Honduras

For the past three years the President of Honduras has come to this global forum to propose simple, honest, straightforward ways of responding to the great challenges that face our societies, because of the need to do more to contribute to the survival of the human species and to decrease the injustice of the immense asymmetries among nations and between rich and poor. From this very rostrum, President Zelaya urged respect for the human rights of our migrants and the forgotten ones of the Earth — those who draw on the strength of hurricanes from their poverty to produce wealth to which they hardly ever have access and that does not relieve the anguish caused by their unsatisfied needs. Our constitutional President, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, with simple and effective proposals, has always called for a more just and more equitable world that would lighten the burden of the shame created by the existence of the astonishing wealth of a few alongside the outrageous misery of the majority. He has also called for a world of tolerance in which we could exchange opinions, ideas and diverse ways of seeing the world, respecting and cooperating with one another to build a better world. But today, another fate has forced us to represent our President and our people here. In our country, criminal hordes have made us revisit old issues — ones that we had believed to be mere vestiges from the distant past. Today, from this rostrum, I should like to tell the members of the Assembly that, as I address them, our President is being besieged by military forces at the diplomatic mission of the sisterly Republic of Brazil in Tegucigalpa. He is being threatened, and every moment that passes could bring a tragic outcome that would have a paralysing effect on history and on all Hondurans, all Central Americans and the entire world. As I speak, our President’s life is in peril, and the lives of our people are also in peril. I should like to prove this to the members of the Assembly. In my hand, I have a telephone with President Manuel Zelaya Rosales on the line. He wishes to address the Assembly and to reclaim his rightful place in the presence of the members of the international community. Here, with them, is our leader, our President, the hero of democracy, which he is defending today with his life alongside our people. President Zelaya (spoke in Spanish via telephone): Greetings to the United Nations. For those who had any doubt that a dictatorship was being installed here, I believe that all that has occurred during the past 93 days of repression have dispelled 45 09-52604 those doubts. In Honduras, in addition to a coup d’état having taken place, a fascist dictatorship has been installed that has suppressed the freedoms of Hondurans and is violently repressing the Honduran people. Today, the broadcast frequencies used by the only two media outlets opposed to the dictatorship — a national radio station, Radio Globo, and a national television network, Channel 36 — have been shut down, their offices invaded and their transmission equipment confiscated. Surely, a serious crime is being committed when the voice of the people is silenced — a people that is being suppressed. I ask the United Nations for cooperation to restore the rule of law and the freedom that Hondurans deserve. I ask the United Nations for support, so that the civilized nations of the world can continue to stand firm against force and barbarity. I also ask the United Nations to give us guarantees for our own personal integrity and the lives of those being besieged with chemical gases and electronic interference at this diplomatic facility of the sisterly Republic of Brazil. With great courage, President Lula is demonstrating his interest by supporting democracy and fighting against coups d’état. I ask the United Nations for its support to reverse this coup d’état, so that democracy will really be an asset of all civilized societies throughout the world. Ms. Rodas (Honduras) (spoke in Spanish): Our President is surrounded and isolated by military forces. The Embassy of the Republic of Brazil is under threat of invasion. We have heard the forceful call of President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and we are here to tell the Assembly about the scale and the terrible impact of the repression being visited on our people today. Free transit through airports and land borders has been halted. A state of emergency has been decreed, with the indefinite suspension of absolutely every constitutional guarantee. In addition, independent news media have been shut down, destroyed and dismantled and their operators persecuted, and two journalists were tortured today in our country. Women have been raped during demonstrations, and sport centres have been turned into concentration camps in Tegucigalpa and other cities. Honduras is becoming an enormous prison camp. They have imprisoned national journalists and expelled international media. Furthermore, the entire country is militarized. There are constant reports that highly dangerous hired assassins are being freed from prison, as military contingents move forward and mass around the place where our President is now located, together with his family, officials of the Embassy of the sisterly Republic of Brazil, journalists, priests and a large group of people who are accompanying him. We have made major efforts together, inside and outside of Honduras, aimed at enabling our country to regain its constitutional rights, which were forcibly taken from it just three months ago to the day. We have done this, convinced that it will benefit not only Honduras, but the entire world, where there are still people fighting for freedom and self-determination, so as not to be punished for their ideological differences or for their efforts to improve society and transform the economy, so that our peoples may finally look forward to a brighter future with greater possibility. Our countries, our peoples deserve this, because they have fought their entire lives — first against conquest, then against colonization, then against the major differences created by economic dependency; and today, we continue to fight peacefully and without weapons for our democratic freedoms. Our only weapon is the truth we carry in our hearts, which we have openly expressed to the world. In the meantime, while we are faced with all of this, our President