Radio Globo Defies New Military Tribunal Order to Close Its 15 Stations
By Al Giordano
AUGUST 4, 2009, SAN PEDRO SULA, HONDURAS: The order was printed on the hijacked stationary of the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL, in its Spanish initials), executed by a military judge, and delivered to Radio Globo’s flagship station on 88.7 FM in Tegucigalpa at noon today: charged with “sedition,” the people’s radio station will be closed by decree, it proclaimed.
But the station continues to broadcast here in San Pedro Sula at 104.5 FM and also from 14 other cities throughout the country, in defiance of the order, which had been solicited by the Armed Forces of Honduras clandestinely on July 31 and granted today by the illegitimate coup regime.
This highly illegal situation – in which Armed Forces that claim to obey the orders of civilian authorities are the ones giving the orders to the regime over which media may broadcast and which may not – makes a lie, again, of the legaloid claims to be a civilian coup. But it’s the military – the same one that invaded and closed Radio Globo in the early hours of June 28 – that is calling the shots in Honduras today.
Honduras Indymedia was there at noon, in the capital city, and photographed inside and outside the station at the moment that the order was delivered. Its report (in Spanish) and the photographs appear here.
This morning’s televised threat by coup General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez to “go after them” – the leaders of the civil resistance to the coup – also included broadcasters and journalists.
Radio Globo, after its first shutdown at the hands of military soldiers, won a court order to reopen and has broadcasted constantly since June 29. If not for its news team and conductors and the thousands of calls they have received live on the air from Honduran citizens, the nationwide public would not know the real facts about what has been happening to their country. Thus, the military coup’s thirst to censor Radio Globo’s signal.
Repression has also been on the rise here in the country’s second largest city, and so has the resistance. Yesterday, Monday, August 3, as a peaceful caravan headed to protest outside the Honduran Arab Club where coup “president” Roberto Micheletti would address business leaders, National Police violently intercepted the participants, arresting at least 24 and wounding at least 47 men, women, children and seniors.
After beating and arresting the caravan participants for the crime of riding in cars toward a peaceful protest location, the National Police converged on the city’s central square. According to pro-coup daily El Tiempo, they did so “because they had information that resistance members were reassembling in that location.”
Local stores and businesses near the square, upon viewing the violent charge of the police, began closing their metal gates to protect themselves and their customers. Among them, Mr. and Mrs. Miguel Mejía, proprietors of a cyber-café. “In the building, police were seeking various pregnant and elder women who they sought to arrest because they considered them part of the protests,” wrote the pro-coup daily. When the Mejías did not open the gates, the police arrested them. You can see that scene in this photo:
The central park of San Pedro Sula has been the site of constant round-the-clock demonstrations since July 2, when troops invaded its City Hall and Mayor Rodolfo Padilla Sunseri disappeared. Narco News has learned that Mayor Padilla has been in exile ever since, due to the threats on his life. The coup regime attempted to install William Hall Micheletti – nephew of the coup “president” by the same last name, and third place defeated candidate in 2008 for the Liberal Party nomination for Mayor – in a local regime mirroring the national coup.
The response by the Municipal Workers Union was to close City Hall and it has remained locked and protected by peaceful protesters for more than a month now.
Tomorrow, from every corner of the country, national marches toward San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa will begin, scheduled to converge on the two cities early next week.
As the repression escalates, so does the civil resistance.
When Radio Globo’s eight p.m. hour team signed off shortly before nine p.m. for a regularly scheduled paid half-hour Evangelical broadcast tonight, the broadcaster added two words: “This is Radio Globo… in resistance.”
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So... when will the Cardinal speak up...
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by Charles (not verified)So... when will the Cardinal speak up about the abuse of pregnant women, he being a strong "pro-life" advocate and all?
Go go real radio!
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by John SladeI'm a volunteer for a local community radio station - glad to know that the airwaves are being used to such good use down there!
