[HNA] Fwd: [Presente-Honduras] Honduras: Massive Fraud Clearly Documented - Audited Recount Demanded!

Sat Nov 30 09:06:52 PST 2013

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gary Cozette <cozettelada at ameritech.net>
Date: Sat, Nov 30, 2013 at 10:39 AM
Subject: [Presente-Honduras] Honduras: Massive Fraud Clearly Documented -
Audited Recount Demanded!
To: Presente-Honduras <presente-honduras at lists.mayfirst.org>

Good morning from Honduras.  Last night, LIRBE presidential candidate and
likely victor in the Honduras elections spoke at her highly anticipated and
nationally televised press conference documenting systematic fraud
occurring in the national Supreme Electoral Tribunal (TSE), which tabulates
the official vote counts.  Xiomara Castro called for a complete, audited
recount.  She also for the Honduran people to go to the streets to make
clear that a stolen election will no longer be tolerated.  Street
demonstrations are anticipated this Sunday.

Here is the text of the speeches of Xiomara Castro and the LIBRE Party last
night regarding the charges of systematic, massive fraud.

http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2013/11/xiomara-we-will-defeat-them-in-streets.html

LIBRE details election fraud:

http://hondurasresists.blogspot.com/2013/11/libre-details-electoral-fraud-english.html

If the Obama Administration truly wants to advance democracy in our
hemisphere and head off another civil war, it will *join in the call for a
fully audited recount*.  Below is an excellent article co-written by the
president of the *National Lawyers Guild*, Azadeh Shahshahani, and Lauren
Carasik, both of whom I met in Tegucigalpa.  It gives a concise rundown of
what we've heard and witnessed during our time in Honduras as election
observers.

*Gary L. Cozette*

*Cell:  773.350.3518 <773.350.3518>*

*Honduras' presidential election demands an investigation*

*The US should take allegations of voter intimidation and fraud seriously*

 *November 28, 2013*

*by Lauren Carasik and Azadeh Shahshahani*

http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2013/11/honduras-presidentialelectionfraudintimidation.html

Honduras' contested results from its Nov. 24 election threaten to unleash
civil unrest and repression that could further destabilize the country.
Amid widespread allegations of fraud, vote buying and voting
irregularities, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) — Honduras' electoral
authority — announced on Nov. 26 that conservative National Party candidate
Juan Orlando Hernandez had an irreversible lead. Both Hernandez and
left-leaning LIBRE party candidate Xiomara Castro claimed victory on
election night.

Castro based her claim on LIBRE's exit polls that showed a substantial
lead. Her husband and former president Mel Zelaya – who was ousted in a
2009 coup – also contested the results, noting that the vote tally from 20
percent of the polling stations announced by the TSE contradicted the
actual vote count from polling stations. Anti-Corruption party candidate
Salvador Nasralla has also impugned the accuracy of the vote counting
process.

In the cloud of election violence and suspicions, outside pressure from the
international community, especially the United States, is critical to
ensure that democracy prevails in Honduras and to protect those vulnerable
to state sponsored repression. However, the signals from the U.S. so far
suggests that it is pleased with the results, even if they are tainted by
fraud and intimidation.

*Procedural concerns*

The presidential campaign and vote were marred by allegations of fraud,
intimidation and violence. Prior to the election, observers questioned the
lack of a conducive political environment, given the ruling National
Party's control over all branches of government, including the Public
Ministry (the office charged with investigating and prosecuting crimes),
the judiciary, the military, the electoral authority and congress.

In some cases, voter rolls listed registered voters as deceased, listed
dead voters as registered, and inexplicably assigned some voters' polling
sites to more distant locations. To ensure the transparency and integrity
of the voting and counting process, TSE proposed staffing individual voting
tables by representatives of all nine political parties. Given their
limited capacity, however, it was unlikely for smaller parties to cover all
5,000 voting centers, some of which had more than 20 voting tables. A TSE
official confirmed to a team of international observers allegations that
the National party was buying credentials from smaller parties, enabling a
dominant presence at individual voting tables and raising the possibility
of fraud. LIBRE party representatives reported receiving death threats for
their refusal to sell party credentials. After the election, the
International Federation for Human Rights expressed its concern for the
vulnerability of opposition activists and denounced conditions that may
have slanted the vote illegitimately in advance of election day, such as
the complete lack of transparency in campaign financing, and Hernandez's
open financial inducements to support the party, including job offers and
the widespread distribution of discount cards to party members.

Additionally, for a country still living under the cloud of the 2009
military coup, the militarization of the election process was disturbing.
The presence of heavily armed soldiers at the doors of each voting center,
conducting searches of some voters and making periodic patrols through the
centers, could reasonably be seen as intimidation. The Honduran National
Police, long plagued by accusations of pervasive corruption and brutality,
were present outside many centers as well. The military was charged with
delivering blank ballots to voting sites and transporting counted votes to
the electoral nerve center.

*Violence and intimidation*

Most media reports on the elections attribute the violence to endemic gang
and drug problems — which are partially responsible for Honduras’ murder
rate of 20 victims per day. Yet, such reports give scant attention to the
mayhem created by politically targeted violence: the deaths of 110
campesinos in the Lower Aguan region, who were subjected to systematic
repression for defending their land against powerful oligarchs; the murder
of 20 LIBRE activists since May 2012; and the death of journalists,
lawyers, judges, artists, human rights defenders and members of the LGBT
community.

