*** Breaking News ***
PRESIDENT ZELAYA IS BACK IN HONDURAS
DAY 86, HONDURAS COUP RESISTANCE – President Zelaya is back in Honduras
(Alert#66, September 21, 2009)
As we go to press, releasing this Alert #66, we have learned that President Zelaya is back in Honduras, apparently in the Brazilian embassy.  Spanish speakers can get live coverage at the Telesur news service: http://www.telesurtv.net/noticias/canal/senalenvivo.php
FOR INTERVIEWS & MORE INFORMATION
Grahame Russell, in United States: 1 (860) 352-2448, cel: 1 (860) 751-4285, info@rightsaction.org
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BELOW, Alert #66:

FOR INTERVIEWS & MORE INFORMATION:  Grahame Russell, in United States: 1[860] 352-2448, cel: 860-751-4285, info@rightsaction.org
SPEAKING TOURS: “RESISTANCE TO MILITARY COUPS & GOLD MINING DEVASTATION IN HONDURAS & GUATEMALA”
In October, activists with Rights Action will be on speaking tours in Ontario, Quebec and eastern Canada, and north-east USA, showing slides and short documentaries and speaking about the on-going pro-democracy, anti coup movement in Honduras and about indigenous and community resistance to Goldcorp Inc.’s open-pit, cyanide leach mines in Guatemala and Honduras.
Karen Spring (spring.kj@gmail.com) in Ontario
Francois Guindon (francois.guindon@gmail.com) in Quebec and eastern Canada
Grahame Russell (info@rightsaction.org) in north-east USA

