miércoles, 29 de noviembre de 2017

COPINH Calls to Respect the Will of the Honduran People

(AQUI en español)
The Civic Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) calls for the respect of Honduran people’s will who took a position against continuity and dictatorship on November 26 and has communicated the decision to get the dictator Juan Orlando Hernandez (JOH) out of the Presidency.

COPINH is a popular organization that fundamentally believes in community and grassroots political processes that make political participation a daily struggle and not just a call every four years to change executioners. However, despite all the manipulation, vote buying, clientelism and deceit, the Honduran people have clearly stated that they don’t want to continue to live in the violent situation imposed by the JOH government which represents a continuation of the 2009 coup d’etat and is an ally of the oligarchic economic structures. The people have expressed, even in the highly controlled and manipulated electoral process, that this coup-supporting, racist, extractivist government only represents hatred and death.

The Honduran people don’t forget that this government is complicit in the assassination of our General Coordinator Berta Cáceres and have expressed this belief in thousands of public protests and in the most recent, last Sunday. The people know the complicity of JOH’s government with DESA’s owners and the powers that be - unpunished murderers that are protected by a cloak of impunity that the corrupt and colonialist state enables.  

The same hate and fear that persecuted and assassinated Berta is the same that wants to impose a dictatorship by means of violence and fraud. What has occurred in the Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE) and the divulgation of votes is a large crude lie that reflects the dirty, lying nature of the state. The delay in the divulgation of results, like the ambiguities in their public announcements are a clear sign of the development of fraud. The sudden reduction of the percentage differences favoring JOH, is also a demonstration of this.

The structural changes that this country needs cannot be achieved through a voting process but instead through means of liberating practices of our peoples, in the defense of our territories, our autonomies, and living alternatives to capitalism in which life, dignity and liberty come before business and profit. For this reason, our organization will remain vigilant in the fulfillment of the will of the people.
COPINH calls to defend the decision of the people to avoid dictatorship. We call on all popular and grassroots organizations to not only defend their decision but to unite and pronounce in favor of the construction of the society we want. We convoke the entire international community to be observers of the events that will unfold in the coming days, to avoid a blood bath in what may be a new coup d’etat perpetrated by the same elite political class.

With the ancestral force of Berta, Lempira Mota, Iselaca y Etempia, we raise our voices full of life, justice, liberty, dignity and peace.


Written in La Esperanza, Intibucá, November 29, 2017