is being punished for trying to give more freedom and more well-being to our people and for joining in the concert of nations to ensure that our diversity and ways of thinking are viewed as equal to those of the greater countries of the world. Because no matter how small our economies or populations may be, we deserve no less than any other society. Dreaming the impossible dream makes it possible for us to attain what is indeed possible. But our President, our people, all of Honduran society, the international community and the solidarity that gives life to our struggle are shamefully punished day after day by the weapons and brute force of the regime of putschists, which is quickly transforming itself into a dictatorship in the best tradition of what occurred three and four decades ago on our continent. There is no civil war in Honduras. There are no armed forces facing each other. There are no subversive groups. Hondurans are people who walk tirelessly. They continued walking forward for 90 days, peacefully, silently and determined, with bravery and 09-52604 46 heroism. And with their silence, children, young people, men, women and the elderly told the world: as long as the Honduran people have the unwavering support of the international community, it will be possible to take back our democratic path — the path we shed blood for throughout our history, until the victory at the ballot boxes, until the guns and cannons were lowered — and now those weapons are raised again with bayonets aimed at our defenceless people. It is a dreadful state of siege: every single conceivable constitutional guarantee has been suspended, which threatens the life of every Honduran man and woman every night and every day. But every day, tirelessly, our people come out to the street and march in small groups, large groups or in masses. They mobilize in whatever way they can around their houses, their blocks, their neighbourhoods or on big plazas. It does not matter how they do it; wherever they are, they mobilize actively. They put their feet on the ground, on the soil that gave birth to them, and assured of regaining our territory — with freedom and democracy — they do not feel tired, they simply walk, as Gandhi did a long time ago and as our migrants and poor have done thousands of times to harvest their simple everyday sustenance. In this way our people do not use their energy for violence. They are determined to conquer the world by force of will alone, without raising a gun or shooting a single round, even if they risk joining the ranks of the dead, or being tortured or jailed. The brutal coup d’état expelled our President, persecuted his Cabinet and kidnapped his Minister, but finds itself humiliated under the feet of a people who walk their way around the world every day. Their steps cross imaginary bridges to all of the countries of the world, and the world responds with its solidarity. But, we have been able to present many shared efforts inside and outside our country, including mediation initiatives that have arisen with the aim of implementing resolutions of this General Assembly, such as resolution 63/301 of 30 June 2009, in which the Government of putschists was repudiated and the only constitutional president of Honduras was recognized to be José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. Forums for dialogue have been created, along with efforts at mediation such as the San Jose Agreement, all of which have been systematically rejected by the intransigent putschist regime, which causes those efforts to fail, even when the world attempts to revive those efforts every day. Those who wished to join the constitutional President have been replaced and prevented from returning to the country, even though they wanted to find the path to reconciliation. Ambassadors who were summoned for consultations following the military coup d’état cannot return to the country without first bowing to the boots of the military who are trampling on our country today. All of these initiatives, as important and essential as they are in attempting to give strength to the struggle of my people, all of the efforts of the international community in searching for rational, peaceful solutions have made it clear that we are facing forces that are able to unleash the most perverse form of violence and irrationality. Civilization is being brought to a halt by barbarism there in Central America — in the centre of Central America — that narrow strip that joins the two halves of our hemisphere. Given this new situation in which the President’s return unleashed the fury of the dictators, the initiatives needed in order to find a solution today call for specific actions to be taken: the tyrant and the military must be forced to step back. The military forces who disobeyed their President and oppressed their own people have become an occupying army — irregular forces serving only to repress and oppress. They uphold the executory arm of a coup d’état that found its support in a sector of the powerful, old economic class, which is responsible for crushing, exploiting and stripping bare our people and has done so throughout our history. That is why, in those new conditions, when we need strength to consolidate the proposals and assemble global intelligence and the feeling of a continental home in the midst of the conspiracy of the imminent danger that today confronts not only our President, an embassy and a diplomatic mission the inviolability of which is threatened, but also, in fact, our humble people who walk, who at any moment can be assassinated, imprisoned or tortured; at this time when we hear that military units are moving towards the Embassy of Brazil to continue attacking our President, I appeal to this Assembly. With the authority derived from our peaceful and heroic people and with the moral authority of those who resist the bullets with 47 09-52604 their bodies and flesh, we fervently but resolutely call on the United Nations and its highest bodies to use the strength of their authority to avert and ward off the danger that hovers over Honduras. It is increasingly imminent, ever closer and more and more terrifying. We can avert that danger together with the will and solidarity garnered so far, but with resolute joint actions that will succeed in pushing back that shame. I must say that, first of all, we must demand respect for the life of our President, his physical and