August has been a troubled month for freedom of the press in the Americas. Here are a few examples.
Unidentified gunmen shot and killed veteran radio broadcaster Israel Zelaya Díaz in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Zelaya is at least the eighth Honduran reporter killed so far this year amid an atmosphere that has become far more dangerous since the June 2009 coup that deposed elected President Manuel Zelaya. “The unsolved murders suggest a deeper breakdown of law and order and undermine Honduras’ desire to put last year’s political violence behind it,” read an August 27 Miami Heraldeditorial. “As disturbing as the journalists’ deaths has been the Honduran government’s swift dismissal of the possibility that the victims were killed because of their line of work,” charged an August 8 Houston Chronicleeditorial. “After minimizing the crimes, Honduran authorities are slow and negligent in pursuing the killers,” charges a hard-hitting July 27 report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. The Honduran government’s minister of human rights, a newly created post, wrote the New York Times to defend its actions: “The investigations have not concluded in the rest of the cases and continue at a standard pace. Therefore, one should not talk about killing with ‘impunity’ in any of these cases, as the [CPJ] report does.”
The government of Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has feuded constantly with two of the country’s principal daily newspapers, La Nación and Clarín. The latter is part of the country’s largest media company. In the latest episode last week, President Fernández proposed to regulate the production of newsprint paper as a “public interest.” In other words, the Argentine government would control the supply of newsprint. The president justifies the move by alleging that the country’s main newsprint supplier, Papel Prensa, was sold to Clarín and La Nación under pressure from the military government that ran Argentina at the time. Fernández accuses the papers of benefiting from “crimes against humanity”; Argentina’s opposition issued a joint statement charging, “Like the dictators, they believe they can build an official history by censuring the press, controlling their materials and, with this new power, form an extraordinary state communication apparatus so that society only hears their side of the story.” Said U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner, “We have concerns about journalistic freedom all over the world and certainly, there’s a strong domestic debate occurring right now in Argentina. We’re paying close attention to developments and it’s a part of our bilateral conversation.”
The Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and National Public Radio have all recently covered Mexico’s troubling phenomenon of “narco-censorship,” in which media outlets fail to report about drug cartel violence out of fear for reporters’ lives. Notes the L.A. Times, “When convoys of narco hit men brazenly turned their guns on army garrisons in Reynosa, trapping soldiers inside, it was front-page news in the Los Angeles Times in April. It went unreported in Reynosa.” Affiliates of Televisa, the country’s largest television network, were hit by small bomb attacks in Monterrey and Matamoros on August 15. Associated Press reports about a heavily anonymized blog, “Blog del Narco,” that has quickly won a huge readership in Mexico because it reports on the cartel violence that major media outlets ignore. With nine journalists killed so far this year, journalists’ associations in northern Mexico now recommend that reporters wear helmets and bulletproof vests.
In Venezuela, reporting on violence carries risks from another direction: the government. A court declared a one-month ban on publishing pictures of crime and violence after one of the country’s main dailies, the opposition-aligned El Nacional, ran a gruesome photo of crime victims’ bodies strewn across a clearly overwhelmed morgue. Opponents of President Hugo Chávez’s government allege that the crime-images ban, imposed with a month to go before highly contested September 26 legislative elections, is designed to reduce voters’ outrage at the country’s very high crime rates. The government at first sought to sanction El Nacional for running the photo and thus threatening “the rights to health, physical, psychological and moral integrity of children and adolescents”; the charge was later dropped.
On Sunday, a Colombian Army jungle raid freed four policemen who had been held hostage by the FARC guerrillas since the 1990s. Colombian Defense Minister Gabriel Silva said that although there was combat, the rescue took place without a single death. It happened less than 20 miles from the site where the 2008 “Operación Jaque” hostage rescue occurred. Details of the operation – in particular, how it happened without the guerrillas carrying out their threat to kill hostages at the first sign of a rescue attempt – are still emerging. We’re posting links to coverage here.
The rescue happened on the same weekend that Colombia’s principal newsmagazine, Semana, reported that the country’s military, angered and “discouraged” by verdicts in high-profile human rights cases, had become almost inoperable. “The situation is so delicate that some analysts have dared to propose it as the reason [the Army] has not repeated its strong blows against the FARC high command, such as the bombing of Raúl Reyes and Operación Jaque in 2008.”
