HRF calls on the OAS to suspend Honduras’ antidemocratic government

The following is the HRF press release on the Honduran crisis:

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) has called on OAS Member States to apply the democratic clause and suspend the government of Honduras that forcibly overthrew President Zelaya. Pursuant to the Charter of the OAS and the Inter-American Democratic Charter, the situation in Honduras amounts to a grave alteration or interruption of the democratic order, and it is the duty of the OAS to act, said HRF.

“In application of its own rules, the OAS must undertake every diplomatic measure that may be conducive to the immediate reinstitution of Honduras’ constitutional President”, said Javier El-Hage, General Counsel of the HRF. “But in case these measures do not render prompt results, the OAS must suspend Honduras’ government from participation in all bodies of the OAS.”

According to the Charter of the OAS, “[a] Member of the Organization whose democratically constituted government has been overthrown by force may be suspended from the exercise of the right to participate” in the OAS (Art. 9). Along the same lines, the Inter-American Democratic Charter states that “access to power in accordance with the rule of law” is an essential element of democracy (Art. 3) and that “an unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order or an unconstitutional alteration of the constitutional regime that seriously impairs the democratic order in a member state, constitutes, while it persists, an insurmountable obstacle to its government’s participation” in the OAS (Art. 19).

“It is profoundly antidemocratic to attempt to solve a crisis between the branches of government, by having the chief of the executive power forcibly sent to exile. The unconstitutional actions by President Zelaya must be addressed in absolute respect of his constitutional rights and not through further unconstitutional acts,” said El-Hage. “The armed forces claim to have acted in compliance with a judicial order and under the approval of the legislative power, but Art. 102 of the Honduras Constitution expressly bans the ‘expatriation’ of any Honduran citizen, let alone a democratically elected president that has not been duly prosecuted. Latin-American politicians must once and for all understand that forcibly overthrowing a President, is simply not an option,” he concluded.

As part of its “Mr. Insulza and the Democratic Charter” project, the HRF has already sent five letters to the Secretary General of the OAS criticizing him for failing to apply the democratic clause against the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador, which have repeatedly and with impunity violated the essential elements of democracy set forth in Art. 3 of the Democratic Charter. HRF has also strongly condemned the recent resolution favoring the government of Cuba’s reincorporation to the OAS, decrying Castro’s appalling human rights record and its failing to comply with any of the essential elements of democracy, as recognized in the Democratic Charter. “The forcible overthrow of a government is not the only fact that must trigger the activation of the democratic clause. Antidemocratic governments, whether self-defined left-wing or right-wing, simply cannot participate in the OAS,” said HRF.

HRF also announced that in the following days it will publish a legal report that thoroughly addresses the conflict of powers that deteriorated into President Zelaya’s forcible overthrow. The purpose of the report will be to individualize those responsible for each of the constitutional violations effected in Honduras, and to recommend actions for Honduras’ branches of government to democratically solve the political gridlock in the country.

HRF is an international nonpartisan organization devoted to defending human rights in the Americas. It centers its work on the twin concepts of freedom of self-determination and freedom from tyranny. These ideals include the belief that all human beings have the rights to speak freely, to associate with those of like mind, and to leave and enter their countries. Individuals in a free society must be accorded equal treatment and due process under law, and must have the opportunity to participate in the governments of their countries; HRF’s ideals likewise find expression in the conviction that all human beings have the right to be free from arbitrary detainment or exile and from interference and coercion in matters of conscience. HRF does not support nor condone violence. HRF’s International Council includes former prisoners of conscience Vladimir Bukovsky, Palden Gyatso, Armando Valladares, Ramón J. Velásquez, Elie Wiesel, and Harry Wu.

Contact: Javier El-Hage, Human Rights Foundation, (212) 246.8486, info@thehrf.org

Human Rights Beyond Ideology (From the WSJ)

From the Wall Street Journal
By JOHN FUND

Oslo

Twenty years ago, as Soviet communism was collapsing and new democracies were springing up everywhere, there were bright hopes for the spread of human rights. But while this year marks the anniversary of the Berlin Wall falling, yesterday was also the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre in China, a reminder of just how unyielding authoritarian governments can be.

