News: International
Venezuela: Chavez Calls for Continent-Wide Protests against Honduran Coup
Caracas, June 29th 2009 (Venezuelanalysis.com) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for all Latin American governments to organize demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Honduras at an emergency meeting of the nine member countries of the Bolivarian Alliance for Our Americas (ALBA) in Mangaua, Nicaragua, Sunday night.
"It's not enough to just say that we condemn it; we demand demonstrations in solidarity with the people of Honduras and with President Manuel Zelaya," he said. Chavez characterized the military coup against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya as "a coup against all of us."
"It's not possible to negotiate with these coup plotters. They must step down. It's necessary to be as firm as a rock, in the face of coup plotters, to whom it's necessary to say hand over the government to Manuel Zelaya without conditions," Chavez declared.
The Venezuelan head of state also denied reports circulating in the international media alleging Venezuelan troops plan to enter Honduras. "We would never do that because of our sacrosanct respect for Honduran sovereignty," he emphasized.
However, he did say on arrival in Managua, "If the oligarchs of this continent break the rules of the game, as they have in the past few days, the peoples have the right to resist and fight back, and us with them. This is a warning for the oligarchs of this continent."
The Venezuelan head of state also affirmed that the Venezuelan government "will not recognize any government in Honduras except the legitimate government of Manuel Zelaya."
The coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras appears to be almost a carbon copy of the tactics used in the U.S.-backed military coup against Chavez in April 2002, when a mass popular uprising defeated the coup and restored Chavez to power. On Sunday, troops from the military high command in Honduras kidnapped President Manuel Zelaya and transferred him to Costa Rica. A forged resignation letter was then used as a "justification" for the coup and Roberto Micheletti, and the head of Congress, was sworn in as de facto president.
"What happened was a coup just like the coup that happened here in April 2002. The military acted similarly in Honduras... as Venezuelans and having the experience of what we suffered in April 2002, we support the democratically elected president of Honduras," Ismael Peña told Venezuelanalysis.com in Merida.
President Chavez called on Venezuelans to protest the coup in Honduras. "We're going to give this military high command, subordinated to the bourgeoisie, another lesson like the one we gave them 12th and 13th of April," Chavez said referring to the mass uprising that defeated the 2002 coup.
Thousands of Venezuelans converged in Avenida Urdaneta and around the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas on Sunday to protest the coup in Honduras and to demand the restoration of the democratically elected government. Protests have also occurred around the country.
Hilda Girardi, a resident of the La Pastora parish, commented that the struggle of the people of Honduras is the struggle of all the Latin American people. "For us the homeland is America and as [independence leader Simon] Bolivar said integration is what will make us free, this is why we join in solidarity to reinstate the project of the peoples," she explained.
The trigger for the coup, which occurred after days of tension in Honduras, was supposedly an initiative by President Zelaya to hold a non-binding referendum over the possibility of electing a constituent constitutional assembly during the upcoming November elections. The Supreme Court declared the initiative, which had the backing of social movements, unions and various political parties, illegal.
When the military refused to distribute election material throughout the country Zelaya fired Gen. Romeo Vásquez. The Supreme Court ruled the firing illegal and reinstated General Vásquez. Then in the early hours of Sunday morning 60 masked troops entered the presidential residence, kidnapped Zelaya and expelled him to Costa Rica.
However, many believe the coup is an attempt to halt the process of Latin American integration promoted by the Venezuelan government and other left-wing governments through ALBA, which prioritizes fair trade and investment in social programs aimed at reducing poverty.
This view appears to be sustained by comments made by Micheletti in press conference immediately after his swearing in as interim president. If Manuel Zelaya, "returns without the support of [the Venezuelan president] Mr. Hugo Chavez, then we will receive him warmly," he said.
As to whether Honduras would continue being part of ALBA, Micheletti said, "I believe that first we are going to revise what ALBA has produced for Honduras."
The coup has sparked global condemnation including from the European Union and UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. An extraordinary session of the Organization of American States (OAS) on Sunday unanimously condemned the coup d'etat in Honduras, and demanded the immediate and unconditional return of President Manuel Zelaya. The OAS statement also indicated that it would not recognize the illegitimate coup government.
United States President Barrack Obama expressed "preoccupation" over the situation and called for respect of "democratic norms."
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made a statement condemning the action taken against Manuel Zelaya and called for all sides to "respect constitutional order and the state of law." She also called for the resolution of the conflict in a peaceful manner through dialogue.
Chavez accused the US, which maintains 600 personnel stationed in Honduras, of being involved in the coup, which the US has denied.
A New York Times article has revealed that the US officials "began in the last few days to talk with Honduran government and military officials in an effort to head off a possible coup." The US government has not taken a clear position on whether or not it will recognize the coup government.
Published on Jun 29th 2009 at 4.38pm
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Abya Yala: Message to the Americas -CALL TO THE CONTINENT
Abya Yala
Continental Confederation of the Eagle and the Condor
Message to the Americas
CALL TO CONTINENTAL CONSCIENCE
Monday June 29, 2009
Honduras – Peru – Colombia
The present crisis in Honduras, a blatant criminal military coup against the legitimate offices of the democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya, represents yet another tragic flashpoint exposing the violent imposition of unjust regimes of expropriation and exploitation of the natural resources and labor of our continent Abya Yala. While the situation Honduras unfolds before the unequivocal denunciation of global society, in Peru the conflict of the Indigenous Peoples of the Amazonas continues over the issue of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement, and today President Obama is to meet with President Uribe of Colombia, who has overseen one of the most long lasting and bloody pogroms of genocide against the Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala.