Meanwhile, a week before Sunday’s presidential election runoff in Colombia, former Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos leads opponent Antanas Mockus by a broad margin. 66.5 to 27.4 percent, according to the last Gallup poll.
Mexico is angryabout a June 7 incident in which a Border Patrol agent fired across the border at a group of people throwing rocks, killing a 15-year-old boy in Ciudad Juárez. Mexico’s Interior Secretary issued a diplomatic note expressing concern, and legislators of all major parties have called for the agent’s extradition to Mexico. The State Department’s response was terse.
“[M]ost of Chile didn’t notice the dictatorship of Pinochet. On the contrary, they felt relieved,” Chile’s ambassador to Argentina, Miguel Otero, told an Argentine newspaper. Otero downplayed the 1973-1990 dictatorship’s human rights abuses (“everywhere in the world, there are people who abuse their authority”), adding that had it not been for Pinochet’s coup, “Chile would be Cuba today.” The resulting political firestorm not only forced Otero’s resignation; it shone a light on the pro-Pinochet elements in the right-of-center coalition backing recently inaugurated President Sebastián Piñera.
Peru’s defense minister, Rafael Rey, accused the country’s human rights groups of going on a “witch hunt” against the armed forces.
Honduran President Porfirio Lobo claimed that a conspiracy, possibly involving the right wing of his own National Party, is plotting a coup to overthrow him. “I know who you are,” Lobo cryptically warned the alleged plotters, whoever they are.
Though it wasn’t on the official agenda, the question of whether to re-admit post-coup Honduras to the Organization of American States was a dominant point of discussion at the annual OAS General Assembly meeting in Lima, Peru. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made a pitch for Honduras’s reinstatement, but a significant number of countries demand that the Tegucigalpa government take further steps to demonstrate that democracy has truly been restored. Meanwhile, U.S. aid to the Honduran military re-started with the delivery of twenty-five trucks.
Secretary Clinton’s trip to the region was also notable for a surprisingly friendly visit to Ecuador, where leftist President Rafael Correa declared, “The new left that I represent is not anti-anything. We’re not anti-American; we love America.” Correa’s new tone has been marked by kind words from Colombia on border-security cooperation, postponed and less-frequent meetings with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and increasing opposition to the President on Ecuador’s left.
An NPR analysis of Mexican government news releases finds surprisingly little mention of actions against Mexico's largest narcotrafficking organization, the Sinaloa cartel.
Mexican President Felipe Calderón paid a two-day official state visit to Washington, which included an address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress (video / transcript). Calderón called on Congress to reinstate a lapsed ban on U.S. sales of assault weapons, thousands of which cross the border into Mexico and end up in the hands of violent drug cartels. He was also strongly critical of Arizona’s new illegal immigration statute, calling it “racial profiling.”
While Republican legislators’ attendance at the speech was sparse, border-state Republicans criticized it harshly. “The Mexican government has made it very clear for many years that it holds American sovereignty in contempt and President Calderon’s behavior as a guest of the Congress confirms and underscores this attitude,” said one California congressman.
Of all the media coverage of Calderón’s trip, the story that probably caused the biggest stir was an investigative piece by National Public Radio contending that Mexico’s largest drug-trafficking organization, the Sinaloa cartel, is getting favorable treatment. It found “strong evidence of collusion between elements of the Mexican army and the Sinaloa cartel in the violent border city of Juarez.”
The committee chair of the latter hearing, Sen. Clare McCaskill, was so disappointed with how little she learned about private contractors’ role in counter-drug aid that she issued a statement threatening to subpoena the State and Defense departments.
Polling for Colombia’s May 30 first-round presidential elections seems to show the challenger, former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus, no longer surging — though not exactly losing ground. President Álvaro Uribe’s former defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, now holds a slim lead. However, as El Nuevo Heraldnotes, Mockus may have a second-round advantage, as polling seems to point to him getting most of the votes from people who support candidates likely to lose in the first round.
