By Dana Frank

The United States is expanding its military presence in Honduras on a spectacular scale. The Associated Press reported this month in an investigative article that Washington in 2011 authorized $1.3 billion for U.S. military electronics in Honduras. This is happening while the post-coup regime of Honduran President Porfirio Lobo is more out of control than ever, especially since the Honduran Congress staged a "technical coup" in December.

But as the Obama administration deepens its partnership with Honduras, ostensibly to fight the drug war, Democrats in Congress are increasingly rebelling. Here's a message, then, for new Secretary of State John Kerry: Recast U.S. policy in Honduras and the murderous drug war that justifies it.

In the last few years, the U.S. has been ramping up its military operations throughout Latin America in what the Associated Press called "the most expensive initiative in Latin America since the Cold War." The buildup has cost U.S. taxpayers more than $20 billion since 2002, for troops, ships, clandestine bases, radar, military and police training and other expenses.

U.S. military expenditures for Honduras in particular have gone up every year since 2009, when a military coup deposed democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya. At $67.4 million, 2012 Defense Department contracts for Honduras are triple those of 10 years ago. The U.S. spent $25 million last year to make the U.S. barracks at the Soto Cano air base permanent, and $89 million to keep 600 U.S. troops based there. U.S. direct aid to the Honduran military and police continues to climb as well.

More:
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/feb/12/opinion/la-oe-frank-honduras-drug-war-20130212

[Judi Lynn]

5. Earlier US connections with Honduras population control specialists:

HONDURAS:

HOW THE SOA SOWS A DEATH SQUAD,

AND REAPS LECTURERS FROM IT

1) One of the most feared death squads in all of Latin America is founded by Honduran SOA graduates with the help of Argentine neo-Nazis also from the SOA.

(2) In the 1990s, death squad criminals return to the SOA to inspire and train others.

The gory details �

" a course in intelligence at the school of the Americas a lot of videos which showed the type of interrogation and torture they used in Vietnam. � Although many people refuse to accept it, all this is organized by the U.S. government." � José Valle, graduate of the SOA, admitted torturer, member of Battalion 316, Inside the School of Assassins, video

Torturing was "a job, something I did to give food to my kids" � Valle, Baltimore Sun, 6/11/95

"The intelligence unit, known as Battalion 316, used shock and suffocation as devices in interrogations. Prisoners often were kept naked and, when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves. Newly declassified documents and other sources show that the CIA and the U.S. Embassy knew of numerous crimes, including murder and torture, yet continued to support Battalion 316 and collaborate with its leaders." � Baltimore Sun, 6/11/95

Battalion 316 is founded in the early eighties by General Luis Alonso Discua�graduated from the SOA three times, in 1967, 1972, and 1982�while the nation is under the repressive dictatorship of SOA graduate General Policarpo Paz García, inducted into the SOA "Hall of Fame" in 1988. Also inducted in 1988 is General Humberto Regalado Hernández�a four-time graduate in the late sixties and seventies�who, as chief of Honduran armed forces, refuses to take action against soldiers involved in Battalion 316 death squad activity, and indeed appears to cover-up at least some of that activity. � Americas Watch reports on Honduras, 1987 and 1994

Fresh from their own "Dirty War", Argentine SOA graduates such as Colonel Mario Davico move to Honduras in the early 1980s to teach Batalion 316 techniques such as arbitrary detention, torture, extrajudicial executions, and methods of disposing of the bodies of the victims. � Americas Watch, 1994

The return �

One year after he enters the SOA Hall of Fame, fellow officers accuse Regalado Hernández of misappropriating millions of dollars in U.S. military aid. Officers contend that equipment provided through U.S. military assistance was regularly sold to unit commanders by Regalado, who then deposited the money in a "special account". Military assistance supplies sold by Regalado ranged from batteries to tires to gasoline. Meanwhile, the Reagan administration�in 1988, the year Regalado is inducted into the SOA Hall of Fame�suspects Regalado of providing protection to Colombian drug traffickers living in Honduras. Regalado's half-brother (SOA graduate Rigoberto Regalado Lara, convicted and imprisoned in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges) tells authorities that his supplier was a close friend of General Regalado Hernández. � New York Times, 10/15/89

