We cannot let the coup become business-as-usual.

From day one of the military and civilian coup in Honduras, the media strategy of the Honduran de facto government has been to give the image of business-as-usual. The mass protests and marches, it claims, are the expression of a “few deranged” people who refuse to accept the new state of affairs.

This maneuver to give the appearance that everything is normal -which includes the mediation process underway in Costa Rica under the auspices of the US State Department-, together with the withdrawal of the media, could culminate in a fierce repression of the popular organizations that continue to demand the restoration of the democratic order.

Following the world’s condemnation of the coup, the great expectation raised by President José Manuel Zelaya’s move to return to the country, and the failed attempt at mediation in Costa Rica, leading international media teams have abandoned the country. Telephones are no longer ringing off the hook, and the coverage of Honduras by international news agencies has dwindled down to a few lines.

The ongoing mobilization of the country’s civil society, grassroots and labor organizations is no longer newsworthy, and the situation for the international media that remains in the country has become very risky.

At dawn yesterday, the news teams of TeleSur and the Venezuelan TV channel VTV were first arrested and then forced to stay inside their hotel rooms, thus preventing them from exercising their right to cover today’s events. The journalists also reported that they were intimidated by police officers, who told them to go straight to the airport “because there’s nothing here for you to cover, nothing for you to inform.”

As popular organizations continue organizing mass mobilizations -such as this weekend’s rally in memory of Isis Obed Murillo, the 19-year-old boy shot to death at the airport as he awaited Zelaya’s return on July 5, and the demonstration held in Tegucigalpa’s central park- and as the international media’s interest in the crisis declines, the leaders of the National Front Against the Coup fear an even harsher wave of repression.

On the night of Saturday, July 11, Popular Block activist Roger Bados, a former textile unionist and leader of the United Workers’ Federation of Honduras (FUTH), was murdered by strangers outside his house in the northern city of San Pedro Sula. Activists fear that this homicide marks the beginning of a plan to kill mid-ranking leaders with the aim of terrorizing the population.

With the international community apparently reluctant to move from words to action, bent as it is on a mediation process destined to fail and visibly influenced by the US government’s ambiguity, Sirel met with Carlos H. Reyes, general secretary of the Union of Beverage and Related Industry Workers (STIBYS) and member of the IUF’s International Executive Committee, to discuss the current situation.

-It’s been 15 days of resistance and struggle. Very difficult days in which Hondurans proved they could respond to the coup and stand up to the repression that followed. What is your assessment of these efforts?

-The popular movement has made major progress in terms of the quality of the political battle it is waging. If it hadn’t been for the existence of the National Coordinating Body for Popular Resistance, which has been the backbone of this movement of opposition to the coup, it would’ve been impossible to achieve such a level of struggle and to carry out these actions of resistance. We were able to overcome the shock of the coup and the fear of the repression unleashed by this de facto government and go on to stage the largest demonstration ever in the history of the country and organize a number of actions, such as occupying highways and holding mobilizations, sit-ins and political and cultural acts.

-Do you think the government will step up its repressive actions?

-As the coup’s perpetrators realize they can’t control us and that they’re faced with a huge opposition, they’ve started to show signs of wanting to step up their repression of the people. On Sunday, July 5, Isis Obed Murillo was killed near the airport, and just this Saturday former FUTH leader and Popular Block activist Roger Bados was killed in San Pedro Sula. We have also been informed that the police forced Venezuela’s TeleSur and VTV news teams out of their hotel and ordered them to leave Honduras.

We believe that these acts are part of a repression that is escalating in the country with the aim of intimidating us so we will stop our resistance.

-What do you have planned for this week?

-We are going to continue our struggle with numerous mobilizations, because this is going to be a very difficult week. The mediation process in Costa Rica failed, because, as we said, this problem cannot be solved through such means. This crisis has a bottleneck, which is the duplicity of the United States, because on the one hand the US condemns the coup and supports the resolution of the OAS, while on the other it supports the forces behind the coup. We must put an end to that situation, which is why a delegation of the National Front Against the Coup has traveled to the United  States to meet with several US senators.

-There is a clear attempt by the de facto government to paint a peaceful picture of Honduras and pretend that everything’s business-as-usual in the country. Could the reduced presence of international media facilitate that strategy?

-Much of the media pulled out of the country because they were intimidated, and that shows that there is a deliberate attempt to cover up what’s really going on and that there was in fact a coup here. TeleSur’s case is emblematic. It has to be denounced worldwide, to convince the media to come back to the country, because it’s an indication that there’s going to be an escalation of repressive actions.

-What prospects are there for keeping the people mobilized on the streets?

-We are not going to back down in our demand to restore democracy and bring President José Manuel Zelaya back. We need to support the President’s efforts to convince other nations to further pressure the de facto government by calling on our brothers and sisters in popular organizations from all of Central America to stage mobilizations on the borders. We also ask organizations from across Latin America to pressure our embassies in their countries, expressing their solidarity with the struggle of the Honduran people. Here in Honduras, we’re going to keep fighting.

-The IUF has given absolute priority to the situation in Honduras and has reiterated its solidarity with the resistance movement led by popular and labor organizations. How else can the IUF support this struggle?

-The IUF’s continuous presence throughout these past two weeks has made it possible to keep the international labor movement informed on the situation in Honduras and to report in the most objective way possible that Hondurans are keeping up their resistance.

There’s a much deeper problem here, which is that in Honduras defending the interests of workers is considered a crime, and fighting for social gains is considered a crime. That is why we support Zelaya’s government in many aspects, because he was working to defend our rights, and in an ultra rightwing country like Honduras that in itself is a crime, and we are considered criminals. But we will continue working and fighting, and we want the IUF to convey that message to the world.

We are already facing a savage dictatorship and the military is moving to escalate its repressive actions, the same military who in the 1980s perpetrated the most heinous crimes.