The OAS Inter-American Human Rights Commission carried out follow-up work on an earlier report about the human rights situation in post-coup Honduras. Its press release voiced “deep concern” about waves of killings and threats against journalists, judges and human rights defenders critical of the June 28, 2009 coup. The release notes near-total government inaction when it comes to investigating or prosecuting these crimes:
The Commission was informed that only one person is being held in custody for human rights violations, only 12 have been charged, and the cases are not moving forward, among other reasons due to the lack of investigation by the various State bodies, particularly the security forces handling the investigations.
Rogelio Martínez, a victims’ rights activist in the municipality of San Onofre, Sucre, Colombia, was killed by a gunman on a motorcycle on May 18. San Onofre is known throughout Colombia for the discovery of a large number of mass graves dug by paramilitaries who carried out a string of massacres a decade ago. The graves’ discovery was made possible by the mid-2000s work of victims’ activists, who at the time had the support of the local military leadership. Threats against the victims' movement in San Onofre have since worsened.
Last weekend, Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva brokered an apparent nuclear deal with Iran. Links to media coverage of the deal are here.
A Washington Postpiece cites documents and testimony from former Colombian guerrilla leaders indicating that members of Spain’s Basque separatist terror group, ETA, may have trained at camps maintained by Colombia’s FARC guerrillas in Zulia and Apure, Venezuela.
The Just the Facts project obtained a copy of the Defense Department’s “Section 2011” report (PDF) documenting Special Operations Forces’ training with foreign militaries during 2008.
Yesterday, Honduras' El Heraldo published an article about 25 Honduran police officers who are currently in the United States for training on prison management. According to the article, the training will help keep "improvisation, flexibility, incompetence and corruption" out of Honduras' new maximum-security prison. The seven-week long training includes topics such as the proper handling of inmates, acceptable police conduct, and measures to be taken with prisoners to avoid danger.
Below is a translation of the article, thanks to CIP Intern Cristina Salas.
The policemen that traveled to the United States will be entrusted of training other correctional officers.
Improvisation, flexibility, incompetence and corruption do not seem to be a part of the new maximum-security prison to be inaugurated in the upcoming days in the Marco Aurelio Soto National Penitentiary.
The Department of Security (Secretaría de Seguridad) and the National Authority of Preventive Special Services (Dirección Nacional de Servicios Especiales Preventivos, DNSEP) choose the staff and resources to be used in the jail that will host dangerous criminals.
A first contingent of 25 police officers, men and women, travelled to the United States yesterday to attend a special training session on handling inmates, proper police officer-conduct, and measures to be taken with prisoners to avoid danger, among others.
…
The group will remain in training for seven weeks and will come back to the country to rejoin the police force in the main penitentiary, given that the security module will be inaugurated in the beginning of July, where inmates selected by experts in the field will be hosted.
They will serve time
Minister [of Security Óscar] Álvarez stated that the police officers trained in prison management would help so that “those imprisoned serve their time as it should be.”
“It is the first time in history,” he added, “that we have sent a contingent of this size to be trained on inmate management in the United States.”
He continued saying the course will last seven weeks, which will “help us transition our prison system management from the 20th to the 21st century.”
He declared that, in order to guarantee efficiency of the new prison, the selection process of police officers is very rigorous, they are subjected to polygraph tests and background checks to assure quality.
What we want, he said, is that whoever does the job has a clean criminal record and no connections with organized crime or criminal gangs.
…
The chief of DNSEP, Danilo Orellana, confirmed that the building could hold up to 220 inmates selected by technical teams approved by Minister Álvarez.
In the following days, Álvarez will announce rehabilitation measurements for the general penitentiary population, including those in this unit, who will be people involved to organized crime such as drug-traffickers, kidnappers and car thieves, among others.
This is cross-posted from the Latin America Working Group's blog, theLAWG Blog. It was written by Lisa Haugaard.
As National Party leader Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo is inaugurated president of Honduras, we can’t just pretend the June 28th coup and its bitter aftermath never occurred.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights just released a devastating 147-page catalogue of the violations of human rights and civil liberties that have occurred since the coup in Honduras.
