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6 June 2015 - 03:24 PM
Analysis
US Activists Protest Charter Cities: An 'Assault on Honduran
Sovereignty'
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A coalition of Latin American solidarity and California Bay Area groups,
including the Honduras Solidarity Network and Food First, have issued a
call to action to protest a San Francisco event Monday that will
promote anti-democratic land grabbing and repression in Honduras under
the guise of poverty reduction.
Members of the Garifuna organization OFRANEH demonstrate in front of the
Honduran Parliament in Tegucigalpa.
While Honduran officials and libertarian think-tank representatives will
discuss their “utopian vision” of the policy known as charter cities,
activists will protest the “assault on Honduran sovereignty,” and
potential for increased repression these charter cities represent.
The official event will feature Honduran panelists Octavio Sanchez and
Ebal Diaz, both key architects behind the charter cities plan in
Honduras, as well as Randolph Hencken and Mary Theroux, heads of the
Seasteading Institute and the Independent Institute,U.S. think tanks
promoting charter cities abroad.
While Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, currently embroiled in a
massive corruption scandal and facing a popular demands for his
resignation, was initially scheduled to attend, he has since canceled
his appearance and will instead be represented by his Chief of Staff
Ebal Diaz.
RELATED: Washington Complicit in Honduras' Corruption Scandal
According to the event description, the panel titled “New Opportunities
for Enterprise and Governance in Honduras and Beyond” will discuss how
Honduras' charter city legislation is “opening a new jurisdictional
frontier” through implementing “competitive governance.”
“A small group of elite businessmen and politicians are trying to
auction off parts of the country to foreign capital in order to create
islands of affluence surrounded by a sea of poverty and violence.”
Charter cities are special economic zones governed by foreign
governments or corporations where national law does not apply. Despite
the freedom of choice rhetoric that claims residents can “vote with
their feet” to “opt in” to the system, these foreign-owned, so-called
“model cities” are devoid of democratic structures.
Honduran legislators approved the creation of charter cities in 2011
under the U.S.-backed, post-coup government of President Porfirio Lobo.
The Caribbean coast of Honduras, the traditional territory of the
Afro-indigenous Garifuna people, was slated to become the site of
Honduras' – and the world's – first charter city, despite widespread
criticism from affected communities and local and international human
rights groups.
RELATED:Garifuna at the Forefront of the Honduran Resistance
In October 2012, four of five Honduran Supreme Court justices declared
charter cities unconstitutional. Just two months later, in a move
referred to as a “technical coup” against the Supreme Court, the four
dissenting judges were removed and replaced with justices aligned with
the ruling National Party and its neoliberal privatization agenda.
The irregularity of the Supreme Court “technical coup” was an assault on
Honduran democracy, but not out of character for the government mired
in widespread impunity and popularly regarded as a fraudulent
continuation of the coup regime in Honduras.
In 2013, Honduran lawmakers brought the charter cities plan back to
life, re-approving the project for developing investor-friendly enclaves
governed by their own laws under the new name of Zones for Employment
and Economic Development, or ZEDEs.
Despite the rebranding of the project, ZEDEs raise all the same
troubling concerns for which charter cities were initially condemned.
"The first ZEDE is being proposed in southern Honduras on the Golf of
Fonseca and will have various impacts on the environment," Karen Spring
of the Honduran Solidarity Network told teleSUR. "If this ZEDE moves
forward, over 10 communities on the island of Zacate Grande will likely
be evicted from their ancestral lands."
“[ZEDEs] allow corporations to circumvent local business regulations,
write their own laws, and create their own private police force,”
protest organizers explained in a statement. “They bypass accountability
to the Honduran people, grab land that sustains local people, and
enforce arbitrary laws with private security.”
Among the communities that would be most directly impacted by the
implementation of charter cities are campesinos and indigenous Garifunas
already suffering U.S.-backed repression and grave human rights abuses,
while engaged in intense struggles to defend their land, livelihoods,
and food sovereignty.
Corporate land grabs for mega-tourism projects, resource extraction, and
agribusiness, sometimes doubling up for narcotrafficking, have robbed
several north coast communities of their land and sea access, and
continue to threaten many more.
RELATED:Garifuna Take on Mega-Tourism, Displacement and Organized Crime
in Honduras
“The corporate cities represent another threat to their territories,”
said protest organizers. “Yet the communities will be defenseless before
the legally autonomous, unaccountable Charter Cities.”
Charter cities not only violate the Honduran constitution, as found by
the former Supreme Court justices, but also the international convention
on the rights of indigenous people that protects the right of
indigenous communities to “free, prior, and informed consent” for any
development projects proposed for their territories.
“A small group of elite businessmen and politicians are trying to
auction off parts of the country to foreign capital in order to create
islands of affluence surrounded by a sea of poverty and violence,” the
Honduran Garifuna organization OFRANEH said in a statement last week.
“Honduras’ failed state is directly related to the actions of these
thieves who are associated with narcotraffickers and have permitted the
collapse of our legal system and corruption of our security forces.”
RELATED:The Garifuna Way of Life Is Under Threat!
National and international advocates of charter cities in Honduras have
repeatedly ignored widespread calls for the repeal of the legislation
from indigenous groups, campesinos, human rights defenders, and
political opposition. Despite adamant local opposition of the plan, one
of the upcoming event sponsors, The Seasteading Institute, a U.S. think
tank that advocates “floating cities” with “significant political
autonomy,” has expressed interest in establishing such an ocean
elite-haven off Honduras' north coast.
If realized in Honduras, charter cities will be founded on mass land
theft, violation of human rights, and repression and criminalization of
popular movements fighting to defend their communities.
California-based activists are calling for protests against this assault
on Honduran democracy, sovereignty, and rule of law and the repressive,
corrupt, violent context in which these projects are being advanced,
with the political and economic support of the U.S. government.
RELATED: “Just Cause” – Piedad Cordoba on how the Garifuna are fighting
charter cities
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Food First
By Heather Gies
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<br><br>This content was originally published by teleSUR at the following address: <br> <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/US-Activists-Protest-Charter-Cities-An-Assault-on-Honduran-Sovereignty-20150606-0011.html">http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/US-Activists-Protest-Charter-Cities-An-Assault-on-Honduran-Sovereignty-20150606-0011.html</a>. If you intend to use it, please cite the source and provide a link to the original article. <a href="http://www.teleSURtv.net/english">www.teleSURtv.net/english</a></div></div>