Manuel Zelaya undergoes strange siege inside Brazilian embassy

[struggle4progress]

A journalist holed up with the ousted Honduran president describes life on the inside of a surreal political standoff

Fabiano Maisonnave
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 25 October 2009 21.07 GMT

It was just past 2am when the music blasted us from our sleep. Honduran soldiers had placed high-powered speakers just outside the embassy compound for a night-long, deafening serenade ...

It is a strange siege. The de facto government dares not storm the embassy and Zelaya dares not leave, knowing he would be arrested. Talks between the two sides have collapsed and no resolution is in sight. Access to the building is restricted, with only UN officials; a local human rights organisation, which delivers food; embassy staff; and three Zelaya envoys allowed to regularly come and go ...

Three weeks ago, checks took so long that the food went off. Thirty people had diarrhoea, clogging up the embassy's six toilets. Three toilets are reserved for Zelaya, his wife and closest aides ...

Last week the Permanent Council of the Organisation of American States (OAS) condemned "the hostile action by the de facto regime against the embassy of Brazil in Tegucigalpa and the harassment of its occupants through deliberate actions that affect them physically and psychologically and violate their human rights" ...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/25/honduras-manuel-zelaya-embassy-siege

[BolivarianHero]

1. Time for ALBA to make its first coordination military strike...

These Honduran soldiers should know that they risk their lives and all the pain the loss will inflict upon their loved ones if they continue to subvert the will of the people they are sworn to protect.

There is only one military coup I am willing to justify unquestionably, and that's Portugal's Carnation Revolution. I defend Hugo Chavez's botched 1992 coup with substantial reservations in that while Perez was elected in free-and-fair election but surrendered his right to govern by doing the exact opposite of the mandate that had led to his election and by massacring his own people, there is no evidence that Chavez and his clique had any legitimacy at that time, and reading legitimacy into the attempted coup by virtue of his subsequent electoral and other political successes introduced a presentist bias into the reading of Venezuela's political history.

[struggle4progress]

2. I really doubt we'll see that: I'd expect more coordinated diplomatic efforts