TEGUCIGALPA, June 29 (Reuters) - Honduras has shut down television and radio stations since an army coup over the weekend, in a media blackout than has drawn condemnation from an international press freedom group.
Shortly after the Honduran military seized President Manuel Zelaya and flew him to Costa Rica on Sunday, soldiers stormed a popular radio station and cut off local broadcasts of international television networks CNN en Espanol and Venezuelan-based Telesur, which is sponsored by leftist governments in South America.
A pro-Zelaya channel also was shut down.
The few television and radio stations still operating on Monday played tropical music or aired soap operas and cooking shows.
They made little reference to the demonstrations or international condemnation of the coup even as hundreds of protesters rallied at the presidential palace in the capital to demand Zelaya's return and an end to the blackout.
"The spurious government is violating our right to information, blocking the signals of channels like CNN," Juan Varaona, a protest leader at a barricade, said as burning tires sent plumes of black smoke into the sky.
CNN en Espanol is the Spanish-language channel of the U.S.-based 24-hour news network CNN.
Others blasted the two main Honduran newspapers and said they were still online because they supported the coup.
"El Heraldo and El Tribuno are two papers that were part of the coup plot, them and some television channels controlled by the opposition," said 27-year-old Erin Matute, a government health worker.
"This morning, they were the only ones with signals, the others were shut down," Matute said at a barricade on a side street in the capital.
El Heraldo's website ran one headline saying "Semblance of normality across Honduras."
Some Hondurans used Internet social networking site Twitter to urge on demonstrators and spread news about the protests.
"Down with the coup! Brothers of Honduras break the information blackout and watch the repression on Telesur on the Internet," one message said.
Some protesters burned and smashed El Heraldo newspaper stands and others used them as barricades to block streets around the presidential palace.
PRESSURE ON OAS, WEST
Paris-based press freedom group Reporters Without Borders criticized the media shutdown.
"The suspension or closure of local and international broadcast media indicates that the coup leaders want to hide what is happening," the group said in a statement.
"The Organization of American States and the international community must insist that this news blackout is lifted."
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3 comments:
the world right wing is nervous and violent, they are seeing that the left is gaining grounds. Even within the USA, the Tea Party terrorists want to stage a coup de etat against Obama
The Tea Pary demagoguery is an apt comparison of the right-wing disinformation against even moderate presidents such as Obama or Zelaya. Both Obama and Zelaya are "accused" of communists. Obama was "accused" of communist when he defended a reform in the US health system. Zelaya has been "accused" of communist for signing Honduras in ALBA-TCP. This is the very same situation Marx and Engels described in 1848 ("A spectre is haunting Europe..."). Red baiting is the strategy (?) used by right-wingers in All The Americas and in the "Old" Europe to spread fear and intimidation.
Obama's main flaw is that he has an american libertarian capitalist world view. Which is a flawed world view. What we need in this country is a change toward collectivism, and marxism.
Read this from:
http://marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch07.htm
"Only Marxism," says Lenin, "has precisely and correctly defined the relation of reforms to revolution. However, Marx was able to see this relation only from one aspect, namely, under the conditions preceding the first to any extant permanent and lasting victory of the proletariat, if only in a single country. Under those conditions, the basis of the proper relations was: reforms are a by-product of the revolutionary class struggle of the proletariat... After the victory of the proletariat, if only in a single country, something new enters into the relation between reforms and revolution. In principal, it is the same as before, but a change in form takes place, which Marx himself could not foresee, but which can be appreciated only on the basis of the philosophy and politics of Marxism...After the victory (while still remaining a 'by-product' on an international scale) they (i.e., reforms-J.St.) are, in addition, for the country in which victory has been achieved, a necessary and legitimate respite in those cases when, after the utmost exertion of effort, it becomes obvious that sufficient strength is lacking for the revolutionary accomplishment of this or that transition. Victory creates such a 'reserve of strength' that it is possible to hold out even in a forced retreat, to hold out both materially and morally" (see Vol. XXVII, pp. 84-85).
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