18 Xiomara Zelaya (leftist) supporters murdered in run-up to Honduran election... [View all]

[Peace Patriot]

Democracy Now 11/15/13

"Both candidates are claiming victory in Honduras’ disputed presidential election. The race has pitted Xiomara Castro, wife of ousted President Manuel Zelaya, against right-wing candidate Juan Orlando Hernández. According to election officials, with more than half of precincts reporting, Hernández has won 34 percent of the vote, while Castro has 29 percent. Castro’s husband, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted in a U.S.-backed coup in 2009. The campaign has been marred by violent attacks in a country with the highest homicide rate in the world. At least 18 members of Castro’s Libre party were murdered in the runup to the election, more than all other parties combined. We go to Honduras to speak with Adrienne Pine, an assistant professor of anthropology of American University, and Edwin Espinal, a community organizer who has survived harassment and torture by police. "This election, I think for most Hondurans, represents the possible overturning of the coup, finally," Pine says. "People, in Xiomara Castro, have seen a leader … It is impossible to overstate the amount of hope, excitement, and organization people have been engaged in leading up to these elections." We also hear from Zelaya and leading Honduran human rights activist Bertha Cáceres, who has been in hiding for two months."

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/11/25/honduras_presidential_elections_in_dispute_as

The clips and interviews that follow this intro say that this Honduran election was basically shit, due to the pervasive murder, violence, repression and intimidation by the U.S.-supported fascist shitheads in charge and their fascist death squads. The last (s)election was run by the U.S. State Department and the International Republican Institute, et al, and the shits (s)elected in that shit are running this shit.

I didn't want to say it before--didn't want to predict bad news, just in case the U.S. had decided on honest elections in Honduras this time, for corporate strategic reasons (what else?)--but I certainly thought to myself that Xiomara had no chance, no chance at all in this U.S./fascist-run, bloodsoaked country. I just hoped, ya know, the way one hopes...

Poor Honduras! Gawd! What terrible crimes our government has committed there, in the past and recently, and this week. All for transglobal corporate and "military-industrial complex" profit.

The good news is that Xiomara is still on her feet--alive, and fighting the good fight--and that Mel has pledged the country's resistance movement to peace. So many of these brave Hondurans have been killed--a teacher shot in front of his students, a protest leader beheaded and his body left in the road as a "lesson" to all--or raped, or unjustly imprisoned, or beaten, or tear gassed to death (as with the wife of one of the interviewees above), or fired or blacklisted from jobs, and on and on! And still they pledge peaceful resistance! Wonderful people, the Honduran resistance and its leaders!