Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Thomas Shannon is due in Tegucigalpa tomorrow to try to restart negotiations between the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti and ousted President Manuel Zelaya. Talks began in Costa Rica on July 9, shortly after the June 28 military coup, but have continually stalled over the regime’s refusal to consider Zelaya’s restitution to office. On Thursday this week, October 29, the army will be placed at the disposal of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) to help with elections, one of its constitutional responsibilities. The TSE is already threatening to jail anyone who threatens to boycott elections.
The latest round of negotiations occurred in Tegucigalpa under OAS sponsorship, but collapsed in the face of intransigence from the Micheletti regime. As reported in Honduran daily El Tiempo on October 24:
The dialogue to resolve the political crisis failed yesterday after commissions could not reach agreement on the restitution of President Manuel Zelaya. While there had been an arrangement to that effect on October 15, a day later the arrangement began to be reversed until talks broke down.
The dialogue began on October 7, the day on which commissions agreed that the agenda would be defined within the framework of the San José Accord, proposed by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, which establishes the restitution of Manuel Zelaya Rosales to the presidency, but with a variety of conditions that would prevent calling a Constituent Assembly.
In three days, the two commissions were able to agree on seven of the eight points of the San José Accords, announced as 90 percent progress, but the remaining five percent [sic] was the subject of restitution.
From October 13, the give and take on the subject began until a sort of maximum inflection point was reached on Thursday, October 15, when the restitution of Zelaya Rosales was decided and all that remained for Friday was to define the date and mechanism.
However, on October 16, there was a surprising setback when Roberto Micheletti’s provisional government proposed that the Supreme Court would decide on restitution. The talks then began to unravel until last Monday when Zelaya Rosales declared the dialogue to be in an "obstruction phase."
No small part of the blame for the failed talks rests with the State Department itself. On Friday, October 16, Time magazine published statements from anonymous U.S. officials that revealed a "softening" position with regard to elections, giving Micheletti the breathing room he needed to once again obstruct negotiations. During his trip to Honduras, Assistant Secretary Shannon will have to clean up a mess created by U.S. officials who torpedoed the talks, including some from its troublesome OAS delegation. Many in Latin America believe the U.S. was responsible for the coup and that its response in recent months has been half-hearted, at best. For the State Department to have broken ranks with the international community during delicate negotiations sent the worst possible sign to the region. The stakes for Shannon in Honduras are now quite high, as the U.S. is forced through the State Department’s own missteps to take a dramatic role in trying resolve the crisis late in the game.
Shannon was nominated by the Obama White House as U.S. ambassador to Brazil, but his confirmation has been held up by Senator Jim DeMint, who recently praised the State Department’s apparent shift in direction in Honduras.
New Human Rights Report
I’m still working my way through the second human rights report released by the Committee of Family Members of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras (Cofadeh). The 46-page report documents 4,234 human rights abuses since the June 28 coup, including more than 20 executions.
As the AFL-CIO noted yesterday:
National and international human rights organizations report widespread human rights violations by state security forces, including arbitrary arrests and detentions, severe beatings, sexual violence, imprisonment and torture, and killings of Zelaya’s supporters.
Following the president’s return to the capital city of Tegucigalpa on Sept. 21, the situation deteriorated rapidly. The de facto government stepped up its offensive against democratic civil society organizations, including the trade union movement. A report by Honduran Radio Progreso confirmed the killing of a trade unionist from the National Agrarian Institute shortly after Zelaya’s return. Three members of the teachers union—Felix Murillo Lopez, Roger Vallejo and Martin Florencio Rivera—were killed while mobilizing trade union opposition to the coup . . .
The AFL-CIO continues to strongly condemn the military coup against the democratically elected Zelaya and the ensuing violent repression of the Honduran people by the de facto government.
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stated:
"The de facto government must immediately halt the repression of the Honduran people and reinstate their human and trade union rights. We urge the U.S. government, as well as other governments in the hemisphere and throughout the world, to condemn the violence and seek a peaceful resolution to this crisis."
Here is the table summarizing human rights abuses from the Cofadeh report. The totals at the bottom of the first three columns were miscalculated in the original and I’ve corrected them.
Table: Summary of Human Rights Violations Registered by Cofadeh, in the Framework of the Coup D'état. June 28 to October 10, 2009.
Type of Rights Violation | Period 28/06 to 15/07/09 | Period 16/7 to 20/09/09 | Period 21/09 to 15/10/09 | Total |
Right to life | | | | |
Executions (violent deaths and assassinations) | 4 | 5 | 12 | 21 |
Attacks against persons | -- | -- | 3 | 3 |
Death threats | 13 | 6 | 89 | 108 |
Right to personal integrity | | | | |
Cruel, degrading and inhumane treatment | -- | 90 | 43 | 133 |
Serious lesions | 6 | 5 | 10 | 21 |
Lesions and injuries | 59 | 78 | 316 | 453 |
Affected by non-conventional weapons | -- | -- | 211 | 211 |
Right to liberty | | | | |
Illegal detentions | 1,046 | 783 | 1,204 | 3,033 |
Kidnapping attempts | | | 2 | 2 |
Political prisoners | | 27 | 87 | 114 |
Right to inviolability of the home | | | | |
Searches | -- | 4 | 6 | 10 |
Right to defend human rights | | | | |
Persecution of social leaders and HHRR defenders | -- | 7 | 6 | 13 |
Attacks against organizations | -- | 4 | -- | 4 |
Freedom of expression | | | | |
Communications media | 13 | 7 | 7 | 27 |
Aggression against journalists | 14 | 9 | 3 | 26 |
Social organizations | 3 | -- | -- | 3 |
Freedom of movement | | | | |
Military and police roadblocks | -- | 52 | -- | 52 |
TOTAL | 1,158 | 1,077 | 1,999 | 4,234 |