by the El Reportero’s news services
Manuel Zelaya
At press time of this edition, thousands of Hondurans were in the streets protesting the coup d’etat in their country. They have been met with tear gas, anti-riot rubber bullets, tanks firing water mixed with chemicals, and clubs.
Police had moved in to break down barricades and soldiers used violence to push back protesters at the presidential residence, leaving an unknown number wounded.
“If the coup leaders were desperate when they decided to forcibly depose the elected president, they are even more desperate now,” said a Americas Program, release.
“Stripped of its pretense of legality by universal repudiation and faced with a popular uprising, the coup has turned to more violent means.”
An isolated President Manuel Zelaya left the presidential palace on June 26, having suggested that the country’s “oligarchy”, with the support of Congress and the Supreme Court, had attempted a technical coup d’etat against him.
Honduran Foreign Minister Patricia Rodas called on the people to take to the streets to resist the coup perpetrated early Sunday against President Manuel Zelaya.
Also, the Attorney General, Luis Alberto Rubí affi rmed that the ex president Manuel Zelaya will be arrested at his arrival in Honduras”immediately” after being charged with varios crimes committed against the State.
Meanwhile, the World Bank and Interamerican Development Bank announced on Tuesday the freezing temporarily of their operations in Honduras.
Sharp fall in Colombian coca cultivation is less impressive than it seems
Coca cultivation fell sharply in Colombia in 2008, while increasing in Peru and Bolivia. That was the headline-grabbing conclusion of the annual report released by the United Nations Offi ce on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) this week, heralded by some as a vindication of the USsponsored counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency initiative Plan Colombia.
production was the lowest inAttention to the detail of the report shows, however, that coca cultivation in Colombia merely returned to a steady average maintained between 2003 and 2006 after an anomalous spike in 2007, although the UNODC report argues that potential cocaine a decade.
Convulsion in the Amazon shakes Peru’s García
Peru’s police force suffered the greatest number of casualties ever in one single day in early June. This did not come about as a result of an engagement with Sendero Luminoso guerrillas but rather in a violent clash with indigenous protesters in the northern department of Amazonas.
The government initially blamed indigenous groups for the scale of the violence but later conceded that the protests were a direct result of its failure to consult them about its plans to open up the area to private investment. President Alan García’s indecisive and inconsistent response to the violence has exposed his government as weak, and left his much-touted development strategy in tatters.
Canada’s leaders to skip out on developing nations’ summit
UNITED NATIONS — Canada is among Western countries whose leaders have spurned invitations to attend a United Nations “summit” opening Wednesday on how the world body can help solve the global fi nancial crisis.
UN General Assembly president Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, a former Nicaraguan revolutionary, had asked all 192 member states to attend at the “highest level.”
But many developed countries fear the three-day gathering will descend into a raucous denunciation of the capitalist system, western diplomats say.
Radical members of the anachronistically named Group of 77 developing countries, which has more than 130 members, have largely developed the agenda.
What’s more, some of the world’s harshest critics of capitalism are among the 14 heads of state and government who are turning up. Among them are presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia and Rafael Correa of Ecuador.
