10 jaar na de door Hillary Clinton en de CIA opgezette bloedige coup (28 juni 2009) is het intussen al meer dan 60 dagen onrustig in het land, dit als reactie op het plan om ook op gezondheidszorg en onderwijs te bezuinigen….. Middels massaal verzet, ook van de beroepskrachten, is deze bezuiniging van de baan, maar het verzet blijft doorgaan daar de ellende groot is onder het gewone volk, ook al is er gevaar voor arrestatie waarbij mensen in op VS leest gebouwde extra beveiligde gevangenissen worden opgesloten……
De internationale neoliberale uitzuigorganisatie IMF heeft een akkoord bereikt met de regering van Honduras over privatisering van staatsbedrijven, het programma dat hiervoor wordt gevolgd is door sommigen als ‘neoliberalisme op steroïden’ weggezet….
De vrouw van een criticaster van dat programma vertelt dat haar man in de gevangenis zit, NB betaald middels de Hondurese veiligheidsbelasting, een belastingsturing die werd gesteund door de regisseur van de coup in 2009, hare kwaadaardigheid Hillary Clinton, destijds minister van BuZa onder Obama, waarbij de politie en leger, plus de geheime diensten kapitalen extra kregen, terwijl de rest van de departementen in feite moesten bezuinigen, of rond zien te komen van een veel te laag budget….. De gevangenis waarin de bewuste man vastzit en die op VS leest is gebouwd, werd betaald uit die veiligheidsbelasting…….
Het neoliberalisme heeft ervoor gezorgd dat een groot aantal mensen in diepe armoede is beland, niet voor niets dat velen het land uitvluchten, als ze dat al niet uit angst voor overheid en doodseskaders hebben gedaan………
Lees het volgende ontluisterende verhaal en lees de interviews (via link) en begrijp waarom zoveel Hondurese mensen het land zijn ontvlucht, mensen worden vermoord door doodseskaders die niet zelden uit overheidsfunctionarissen bestaan en zoals al vaak vertoond in Latijns-Amerika: ‘mensen verdwijnen……’ Overigens ook drugsbendes zorgen voor grote ellende en vermoorden mensen als waren het insecten….. Bij de protesten die hebben geleid tot het stopzetten van de bezuinigingen op onderwijs en gezondheidszorg zijn een groot aantal studenten neergeschoten, als gevolg daarvan is een aantal van hen overleden……
In het hierna volgende artikel spreekt de schrijver over de neoliberale agenda van ‘president’ Hernandez (JOH), die illegaal een tweede termijn dient met steun van de VS, echter gezien het verhaal kan je niet anders concluderen dan dat we hier met een fascistisch beleid te maken hebben……
Dat de mensenrechten met grote platvoeten worden getreden, leek me aanvankelijk overbodig te melden. Alexander Rubinstein van MintPress News(MPN) is de schrijver van het volgende artikel, ook is hij de fotograaf die de beelden maakte van een veel gebruikt ‘protestinstrument’ in Honduras: graffiti op muren en deuren:
A NEOLIBERAL AGENDA
Members of the resistance in Honduras tell MintPress how a US-backed coup – and the Neoliberalism it brought with it – have impacted their country.
EGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS — MintPress News went to Honduras and spoke with a number of leaders of the Honduran resistance amid a 66-day uprising over a neoliberal austerity deal reached between the government as the country marked the 10-year anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup d’etat.
Last Thursday, the Honduran government passed a privatization law, the run-up to which had triggered uprisings challenging the mandate of President Juan Orlando Hernandez and protesting the implementation of a privatization deal reached with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — a deal kept secret until this week. The battle against it was fought tooth and nail, with average Hondurans following the lead of healthcare and education activists.
MintPress has obtained a copy of the law. The document details the government’s plan to sever 6 billion lempiras ($242 million USD), and includes instituting a maximum wage on public sector contract “technical and professional” workers amounting to $2,426 a month, but promises not to cut healthcare and education. An agreement with the IMF over the state-run electrical company remains in question.
What is known is that the deal consists of more of the same neoliberal remedies that have already devastated Honduran civil society. One person interviewed by MintPress called the approach “neoliberalism on steroids.” And she would know: her husband is a political prisoner sitting in a U.S.-designed maximum security facility. The prison was paid for under the Honduran Security Tax, a program backed by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that bankrolls the military and police while the rest of the government is gutted.
Photo | Alexander Rubinstein
Adrienne Pine, a Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington and expert on Honduras, told MintPress:
“The fact that education and healthcare were left out is a pretty big win for the movement because that is what they were planning to cut, and the healthcare and education workers who have led this struggle against this have prevented those cuts even though there has been this very radical reduction in public spending.”
On May 6, the IMF announced it had reached a “staff level agreement” that was believed to be targeted towards healthcare, education and more. That same day, protests started breaking out.