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TERROR IN HONDURAS: ONE FAMILY'S TRAGIC STORY OF LIFE AFTER THE COUP
By Jeremy Kryt, Earth Island Journal, September 16, 2009,
http://www.alternet.org/story/142679/
Tegucigalpa, Honduras -- It's been a rough summer for the Murillo family. On July 5 -- one week after the military coup that ousted democratically-elected president Mel Zelaya -- nineteen- year-old Isis Obed Murillo was killed when soldiers opened fire on a peaceful protest march at Toncontin airport.
Obed's father, Jose David Murillo, a well-known anti-deforestation crusader with the Environmental Movement of Olancho (MAO), and head pastor of the New Life Church, had long taught his family the virtues of peaceful resistance to authoritarian power. Pastor Murillo, his son Isis, and three other siblings had come to the airport that morning to welcome home the deposed president, and to show their defiance of the military-backed government.
At about three-thirty p.m., shortly after Zelaya's plane was refused clearance to land, the Honduran soldiers guarding the runway began firing teargas and live rounds into the crowd of unarmed demonstrators.
"I stood up in front of the soldiers and cried, ‘What are you doing? Do not attack us!'" says Pastor Murillo. "We had done nothing to provoke them."
When the protestors broke and ran, the family was separated. Pastor Murillo did not learn the fate of his fifth-born child for nearly an hour – until he received a cell-phone call from his eldest son, informing him that Obed had been shot in the back of the head, as he tried to escape the incoming rounds.
The youth's final, conscious act was to push his younger brother, Byron, out of harm's way. It took about ten minutes for Obed to die. During that time several campesinos bore him up wrapped in jackets, and raced to the nearest hospital.
Pastor Murillo, joined by his wife, identified their son in the morgue that evening. "We could not believe what had happened," says Obed's mother, Sylvia Mencias. "We did not have any words sufficient to our grief." But this was just the beginning of the Murillo's ordeal.
In the office of the morgue they were greeted by a public minister, who said, bluntly, "This is not our fault." When asked by Pastor Murillo whose fault it then was, the government official threw the clipboard containing the death certificate into Murillo's face, and demanded a show of "respect."
Three days later, on July 8, Pastor Murillo met with three members of the Honduran Department of Criminal Investigations (DIC), to inquire into the details of his son's death. The meeting was held in the public offices of the Committee for Detained and Disappeared Persons of Honduras (COFADEH), a prominent human rights organization. (Murillo already feared governmental revanche, and thought the COFADEH office would be safe ground).
Immediately after the meeting, upon exiting the building, Murillo found the street cordoned off by police, and ten heavily-armed officers waiting to arrest him.
Without being told what charges had been made against him, the pastor – a big man in his late fifties, with close-cropped, still-dark hair and massive, work-worn hands -- was cuffed and taken to the Via Della police station. There, deep in the basement, he was ordered to sign a fabricated "confession", stating that he had murdered three people and raped another. When Murillo balked, a sergeant put a 9 millimeter pistol in his ribs, and shouted "Firma aqui!" -- "Sign here!"
"There is no justification for this behavior," says COFADEH Coordinator General Bertha Oliva. "It's monstrous. has no respect for human rights." COFADEH has documented about nine thousand illegal detentions since the coup, and scores more have been physically (and sexually) assaulted by police and soldiers. About a dozen people have been killed, including at least two more during the march on Toncontin.
"This is a highly abusive regime, a kind of hybrid of military and oligarchic rule," says Grahame Russell, Co-Director of Rights Action, a U.S.-based organization involved with the Murillo case. "The elites will do anything to protect their fiefdom."
After signing the bogus document, Pastor Murillo was driven to a penitentiary in the Olancho district, where he was held in solitary confinement for the next 37 days. There were never any formal charges filed in court, which makes his detention illegal under the Honduran Constitution.
Finally, on August 13, after weeks of pressure and investigation by COFADEH and others, the pastor was fined $25,000 lempira (about $1,322 U.S. dollars), and released. But it didn't end there.
The government still refuses to release the autopsy results for Isis Obed, and the ballistics report on the bullet lodged in his skull. Pastor Murillo must report to the prison in Olancho every two weeks, and the family is still deeply in debt from paying the fine. Murillo recently applied to have his driver's license renewed, but was turned down when the computer system showed him to be a "felon." Their home is under constant surveillance, including helicopter fly-bys.
A few weeks ago, when two of their daughters received death threats, the family was forced to go into hiding. Being on the run makes it almost impossible for Murillo to serve his community, either as pastor or conservation activist.
"All of this is being done to shut me up," says Murillo. "To intimidate me. But the price of my son's life is not negotiable."
This reporter met with the pastor and his wife in the offices of COFADEH, where the couple expressed acute concern over future reprisals, including great fear that the authorities would learn they'd met with an American journalist.
"I love my country," says the pastor, "but I want people to know the raw truth of what is happening here." The only hope for Honduras, he says, "Is for the U.S. to help us. They are the greatest country in the world. The only transparent democracy in the hemisphere. If they won't come to our aid," says the Pastor, as tears of emotion well in his eyes, "then who will?"
[Jeremy Kryt, a graduate of the Indiana University School of Journalism and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop is writing his first novel. © 2009 Earth Island Journal All rights reserved]
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U.S. DEPORTS COUP SUPPORTER
