Honduras regime seeks to disarm citizens ahead of polls

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Honduras regime seeks to disarm citizens ahead of polls
AFP
November 21, 2009, 7:17 am

TEGUCIGALPA (AFP) - The Honduran de facto regime on Friday ordered citizens to turn in their weapons in a bid to avert violence around disputed presidential elections to be held at the end of the month.

Ousted President Manuel Zelaya has called on his supporters to boycott the November 29 national elections after crisis talks failed to restore him to power beforehand -- in order to finish his single term that ends in January.

The interim regime led by Roberto Micheletti said it would disarm citizens who risked disrupting the elections in a nation where violent street gangs operate with many weapons left over from decades of civil wars in the region.

"We've agreed a general disarmament from November 23 so that no one will harm the lives of others or provoke other actions against the electoral process," Press Minister Pineda Ponce told local television.

Read more: http://nz.news.yahoo.com/a/-/world/6499432/honduras-regime-seeks-to-disarm-citizens-ahead-of-polls/

[timeforpeace]

1. Sounds like a good idea.

[Judi Lynn]

2. Why? n/t

[EFerrari]

6. Right. A murderous dictatorship should disarm the people at will.

Again, are you sure you're not lost?

[Iowa]

14. +1

[friendly_iconoclast]

17. Yeah, easier to do El Mozote-type massacres if they can't shoot back.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Mozote

[L. Coyote]

25. If you want to start a war, try to disarm a populace. Yeah, real bright.

Sounds like a provocation moreso than anything else, telling people to give us their protection.

[msongs]

3. uh oh better go out n buy lots of guns cuz that scary black president of our is gonna do the same

thing....NOT. he's not really crazy unless yer a mccain/palin voter.

all those teabagger NRA republicans will be in a tizzy tho.

Msongs

[friendly_iconoclast]

18. The teabaggers won't say shit about this. They love the Honduran fascists

While we're on the subject:

Can you promise we'll NEVER have a another Bush/Cheney type of cabal running things?

[rabs]

4. Wonder if that includes

the weapons in the hands of the 10 Families and their scores of bodyguards?

the weapons in the hands of the paramilitaries and sicarios (hitmen) the golpistas have imported?

the weapons in the hands of the Maras (gangs)? Good luck with them.

the weapons in the hands of the common criminals? (That will be the day.)

Was just listening to Globo and it reported that it, CholusatSur and other opposition media may be shut down on Nov. 27, two days before the voting.

Very tense times in Honduras these days.

[Downwinder]

11. The ones who have used weapons are the police and army.

Collect their weapons if you want peace.

[Peace Patriot]

5. This will be an excuse for home invasions, arbitrary arrests and more golpista violence.

The only people who have used guns during this fascist coup are the fascists--they have used live ammunition on peaceful protestors, have killed at least 26 people altogether, and have unfairly jailed, tear gassed, beaten up, raped and tortured many people. The country has been one big prison with armed police and military everywhere. And nobody has shot at them--for all the provocation that people must feel, being so brutally treated and 'occupied' by their own police and military--and nobody has given any indication whatsoever that they might take up arms. The shooting and the violence has all be one-sided.

The people of Honduras are not any threat to anybody. They have been entirely peaceful in their protests against this outrageous, brutal, fascist coup.

So, an order to turn over your guns--that the golpista media whore says "we" have agreed to--is an EXCUSE for more of their violence against the Honduran people. Furthermore, we can be sure that they will be PLANTING guns on people--in their homes, in their cars, on their persons--in order to arrest or kill leftist organizers of the election boycott. Let's be clear about this: There are NO civil rights any more in Honduras. If they plant a gun on someone, and they object, because it's not theirs, they won't get a trial.

This is NOT a "good idea"--as someone upthread just said. This is a very, very bad and ominous DICTATE of the Junta.

[EFerrari]

7. I'm afraid it speaks to their plans.

Do we wait and see what they do? Is there some way to voice this concern here?

This timing is horrible because most of our own government shut down at noon today.

[Downwinder]

8. The resistance has gone for 146 days without using weapons,

Is there some reason to expect them to change from peaceful tactics?

Or are the golpistas planning some move to force a change?

[EFerrari]

9. No, I mean the order to disarm the people speaks to the golpistas' plans.

It's one of the rules of the rabid right: You accuse others of what you are doing or planning to do. Projection, in other words.

[Downwinder]

10. The ten families could not take the punishment that has

handed out to the resistance without resorting to weapons.

[JonQ]

12. This should be interesting

how are the gun grabbers going to respond?

[Judi Lynn]

13. The only ones who've been using guns in Honduras are controlled by the right wing. n/t

[JonQ]

15. I don't suppose they will be disarming the police or military

you know, the ones using the guns. Instead they will preemptively disarm the citizens who have done nothing as a precautionary measure to keep them from getting too uppity.

[unkachuck]

16. "...or provoke other actions against the electoral process,"

....maybe some fake black-op elections require more effort than others?....karzais' fake polls and ballots took a while to sink in....Hondurans might be slicker and easier to arouse....

....what good are elections if you can't control the outcome?

[Posteritatis]

19. That's .. blatant. (nt)

[friendly_iconoclast]

20. This is not good AT ALL. Read this about the former Yugoslavia from a DUer:

This is from DUer Euromutt, a couple of months back:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=118&topic_id=230314#230327

...I got a job at the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. My first job was dissecting witness statements for who was where and when, and did what to whom, and putting that information into a database so the investigators and prosecutors cuold easily find witness statements that supported whichever case they were trying to make. So I read a lot of descriptions of ethnic cleansing, especially from rural areas of Bosnia in 1992, and there was a trend that a week or two prior to a "cleansing" taking place, some local cops and nationalist party members of the ethnic group doing the cleansing would do the rounds of households with registered firearms (shotguns, hunting rifles, the occasional handgun) and confiscate them "to prevent them from falling into the hands of subversives." Of course, it was really so that when the paramilitaries arrived, nobody would be able to shoot back....