In 1983, several key members of Battalion 316 somehow find time in their busy schedules of organizing death squad activity for renewed training at the SOA, including Lieutenant Colonel Luis Alonso Villatoro Villeda (trained in "Administration", then commander of Battalion 316 from 1986-1988), Second Lieutenant Ramón Mejia (in charge of transporting kidnap victims from various parts of Honduras to Tegucigalpa, one of the two officers most involved in torture, interrogation and murder) and General Walter López Reyes.� Americas Watch, 1987 and 1994

More:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~lormand/poli/soa/honduras.htm

[Judi Lynn]

6. We Can't Repress Our Own People: Honduran Police Respond

‘We Can't Repress Our Own People’: Honduran Police Respond
by Jeff Abbott

December 11, 2017

The normally chaotic streets of San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second largest city, were abnormally quiet. Only a few sex workers and others, and the occasional passing car, were in the streets at 9:30 p.m.

“This is not normal,” the clerk at my hotel near San Pedro Sula’s central park told me as we stood on the deserted main street on December 5. “This is because of the state of siege.”

Just days earlier, on December 2, the Honduran government announced this state of siege to put down the mobilization of angry citizens over the election. The government deployed the military, suspended the constitution, and established a curfew for the hours between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. But the government quickly was forced to change the curfew to 8 p.m. to 5 a.m., because no one was respecting the curfew.

Just days later, on December 7, the government changed the curfew yet again to 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. And by December 9, the government had decided to end the state of siege.

More:
http://progressive.org/dispatches/we-cannot-repress-our-own-people-”-171211/

[Judi Lynn]

8. The US Role in the Honduras Coup and Subsequent Violence

Published on
Tuesday, March 15, 2016
by National Catholic Reporter
The US Role in the Honduras Coup and Subsequent Violence
by Stephen Zunes

. . .

Despite being a wealthy logger and rancher from the centrist Liberal Party, Zelaya had moved his government to the left during his four years in office. During his tenure, he raised the minimum wage and provided free school lunches, milk for young children, pensions for the elderly, and additional scholarships for students. He built new schools, subsidized public transportation, and even distributed energy-saving light bulbs.

None of these were particularly radical moves, but it was nevertheless disturbing to the country’s wealthy economic and military elites. More frightening was that Zelaya had sought to organize an assembly to replace the 1982 constitution written during the waning days of the U.S.-backed military dictator Policarpo Paz Garcia. A non-binding referendum on whether such a constitutional assembly should take place was scheduled the day of the coup, but was cancelled when the military seized power and named Congressional Speaker Roberto Micheletti as president.

Calling for such a referendum is perfectly legal under Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran Civil Participation Act, which allows public functionaries to perform such non-binding public consultations regarding policy measures. Despite claims by the rightist junta and its supporters, Zelaya was not trying to extend his term. That question wasn’t even on the ballot. The Constitutional Assembly would not have likely completed its work before his term had expired anyway.

The leader of the coup, Honduran General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, was a graduate of the notorious School of the Americas, a U.S. Army training program nicknamed “School of Assassins” for the sizable number of graduates who have engaged in coups, as well as the torture and murder of political opponents. The training of coup plotters at the program, since renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, isn’t a bygone feature of the Cold War: General Luis Javier Prince Suazo, who played an important role in the coup as head of the Honduran Air Force, graduated as recently as 1996.

. . .

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Hugo Llorens, reflecting the broad consensus of international observers, sent a cable to Clinton entitled "Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup," thoroughly documenting that "there is no doubt" that Zelaya’s ouster "constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup." Similarly, Ann-Marie Slaughter, then serving as director of Policy Planning at the State Department, sent an email to Clinton strongly encouraging her to "take bold action" and to "find that [the] coup was a 'military coup' under U.S. law." However, Clinton's State Department refused to suspend U.S. aid to Honduras -- as required when a democratically-elected government is ousted in such a manner -- on the grounds that it wasn’t clear that the forcible military-led overthrow actually constituted a coup d'état.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/15/us-role-honduras-coup-and-subsequent-violence

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