Honduras, 2009

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

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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

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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

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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,

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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.