October 2020 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
This October in Honduras, an environmental defender from the heavily persecuted community in resistance against mining, was assassinated. Colonisation processes under the name of Model Cities made further inroads against several communities in Honduras. Several campesino and indigenous communities in land occupations had been attacked, evicted, repressed, faced violence and arrests. Journalists and human rights defender experienced death threats and persecution. COVID-19 continued to claim lives including of health care workers in Honduras - along with two other doctors, a pair of twins - a frontline COVID-19 doctor and a microbiologist aged only 35, died of COVID-19 within days of one another. Read on for this and other news. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2020/11/20/october-2020-honduras-coup-update/
July 2020 Honduras Coup Update (tags)
This July 2020 in Honduras we saw many killings and disappearances against activists and we saw many COVID-19 deaths including of a political prisoner, an organiser, health care workers and jorunalists. Living under a dictatorship regime where global and national capital, together with regime leaders, continue to profit through laundering and exploiting the people and the land – when you put a pandemic into that equation it’s a disaster, as we can see in Honduras. Government offers no protection for its poor majority, the money officially designated for healthcare doesn’t translate into actual healthcare, and there is no welfare to enable people to stay home, but the military is controlling the streets and spreading the illness. Communities and organisations continue to campaign for the ‘Where is the money?’ campaign, with voices reverberating from zoom conferences, to managing to stage large letters across highways, printing the question on roads for drivers to see, and on walls for passers-by – people must have found holes in the militarisation. They paint their pained words about losing increasing numbers of fellow Hondurans to death from COVID-19, lives lost due to government’s greed and lies. This July 2020 we saw many attacks against people and organisers, and we continue to see that on the other hand, big businesses that don’t even have environmental permits are free to move around, operate, and act in ways that are harmful to people and environment. And similar to discourse familiar to all of us worldwide about balancing the economy over staying home, this regime, like others, is broadcasting that the nation only has a chance of surviving the pandemic, if ‘development (mega) projects’ of mining, logging, energy etc go ahead and if people also put up with low wages (not to mention threats, killings, and arrests to impose opposed projects) so that large profits can be made from them. International development finance organisations also continue to ignore the violence meted out by capital and by the regime and fuel this fire, passing loans to the regime and ignoring cries from communities who dream of a different kind of ‘development’. https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/2020/08/30/july-2020-honduras-coup-and-pandemic-update/
August 2017 Honduras coup update (tags)
This August 2017 in Honduras. El Libertador newspaper owners were attempted against with gunfire. Two other journalists had gunshots at their houses when they were sleeping inside. Students struggle continue at the uni, they faced several violent evictions this month, smear campaigns, more charges, more threats and intimidation, and now that strikes have stopped classes for two months, authorities announced that lecturers will no longer be paid. Another blockading struggle against the installation of a hydroelectricity dam has faced massive repression this months including violent evictions and arrests, having their camp burned down, physical and psychological mob attack .. news including about these, see below https://sydneywithhonduras.wordpress.com/