Triumphant Return?

As President Mel Zelaya waits in the small Nicaraguan town of Esteli, just 175 kilometers away, Honduran armed forces are massing along the border in what may be a dramatic conclusion to a tense standoff between a de facto government of the military-industrial elite and the impoverished Honduran majority.

"I know that they are suppressing people, but this is the big test, as they impose more obstacles to freedom the people will become more enraged (...) A curfew has been imposed on the border area with Nicaragua, but (...) they cannot rule the people by the barrel of a gun," said Zelaya at a press conference Thursday.

Despite nation-wide curfews and restriction of movement hundreds of supporters are expected to greet their president when, accompanied by Venezuela's foreign minister, he attempts once again to take back his seat as democratic leader of Honduras this Friday...

Hondurans Play the Waiting Game

Barging through the front door failed to bring a triumphant homecoming, so, for now, Manuel Zelaya has opted to try diplomatic channels in order to return to his post as the democratically-elected leader of his nation.

Zelaya claimed Wednesday that the de facto regime has sabotaged mediation before it began by restricting the movement of Zelaya's ministers, some of whom are still in hiding. However he has reiterated, "We are not holding a negotiation. There are things that are non-negotiable—the restitution of constitutional order in Honduras." On top of that mediator Oscar Arias expressed personal doubt with regards to his mediation, "The situation has to be solved from inside Honduras." Amid such speculation what talks will accomplish remains to be seen.

At a press conference on Monday, Zelaya gave the de facto government mere hours before its collapse and defended his actions before the coup, "All I did was to propose a fourth ballot. I have never talked about re-election because it does not exist in Honduras. I ask them to respect the voice of the people because it is this voice that will save us."

Despite the coup, Zelaya has not ruled out the possibility of moving forward with general elections originally slated for November 29, "They [those in the de facto regime] have nullified all the work that the government has accomplished. Those candidates should be very worried because they are isolated. The world is not with them."

The deposed Honduran leader promised that he could return at any moment. However, this time will be more inconspicuous, possibly ruling out another flight on the private CITGO jet that was diverted to Nicaragua last Sunday after military personnel barricaded the blacktop at Tegucigalpa's international airport.

After letting Zelaya supporters ring the airport compound the military expelled them by force, with snipers from the terminal leaving one dead and at least seven hit by gunfire.

The de facto government detained more than 800 demonstrators Sunday for breaking an imposed curfew. Hector*, a human rights lawyer from San Pedro Sula captured the mood of Zelaya's supporters, who are exhausted after marching daily for more than a week and a half and are frustrated with the current impasse:

"The Honduran people are outraged at the constant violation of their human rights. Yesterday [Sunday], at 6pm, after we had showed up expecting to welcome our president, we were informed by the traitors who stole power that there would be a 6:30 pm curfew. They captured at least 800 compañeros who weren't able to return to their homes during that short time period. Today [Monday] they extended the curfew for another 48 hours, once again cutting off our rights to free association, free movement etc. "

Meanwhile, differing viewpoints on the conflict continue to represent themselves in the language used by the international media. The major Spanish-language media label Roberto Michelleti's government de facto, with the lone exception being CNN en Espanol; whilst English media outlets on the whole refer it as an "interim government."

Within Honduras, pro-coup dailies are finding it increasingly harder to justify the actions of Michelleti's government to citizens. As Al Giordano of NarcoNews broke in the English media, Honduran newspaper La Prensa airbrushed out the blood in a picture of the dying demonstrator Isis Obed Murillo being carried out of Tegucigalpa airport Sunday. Giordano also points out the crackdown on independent and international media by the coup regime silences critisicm of these egregious journalistic sins being committed by the pro-coup media.

*Name changed.

A "Free, Sovereign and Independent" Honduras?

No it was not floods, earthquakes or hurricanes that devastated Honduras last Sunday, but a coup where democratically-elected President Manuel Zelaya Rosales was abducted by the military at the behest of a Congress ruled by his own party. News reports either justify the coup painting Zelaya as an aspiring dictator or support him as the latest populist Latino leader bringing reform too fast for the national elites of his country to accept. Neighbouring leaders have all condemned the coup in Central America's second biggest and second poorest nation.