The Commission writes, “Along with the loss of institutional legitimacy brought about by the coup d’état, during its visit the Commission confirmed that serious human rights violations had been committed, including killings, an arbitrary declaration of a state of emergency, disproportionate use of force against public demonstrations, criminalization of public protest, arbitrary detention of thousands of persons, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, poor detention conditions, militarization of Honduran territory, an increase in incidents of racial discrimination, violations of women’s rights, severe and arbitrary restrictions on the right to freedom of expression, and serious violations of political rights. The Commission also established that judicial remedies were ineffective in protecting human rights.”
As the new government takes office, we should look back at these extensive series of abuses to get a feel for the ground that must be covered by the new administration in restoring human rights and civil liberties and repairing and improving the institutions of democracy, including judicial agencies and law enforcement, that so notably failed in their mission to protect the citizens’ rights. Joe Eldridge and Vicki Gass spell out in the Huffington Post some of the steps that are needed to rebuild democracy in Honduras.
And the U.S. government, which condemned the coup but failed in the end to strongly defend democracy and human rights, has an absolute obligation to press the new government to fully restore the democratic rights that have been so severely eroded. This includes restoring human rights protections and civil liberties, establishing a truth commission, investigating and prosecuting the abuses that occurred, and launching a meaningful national dialogue involving broad sectors of Honduran society.
The elections in Honduras are over and the National Party's Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo was victorious, securing over 55% of the vote. However, several questions remain after the culmination of the country's widely disputed elections. Not only is the Western Hemisphere split on whether to recognize the elections, but the official voter turnout numbers are also in question, with numbers from the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) reaching over 60% and the nongovernmental observer group, Hagamos Democracia, tallying voter turnout closer to 47%.
As Daniel Altschuler points out on the Americas Quarterly blog, this discrepancy "raises questions about the electoral tribunal's announcement. In particular, there is concern about the TSE's incentive to inflate voter turnout rates to raise the perceived legitimacy of the elections." RNS, on the Honduras Coup 2009 blog, noted this morning that the TSE turnout numbers are dropping as more votes are counted. This suggests that while turnout in the municipalities surrounding Tegucigalpa was high, the rest of the country did not turn out to vote in such high numbers.
Despite the region's lack of consensus on the legitimacy of Sunday's elections in Honduras, leaders meeting in Portugal at the 2009 Iberoamerican Summit released a joint statement condemning the coup d'etat in Honduras and calling for the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya to carry out his constitutional term as president. The Honduran Congress is set to convene tomorrow to vote on Zelaya's return, and it appears that the region's leaders, whether they recognize the elections or not, find this to be the next step in returning democratic order to Honduras.
The statement (download PDF) released by the presidency of the Iberoamerican Summit reads:
The Iberoamerican heads of state condemn the coup d'etat in Honduras and consider the grave human rights and basic freedom violations unacceptable. In this context, they consider that the restitution of President Jose Manuel Zelaya to complete the term to which he was democratically elected ... is a fundamental step toward the return of constitutional normalcy.
...
The Iberoamerican heads of state will continue to actively contribute to the search for a solution that allows for a widespread national dialogue in Honduras and the return of a democratic regime to the Honduran people.
The Iberoamerican heads of state declare their firm commitment to the democratic principles of all of the Ibero-American countries to prevent any attempts to destabilize legitimately elected governments.
The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, also noted during a briefing yesterday that the election in Honduras was "only a step" toward the return of democratic order. Assistant Secretary Valenzuela said that the remaining steps included those found in the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord: the formation of a government of national unity, a congressional vote on the return of President Zelaya to office, and the formation and structuring of a truth commission (this step was included in the original San José Accords).
"[L]et me stress the most important point, and that is that while the election is a significant step in Honduras's return to the democratic and constitutional order after the 28 June coup, it's just that; it's only a step. It's – and it's not the last step. Given the gravity of the coup d'état and the polarization that Honduras has undergone, both before and after the coup d'état, it's extremely important that Honduran leadership moving forward in the next few months attempt to follow the overall broad frameworks of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.
And by that, I mean that - what are the additional steps that need to be taken? A government of national unity needs to be formed. The congress has to take a vote on the return of President Zelaya to office. And another element of the San Jose Accords that I think would be very, very important as Honduras moves forward to try to reestablish the democratic and constitutional order is the formation and the structuring of a truth commission, which was also contemplated in the original Tegucigalpa framework and San Jose Accords."
