Thousands of Hondurans were to take to the streets yesterday in the latest mass demonstration against Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, under whose watch gang violence and corruption have made the country the epicenter of Central American migration to the US.
Officially being held to mark the 10th anniversary of the coup d’etat that overthrew then-Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, the now-opposition leader has called on his supporters to use the occasion to pile pressure on Hernandez.
Honduras has been rocked by more than a month of protests, initially by striking doctors and teachers unions to protest controversial health and education decrees. When some units of the police joined truckers on strike last week, the government called the army onto the streets.
Zelaya said that 10 years after the June 28, 2009, coup that deposed him, protesters “are on the streets today against privatization” of the health and education sector and to call on Hernandez to resign.
Zelaya’s Liberty and Refoundation Party yesterday announced that the commemoration would pay tribute to those killed by police repression of the protests amid rising tensions.
The 66-year-old opposition leader said that the nation was facing its biggest crisis since the coup.
Anti-government protests intensified last week when three protesters were killed in clashes with security forces.
On Monday, military police opened fire on students at the National Autonomous University in Tegucigalpa who were calling for Hernandez’s resignation, wounding at least five.
“Since 2009, the United States is supporting a militarized government that represses protest,” Zelaya said.
“The dictatorship has to leave sooner rather than later. There is a massive level of protest in the country,” he said.
Meanwhile Hernandez — who is due to step down at the end of his second four-year term in January 2022 — went on television late on Tuesday to reject calls for his resignation and insist that he would complete his mandate.
“I’m going to do the work until the last day of this mandate,” he said.
Hernandez was elected to a second term in 2017 amid widespread allegations of fraud, which sparked protests in which 22 people died, according to the UN.
Former Honduran president Porfirio Lobo, elected in the first post-coup polls, said that Honduras is in a worse state than it was in 2009.
“There is a new ingredient in the crisis. There is hatred in the people,” he said. “Eight out of 10 young people not only do not support the president, they hate him,” said Lobo, a member of Hernandez’s National Party.
The government has been unable to address the economic problems and unemployment that have prompted tens of thousands of Hondurans to migrate, joining caravans going north to the US, Lobo said.
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