In a historically anomalous move the US has declared that the CIA has absolutely no involvement in the coup. However, the plotters needed no external help in abducting and exiling Zelaya to Costa Rica after he planned to go ahead with a non-binding national referendum on extending his mandate. "...President Mel Zelaya miscalculated when he tried to emulate the success of his good friend Hugo in reshaping the Honduran Constitution to his liking," is how Wall Street Journal editor Mary Anastasia O'Grady put it. Commentators like O'Grady agree with the new Honduran "government" that the autocrat Zelaya was subverting democracy and cementing his grip on power.

It seems a bit odd to me that such a powerful autocrat can't control his own military or party while late last week saw his party sponsor a congressional resolution to investigate his mental aptitude for the job. Upon his inauguration Zelaya, once a prominent businessman, angered the establishment by introducing social reforms like raising the minimum wage and by signing up for Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean(ALBA), Chavez's diplomatic pet project.

Currently, a large number of disenfranchised Hondurans are rising up and demanding that Zelaya be re-instated as President. With little to no contact with the outside world due to government censorship of international media, the average Honduran only receives the new establishment's party line. Human rights lawyer Hector* is living in San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second largest city and industrial center, and described the current situation to me in a seething email:

Today, while the rich force their employees into the streets in support of the de facto government, while the media supports and spreads their message, we the poor that are out in the streets on a national level are asking for the respect of our national democracy. We elected MANUEL ZELAYA ROSALES. We are repressed by beatings and weapons; and our rights to move from place to place, engage in free thought or association etc. are being ignored. It is the strangest thing that the biased media, controlled by the traitors, omits this piece of news to the benefit of the USURPERS appointed by the circus we call Congress.

Translated from:

Mientras los ricos hoy desfilan y obligan a sus empleados salir a las calles para apoyar un gobierno de facto y que los medios de comunicacion apoyan y difunden sus actividades usurpadoras, nosotros los pobres que estamos en las calles a nivel nacional pidiendo el respeto a nuestra democracia, epues legimos a MANUEL ZELAYA ROSALES, somos reprimidos por la fuerza y las armas, violentando el derecho a locomocion, libre pensamiento, asociacion, etc, y lo mas curioso es que los medios de comunicación parcialisados, manipulados por los golpistas no cubren esta noticia porque estan a favor de los USURPADORES de funciones que impuso el circo que llamamos Congreso.

Amidst a growing general strike Zelaya plans to return on Thursday to "take back the country". Hector later wrote throughout San Pedro Sula there has been greater freedom as the military is less a force there than the capital and that a reliable source said numerous military battalion chiefs will not support the new government.

What remains to be seen is how long a coup opposed by almost every major player in the region will survive. Hopefully the people of Honduras can resolve this crisis so that it may one day merit its national motto of "Free, Sovereign and Independent."

*Name has been changed.

Thoughts on the "Somali Coast Guard" from the Korean sauna

Recently my friend Ian's buddy from Canada finished up a two week visit here to Busan. He is a Canadian naval officer and had just completed six months on the seas in a NATO posting. His ship was diverted from the Mediterranean to the Somali coast in order to shield World Food Program (WFP) vessels from pirates. A Greek cargo ship was hijacked on Sunday and the International Maritime Bureau issued a notice from their head office in Kuala Lumpur (close to the Strait of Malacca - formerly the world's most dangerous shipping lane) that attacks are again on the rise after a cool down at the end of 2008.

With these pirates getting worldwide attention I was eager to break out my rusty interviewing skills and sit down with him to discuss his time off the Somali coast. Thankfully, he was real accommodating. On a lazy Sunday after a serious late-night session of karaoke the night before we met up at our local jim-jil-ban. We kept alternating from sauna to ice room and here's the interview. His name and the name of his ship are omitted.

Mike Hager (MH): So you were stationed in the Mediterranean with NATO, what were you doing there?
Ian's Friend (IF): Yes I was part of Standing NATO Maritime Group 1(SNMG1), the NATO contribution to the overall collective security in the Mediterranean.