In the 2005 presidential elections, 46 percent of eligible Hondurans turned out to vote. Honduras' Supreme Elections Tribunal (TSE) has projected that more than 60 percent voted this time. The Honduras Coup 2009 blog reports that the pollster the TSE hired to make statistical projections and perform exit polling estimates a turnout of 47.6 percent. The pro-Zelaya "Resistance Front" is estimating turnout of 35-40 percent. Meanwhile, of ballots that were cast, 6 percent were blank or invalid.
Having said that, let me stress the most important point, and that is that, while the election is a significant step in Honduras' return to a democratic and constitutional order after the 28th June coup, it's just that. It's only a step, and it's not the last step....
A government of national unity needs to be formed. The congress has to take a vote on the return of President Zelaya to office.
And another element of the San Jose Accord that I think would be very, very important as Honduras moves forward to try to reestablish the democratic and constitutional order is the formation and the structuring of a truth commission, which was also contemplated in the original Tegucigalpa framework and San Jose Accord.
And the truth commission would be a body that would look into the incidents and the situation that led to the coup, but at the same time, as the accord says, ... it also will provide the elementos, as it says in the accord, the elements to help the Hondurans make the necessary reforms to their constitutional process and to bring about a fuller reconciliation of the Honduran people. ...
The issue is not who is going to be the next president. The Honduran people decided that. The issue is whether the legitimate president of Honduras, who was overthrown in a coup d’état, will be returned to office by the congress on December 2nd, as per the San Jose-Tegucigalpa Accord.
On the way, many things have changed. Today, we are a nation whose sovereignty has been proved, with no fear of defending its sovereignty against even the largest [powers], and with the faith that if we act according to the law, we can achieve everything. Beyond paper and speeches, today our Honduras has gone out to confirm to the world that it is a dignified, free country, with no impositions and very proud of itself.
We will keep rejecting any dialogue with the coup leaders. ... We've had it up to here with dialogues. Why should we go on with so much dialogue if, with these dialogues, we have lost five months and we haven't resolved absolutely anything.
The Honduran Congress is to vote Wednesday on whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya to head a "national unity government" until January 27, when Porfirio Lobo, the winner of yesterday's vote, would take office.
Elections in Honduras will be held in 11 days, and very little progress has been made on advancing the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord. The Accord was signed by ousted President Manuel Zelaya and de facto President Roberto Micheletti on October 29th and declared "dead" by Zelaya on November 5th.
Since the apparent crumbling of the Accord, very little has advanced, despite the United States' attempts to keep the process moving by sending deputy assistant secretary of state Craig Kelly to Honduras twice to meet with both Zelaya and Micheletti. Zelaya has dug in his heels, calling for a boycott of the November 29th elections by his supporters and sending President Obama a letter stating that he will not accept any deal to restore him to office that legitimizes the coup.
Yesterday, the Honduran Congress announced that it will not convene to vote on Zelaya's restitution, a step required by the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord, until December 2nd - 3 days after the presidential elections are to be held.
Here are more details about the most recent events in Honduras' political crisis:
For two days, from November 10 - 11, deputy assistant secretary of state Craig Kelly traveled to Honduras to meet with both ousted President Manuel Zelaya and de facto President Roberto Micheletti in an attempt to get both sides to abide by the terms of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord. He left the next day without any apparent advancement in the Accord, but appeared positive, telling the press "There is still a lot of work to be done along the way ... but I believe it is important for both sides to keep talking."
According to the State Department's twitter feed, @dipnote, deputy assistant secretary Kelly returned to Honduras yesterday to continue to advance dialogue between the two parties and attempt to move the Accord forward.
Much criticism has emerged against the United States' role in the collapse of the accord it helped negotiate. Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), said, through his spokesman, that the "State Department's 'abrupt change' of policy toward Honduras 'caused the collapse of an accord it helped negotiate.'"
One group, the Alliance for Global Justice, sent out an urgent action alert earlier this week, calling for people to call their senators and tell them to vote 'no' on Thomas Shannon' confirmation as U.S. Ambassador to Brazil. The alert argues that Shannon is "not fit to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Brazil" because "Either Shannon defied President Obama’s instructions and plotted with the coup regime to keep it in power, or he was fooled by thuggish coup leader Roberto Micheletti into supporting a hoax that the coup regime had no intention of honoring."
