This article show how the liberal amerikkkan politicians can be just as fascistic and imperialistic in their actions as any fucking conservative right-winger. The article also highlights how these motherfuckers use elections to justify and legitimize their crimes. " If you don't vote you have no right to complain "? Fuck you.
Honduran troops inside the presidential palace during the arrest of the president during the 2009 coup. (Photo: rbreve/flickr)
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
Case #75: Obama, Clinton and the 2009 Military Coup in Honduras
October 24, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Bob Avakian recently wrote that one of three things that has “to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better: People have to fully confront the actual history of this country and its role in the world up to today, and the terrible consequences of this.” (See “3 Things that have to happen in order for there to be real and lasting change for the better.”)
In that light, and in that spirit, “American Crime” is a regular feature of revcom.us. Each installment will focus on one of the 100 worst crimes committed by the U.S. rulers—out of countless bloody crimes they have carried out against people around the world, from the founding of the U.S. to the present day.
Honduran troops inside the presidential palace during the arrest of the president during the 2009 coup. (Photo: rbreve/flickr)
THE CRIME: On June 28, 2009, the Honduran military carried out a coup d’etat against the elected president, Manuel Zelaya, a liberal-leaning populist. The coup had crucial backing from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. State Department. The generals and politicians behind the coup brought to power a more openly fascistic and pro-U.S. regime that plunged the Honduran people even more deeply into the hell of U.S. domination, state-sponsored political assassinations and terrorism, and intensified violence, poverty, and oppression. These horrors remain in effect to this day, with U.S. backing.
The coup began with the abduction and kidnapping of President Zelaya, and was led by General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez. General Velásquez and three other generals who played key roles in the coup were graduates of the U.S. School of the Americas (SOA).1 Later that day, the Honduran congress elected its speaker, Roberto Micheletti, a member of Zelaya’s own Liberal Party, to head an interim post-coup regime.
The coup was immediately denounced as illegal and illegitimate by other Latin American countries. President Obama and Hillary Clinton each released routine criticisms of what they called “the action.” Neither of them called it a coup, and neither called for Zelaya to be returned to power.
In reality, Obama, Clinton, and the State Department knew days ahead of time that a coup was in the works. And they knew it was not a legal act “in defense of the constitution,” as the junta leaders and opposing politicians would claim. Less than a month after the coup, the U.S. ambassador to Honduras sent a secret cable (later released by WikiLeaks) to Hillary Clinton. It was titled “Open and Shut: The Case of the Honduran Coup,” and stated, “There is no doubt” that Zelaya’s removal “constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup.”
Within days of the coup, Secretary Clinton stepped in with a strategy to make sure the coup succeeded and could claim legitimacy: elections would be held without Zelaya being allowed to take part.
This post-coup election was held five months later under military rule, marked by violence and censorship. Although it was boycotted by opposition candidates and by international observers, including the Carter Center and the UN, the Obama administration upheld the election and recognized the outcome even before the polls had closed. Since then, the U.S. military and State Department have worked closely with the post-coup regimes of President Porfirio Lobo, and now with President Juan Orlando Hernández.
Honduran police frisk a man as they break into a home in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, June 2013. (AP photo)
Meanwhile, the lives of the Honduran people have become even more desperate and dangerous. The murder rate in Honduras, already the highest in the world, increased 50 percent between 2008 and 2011. State security forces carried out violence and murder with impunity. Released documents show that high-level police commanders planned, and police carried out, the assassination of the chief of the anti-narcotics unit shortly after the 2009 military coup. Two years later, they then killed his adviser. In October 2011, the 22-year-old son of the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras was kidnapped and murdered by Honduran national police. The rector, Julieta Castellanos, had been a vocal fighter for police reform, and had called for an end to U.S. aid for the Honduran police and military.
The School of the Americas Watch (SOAW) wrote in 2012 that “state security forces have killed over 300 people, with 34 opposition members disappeared or murdered... at least 22 Honduran journalists have been killed.” The SOAW also wrote that death squads have reemerged since the coup and are responsible for many of these killings.2
The essence of what exists in the U.S. is not democracy but capitalism-imperialism and political structures to enforce that capitalism-imperialism. What the U.S. spreads around the world is not democracy, but imperialism and political structures to enforce that imperialism.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:3
“Washington backs them every step of the way as they silence the population into fearful compliance with government initiatives,” SOAW concluded. The Honduran security forces are now seen by the people as the principal source of the country’s violence.
There is now widespread suspicion that the state was involved in the March 2016 murder of Berta Cáceres, the internationally admired environmentalist and a well-known leader of the opposition. The Guardian has revealed that, according to one soldier, “her name appeared on a hit list distributed to US-trained Special Forces units of the Honduran military months before her death.” Cáceres had openly condemned the Hernández regime, and called out Hillary Clinton publicly for her responsibility for the carnage taking place in Honduras today.