moral integrity and the dignity of his high office. That gives our people strength and determination because we are and wish to be a sovereign, free and independent republic with a solid lasting democracy that will also help make the injustices and inequalities subside. We must also request unconditional support for the dialogue that our President began once he had entered the country unarmed and peacefully so as to be able to sit with the different sectors of Honduran society and thereby open the way to restoring trust, reconciliation and the fabric of the Constitution, because all that depends on reinstating the constitutional President of the Republic of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. It is also important to bolster efforts to set specific dates, precise mechanisms, ultimatums and frameworks for action to be signed by the body for dialogue and mediation that has been set up, and those that may emerge in its support, to restore peace to our people and to continue building the path of transformation. Furthermore, we must say that as long as there are no constitutional guarantees, a permanent state of siege is imposed on our people and citizen rights are absent, the conditions to prepare free, transparent and universal elections do not exist. The international community has spoken out by not recognizing that regime of the coup or those Governments or regimes that arose from spurious elections launched into history by cannon or at the point of a bayonet. We therefore urge this General Assembly to call an urgent extraordinary session of the Assembly to keep under review the situation developing in Honduras, that country so close to this land and all countries of the world, neighbour of the Panama Canal and at the centre of all America, so as to be able to keep monitoring the pace of events and, of course, the necessary resources to urgently respond to relieving whatever needs arise there. It is important that the vital issues that we have presented here be addressed at that Assembly, but it is even more important and more urgent that we urge the Secretary-General of the United Nations to appoint an urgent special diplomatic mission, comprised of the various countries that make up this world forum, to go as soon as possible and pay a working visit to Honduras. It can assess in situ the situation prevailing there and help seek solutions for the region, together with our President, in conjunction with the efforts of the Organization of American States (OAS). The OAS special missions sent to Honduras to prepare a meeting of its Secretary-General with other foreign ministers was recently expelled from the territory. Thirdly, we should impress on this Assembly and its appropriate authority the need for it to continue analysing and constantly review the situation of violence and the danger of violation of the Vienna Conventions, which prevail over everything pertaining to the inviolability of diplomatic missions and the upholding of international law. For the lives of our President and of our entire people, the consideration, review, analysis and ongoing attention of the Security Council is essential in order to find formulas to avert a greater tragedy that later, once out of control, we could not address. To conclude, I must state here that, with the awareness of and support for the presence of our President, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, in our land — in the country where he was elected President by a large majority in free and democratic elections, which today makes him the leader and hero in defending the democratic rights of our peoples — the need to restore to José Manuel Zelaya Rosales to his functions as President of the Republic is more urgent than ever, so that he can take on the duties bestowed on him by our Republic’s constitution and the sovereign mandate of our people. Right now, tonight and in the days following, the leaders of the coup should be urged to respect the life of our President and the inviolability of Brazilian territory in Honduras in its diplomatic mission. We must not neglect this grave political and institutional crisis, a crisis that affects the entire world and democracy around the globe. I therefore request that the Secretary-General present to the special session of the General Assembly a report analysing compliance with resolution 63/301, and resolutions that might stem from it, for a return to constitutional rule, 09-52604 48 the restoration of our President, ending violence and repression and violations of the international law, for a return to international peace and concord, to our people’s freedom to hold elections without the constant threat of violence and coups d’état, and, finally, for respect for human life. The most humble may not be known to the international community, but every night their lives are in danger under the skies of our country. We declare our solidarity with all those suffering from lack of freedom and of democracy, from lack of development, from poverty and inequality, those suffering from a lack of respect for the freedom that every society must have to organize itself as best it can, without being attacked, blockaded or, much less, expelled from any international entity. I express the solidarity of Honduras with those people suffering from discrimination and despoliation and those whose hope is crushed beneath the terror of military force, and our bottomless gratitude for the solidarity expressed by the entire international community. In an extraordinary, unprecedented way, they joined hands and forgot their profound differences to unite with our people and jointly confront this crime, which, in the twenty-first century, has once again stained our democracies. We give our thanks for the prayers and the solidarity of all the peoples of the world, to those who accompany us daily on the long road back to democracy, and to those who will never forget the words of our President calling out for respect for life, integrity and freedom of speech, and that never again will this sad story of persecution and death be perpetrated against an innocent, unarmed and peaceful people. These, then, are the initiatives I have set out. Along with that I express our gratitude to all peoples of the world, representatives of whom fit into this small space, just as all the freedom and the hope of democracy of the entire world fits into that tiny country of Honduras.