One year after soldiers sent away the president of Honduras at gunpoint, political rulers in the Central American nation have failed to convince many observers that the crisis is over.
The removal of wealthy cattle rancher Manuel Zelaya on June 29 last year, who swerved to the political left during his presidency, split opinion both in Honduras and internationally.
Many in Latin America, including powerhouse Brazil, refuse to recognize Honduran President Porfirio Lobo, who won power in polls held under an unelected interim regime in November last year and took office in January.
But the US, the traditional Honduras backer, has now restored economic and military cooperation, after first condemning the coup.
“Sadly, Honduras has turned into a political football,” Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington said.
“There have been too many attempts to score political points and too few efforts that give highest priority to the welfare of most Hondurans,” Shifter said.
The coup and its aftermath increased tensions on familiar geo-political battlegrounds in the Americas.
It provoked the Organization of American States (OAS) to suspend Honduras — a move which has not been reversed despite pressure from the US.
“It is time for the [Western] hemisphere as a whole to move forward and welcome Honduras back into the inter-American community,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told OAS foreign ministers in Peru earlier this month.
OAS experts are studying the necessary conditions for the return of Honduras but Brazil, which sheltered Zelaya in its embassy in Tegucigalpa in a long showdown following the coup, has urged countries not to rush into readmitting Honduras.
In a major challenge for Lobo’s presidency, the killings of a string of journalists and rights activists this year have maintained tensions at home and abroad.
A group of 27 US Democratic lawmakers on Thursday wrote to Clinton to “express our continuing concern regarding the grievous violations of human rights and the democratic order which commenced with the coup and continue to this day.”
They called for a US mission to study the situation in Honduras.
The US government supports an official Truth Commission set up to investigate alleged rights abuses surrounding the coup.
But many in Honduras fear that officials who are implicated but still in power could influence that probe.
Rights activists including two Nobel Prize laureates last week set up a rival commission to investigate abuses and responsibility for the coup.
Supporters of Zelaya plan demonstrations to mark the one-year anniversary today.
Zelaya angered the country’s elite as he sought to change the Constitution. His critics accused him of seeking to extend term limits.
Zelaya made two bids to return to Honduras before appearing in Brazil’s embassy in September. He left for the Dominican Republic in January.
Nauru has started selling passports to fund climate action, but is so far struggling to attract new citizens to the low-lying, largely barren island in the Pacific Ocean. Nauru, one of the world’s smallest nations, has a novel plan to fund its fight against climate change by selling so-called “Golden Passports.” Selling for US$105,000 each, Nauru plans to drum up more than US$5 million in the first year of the “climate resilience citizenship” program. Almost six months after the scheme opened in February, Nauru has so far approved just six applications — covering two families and four individuals. Despite the slow start —
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
MOGAMI-CLASS FRIGATES: The deal is a ‘big step toward elevating national security cooperation with Australia, which is our special strategic partner,’ a Japanese official said Australia is to upgrade its navy with 11 Mogami-class frigates built by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles said yesterday. Billed as Japan’s biggest defense export deal since World War II, Australia is to pay US$6 billion over the next 10 years to acquire the fleet of stealth frigates. Australia is in the midst of a major military restructure, bolstering its navy with long-range firepower in an effort to deter China. It is striving to expand its fleet of major warships from 11 to 26 over the next decade. “This is clearly the biggest defense-industry agreement that has ever
DEADLY TASTE TEST: Erin Patterson tried to kill her estranged husband three times, police said in one of the major claims not heard during her initial trial Australia’s recently convicted mushroom murderer also tried to poison her husband with bolognese pasta and chicken korma curry, according to testimony aired yesterday after a suppression order lapsed. Home cook Erin Patterson was found guilty last month of murdering her husband’s parents and elderly aunt in 2023, lacing their beef Wellington lunch with lethal death cap mushrooms. A series of potentially damning allegations about Patterson’s behavior in the lead-up to the meal were withheld from the jury to give the mother-of-two a fair trial. Supreme Court Justice Christopher Beale yesterday rejected an application to keep these allegations secret. Patterson tried to kill her
RSS