Call
on the State Department to stop legitimizing
fraudulent Honduran elections
 On Sunday,
November 24, Hondurans went to the polls in
record numbers to vote in their presidential
elections. In the country with the highest
murder rate in the world and targeted repression
of the opposition and social movements, many
Hondurans voted for change, including for
Xiomara Castro, the candidate for the new LIBRE
party which was created out of the resistance to
the 2009 SOA-graduate led coup that ousted her
husband, President Mel Zelaya. Despite outright
vote buying, vote counting problems, selling of
election credentials, irregularities
in posted voting certificates, discrepancies in
the results released by Honduras' Electoral
Tribunal (TSE) and those received by the
parties, and other signs of fraud, Juan Orlando
Hernandez of the ruling (National) party was
declared the winner. Libre and PAC, another new
party running on an anti-corruption platform,
have refused to accept the TSE's results, citing
widespread fraud, but the US has supported the
ruling party, calling the elections
"transparent." Call
on the U.S. to stop legitimizing
fraudulent elections in Honduras!
 On Sunday,
December 1st,
thousands of Hondurans took to the streets
demanding an end to fraud and the recognition of
Xiomara Castro as the legitimate President of
Honduras. See a photo report here.
On Monday, December 2nd, Castro presented an
official request to the TSE for a recount of all
the voting certificantes in the presence of
Libre. However, with the TSE, Executive Branch,
current Congress, Supreme Court, and Attorney
General all controlled by the ruling party
(Hernandez himself led the Congress in firing 4
Supreme Court justices last year and replacing
the Attorney General in a highly controversial
process just months before the elections), there
is little hope that Honduran system will resolve
fairly.
The US State Department has white-washed the
elections, commending the TSE for "its
professional counting of the vote," when the
reality is that the
elections were full of problems. Send an
e-mail to the State
Department and Congress urging them to condemn
the fraud, irregularities, and violence during
the Honduran elections.
 SOA
Watch's election delegation to
Honduras, along with many other delegations as
part of the Honduras
Solidarity Network observed problems
with vote counting, reports of dead people
voting, voting table credentials of other
parties used by the ruling party, breaking of
the rules during vote transmission, suspicious
results from voting tables reported by the TSE,
and numerous opportunities for alternation and
manipulation of the results. Read the report
back from the SOA delegation here.
Libre has also documented
numerous alternations and manipulations,
including the tabulation of 82,301 too many
votes counted in favor of the National (ruling)
Party and 55,720 votes not counted for LIBRE.
Even the European Union election monitoring
delegation, which white-washed the elections
for political reasons, reported that 30%
of the voter rolls were people who were dead or
have left the country, making fraudulent voting
all too easy.
 The day before
Libre activists prepared to take to the streets
to demand a recount, Jose Antonio Ardon, a
well-known member of the resistance movement and
the motorcade that accompanied Xiomara Castro,
was brutally murdered by death squads while
organizing for Libre's march. This political
assassination sent a clear message: you will
continue to be murdered for speaking out. Prior
to the elections, at least 18 Libre candidates
and activists were murdered, more than all other
parties combined. Two additional campesino
leaders and Libre activists were murdered
the evening before the elections as they
returned from election training and a citizen
was beaten on election day for asking for the
votes to be read out loud as they were counted.
Just days after the elections, the police tear
gassed and violently repressed
thousands of university students protesting
against fraud and the imposition of Juan
Orlando as president of Honduras.
International observers were also intimidated,
with migration raids targeting accredited
observers from the Honduras Solidarity Network
and other groups. The SOAW delegation, together
with the US-El Salvador Sister Cities
delegation, was
blocked for over 5 hours from visiting Rio
Blanco, where Lenca communities are
resisting the construction of an illegal
hydroelectric dam and facing death threats and
severe repression, including the murder of Tomas
Garcia this July.
 As Sunday's
mobilization came to an end, Xiomara Castro
stood beside the casket of Jose Antonio Ardon,
which accompanied the mobilization outside the
TSE to demand a recount of the votes, and
declared "Today we have pain in our hearts and
tears in our eyes and it is precisely because of
this, and for the 350 other martyrs, that we
will not give up. Because of this we continue.
We believed the false promises that there would
be clean elections… Over 1 million people went
out to vote for us… They have stolen our victory
and implemented fraud. We will not give up until
we achieve… our hope of constructing a better
Honduras for all".
As the ultra-right seeks to consolidate its
stranglehold on Honduras through fraudulent
elections aimed at imposing the presidency of
Juan Orlando Hernandez and unleashing repression
against those who stand up against the looting
of the country by multinational corporations and
the oligarchy, it is more important than ever to
stand in solidarity with the people of Honduras.
Demand that the US stop legitimizing the
elections and instead condemn the widespread
fraud and the murders of Libre activists.
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UPCOMING SOA WATCH DELEGATIONS
El
Salvador: January 27-February 4, 2014
Come to El
Salvador and contribute to a
process of fair elections as an electoral
observer in the presidential elections on
February 2, 2014. Learn also about new social
initiatives of the FMLN government and join the
people of El
Salvador in calling for withdrawal
of their country’s troops from the SOA/WHINSEC.
SOA Watch will partner with the Centro for
International Solidarity (CIS) for this
delegation. CIS has organized electoral
observers in El
Salvador for every election since
the 1992 Peace Accords. Contact Lisa Sullivan
for more information or download an application.
Guatemala:
February 15-23, 2014
Join Father Roy Bourgeois on a delegation of
solidarity to
Guatemala . The group will visit
Ixil communities who bravely brought SOA
graduate General Efrain Rios Montt to trial,
leading to a conviction for genocide. The
conviction was based on the forced displacement
of 29,000, the deaths of 1,771 in 11 massacres,
and thousands of cases of torture and sexual
violence. Sadly,
Guatemala’s Constitutional Court
overturned the verdict only 10 days later, but a
new trial is tentatively scheduled for January
2015. International solidarity and support for
the people of
Guatemala is key at this time.
Write Lisa Sullivan for more information or
download an application.
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