I'm wondering why they're continuing to broadcast; is it that there are too few police and military to enforce the orders? It seems that the golpistas can concentrate power to do things (break a specific road blockade, hold enough of the airport to block a plane landing) but they can't hold down a lot of other things (certain ministries, Radio Globo, city hall). Is it the lack of forces?
@ John Slade
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by Al GiordanoJohn - I don't think it's that the limited troops of the coup regime are spread thin as much as Radio Globo, by disobeying the order, has put the regime on the horns of a dilemma, giving it two options, neither of which will be good for it.
It can shut the station by force, solidifying the national and international perception that it is a repressive and illegitimate regime that doesn't respect freedom of the press, or it can leave the station broadcasting. Neither option is helpful to the regime remaining in power.
More an more, the movement down here is implementing these kinds of actions that, as Ivan Marovich described to them, put the regime on its heels in a "creative dilemma" in which it has no good options for how to respond, which further demonstrates that the regime has failed to maintain control. As time goes on and its ineptness and lack of control become more and more evident, the perception that it can hang on to power diminishes. The moment it loses that perception of inevitability, it begins to crack from within as various of its rats begin to desert the sinking ship.
Write and call your political leaders
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by knowbuddee@gmail.com (not verified)"The United States only needs to tighten its fist and the coup will last five seconds," said Zelaya... on Tuesday.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE5740Z220090805
===============
I have been sending emails to the U.S. Pres, Vice Pres, & several senators and congressmen, one to three times per week with subject lines like: "Please Support Democracy/Zelaya in Honduras" and telephoning some too.
Others from outside Honduras are encouraged to do the same. It's my understanding that the politicians pay attention to the demands made by their constituents.
Below is some contact information for people from the U.S. that you some may want to use. Obviously the more noise we make about this the better.
president@whitehouse.gov,vice_president@whitehouse.gov, comments@whitehouse.gov,John.Conyers@mail.house.gov,senator_leahy@leahy.senate.gov,
senator_lugar@lugar.senate.gov,
White house
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
FAX: 202-456-2461
webform for comments to the white house:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
U.S. Department of State, leave message - on webform:
http://contact-us.state.gov/cgi-bin/state
United States Department of State
Secretary Hillary Clinton 202-647-5291
Deputy Executive Secretary Kenneth Merten 202-647-8448
Deputy Executive Secretary Paul Wohlers 202-647-6548
Deputy Executive Secretary Uzra S. Zeya 202-647-5302
Longshoremen?
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by Tien Le (not verified)I'm curious to know if the Teamsters and Longshoremen are honoring the call to refuse to offload container ships from Honduras?
Longshore
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by John SladeI'd heard that the West Coast longshoremen's union (the still-radical one) was honoring something, but I don't have a source on that.
US Interference
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by engineer (not verified)Is the prospect of more direct US involvement in Honduras a positive thing, or is it likely to backfire, as many claimed it would in Iran?
Will this get the news play of the 34 Venezuelan radio stations?
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by El Cid (not verified)The Venezuelan government's shutting down of reportedly 34 radio stations due to claims of licensing and documentation problems was a story reported quite prominently in the US.
Will this get any play?
@ engineer
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by Tribunus Plebis (not verified)"Is the prospect of more direct US involvement in Honduras a positive thing, or is it likely to backfire, as many claimed it would in Iran?"
The "fist-tightening" that Zelaya suggests might, most effectively, be sanctions aimed at a wider circle of senior Hondurans who are identifiable as being behind the coup, like the threat of lifting any US visas for a long period (which can always be done fairly peremptorily by the State Department). To the extent that such Honduran political and military types are materially put at risk or their comfortable lives seriously inconvenienced, my guess is that they'll fold their tent.
Would that be "direct involvement"? Not really. It would be withholding a privilege previously granted to people supporting an anti-democratic coup, and would further the process that Al describes, i.e. the "cracking from within" of the group behind the coup. But it wouldn't be the kind of intrusive political subversion, for example, of which the Iranian regime accused the Bush Administration.
