Secretary Clinton’s reputation as a strong supporter of reproductive rights for women fell by the wayside when she stumbled and decided to side with the right wing military junta against Honduran president, Manuel Zelaya. President Zelaya as part of his pro women/pro human rights initiatives had vetoed the ban on morning after contraception. On June 28, 2009 President Zelaya’s residence was invaded by 100 soldiers and he was taken by force by military plane to Costa Rica. One day after the coup d’état against President Zelaya, the violence against women’s reproductive rights began:
Under the dictatorship there has been a rollback of gains in women’s reproductive rights. On June 29th, one day after the coup, an initiative to ban emergency contraception (earlier vetoed by President Zelaya) was approved.
www.huffingtonpost.com/…
Within 3 weeks of the June 28, 2009 coup d’état, director of Policy Planning at the State Department, Ann-Marie Slaughter warned Secretary Clinton what was at stake:
“Ann-Marie Slaughter, then director of Policy Planning at the State Department, sent an email to Clinton on August 16 strongly urging her to “take bold action” and to “find that [the] coup was a ‘military coup’ under U.S. law,” a move that would have immediately triggered the suspension of all non-humanitarian U.S. assistance to Honduras.
In her email, Slaughter correctly diagnosed the region’s deep disappointment with the administration’s handling of the Honduras crisis:
I got lots of signals last week that we are losing ground in Latin America every day the Honduras crisis continues; high level people from both the business and the NGO community say that even our friends are beginning to think we are not really committed to the norm of constitutional democracy we have worked so hard to build over the last 20 year [sic]. The current stalemate favors the status quo; the de facto regime has every incentive to run out the clock as long as they think we will have to accept any post-election government. I urge you to think about taking bold action now to breathe new life into the process and signal that regardless what happens on the Hill, you and the president are serious.
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Meanwhile, many Democrats were pushing hard and publically for a “military coup” determination. In early August 15 House Democrats signed a letter asking the State Department to “fully acknowledge that a military coup has taken place.” On September 3, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills sent Clinton an LA Times op-ed by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman entitled “Honduras: Make it official – it’s a coup.” Berman emphasized that it was critical for Clinton to make the determination quickly:
Honduras will hold presidential and parliamentary elections Nov. 29, and every passing day gives Micheletti and his associates the chance to tighten their illegitimate hold on the reins of power.
In the end, as we know, Clinton spurned the advice of Slaughter and fellow Democrats and never used the words “military” and “coup” together to describe what had happened in Honduras.”
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But, with the U.S. being by far the most powerful external actor in Honduras, the coup regime had little incentive to allow the restoration of democracy. The congress voted against Zelaya’s reinstatement and the elections took place under a so-called “unity government” that included no one from the constitutional government, despite the fact that nearly every country in the region besides the U.S. considered them to be illegitimate.
www.commondreams.org/...
The “hard choices” taken by Clinton and her team didn’t just damage U.S. relations with Latin America. They contributed to the enormous damage done to Honduras. In the years following the coup, economic growth has stalled, while poverty and income inequality have risen significantly. Violence has spiraled out of control. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has increased military assistance to Honduras, despite alarming reports of killings and human rights abuses by increasingly militarized Honduransecurity forces. Many Congressional Democrats have asked for a complete suspension of security assistance while human rights violations continue with impunity. But neither the Clinton nor Kerry State Departments have heeded their call.
www.commondreams.org/…
“Honduran Coup Violates Women’s Human Rights”
Their testimonies provided documented proof that the coup regime and its security forces have been responsible for rapes, beatings, murders and harassment of Honduran women in the resistance movement, and the dictatorial elimination of gains in gender equity. These crimes against women have been committed in the context of impunity for the perpetrators.
www.huffingtonpost.com/...
MONDAY, JUN 8, 2015 11:58 AM CDT
”EXCLUSIVE: Hillary Clinton sold out Honduras: Lanny Davis, corporate cash, and the real story about the death of a Latin American democracy “
“Want to know why Clinton's State Dept. failed to help an elected leader? Follow the money and stench of Lanny Davis”
MATTHEW PULVER
It was becoming widely believed that the Clinton State Department, along with the right-wing in Washington, was working behind the scenes to make sure that President Zelaya would not return to office. This U.S. cabal was coordinating with those behind the coup, it was being rumored, to bring new elections to Honduras, conducted by an illegal coup government, which would effectively terminate the term of Zelaya, who was illegally deposed in the final year of his constitutionally mandated single term. All this as Honduras was “descending deeper into a human rights and security abyss,” as the coup government was seen to be actually committing crimes worthy of removal from power. Professor Dana Frank, an expert in recent Honduran history at UC Santa Cruz, would charge in the New York Times that the resulting “abyss” in Honduras was “in good part the State Department’s making.”
www.salon.com/...
Hillary Clinton had a chance to listen to wiser heads, but chose instead to follow Lanny Davis and his financial cronies to abandon the democratically elected President Zelaya to instead support the right wing perpetrators of the coup:
“Clinton emails reveal U.S. wanted to set up back channel after 2009 Honduran coup”
In the aftermath of the 2009 coup that overthrew Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton requested the assistance of a prominent D.C. lobbyist to act as a back channel with the interim government in Tegucigalpa, even as the United States was denouncing the putsch.
According to emails released this week from Clinton's private server, the former secretary of state and presidential candidate asked if Lanny Davis, a lobbyist and former White House Counsel to Bill Clinton, could help in the talks with then-interim Honduran President Roberto Micheletti.