The time has long past for members of civil society in the Americas to remain silent on the cumulative and overlapping doctrines of dispossession that began in this hemisphere with the Papal Bull Inter Caetera of 1493 issued by Pope Alexander VI and the Doctrine of Discovery. As Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala we have endured over five centuries of Doctrines of Colonization which the Republics of the Americas [OAS] have continued to impose continentally in violation of the legitimate Right of Self Determination of the Indigenous Nations and Pueblos of Abya Yala, enforced militarily by the Empire of the North through theMonroe Doctrine and now, the assault expands via economic regimes of bi-lateral “free” trade agreements.
We of Abya Yala North stand today with our Indigenous Peoples of Honduras and civil society in denunciation of the illegal and illegitimate military takeover in Honduras, demanding accountability and restitution of justice for the Honduran People.
We recognize that the interests behind the military takeover in Honduras are in collusion across the hemisphere and globally, acting as agents of an ecologically destructive and dehumanizing regime of exploitation and expropriation of the natural resources and labor of all Peoples, among whom we asIndigenous Peoples of Abya Yala are the first victims of genocide. This self destructive schema is not development, but a derivative of the commodification of the material world as property and product for commercial marketing that negates the spiritual relationship and ecological inter-dependence of all life, and threatens to bring the whole of Human Society globally to the brink of terracide.
The particulars of implementation of this mal-adaptive schema, the imposition of the bastard relics of theDivine Right of States in contradiction to the Right of Self Determination of the Indigenous Peoples, continues to be evidenced by policy and practice across the continent. In Peru, the good faith negotiations entered into by the AIDESEP with the government have suffered from persecution of the indigenous leadership from the Amazonas and other regions where Indigenous Peoples have challenged the illegal expropriation of their resources by the national government.
And today, as President Obama meets with President Uribe of Colombia, a country where trade union organizers are subject of state persecution and human rights workers are systematically executed, we echo the words of warning from our Elder Bothers of the Tayrona Confederacy of Umûnûkûnû in Colombia:
Law that legislates the universe, whose constitution is made of harmony and balance by which Serankwa traverses on the ray of the sun, drawing close and piercing the sky from above to say no more marketing of the Mother Earth much less of the Sky because as the Grandmother Sea charges invoking a second tsunami or Mother Earth itself may call upon Brother Storm to bring global disaster, and so it is Brothers, representatives of different nations, especially the government of Colombia who must respect the Mandate of Serankwa because we the Tayrona Peoples are prepared to educate in the schools and with the University of Mother Earth as Emissaries of Umûnûkûnû that we are, we are ready to cooperate to halt the abyss that you the Younger Brothers are creating through economic and scientific development that is recklessly speeding the end of the world.
(VOICE of the MAMAS of UMÛNÛKÛNÛ
The issues brought forward are written in human blood, the voice of testimony is that of the Mother Earthherself and her children of the Nican Tlacah (Indigenous Peoples). For too long has the robe of legitimacy of the state and collective state institutions such as the UN and the OAS, been used to shroud the violation of our human rights. We, as Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, demand recognition, respect and protection for the collective rights of Self Determination for all Peoples.
For these reasons we call upon President Barack Obama to address these historical injustices within aHuman Rights framework that analyzes the effects of collusion and participation in policy implemented by US Trade Agreements that serve as instruments in pogroms of genocide continentally.
Now is the time for the realization of Integrity, integrating justice and dignity along with all of our fellow "Americans" of this continent Abya Yala a new hemispheric policy of Self Determination and Reciprocity with Respect for the Rights of the Nations of the Indigenous Peoples at a continental level, transcribed in the principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which was adopted by the UN General Assembly on September 13th, 2007.
The time has come to not only change but TRANSFORM our collective continental society of the Americas, breaking the chains of centuries of European-American racism and colonization, expropriation and exploitation by finally and for the first time arriving and discovering the ancient hearth of our global humanity here in the New World: a world under assault since the beginnings ofWorld War One: October the 12th, 1492.
This war, the war against the Nations of Indigenous Peoples of Abya Yala, must now be finally brought to an end.
Tupac Enrique Acosta, Yaotachcauh
Tlahtokan Nahuacalli
NAHUACALLI
Embassy of the Indigenous Peoples
PO Box 24009 Phoenix, AZ 85074
Tel: (602) 254-5230 Email: chantlaca@tonatierra.org
www.nahuacalli.org
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Abya Yala: CALL TO CONTINENTAL CONSCIENCE - Honduras, Peru, Colombia
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South/Central American Treaty organization
It's time for the Americas (not the U.S.) to have a South/ Central American Treaty Organization to come to the aid of member countries when scum like Romeo Vasquez, trained by the School of the Americas, plots another coup. The organization would have to send troops, arrest the coup plotters and put them on public trial for treason. And that will send a clear message to the vermon in Washington that the days of being a Banana Republic are over. Then they can open up their countries to trade with the world, get a nuclear weapons program in place to insure that the vermon get the message.