Last Tuesday, the secretary general of the Organization of American States, José Miguel Insulza, said he would not send observers to monitor the November 29th elections, while many of the OAS's member countries said they would not recognize the election winner unless Zelaya was reinstated.
In response, the U.S. Ambassador to the OAS, Lewis Amselem, said: "I've heard many in this room say that they will not recognize the elections in Honduras. I'm not trying to be a wiseguy, but what does that mean? What does that mean in the real world, not in the world of magical realism?" This prompted us to ask, in an earlier blog, where is the Obama administration's nominee for U.S. Ambassador to the OAS?
Zelaya has been calling for a boycott of the elections by his supporters, and in protest of the coup d'etat, 110 mayoral candidates and 55 deputies have pulled out of the elections.
However, despite the continued controversy surrounding the legitimacy of the upcoming elections, Honduras' Supreme Electoral Court announced that already has confirmed over 250 international observers for the November 29th elections. While a detailed list of the observers has not been provided, the Honduran National Party announced that it invited around 100 observers, among them ex presidents Jorge Quiroga (Bolivia), Armando Calderón and Alfredo Critiani (El Salvador); Vinicio Cerezo (Guatemala), Vicente Fox (Mexico) and Alejandro Toledo (Peru). According to the National Party, "the majority of the invited have confirmed their attendance and in some cases will send a representative."
Over the weekend, Zelaya sent President Obama a letter, in which he said he will not accept any deal to restore him to office if it legitimizes the coup government. In the letter, Zelaya also stated that he will not accept the legitimacy of the upcoming elections and accused the Obama administration of reversing its stance on whether the elections would be legitimate if he was not in office.
In the letter, Zelaya writes: "The future that you show us today by changing your position in the case of Honduras, and thus favoring the abusive intervention of the military castes ... is nothing more than the downfall of freedom and contempt for human dignity. ... It is a new war against the processes of social and democratic reforms so necessary in Honduras."
The president of the Honduran Congress, José Alvedro Saavedra, announced that Congress would not convene until after the elections to vote on Zelaya's restitution - setting the vote date as December 2nd.
According to Reuters, this move by the Congress was most likely made in an effort to win more international support for the elections. "The delay could leave a door open to negotiators to continue looking for a way to end the deadlock. A 'No' vote before the election might have increased international rejection of the result of the presidential election."
One and a half weeks ago, on October 30th, it appeared that the political crisis in Honduras, instigated on June 28th after then-President Manuel Zelaya was removed from the country in his pajamas, was nearing an end. A high-level delegation of United States officials had left Honduras with an agreement signed between ousted President Zelaya and de facto President Roberto Micheletti, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced that an historic breakthrough had occurred in Honduras.
As last week progressed, however, the "historic" deal appeared to be crumbling. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon said the United States will recognize the November 29th elections in Honduras whether or not Zelaya is reinstated, the Honduran Congress delayed a vote on the reinstatement of Zelaya, one of the steps required by the signed agreement. Zelaya sent Secretary Clinton a letter asking her to restate the United States' opinion on his reinstatement to the presidency, and finally, Micheletti created a unity government without Zelaya's participation, prompting Zelaya to denounce the deal as "dead."
Over the weekend, the Verification Commission appointed to oversee the implementation of the steps required in the signed Tegucigalpa-San José Accord, and an OAS delegation attempted to restart talks and move the deal forward. Yet this morning, it still appears to be where it was on Friday - stuck. And the elections are 19 days away.
The United States released a statement expressing disappointment at both sides' failure to implement the agreement, though it has left behind its calls for Zelaya's reinstatement and now rests its recognition of the November 29th elections on the new agreement, which does not guarantee Zelaya's return.
Here is a summary of events in Honduras since the Tegucigalpa-San José agreement was signed last Thursday.