Opposition leaders also faced myriad intimidation tactics, including
spurious criminal charges. Berta Caceres, an activist against a
hydroelectric dam project that threatens her community, was charged with
crimes against the state and weapons possession. Edwin Espinal, an
anti-coup activist, was tortured and his house was damaged during a police
raid, likely for his political activism rather than alleged criminal
activity. In this regard, Hernandez’s promise of a soldier on every corner
provides little comfort for those who oppose the government.

U.S. Ambassador to Honduras Lisa Kubiske congratulated the Honduran people
on a peaceful and transparent election.

Election day was also marred by violent repression. Two LIBRE activists,
who previously received death threats for their involvement in land
disputes as members of the Carbon Cooperative of the National Council of
Rural Workers, were killed on Nov. 23 just outside Tegucigalpa, Honduras’s
capital. Earlier in the day, an attack in the eastern part of the country
near the La Moskitia polling station left two people dead.

The pre-poll intimidation was not limited to Hondurans. In the weeks
preceding the election, the ruling party launched a campaign against
international observers to discredit and preempt their conclusions about
the integrity of the electoral process but international observers refused
to be cowed.

Castro led in polls for most of the year leading up to the election.
Hernandez saw an unexplained surge with a month left to the election just
prior to the moratorium on polling. Observers warned that the surge was
orchestrated to lay the groundwork for a Hernandez victory, noting that the
polling company was closely associated with the National Party–controlled
Congress. Many voters were also reluctant to answer poll survey questions,
making the art of prediction even more tenuous.

The TSE also imposed a gag order, asking the press to sign a pact agreeing
to refrain from predicting the election’s outcome or contradicting official
announcements. On election day, the military surrounded media houses that
refused to sign the pact, including Radio Global, Globo TV and Channel 11.
Radio Globo, a source of opposition news, was shut down for almost a month
by the military following the 2009 coup.

On Nov. 25, a day after the election, workers at the Public Ministry tasked
with handling complaints of electoral wrongdoing were sent home and the
office was surrounded by the military, according to the Honduran
Accompaniment Project (PROAH) and the La Tribuna newspaper.

*U.S. government’s reaction*

Although the U.S. should advocate for Honduran democracy through fair
elections, it has so far squandered its potential role as a neutral
observer.

In 2009, just months after the coup, the U.S. State Department erroneously
congratulated President Porfirio Lobo even before polls closed in a widely
discredited election that was boycotted by political parties, voters and
international observers. At a meeting last week, U.S. Ambassador to
Honduras Lisa Kubiske told our delegation of credentialed international
observers from the National Lawyers Guild that the embassy would be
cautious in issuing statements in the days after the election. However, on
Monday Kubiske complimented the transparency of the process and
congratulated the Honduran people on what she described as a peaceful
election.

In response to concerns about political intimidation, Ambassador Kubiske
indicated that it is extremely difficult to distinguish between targeted
and “common” violence in Honduras in order to achieve redress. She also
noted that the U.S. is providing support for a special unit within the
public ministry charged with addressing crimes and political persecution of
the LGBT community. The ambassador’s concession of targeted violence
against the LGBT community, however, seemed inconsistent with her
skepticism about identifying ongoing brutal repression against other
groups. Kubiske’s assessment also disregarded the fact that many of the
murders of civil society leaders, activists and human rights defenders were
preceded by death threats.

Despite its professed support for Honduran democracy, the U.S. would likely
prefer a government that could counterbalance the left-leaning governments
in Central and South America —including Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador—
that challenge U.S. hegemony in the region and threaten its economic and
geopolitical interests.

But in this election, the Obama administration has two stark choices: to
affirm its commitment to human rights, democracy and the rule of law and
insist on a full investigation into allegations of a disputed electoral
process and pervasive repression, or endorse the findings of the TSE and
ignore alarming signs that the will of the Honduran people is being
trampled once again.

*Lauren Carasik is Clinical Professor of Law and Director of the
International Human Rights Clinic at Western New England University School
of Law. Azadeh Shahshahani is a human rights attorney based in Atlanta and
President of the National Lawyers Guild. The authors took part in a
National Lawyers Guild delegation to Honduras in November 2013 to observe
the elections.*

_______________________________________________
Presente-Honduras mailing list

Post: Presente-Honduras at lists.mayfirst.org
List info: https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/listinfo/presente-honduras

To Unsubscribe
        Send email to:  Presente-Honduras-unsubscribe at lists.mayfirst.org
        Or visit:
https://lists.mayfirst.org/mailman/options/presente-honduras/proyectohondureno%40gmail.com

You are subscribed as: proyectohondureno at gmail.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://hondurasresists.org/pipermail/announce_hondurasresists.org/attachments/20131130/dd32f72d/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 15465 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://hondurasresists.org/pipermail/announce_hondurasresists.org/attachments/20131130/dd32f72d/attachment.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 52348 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://hondurasresists.org/pipermail/announce_hondurasresists.org/attachments/20131130/dd32f72d/attachment-0001.jpg>