Honduras Coup - Grahame Russel, eyewitness report on brute force.



Grahame Russel, human rights lawyer is in Honduras getting the real story out. The military coup, backed by the oligarchy and elite business community, has been universally condemned, but unlike Tehran the huge houtpouring of popular repudiation of the coup masters and the military, doesn't seem to be making the headlines in mainstream media.

Grahame was present last Sunday when the President of Honduras tried to fly in to return to his country after being bundled out of his residence last week by the military and put on a flight to Costa Rica. Somewhere between one hundred thousand and two hudnred thousand demonstrators turned up at the airport to see the Presidential plane land. Two were shot by the military and another four wounded. After the military placed trucks on the runway and fired shots at the plane after a low pass over the runway the landing was aborted.

He will try again on Wednesday (Thursday Australian time). The Honduran people are mobilised, the biggest outpouring of popular power in this country since the 1950s. Honduras is diplomatically isolated, although the US is slow to take decisive action.


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Coup in Honduras - eyewitness report



17 Mb mono 37 mins

Toni covers the Honduran coup. He was there, invited as an international observer, by the Honduran government, to be an observer to a constitutionally legal poll as to whether the Honduran people wanted to have a body to study constitutional reform included in the elections of next November. The results of this study would later be put to a popular referendum.

Contrary to mistaken references in the anglo/western media that the coup was triggered by fears that he was seeking extra time in the Presidency, Zelaya was not seeking this, and had not even put his name down as a Presidencial candidate. He was actually looking forward to retirement.

Toni tracks the amazement of observers when an armed military coup interrupted the poll, and they went to the Presidential Palace, in the middle of a military media blackout, to discover that there was a mobilisation of people trying to prevent the coup non violently.

This was the script set out for the next week of events in Honduras.
Direct download: Honduras.mp3
Category: Latin Radical -- posted at: 5:24 AM

Chiapas - Blitz on Human Rights: Julie Webb reports



7.4Mb. 100kbps mono. 12 mins

Julie Webb, journalist for "Scoop" gives us an update on the increasingly tense situation in Chiapas, particularly the harassment of the Human Rights organisation Fray Bartholome de las Casas, by Mexican government security and paramilitary forces. Chiapas peasants are living on land that the neo-conservative 'developers' want to get their hands on, and human rights organisations like 'Fray Barta' is often the only thing standing between them and outright pillage.

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