Honduran business leader Adolfo Facussé arrived at Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport near the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula the morning of Sept. 13 after being deported from the US. He was reportedly detained by US immigration authorities and sent back to Honduras after flying to Miami on Sept. 12. Facussé was apparently a casualty of a decision announced by the US State Department on Sept. 3 to revoke visas of Hondurans involved in the June 28 coup.
Also on Sept. 12, Honduran officials said the US had revoked visas for de facto president Roberto Micheletti, 14 Supreme Court judges, the de facto foreign relations secretary and attorney general, and the armed forces chief (El Heraldo (Honduras) 9/13/09; New York Times 9/13/09 from AP)
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EUROPEAN UNION WON'T PROVIDE OBSERVERS FOR HONDURAN ELECTIONS, EFE. September 11, 2009
BRUSSELS - The European Commission announced Thursday that the European Union will not send observers to the November general election in Honduras, the scene in June of a military coup, because the conditions do not exist for the vote to be held within a framework of democracy and freedom. The commission's deputy director general for external relations, Stefano Sannino, said in an interview with Efe that the EU, "like the other Latin American countries, does not acknowledge that those elections can be based in an open, free and democratic context." The 27-member European bloc has not recognized the de facto Honduran government led by erstwhile congressional speaker Roberto Micheletti.
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HONDURAN CATHOLIC RADIO SHUTS DOWN A RADIO PROGRAM …
… called “En La Plaza”, hosted by journalists Gilda Silvestrucci and Meryln Aplicano, because they interviewed Father Andres Tamayo that the coup-regime and the Catholic Church hierarchy are trying to censor and kick out of Honduras, because of the critical position Father Tamayo has taken towards the illegal regime. (www.revistazo.com)
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INTERNATIONAL FORUM, IN HONDURAS, HOSTED BY THE NATIONAL FRONT AGAINST THE REGIME
“Comrades in solidarity with the Resistance, On behalf of the resistance in Honduras, we send combative and fraternal greetings to all those assisting us in this process of struggle for the restoration of constitutional order and for the installation of a National Constituent Assembly in Honduras. The National Resistance Front against the Coup in Honduras calls together the first internationalist conference against the coup d'etat and for a National Constituent Assembly in Honduras. The conference is to be held on October 8, 9 and 10, 2009 in Tegucigalpa, Honduras.” Full announcement: http://links.org.au/node/1254
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WORLDWIDE FAST FOR HONDURAS: PEOPLE’S NONVIOLENT INSURRECTION
To all friends of justice and peace in Honduras, The National Front Against the Coup invites people around the globe to join the Worldwide Fast for Honduras: People's Nonviolent Insurrection, and to fast in different ways, to promote active nonviolent change and Article III of the Honduran Constitution which guarantees: "No one should obey a usurper government ... The people have a right to rise up in insurrection to defend the constitutional order."  The Worldwide Fast for Honduras initiated on September 15, 2009 in 25 countries around the world with: 1) Solidarity fasters and 2) Core Group fasters. For more information, contact: hondurasfast@gmail.com, www.fastforhonduras.net
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FROM THE QUIJOTE CENTER:
We have recently been alerted that Rep. Mack has initiated a Pro-Coup resolution on Honduras and has 46 cosponsors.
We need you to call your representative and ask her/him to support the Delahunt-McGovern House Resolution on Honduras! The Delahunt-McGovern resolution (HRes 630) calls for the reinstatement of Manuel Zelaya as President of Honduras and for international observation of the November elections. Although it is outdated, in calling for international observers for an election which needs to be cancelled or postponed, it is important that we demand that the Congress take a stand against the coup. It currently has 44 cosponsors. To see a text of the House Resolution and a list of the current co-sponsors go to thomas.loc.gov, select search by bill number, and search for "HRes 630". Please act today! The Honduran people continue to stand firm against the coup, and need us to demand that our government oppose the disruption of constitutional order in Honduras. Call the Capitol switchboard, 202.224.3121 and ask to speak to your representative's foreign policy aide.
The Message: I urge Representative ______________  to join in co-sponsoring the resolution introduced by Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) calling for Honduran President Manuel Zelaya to be returned to office, and welcoming the mediation efforts of Costa Rican President Oscar Arias. It is important to your constituents in ______________ that the U.S. Congress be loud and clear in condemning this military coup and supporting democracy in Honduras--and the Latin American region.
Quest for Peace, a program of the Quixote Center, PO Box 5206, Hyattsville, MD 20782, 301-699-0042
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A COLLECTION OF REPORTS from The Real News Network (www.therealnews.com), from most recent:

WHAT TO DO
SPEAKING TOURS: “RESISTANCE TO MILITARY COUPS & GOLD MINING DEVASTATION IN HONDURAS & GUATEMALA”
In October, activists with Rights Action will be on speaking tours in Ontario, Quebec and eastern Canada, and parts of north-east USA, showing slides and short documentaries and speaking about the on-going pro-democracy, anti-coup movement in Honduras and about indigenous and community resistance to Goldcorp Inc.’s open-pit, cyanide leach mines in Guatemala and Honduras.

ALSO
AMERICANS & CANADIANS should contact our members of congress, senators & members of parliament every day, day after day, send copies of this information, and demand:

TO DONATE TAX-DEDUCTIBLE FUNDS to the peaceful, people’s pro-democracy movement in Honduras, make check to “rights action” and mail to:

For foundations and institutional donors, Rights Action can (upon request) provide a full proposal of which organizations and people we are channeling funds to and supporting.
Thank-you for your on-going support for our work and for this struggle.

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