Communication from the National Resistance Front Against the Coup

COMUNICADO No. 38

1. We denounce that hours before the electoral farce of the military dictatorship, their repressive organs have embarked on a ferocious persecution against popular organisations that have expressed opposition to the Coup D’Etat. Examples of this are the raid and destruction of the headquarters of the COMAL Network in Siguatepeque, the surrounding and raiding with firearms by military of the headquarters of STIBYS (a union) in Tegicugalpa, the military siege of the community of Guadalupe Camey in Silín, Colón, and against the neighbourhood of La Paz in La Lime, Cortés; the militarization of the INESCO centre of Father Fausto Milla in Copán. Similarly, we point out the bombing attempt suffered by the Centre of Women’s Rights in San Pedro Sula.

Likewise, the repressive actions that have again befallen active members of the Popular Resistance on the eve of voting, such as the violent persecution of leaders of the resistance in the neighbourhoods of Kennedy and El Reparto in Tegucigalpa, in Gualala, Santa Barbara; in San Pedro Sula, Cortés; and the capture of feminist leader Merlyn Euigure in Tegucigalpa, freed through the pressure brought by her sisters in the Movement Visitación Padilla.

Also there have been raids in the workplace of the head of the Democratic Unification Party, Gregorio Baca, where disabled watchman Humberto Castillo was detained, and the raid of the house of the sister of Radio America journalist Percy Durón. To round this off, Angel Fabricio Salgado Hernández, of the Tiloarque neighbourhood, is in a critical condition after being shot by military guarding the Military High Command, after he accidentally hit obstacles placed in the street by the military.

2. This violence shows the state of defenselessness in which the Honduran people find themselves, facing the repressive armies of the de facto government, reinforcing the climate of persecution in which they are conducting the electoral circus which begins today. For this reason, the National Resistance Front Against the Coup reiterates that the conditions for clean and secure elections do not exist, and that the determination of this government to hold them is second only to the urgency to change the guard and ‘wash’ the face of those who will be taking over, who in reality are the same golpistas.

3. We are alerting the Honduran people and the international community of this eventuality, and that the scale of repression is increasing in the coming hours, using for its justification suspect attacks that have been made against buses, schools and public buildings, the responsibility for which the National Police attributes in an almost automatic, irresponsible and tendentious manner to the Popular Resistance.

4. For this reason the National Resistance Front Against the Coup reiterates that our struggle is PEACEFUL and we ratify our call to the Honduran people not to take part in the electoral farce mounted by the oligarchy today. At the same time we vigorously deny whatever message under whatever pretence that, in order to create confusion, they say is a call to vote from the People in Resistance.

We are resisting, and we are overcoming!
Made in the city of Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. 28 November 2009

ENDS