On Friday, October 30th, it was announced that a deal had been signed late Thursday between ousted President Zelaya and de facto President Micheletti. Article 5 of this accord deferred the decision on Zelaya's restitution to the Honduran Congress:
The National Congress, as an institutional expression of popular sovereignty, in the use of its powers, in consultation with the points that the Supreme Court of Justice should consider pertinent and in conformity with the law, should resolve in that proceeding in respect to "return the incumbency of Executive Power to its state previous to the 28 of June until the conclusion of the present governmental period, the 27 of January of 2010
.
The accord also:
Called for the formation of a Government of Unity and National Reconciliation;
Called for the creation of a Verification Commission to give "witness of the strict completion of all the points of this Accord;"
Denounced the convocation of a National Constituent Assembly or reform of the "unreformable" articles of the constitution;
Transferred oversight of the upcoming elections to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal;
Called for the normalization of the international community's relations with Honduras;
And set up a timeline for implementing the steps outlined in the agreement, with the appointment of the Verification Commission by November 2nd and the appointment and installation of the Government of Unity and National Reconciliation by November 5th.
From Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced "we've had a breakthrough in negotiations in Honduras." She continued to express the historic nature of the event, saying "I cannot think of another example of a country in Latin America that having suffered a rupture of its democratic and constitutional order overcame such a crisis through negotiation and dialogue."
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon, in a teleconference on October 30th, announced that the agreement "effectively opens a pathway to resolve Honduras' current political crisis and that will allow the international community to support Honduras' elections on November 29th."
Shannon also noted, in response to a question on why there was any thought that the Honduran Congress would return Zelaya to the presidency, that it was "because of the political dynamic inside the country."
By Monday, there was speculation that Assistant Secretary Shannon had made a deal with the presidential candidates and the Micheletti negotiators to guarantee Congress' vote to restore Zelaya to the presidency. Leading presidential candidate Porfirio Lobo announced that "I have not reached an agreement with the United States nor in any moment did I make a secret pact in a private meeting with Thomas Shannon." The negotiators for Micheletti also announced that "there is not an agreement under the table."
U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos were named as the international representatives for the four-member Verification Commission. The other two members represent Honduras' two major political parties.
On Tuesday, the Honduran Congress was set to meet to discuss plans to vote on the issues outlined in the agreement. However, congressional leaders decided not to call Congress out of recess, and to instead delay the vote on whether or not Zelaya should return to the presidency. The Congress also requested opinions on the legality of Zelaya's return from the Supreme Court and the attorney general.
On Wednesday, ousted President Zelaya sent a letter to Secretary Clinton asking her to "clarify to the Honduran people if the position condemning the coup d'etat has been changed or modified." In response to the letter, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly noted that "Our position has been very clear from the very beginning that we did consider what happened in June in Honduras to be a coup. We've made our position on President Zelaya and his restitution clear. This is a - we believe he should be restored to power. This is now a Honduran process that was started by the agreement over the weekend."
Thursday evening, the deadline for the creation of the National Unity Government, ended with Zelaya's refusal to submit his list of members for the new Unity Government and Micheletti's decision to create the Unity Government anyway, with himself at the head.
Earlier in the day, Zelaya warned that he would withdraw from the deal unless Congress held a vote on restoring him to the presidency, though the Micheletti government felt that Congress' vote was not as essential to the agreement as the creation of the unity government. As a result, Zelaya did not submit his recommendations for members of the new government and Micheletti announced he had "finalized the process of confirming a unity government," prompting Zelaya to pronounce the accord "dead," as reported by the BBC.
The United States promptly released a statement on Friday describing the State Department's discontent in relation to the way both parties had behaved, though the statement continued to express the Administration's confidence in the Accord:
We were particularly disappointed by the unilateral statements made by both sides last night, which do not serve the spirit of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord.... Complete and timely implementation of the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord is the path to that future, and the formation of a Government of Unity and National Reconciliation is the next vital step forward.
The Organization of American States also issued a statement on the failure to implement the Agreement.
The Secretary General declared that the OAS will continue in all of its efforts to move forward the process of dialogue and urged President José Manuel Zelaya and Mr. Roberto Micheletti to reach an agreement in the formation of a Government of Unity and National Reconciliation that should, naturally, be presided by he who legitimately holds the office of President of the Honduran nation.