"Can he help me talk w/ Micheletti?" Clinton asked in an email with the subject "Lanny Davis."
At the time, Davis was being retained by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL), a coalition of Honduran businessmen who had supported Zelaya's ouster, and while it is unclear what Clinton wanted to talk about with Davis and Micheletti, the email exchange appears to cast the U.S.' public denouncement of the post-coup government and the pronouncements that Washington was working to restore a democratically president in a poor light.
In the next few months, there were mass protests and violence between demonstrators and police.
Since the coup, Honduras' murder rate has held the title of the world's highest, has seen presidential term limits abandoned
and has recently been ranked the 49th most corrupt country in the world.
latino.foxnews.com/…
Under the dictatorship there has been a rollback of gains in women’s reproductive rights. On June 29th, one day after the coup, an initiative to ban emergency contraception (earlier vetoed by President Zelaya) was approved.
www.huffingtonpost.com/…
“Honduras Supreme Court Upholds Absolute Ban on Emergency Contraception, Opens Door to Criminalize Women and Medical Professionals”
02.13.12 - (PRESS RELEASE) The Honduras Supreme Court has upheld the country’s absolute ban on emergency contraception, which would criminalize the sale, distribution, and use of the “morning-after pill” — imposing punishment for offenders equal to that of obtaining or performing an abortion, which in Honduras is completely restricted.
“By banning and criminalizing emergency contraception, Honduras is telling the world it would rather imprison the women of its country than provide them with safe and effective birth control,” said Luisa Cabal, director of international legal programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Today’s decision from the Honduras Supreme Court blatantly disregards women’s fundamental reproductive rights and completely ignores the respected medical opinion of experts around the globe. It will cause significant harm in the lives countless women and doctors across the country.”
The Center for Reproductive Rights has been working with local and international women’s rights groups to fight this ban on emergency contraception since it was first passed by the Honduran Congress in April 2009. Then-President José Manuel Zelaya was successfully urged to veto the ban a month after it was passed — immediately making the issue a matter before the Supreme Court.
However, following the country’s June 2009 coup d’état, the de facto minister of health issued an administrative regulation in October 2009 banning emergency contraception, despite not yet having a ruling from the Supreme Court that would allow criminal enforcement of the ban.
Nearly three years after the ban was vetoed by President Zelaya, today’s ruling now allows the Honduran Congress to impose the previously proposed criminal punishments on any medical professionals who distribute and sell emergency contraception and any woman who uses or attempts to use the medication to prevent an unintended pregnancy.
Currently, anyone who performs an abortion in Honduras can be sentenced anywhere from three to 10 years in prison, depending on if the woman consents or if violence and intimidation is a factor. Women who seek an abortion face three to six years in prison. With today’s decision, simply being caught with an emergency contraceptive pill would be considered an abortion attempt.
www.reproductiverights.org/…
“Hillary Clinton’s Response To Honduran Coup Was Scrubbed From Her Paperback Memoirs”
“Critics argue the secretary of state’s efforts paved the way for the violence still plaguing Honduras.”
03/12/2016
Roque Planas
Clinton’s role in the aftermath of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster has come under greater scrutiny since the March 3 assassination of environmental and indigenous rights activist Berta Cáceres. Critics argue that the U.S. push for new elections in the months after the coup helped legitimize the actions of the Honduran military, destabilize the country and pave the way for the extreme violence that followed. Killings of activists like Cáceres and others have become devastatingly common.
But the account Clinton offered of her response to the coup in her memoir Hard Choices was omitted from last year’s paperback edition.
www.huffingtonpost.com/…
OPINION | STEPHEN KINZER
“Hard choices in Honduras”
March 30, 2016
Republicans in Congress proclaimed the coup a victory for freedom. A handful of them even flew to Honduras to embrace the country’s new leaders. Secretary of State Clinton sided with them. She approved a new election in which the deposed president was not allowed to run. Her goal, as she wrote in her memoir, was to “render the question of Zelaya moot.”
Honduras was in bad shape before the coup, but it has become far worse. It is corruptly governed, plagued by violence, and servile to rapacious foreign corporations. Berta Caceres is among the most prominent victims of this new Honduras.
www.bostonglobe.com/…
“HONDURAS: SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND TOTAL BANS ON EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTION AND ABORTION”
Honduras is one of the most violent countries in the world1 with particularly high rates of sexual violence.2 The harm suffered by victims of sexual violence in Honduras who are mainly women, is exponentially exacerbated by Honduras’s restrictive reproductive health laws and policies. Currently, Honduras has an absolute ban on emergency contraception and abortion3 - leaving women with the dire choice between carrying a pregnancy to term or undergoing a clandestine, unsafe abortion. These prohibitions and their consequences violate international human rights law perpetuating a discriminatory framework for women that particularly violates their right to life and health.
www.reproductiverights.org/...
“Do Feminists Support Coups? Honduran Women on Hillary Clinton”
For Honduran feminist artist Melissa Cardoza, Clinton’s policy in Central America has shown her true colors as an instrument of empire representing patriarchal, not feminist, ideology.
“As is well known, she supported the coup d’etat in my country, which has sunk a very worthy and bleeding land further into abject poverty, violence, and militarism,” Cardoza said of Clinton’s legacy in Honduras. “She is part of those who consider only some lives to be legitimate, obviously not rebel women and women of color that live here and who do not, at least not all, fit in with imperial interests.”
www.telesurtv.net/...