Tiananmen was very much on the minds of the 200 human-rights activists who gathered in this tidy capital city where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year. But the Oslo Freedom Forum, organized by the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, was unlike any human-rights conference I’ve ever attended. As at other such gatherings, racism and gender discrimination were on the minds of plenty of participants. But there was no desire to blame such problems on the U.S. or other Western nations. The emphasis was on promoting basic rights in all nations at all times.

“It’s pretty simple,” says Thor Halvorssen, a human-rights activist and the conference’s 33-year-old founder. “We all should want freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom from torture, freedom to travel, due process and freedom to keep what belongs to you.” Unfortunately, he explains, “the human-rights establishment at the United Nations is limited to pretty words because so many member countries kill or imprison or torture their opponents.”

Indeed, the U.N. Human Rights Conference held in Geneva last month was a disgrace, with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad denouncing Israel as a “racist regime” and saying that “Zionism” was dominating the media and financial systems of the West. The U.S. didn’t send a delegation to Geneva, and a number of the European representatives walked out during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s rant.

The Oslo Freedom Forum, by contrast, was a serious gathering of grown-ups. Even Oslo’s leftist newspaper Klassekampen (Class Struggle) overcame its initial skepticism, declaring the forum “an impressive assembly of people.”

Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and Yelena Bonner, the widow of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov, couldn’t attend due to ill health, but all sent videotaped statements. Ms. Bonner challenged delegates to combat the “anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli sentiment growing throughout Europe” since she accepted the Nobel Peace Prize here on behalf of her husband in 1975. Vladimir Bukovsky, a scientist who was tortured by the KGB for years, warned that many of Russia’s old oppressors were “safely in power again” in new guises.

The conference also brought together activists from far-flung corners of the world. Palden Gyatso, a diminutive Tibetan monk, told horrifying tales of being imprisoned for 33 years and being tortured by Chinese captors who wedged electric batons into his mouth and destroyed all of his teeth. After his talk, he was embraced by Harry Wu, a survivor of 19 years in China’s network of labor camps, which still contain untold numbers of prisoners.

Although quiet and reserved, Abdel Nasser Ould Ethmane kept his audience riveted as he told of how he’d been raised in an elite Mauritanian family that kept slaves even after the practice was officially abolished in his land in 1981. While living in Paris as an adult, he became infuriated at the world’s indifference to slavery and teamed up with a former slave from Mauritania to provide legal help to escapees and also conduct covert rescue operations of those still in bondage. Mr. Ethmane’s talk was followed by presentations from two powerful speakers from Kurdistan and Uzbekistan, both women who had served time for democratic activism.

Some voices at the Oslo meeting are seldom heard in the West. Victor Hugo Cardenas of Bolivia prides himself on his indigenous background but is an implacable opponent of leftist President Evo Morales, a protégé of Hugo Chavez. Mr. Cardenas, a former vice president of Bolivia, called Mr. Morales a “false indigenous icon” who was deploying “shock troops” to silence critics. Indeed, he said that some of Mr. Morales’s thugs had recently attacked his house and beaten members of his family. “But you will hear little of this from our media, much of which is bought by the Venezuelan money of Hugo Chavez,” he thundered.

The Norwegian hosts seem keen on repeating the event next year. The forum certainly attracted the right enemies. During the conference, Norwegian papers reported that the Cuban Embassy had emailed a lengthy denunciation of the forum, accusing Mr. Halvorssen and former Cuban political prisoner Armando Valladares of being CIA agents. The embassy also wrote that Mr. Valladares was a “terrorist,” and it accused the Human Rights Foundation’s Bolivian representative of “providing the bulk of the funds for the terrorist gang” that had supposedly plotted to assassinate President Morales.

Mr. Halvorssen expressed both amusement and exasperation at the charges. “They accuse me of working for the CIA in countries I’ve never visited,” he told me. “As for Ambassador Valladares, he was Amnesty International’s first prisoner of conscience from Cuba. Amnesty doesn’t usually protect CIA agents.”

Mr. Fund is a columnist for WSJ.com.

Report on Political Violence in Bolivia

The Human Rights Foundation released a report on political violence and human rights in Bolivia. (report is in spanish only). The report succinctly touches on the causes for the political violence that has taken 21 lives and left hundreds of injured and displaced people. The report also states that the governments discourse is limiting freedom of expression in the country by provoking attacks against the press and encourages racial hatred. Both of these are in direct violation of Article 13 of the American Convention on human Rights.

The sign calls for the death for the opposers to Morales' political project... also calls them "sell outs" to the American empire