by Suzette Diaz and Vanessa Kritzeron November 04, 2009
After months of a virtual standstill in Honduras between democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and regime leader Roberto Micheletti, we might be seeing the end of what one writer called, “The Little Coup That Couldn’t.” On October 29th, Honduras’ defacto leader Roberto Micheletti agreed to step down, allowing the Honduran Congress to decide whether President Zelaya would be returned to power. But, the fate of democracy in Honduras still remains to be seen.
Hear LAWG's director talk on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview program about the "two Colombias": The one in which the war is winding down and all is going well; and the other one, in which hundreds of thousands of people are still fleeing their homes from violence, the army as well as guerrillas and paramilitaries are killing civilians, and the government is illegally wiretapping the institutions that are the basic building blocks of democracy.
Click here to listen to it on the Chicago Public Radio website.
On October 23rd, Crude made its debut in D.C. at the Landmark E Street Cinema. Crude, a documentary about the $27 billion dollar “Amazon Chernobyl” case, is making similar debuts across the nation in 2009. Here in Washington, viewers piled into the theater, even at the10:15 PM showing, only to be greeted by director Joe Berlinger whoopened the film stating, “I don’t want to say enjoy the film, because it’s not enjoyable. I hope that it’s provocative so that we can talk about it.” And talk about it we did.
“If that kind of barbarity can be directed against the highest-ranking
person in the country, what will happen to the rest of us?” asked the
activists at COFADEH, the Committee of Families of Detained and
Disappeared in Honduras, right after the June 28th coup that sent
President Manuel Zelaya into exile. Now the answer to that question
can be seen in COFADEH’s hard-hitting October 22nd report, “Statistics
and Faces of Repression.”
UPDATE: The United Nations has voted 187 in favor, 3 against (US, Israel, Palau), and 2 abstentions (Micronesia, Marshall Islands) to condemn the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba.
The United Nations General Assembly will vote on a resolution whichcondemns the U.S embargo against Cuba on Wednesday, October 28th, forthe 18th year in a row. According to a CBS news report written afterthe 2008 U.N vote, “The U.S. embargo has cost Cuba $230 million a yearin foreign investment and caused the country more than $93 billion ineconomic damage since its inception, according to Cuban officials.”
LAWG celebrates—and I personally celebrate—that yesterday the
U.S. House of Representatives approved H.Res. 761, introduced by Rep. Jim
McGovern and 33 co-sponsors. This resolution remembers and
commemorates the lives and work of the six Jesuit priests and two women
who were murdered in El Salvador nearly twenty years ago, on November
16, 1989.
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