But as news emerged on Tuesday of the deal becoming law, the IMF also announced its approval of a plan to restructure the public electric company and said it would give the Honduran government $311 million in loans over the next two years. Around the same time, a fresh corruption scandal was unfolding at the electric company. Professor Pine explained to MintPress:
“ENEE [the Honduran public electric company] has already been subject to privatization measures over the past few years that have significantly weakened it. Problems in the ENEE have to do, at their root, with the privatization itself, but right now it looks like the IMF and the U.S. are justifying the privatization by using examples of corruption at the agency rather than addressing the underlying structural issues.”
Photo | Alexander Rubinstein
The resistance in Honduras fought off further privatization of health care and education in a struggle that left piles of students shot and scores of people killed, as well as resulting in the political imprisonment of a young man who is accused of fueling a fire at the U.S. Embassy in the capital. Romel Valdemar Herrera Portillo, 23, sits in a military-run prison, designed by the United States, called La Tova alongside political prisoners Edwin Espinal and Raúl Álvarez.
In this article, MintPress will feature exclusive interviews not just with leaders of the Honduran resistance but also with people who have been directly affected by the coup and all that it has brought.’
Ten years of resistance
The history of the past decade in Honduras is among the most telling examples of U.S.-backed regime change in the Western Hemisphere. A powder keg for the migrant crisis that popped up under Barack Obama and worsened under Donald Trump, the military operation that deposed leftist reformer Manuel Zelaya from the presidency informs Honduran life at every level today.
MintPress News traveled to Honduras around the 10-year anniversary of the coup d’etat, speaking to a range of leaders of the resistance against the National Party, which has dominated politics in the country since the coup. The National Party is led by President Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH), a widely reviled neoliberal leader believed to be involved in drug trafficking, electoral fraud and death squads.
The post-coup neoliberal policies ramped up under JOH’s reign have rendered Honduras a playground for the business elite and drug cartels and brought the poverty rate to levels unrivaled in the region. Disappearances and lethal violence from police, private mercenaries and drug cartels have also skyrocketed.
Photo | Alexander Rubinstein
Revelations that JOH has been under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) since 2013, according to U.S. federal court documents released this year, came as little surprise to many in the resistance; JOH’s brother is himself in prison in the U.S. on drug trafficking charges. But it did pour salt on fresh wounds, as the United States backed JOH’s re-election in 2017, even though the Honduran constitution explicitly forbids second terms.
While in Honduras, MintPress examined the effects of the coup from multiple angles, including: cuts to education; repression against students and teachers; cuts to the healthcare sector; the political development of Hondurans; electoral fraud; death squads linked to big business; the conditions of political prisoners and the plight of human rights workers; and the effects of neoliberalism on the healthcare sector. MintPress also looked at the role of creative culture in the resistance.
As MintPress previously reported, staff journalist Alex Rubinstein was detained immediately upon landing in the capital, Tegucigalpa. It was “a testament to the government’s unease” around the anniversary of the coup and in the face of more than 50 days of active uprising.
(dit is een still van een 2 minuten video die ik niet over kan nemen, zie het origineel)
MintPress spent nearly a week in the capital, Tegucigalpa, a city that is both militarized and yet ruled by crime at night, a dynamic that makes the often cozy relationship between the state and organized crime palpable throughout much of the city. The prevalence of anti-JOH and anti-National Party graffiti appears as a glimmering of an uprising in a city otherwise divided into quarters of poverty and opulence: from poor, Libre strongholds like El Carrizal to areas where Burger King and Little Caesar’s are second and third only to Juan Orlando. United States colonialism is, basically, omnipresent. American fast-food restaurants, mostly a luxury for the country’s tiny middle class, operate tax-free in the country, while those who can’t afford a Big Mac get squeezed on their electricity, for example.
The streets of Tegucigalpa tell the story of the resistance, to a degree. One tag in the city refers to the use of graffiti as a means of communicating a message: “When justice is silenced, the walls speak.”
Photos | Alexander Rubinstein
What follows are excerpts of MintPress News interviews from a range of leaders of the resistance against JOH.
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Zie ook:
‘BBC volkomen krom over de vluchtelingen uit Honduras die wel degelijk door Trump met geweld worden bedreigd‘
‘Door VS gesteunde bewind in Honduras heeft de staat van beleg afgekondigd……..‘
‘VS heeft Hondurese speciale eenheden getraind die protesten tegen een waterkrachtcentrale gewelddadig hebben neergeslagen……‘
‘Hillary Clinton mede verantwoordelijk voor moord op Berta Cáceres………..‘
‘Hondurese activiste ontvoerd en vermoord (alweer…), met instemming van de VS………‘
‘Berta Cáceres voorvechter gelijke rechten en milieuactivist vermoord in Honduras‘
‘Bolton geeft toe dat de VS een fascistisch beleid voert……‘
