Tyler Shipley: Stephen Harper strengthens Canada’s ties with violent regime in Honduras

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      In November 2009, I stood among thousands of unarmed Hondurans—teachers, students, civil servants—demanding an end to a military coup that had transformed a relatively peaceful country into a brutal police state. As I leaned toward a line of soldiers to take a photo, I felt the butt of a machine gun against my rib cage and understood, in a visceral and embodied way, just how serious the situation had become.

      The soldiers guarded the Brazilian embassy, where democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya was being held captive by the military regime. At the time, around 40 people had been killed in direct state violence, while hundreds more had been terrorized in their homes or in the streets, attacked with batons and bullets, raped and tortured in prisons. Anyone who tried to speak out against the coup was targeted for violence or intimidated by threats.

      The coup regime is still in power today and the repression continues unabated; in fact, just three weeks ago, Amnesty International Canada issued an urgent call for support for some 114 families targeted by intense police violence in northern Honduras.

      But this Friday (August 12), Prime Minister Stephen Harper will visit Honduras to congratulate its leaders on a successful return to democracy and respect for human rights.

      It may seem a contradiction, but this is the new Canada. Not only has the Harper government been the strongest supporter of the military regime since the June 2009 coup, we have also successfully negotiated new trade agreements with it and recently announced that we would be sending 150 Canadian soldiers to conduct joint military exercises with the same military that carried out the coup and has overseen some 200 politically motivated assassinations in just over two years.

      The horrific stories start to blur together. Beloved teacher Jose Manuel Flores, shot to death at the school where he taught with his students looking on—a response to his activism in the National Teachers’ Federation. Carlos H. Reyes, former presidential candidate, bludgeoned in the head by police. Enrique Gudiel, a critical journalist from Danli, discovering his 17-year-old daughter hanged to her death.

      Honduran human rights organizations have meticulously documented the crimes of the military regime and—time and time again—have begged the international community to take heed, isolate the regime, and force them to step down and allow civilian rule once more.

      But Canada has taken the lead in wilfully ignoring these groups.

      In 2009, the leaders of the coup held fraudulent “elections” in an attempt to legitimize their rule. Every reputable international observation group in the world refused to participate in the sham. Nonetheless, independent conservative U.S. and Canadian groups came to Honduras and declared the elections “free and fair”, all the while refusing to speak with delegations from Honduran civil society who wanted to present evidence on the widespread repression. I confronted one such observer, Edward Fox, about his refusal to pay attention to the human rights organizations and he replied, “I’ve spoken to the U.S. ambassador, and he’s here all the time.”

      Indeed. The United States has a long history of meddling in this country; it was nicknamed the USS Honduras in the 1980s, and from its bases in Honduras, the United States launched some of its most brutal and violent wars in Central America. As Honduras has slid back into the chaotic violence characteristic of the 1980s, many Hondurans have suggested that Canada is taking on the role the U.S. used to play; as one woman put it, we are “more gringo than the gringos”.

      Kidnapping an elected president and putting an entire nation in lockdown fits the definition of “coup d’etat” to a T. But Canada’s statements have carefully softened the severity of the violence, euphemistically calling it a “political crisis” and routinely “calling on all sides” of the dispute to exercise restraint, as if this were a matter of two equally powerful parties struggling for control. We “congratulated” Honduras on its fraudulent elections (of which up to 70 percent of Hondurans boycotted in defiance) and regularly praised victorious coup president Pepe Lobo on his “steps toward reconciliation” while the violence continued unabated. Canadian minister of state Peter Kent held meetings with Lobo and worked tirelessly to bring Honduras back into the international community, even sending a Canadian diplomat to sit on a “Truth Commission” in 2010 which looked, frankly, farcical to Hondurans who continued to be targeted by police and military on a daily basis.

      A shameful record, indeed. But if supporting a miserable gang of thugs like the one ruling Honduras seems un-Canadian, it may be time to look a bit closer in the mirror, and re-examine some of our assumptions about Canada’s behaviour in the world.

      Our decade-long occupation of Afghanistan has left over 10,000 civilian casualties, utter social and political ruin, widespread allegations of torture and no improvement in the much-maligned conditions for women that we claimed to represent. Our decision to send the Canadian military to overthrow the democratically elected president of Haiti in 2004 ushered in an era of political instability and disarray that drove the country into ever-deeper poverty and dislocation, making it tragically and immeasurably more vulnerable to the devastating earthquake in 2010. Our quiet participation in the quagmire in Iraq ought to be a skeleton in the closet, but it is ignored perhaps because we are now actively dropping bombs on Libya, though it doesn’t appear to be doing much good for ordinary Libyans.

      As Stephen Harper prepares to heap praise on the leader of a brutal and illegal government in Honduras this Friday, we might ask who in Canada is benefiting from our relationship with this regime. Certainly the Canadian mining and garment giants, from Goldcorp to Gildan, which exploit Hondurans’ weakness under such a repressive state apparatus. But surely not those of us who may have been born in Canada but consider ourselves global citizens. For those of us who believe democracy, security, and human freedom and dignity are more than just euphemisms, it must be time to take responsibility for the Canadian governments’ actions and to insist that they change.

      Tyler Shipley is a writer and researcher who teaches at York University in Toronto.