The Golpistas have created what they were avoiding!
Submitted on August 5th, 2009 by Hèctor (not verified)The Golpistas said:
Zelaya wanted to turn Honduras into a Cuba.......Micheletti did so!
Chavez closed tv and radio stations in Venezuela.....Micheletti is trying to do so!
Zelaya divided people over the cuarta urna....Micheletti divided people over the coup!
Everything that the Golpistas has tried to use against Zelaya has turned against themselves!
Go ahead Al, we are going to keep making news over here!
Iran
Submitted on August 6th, 2009 by EThurm (not verified)I get that the coup in Honduras was illegitimate, and that it's important to report there on the movement to get Zelaya back in power and end the grip of the coup regime.
What I don't get is how the Iran story can just fall through the cracks. Ahmadinejad has alrady been reinaugurated, and aside from the odd story on it as a news event, there has been almost zero reporting on the continued protesting of the regime, something you yourself warned against, Al. The Google News coverage I can find on Iran seems to have returned to the standard Iran narratives about nuclear weapons and relations with the U.S. All stories, even the few that refer to the protests, continue to refer to Ahmadinejad as the president without using sufficiently strong rhetoric to challenge that claim, even in circumstances where lip service is given to the fact that he most likely did not win the election.
It seems that you've fallen into the media trap of moving onto the next big story while the benefits of keeping up coverage of the prior story would be enormous. I got almost all of my real news on Iran from here, and it is sad that it now seems unlikely that the Iranian protests will get the coverage they need to generate continued support and possibly reform the country.
@ EThurm
Submitted on August 6th, 2009 by Al GiordanoEThurm - Believe me, I hear you. In this M*A*S*H unit the helicopters of stories that need to be reported keep coming in daily and in the end we're a small budget operating room and we have to practice triage.
Because I live in Latin America, speak fluent Spanish, have the "contacts among the lumberjacks" in the social movements on the ground, and because this newspaper is first and foremost dedicated to reporting events in this hemisphere, there is just so much more I can do, and do better, to break the information blockade from Honduras than I ever could from Iran: A country I've never been to and, alas, I don't speak and can't translate from Farsi or any of its other languages.
In other words, in a triage situation, the oncologist handles the cancer patients almost exclusively. At other times, when there aren't as many wounded on his beat, he may dedicate himself to brain surgery, but my abilities are far more sharpened when it comes to reporting from Latin America than from other parts of the world.
I would also take issue with the suggestion that nobody else is covering the Iran story. The fact is that because the Western media is mainly critical of the Iranian regime, you actually have access to scores if not hundreds more sources of information on the conflict of Iran than you do on Honduras.
Here's a sampling from the past week that came into my mailbox, culled by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. (Anyone can subscribe for free to its weekly round-up of press clips about social struggles on every continent, at this link.)
I'll break my usual rule of keeping comments brief because here are a bunch of stories from recent days about the struggle in Iran, to provide a sense of what I'm talking about:
So there you have it. Perhaps now you can better understand why I'm focused on Honduras. Not because its the "next big story" (compared to Iran it still gets less international press coverage) but because it's on my beat and the first duty of any soldier is to remain at his post whenever he or she is needed there. Mine is in Latin America.
Iran
Submitted on August 6th, 2009 by Christine CovelliLast night Rachel Maddow showed some Iran footage from the ground. Here's the link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/vp/32307452#32307638
And she credits the New York Times for some of it.
longshoremen
Submitted on August 8th, 2009 by Julie Webb-PullmanThis quote from a post last Friday suggests it's business as usual in Honduras...or they're desperate to pretend it is.
"From Puerto Cortes, our deep water, Atlantic Megaport, operating under the U.S. Container Security Initiative (CSI), shipments of manufactured and raw items are moving regularly to and from the United States and other markets. "
source: http://www.latinbusinesschronicle.com/app/article.aspx?id=3593
juliewp