CNS STORY: Priest goes into hiding after Honduran soldiers attack protesters

HONDURAS-COUP (SECOND UPDATE) Jul-1-2009 (890 words) With photos posted Jan. 23 and June 30. xxxi

Priest goes into hiding after Honduran soldiers attack protesters

By Catholic News Service

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (CNS) -- An activist priest in Honduras went into hiding after soldiers attacked a group of protesters who had blocked a rural highway in support of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Father Jose Andres Tamayo, the parish priest in Salama, told Catholic News Service by telephone July 1 that he and hundreds of other residents of the rural province of Olancho were on their way to Tegucigalpa June 29 to join a pro-Zelaya march when soldiers shot out tires on their seven rented buses near the town of Los Limones, about 100 miles from the nation's capital.

"Since we couldn't proceed to Tegucigalpa, we decided to block the highway there. The army came twice to warn us to leave, and then they returned at 2 a.m. today and started beating us," he said.

Father Tamayo estimated about 200 soldiers confronted some 200 demonstrators in the raid.

"The soldiers were shooting in all directions and beating people. I was grabbed and pulled into a house, where I hid under a bed. The soldiers entered but didn't search under the bed because there was an old man in the bed above me. I lay there and listened to the cries of the people and the gunshots of the soldiers," the priest said.

Father Tamayo said an unknown number of protesters were taken away by the soldiers.

"I don't know how many are injured or even dead," he said.

He said that after the soldiers left, some of his followers took him, disguised as a peasant, to a location in the nearby mountains.

Hermilo Soto, the Lutheran World Federation's director in Honduras, said the Honduran National Congress renewed a "state of exception" measure just before midday July 1, allowing the country's security forces to detain people without cause, enter houses at will, and restrict freedom of travel.

A statement issued the same day by Caritas Honduras, the Catholic charitable agency, called the National Congress "serial violators of the constitution." It said Roberto Micheletti, former Congress president named interim president after the June 28 coup, "led the Congress in an anti-democratic and authoritarian manner."

The Caritas statement said the current political crisis would not be resolved without the "elimination of corruption and the concentration of the country's economic means in few hands."

The military coup was not a solution, as it "seeks to resolve an illegal situation with another illegal one, multiplying attacks on the country's democratic institutions," Caritas said.

Tensions grew in Honduras when Zelaya called a popular referendum, scheduled for June 28, to consider whether the Honduran Constitution should be amended to allow presidents to serve two consecutive terms. Caritas said that while it supports popular consultation, such as referendums, its interpretation as an attempt by Zelaya to pressure for a second term was an illegal attempt to manipulate the law by popular pressure.

The church organization spoke of the deep polarization in the country, between those who rejected Zelaya's referendum attempt as political manipulation and those who saw such a consultation as a door to opening greater popular participation in making changes to Honduras' social and power structures.

Caritas said that the political parties should learn from the crisis that "there is no democracy without social justice."

"All sectors should now be open to dialogue and consensus-building, and the crisis should be an opportunity for society to generate initiatives and solutions to the serious problems in the country," it said.

On June 30 Pedro Landa, executive director of Caritas in Tegucigalpa, expressed concern about human rights violations since the coup and said absolute censorship keeps church and civil groups in the dark about what is really going on.

"The country is heavily militarized, and there are reports of people imprisoned, detained and even disappeared," Landa said. "There are also reports of targeted attacks by the military on individuals who reportedly supported Zelaya's plans."

Many media outlets throughout the country were closed by the military in the wake of the coup. Radio Progreso, a Jesuit-run station in the northern city of El Progreso, was closed by a contingent of 30 soldiers at 10 a.m. June 28.

"The soldiers broke into the station and ordered the staff to stop broadcasting. The soldiers had no documentation and offered no reason for the order, but the staff complied and shut off the transmitter and left the station," Sister Mercedes Arbesu, a Missionary of Mary the Mediator, told CNS July 1.

Sister Arbesu, a member of the station's news team, said the radio reopened the following day and has been operating openly since, despite threats against station personnel from people associated with the coup leaders.

She said popular organizations were urging people to go to Tegucigalpa to demonstrate on behalf of democracy. While the station was broadcasting those appeals, it was also urging a negotiated solution.

Radio Progreso "had asked the government to create a commission on dialogue. Without it, there is no future for the country," she said.

Landa said he believed that Zelaya's reinstatement -- as called for by the United Nations and the Organization of American States -- would not bring about a solution to the crisis.

"We need to go beyond the debate on whether or not what happened was legal. We need a real process of national dialogue and a transformation of Honduras's obsolete political structures," he said.

END

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