      Comments

      8 Comments

      jaime chavez

      Aug 10, 2011 at 7:19pm

      It is important to know how the intelectul left is capable of twisting reality to gain the support of those who in good faith
      wish to seek a better world.This article and the author is a leadig example of how half truth are manipulated. The writer
      knowingly avoids the dictatorial, un-democratic and abusive
      techniques of President Manuel Rosales, and worst of all
      tries to hide the fact that both the catholic church and the evagelist coalition denounced vehemently the extreme socialism that was being imposed with the support o Hugo Chavez.
      Briefly speaking Parliament and the Courts empqwerd the military to stop the abusive regime of Zelaya, and I leave the burdon of explaining to the writer why the government and its authorities (inclouding the electoral college) continued their busisness and the military returned obidiently to the barracs.
      The presidential election of Porfirio Lobo was the most attended election in Honduras history.The candidates and the electoral college were the very same people who had commited their participation well before the so-called COUP-DE- ETAT. The left never mentions this fact to the readers to maintain alive the lies which poison their minds.
      Thank god the Canadian government had the sense of ignoring the claims of the extreme left.Reacently an international commision appointed by OAS, and supported
      by Europea Union, The UNITED STATES, ETC did away with those false claims of masive human right abuses that never took place as the writer want us to believe.

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      seth

      Aug 10, 2011 at 7:40pm

      There are consequences for not voting. Pass that on to your friends.

      Your Dear Supreme Fascist Leader for Life was just down extolling his new free trade agreement with another corrupt murdering regime in Columbia. Even the conservative US can't get that one through. Once again the difference between Canada's fascist regime and a just plain conservative one.

      Remember as well that Your Dear Supreme Fascist Leader for Life is a devotee of the Friedmanite or Chicago school ultra right wing and completely discredited economic and social philosophy that under Our Dear Leader's mentor George Bush gave us the current economic disaster. The Chicago school bunch was behind the murderous military regime that almost destroyed Chile.

      Canada is not welcome in most of South and Central America as Your Dear Supreme Fascist Leader for Life's connection's with the Bush, Tea Party and allied South/Central America fascist governments is well understood. Apparently Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez De Kirchner can't even stand being in the same room as the monster.

      seth

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      Steve Y

      Aug 10, 2011 at 10:40pm

      Free trade with Canada will help more Hondurans than hurt it. Are the North Koreans better off that we don't trade with them? They are starving to death behind closed doors. Free trade = more freedom.

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      Megan Polidano

      Aug 11, 2011 at 7:20am

      Leftists distort the truth? you think coups are ok? You are down with disappearances and murders? Or you argue that there aren't disappearances and murders? Whose playing with the truth now?

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      Comandante M

      Aug 11, 2011 at 2:20pm

      Bertha Oliva is not a credible source of information on human rights abuses in Honduras. She is on Zelaya's payroll, this was confirmed in released documents:

      http://www.elheraldo.hn/content/view/documento_honduras/500905

      There are many cases, in Latin America and around the world, where human rights organizations become political actors and present false or misleading claims rather than the straight up facts. In the case of Honduras, both Oliva's COFADEH and Andres Pavon's CODEH are biased towards Zelaya, likely as the result of financial co-option and ideological incentives.

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      Tyler Shipley

      Aug 11, 2011 at 7:25pm

      Comandante M has an interesting take on what makes a 'credible source.' Oliva's organization has been a highly respected source on Honduran human rights cases since it was formed in the 1980s following the 'disappearance' of Oliva's husband.

      El Heraldo, the newspaper Comandante M is citing, is a newspaper owned and controlled by the same people who were among the leaders of the coup. El Heraldo and its sister paper La Prensa have resorted to all manner of manipulation in order to support the coup and its leaders, including the very embarrassing episode in which they photoshopped blood out of the image of a teenaged protestor shot in the head by Honduran police. See below for more details.

      http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/06/20116308238988474.html

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      Jovan A

      Aug 13, 2011 at 6:27am

      Is interesting to see how people who have not experienced the horror of living under a government reprecion say, Honduras now has returned to democracy, I am a young man from Honduras who now lives in Canada for a short time, those who defend the new government let me tell you that in no has been most voted, they had to invent something for the acceptance of the other countries, and about Manuel Zelaya just want to say, I participated in many national movements in our country such as the national Youth Forum which promoted the approval of the Law for the Young and the creation of the National Ministry of Youth, National Youth Policy and the only president to receive all the support was Zelaya, plus you identify with women, with ethnic groups, the farmers and specifically the poorest, then the question must be ... that's being a abusive regime? to favor those who most need? because pretend to give power to the people to decide what they want for their country? I am not defending Zelaya specifically but I could not tolerate a coup in Latin America with a democracy that is still in diapers ... how could I defend the death of many people, kidnapping and so much violence from a government that use state resources to suppress the people, about COFADEH and Bertha has been one of the organizations from the 80's has struggled for the rights of vulnerable groups in Honduras and our people if he believes in them, only the extreme right heartless and without interest in his people will be able to defend the entire damage they have done to our countries.
      I'm just a person with social commitment and responsibility for the future of my people

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      WNMW

      Aug 13, 2011 at 10:34am

      Sorry Jaime. What you fail to acknowledge is that we know that these elections are fixed. Well-attended or not. In fact, well attended gives more credibility to the offenders through shadows & rocks to hide behind. Most people can be fooled some of the time, but all of the people cannot be fooled all of the time.

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