To that end, "it is also essential that the Honduran National Congress issue its sovereign declaration on the pending point of the San José Agreement regarding the restoration of the Executive Power to its state prior to June 28 and until the end of the current term of government, January 27, 2010," Insulza said.
On Thursday, Senator Jim DeMint lifted the hold on the confirmations of Arturo Valenzuela as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Thomas Shannon as the U.S. ambassador to Brazil, after accepting the United States' role in allowing the Hondurans decide the fate of their political system through a vote in Congress and recognition of the upcoming November 29th elections. According to a press release on the Senator's website, the announcement came after he "secured a commitment from the Obama administration to recognize the Honduran elections on November 29th, regardless of whether former President Manuel Zelaya is returned to office and regardless of whether the vote on reinstatement takes place before or after November 29th." The release continues, quoting Senator DeMint: "I trust Secretary Clinton and Mr. Shannon to keep their word, but this is the beginning of the process, not the end."
This announcement led to concern that the United States is determined to recognize the November 29th elections regardless of whether the Tegucigalpa-San José Accords are fully implemented, and therefore has given the Honduran Congress and the Micheletti government an excuse to hold on to power. During the daily press briefing last Friday, Department spokesman Ian Kelly was repeatedly asked if Senator DeMint's statement was correct. Spokesman Kelly did not have an answer, however an official response to those questions was released on the State Department website later in the day, which ended with this statement: "Our commitment is to the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord and its implementation. Our commitment to support the Honduran elections is the product of that agreement. Failure to implement the accord could jeopardize recognition of the election by the international community."
Latin American countries, including Brazil, are "loudly demanding Mr. Zelaya's return," according to the Wall Street Journal. This had created speculation that the United States' role and image in Latin America could be jeopordized if the U.S. does not hold to their initial call for Zelaya's reinstatement.
Over the weekend, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who played an important role in the initial drafting of the San José Accord, also made a statement on the breakdown of the new Accord. According to the Spanish newspaper El Dia, Arias affirmed that "the de facto Honduran Government never had the will to solve the political crisis resulting from the coup d'etat, and specified that 'they are only looking for, through delaying tactics, time to pass and for the elections to come (on November 29th), risking that the future Government will not be recognized by some countries.'"
According to RAJ at the "Honduras Coup 2009" blog, there is confusion on whether or not the Supreme Court will meet this week to discuss the legality of Zelaya's restitution. Reports early in the day yesterday suggested that the Honduran National Congress announced it will wait until November 17th for the reports it has requested from the Supreme Court and the attorney general. A later report suggested that the Supreme Court had determined it would not give the report to Congress because "it has an appeal of the decree that removed him from power before it." Yet a report issued around 8:00 pm Monday night suggested that the Supreme Court will convene on Wednesday to "analyze if the restitution of Manuel Zelaya Rosales should proceed, as the Tegucigalpa-San José Accord indicated."
Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and the acting president who deposed him in a June coup, Roberto Micheletti, arrived at an agreement last night to restore Zelaya to the presidency. Zelaya would complete his term under a power-sharing agreement, the product of a U.S. and OAS diplomatic offensive. The agreement still needs to be approved by the Honduran Congress, most of whose members supported the coup in the first place.
Acting President Micheletti announces the accord and lays out its main points (text / video).
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton applauds the "breakthrough." (text)
OAS Secretary-General José Miguel Insulza lauds the accord as "a moment of great satisfaction." (text)
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon is "encouraged." (text)
In a private ceremony this morning, U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Brownfield and Colombian Foreign Minister Jaime Bermúdez signed the “Complementary agreement for cooperation and technical assistance in defense and security,” which formalizes a U.S. presence at seven Colombian military bases for ten years. We still do not know what else is in this agreement, which was negotiated in secret and will not require the approval of either country’s Congress, though in the United States it will be shared with both houses’ foreign relations committees before it goes into effect. (We will add a link to the agreement once we obtain a copy.)
Declaration from the Colombian Presidency (text - English and Spanish)
The U.S. embassy in Bogotá says "this Agreement is a natural part of our relationship." (text)
The U.S. embassy has produced a new "fact sheet" about the agreement, but it is only just over a page long. (PDF)
August has been a troubled month for freedom of the press in the Americas. Here are a few examples.
