The Media Co-op

On early morning of Sunday June 28, approximately 100 Honduran soldiers removed President Manuel Zelaya from his home and forced him onto a plane and into exile in Costa Rica. A fake letter of resignation from Zelaya was presented and the head of Congress, Roberto Micheletti, was named the interim President. This military coup has been condemned by the United Nations General Assembly, Central American Integration System, European Union, Organization of American States, and Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) bloc.

Over the past week the Honduran Congress has suspended basic constitutional rights including freedom of association and freedom of movement through the imposition of a military curfew and checkpoints. A decree allows for warrantless arrests and detention without charge. Geoff Thale, with Foreign Policy in Focus, reports that leaders of civil-society organizations have gone into hiding. The National Commission for the Disappeared reports over 300 people have been detained. Freedom of the press has been drastically curtailed in what Reporters Without Borders has called “either closely controlled or nonexistent” coverage of events through detention of journalists as well as closure of local TV and radio stations and disruption of foreign networks such as CNN and Telesur. Government electrical blackouts and shutdown of phone services have further limited freedom of information.

Murder reports are being received by human rights organizations, such as COFADEH (Honduran Committee of Families of the Detained and Disappeared). The majority of these reports have arrived from the northern part of Honduras. The people killed thus far have been left with all of their clothes, money, and cell phones, a clear signal that gangs and robbers are not responsible for the murders, but rather it is a product of political violence.

News reporters and stations who are reporting on the coup or human rights abuses are being shut down, and the reporters have been threatened with violence, with at least one death reported. The signal of the independent radio station, Libertad, in Marcala, La Paz, has been cut. On Friday, journalist Gabriel Fino Noriega, who was reporting on the coup and military developments, was killed. He was last seen alive leaving Radio América after transmitting his latest report. Radio América is a well established Honduran news corporation which gets international coverage.

In a town in San Pedro Sula, a family of four was found assassinated. It is known that the mother of that family worked in her local court.

In Tegucigalpa, the nation’s capital, at least 5 corpses have been found. Two corpses were found yesterday in barrels. Another corpse, of a young man, was found in La Montañita. La Montañita was the first unmarked, clandestine cemetery established in Honduras in the 1980’s