MH: And you guys were just the closest to Somali when the pirate attacks increased?
IF: We were originally tasked to send a Canadian ship with the SNMG1 to the Mediterranean, which at the time was concerned with supporting Operation Active Endeavour , in response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in 2001. This was basically a security force meant to stop the illicit trade of people and arms that could be used for terrorist operations... What ended up happening that led to the subsequent redeployment of [my ship] to Somalia to support WFP escorts of food aid into Mogadishu in response to numerous pirate attacks against WFP vessels... We weren't actually tasked with combating piracy but we would have gotten involved if they attacked us.

[We switch from the ice room to a sauna, this one was a bad choice as there were a trio of ajummas having a hen party at the entrance and the dome-shaped ceiling served to amplify their nattering]

MH: So you were in Somali waters for six months?
IF: What ended up happening was we started on our original mission with NATO but we got re-tasked and went to Somalia for roughly three months. Then we had a bit of an engineering failure so we ended up coming back to Europe in order to repair in France and finished our NATO commitment there.

MH: During that time did you engage any pirates?
IF: We didn't engage any pirates, but there were quite a few sightings of vessels that had already been taken by pirates. The thing was we weren't going to risk the crew's lives by antagonizing these guys or maybe going through a rescue mission because we didn't have the resources that some of the other countries in the area have. We don't carry commandos or have marines on board.

MH: You wouldn't have put on the war paint?
IF: Haha not me, no.

MH: I heard a Dong Won boat, a huge Korean company, recently got captured- it was a tuna fishing boat- and it made me think about the vast overfishing of the area because the lack of protection from the Somali state [sic]. Was that a visible issue? Did you see foreign fishing boats everyday?
IF: Well, that's basically the crux of the whole piracy issue. You have to understand that these guys, the modern-day Somali pirates, went through in a series of generations they developed from the normal fishermen in the area who started defending their own fishing spots and graduated into actually attacking other fishing boats... and then taking the fishing boats and the crews and ransoming them off. As the situation ashore got worse and worse they realized it was one way to have a lucrative lifestyle for themselves and their families. The modern pirates today call themselves the "Somali Coast Guard," and the support the receive from shore is just extravagant.

MH: I guess they were fighting when no one else would.
IF: They're heroes in their communities. They're building things with the money they ransom off - which is in the millions- all that money goes to themselves, their families and supporting the local economy. The whole community basically benefits from these guys.

[We have switched back into an ice room where two giggling teenage girls ask if they can take cellphone pictures with us. "REAL LIVE FOREIGNERS HOLY SHIT!"
Coming from such a multicultural place as Vancouver it never ceases to amaze me how blown away some Koreans are by a visible foreigner.]

MH: Have they now moved on from attacking fishing boats to targeting the easiest vessels?
IF: Well the most money is being made in shipping, so they go for the largest commercial cargo ships that they can. Typically what happens is they'll take a vessel and they'll tow it back into a town that's friendly to them. They'll start the negotiation process with a company and after what is usually a long negotiation process they come out with a deal.

[Switch back to the sauna]

MH: Did you see the MV Faina go by and was it business as usual?
IF: Yeah, we saw it pass but we pretty much knew it had already been taken. So we were powerless to do anything... we didn't have the resources to actually deal with an actual hostage situation. It was better to let another country in the area who had troops on board - trained for that kind of thing- deal with it.

MH: And those countries are France and the US?
IF: Yes, largely, France and the United States have the personnel on board. It depends on what ship is in the area, but at the time [when the MV Faina was first hi-jacked] there were two American destroyers and a French destroyer.

MH: Your escort ran from Mombasa, Kenya to Mogadishu?
IF: Yes, we were based primarily out of Mombasa and we would make the two-day trip to Mogadishu with our charge. Just make sure that they got in [unloaded their food aid] safely.

MH: You never deviated and went further North?
IF: No, there were occasions where we were prepared, if necessary, to go to other locations. That never ended up coming up, but the contingency plan was there.

MH: Thanks a lot, let's get out of this sauna!