[Odin2005]

21. This is why I support the right to bear arms.

Disarming the populance = prelude to repression.

[mitchtv]

22. "We've agreed a general disarmament from November 23

what you mean "WE" , pig?

[edwardian]

23. I propose

that there is a time for forceful, defiant opposition. Civil war is no longer avoidable in Honduras. The populace have been patient, endured harrassment and murder, have attempted to address the rape of their nation by the selfish plutocracy and done so through peaceful means...but this is the limit. I urge my brothers in Honduras to RESIST! FORCEFULLY AND BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY! No dejen que le maten! A la defensa, pueblo! Ahora es la hora de defender el pueblo!@!@!

[L. Coyote]

27. a real crock full of it.

Giving away the moral high ground now would end the battle and lose the cause.

Peace is the only path forward. Violence is always the path backwards.

[edwardian]

28. The peaceful

are the ones who die. You are the crock and you overflow from your ignorance. Violence has to be opposed with force, or has all of history gone unnoticed by you? Peace?With Nazis? In Honduras? You are definitely out of touch with the real world. You ignorant poster.

[L. Coyote]

29. Everyone dies.

Not everyone lives a life worthy of the adjective "human."

[edwardian]

31. Every human does.

EVERY HUMAN DOES! It does not make conflict inevitable, and a well conceived resistance knows when to resort to force. Venceremos!

[PavePusher]

36. I'd prefer to live a worthwhile life...

and survive the process of getting rid of tyranny. So I'll keep my firearms, thank you very much.

[PavePusher]

37. Some pigs is more equal than other pigs. Got it. n/t

[hack89]

24. Sound like they need a 2nd Amendment. nt

[EFerrari]

26. Military juntas don't care what the paper says.

[L. Coyote]

30. New LATEST thread to follow here:

Threats, Detentions, Persecutions Prior to Honduran Polls
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4157480

Previous LATEST: Interim Leader in Honduras Says He’ll Briefly Step Down
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4154423

[Judi Lynn]

32. Bearing weapons to be banned during Honduran elections

Bearing weapons to be banned during Honduran elections
2009-11-24 13:02:50

TEGUCIGALPA, Nov. 23 (Xinhua) -- Honduran police started on Monday to enforce a ban on the bearing of weapons in public during the country's upcoming elections on Nov. 29.

"Any person caught bearing arms during the elections will have them confiscated," police spokesman Orlin Cerrato said on Monday, adding that the weapons could be returned to their owners later.

"Obviously those who bear prohibited arms, will be punished according to our domestic laws," the official said.

The ban will last until early December when official results of the elections would be released.

Honduras will hold elections on Nov. 29 to choose a president, 128 deputies for Congress, 20 for the Central American Parliament and 298 mayors.

Ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya issued a statement on Monday urging the international community not to recognize the elections. He has been staying in the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa since he secretly returned to the country late September.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-11/24/content_12530326.htm

[boppers]

33. Can we stop nutjobs combining weapons and their politics in the US?

No?

Seem pretty intractable. Hell, even when we first gained control over Iraq, we weren't that harsh.

On a more interesting political note, we should make sure that every 'publicant who decided to play in this arena is called out for supporting "gun grabbers". That ought to be a lesson for them to learn, and be held accountable for.

[Judi Lynn]

34. Honduras police say 4 people, rifles seized

Honduras police say 4 people, rifles seized
By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA © 2009 The Associated Press
Nov. 25, 2009, 1:14AM

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduran police detained two Nicaraguans and two Hondurans along with several rifles, and interim President Roberto Micheletti claimed the weapons were part of a plot to attack him during Sunday's presidential election. The suspects, weapons, communications equipment and gun sights were found during a raid on a house in the city of El Progreso, north of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, authorities said Tuesday.

"Today, police informed me that there was going to be an attack against me in the city of Progreso when I went to vote," Micheletti said at a news conference. Micheletti is from Progreso.

Micheletti, who was named acting president after a June 28 coup removed President Manuel Zelaya, has said he is taking a temporary leave from office from Thursday to Dec. 2, when the congress is expected to decide whether to reinstate Zelaya to serve out the final weeks of his term. He hopes the leave will win more international recognition for the vote. Zelaya's ouster over his push to overhaul Honduras' constitution has isolated Micheletti's government diplomatically and led many countries to say they will not recognize the election, which was scheduled before the coup.

Zelaya, whose term ends Jan. 27, says the vote is an attempt to legitimize the coup and the results should not be recognized.

In announcing the weapons seizure and detentions, police spokesman Orlin Cerrato said, "There is no doubt that the intentions of these people was to cause chaos and fear among the Honduran people to damage the elections."

Authorities are nervous about purported efforts to disrupt the vote. On Nov. 12, assailants fired an anti-tank grenade toward a building where ballots for the presidential election were stored.

Honduras' electoral tribunal wants observers for the election so much that it is looking for them on the Internet. The country's top elections court said Tuesday it hopes to make everyone a potential observer, by transmitting video images from a few polling stations and other electoral offices over the Internet.

"The entire world is going to be able to see" the vote to replace Zelaya, Supreme Electoral Tribunal Magistrate Enrique Ortez said at a news conference to announce the camera system. "If they don't want to come, or cannot come, to observe the process, we are making it available to them so there will be no doubt."

Tribunal President Saul Escobar acknowledged that for reasons of cost, there will be cameras at only about 15 of the country's 5,360 polling places.

More:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/latinamerica/6738186.html

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

35. OK, can we consider the Honduran coup regime evil NOW? -nt