(The following article is from the August 1-31, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Statement of the Central Executive Committee, Communist Party of Canada, July 27, 2009

One month has passed since the June 28th coup d'etat in Honduras which drove elected President Manuel Zelaya from office and into exile, installing one of the coup leaders, Roberto Micheletti as "Interim President" in his place. And yet despite street protests and general strikes inside the country, and unanimous international condemnation, including Honduras' suspension from the Organization of American States (OAS), the coup leaders remain in control.

     Canada and the other imperialist states ‑ the United States in the first instance ‑ were forced at first to publicly disassociate themselves from the coup. But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the Harper government in Ottawa are refusing to insist on the return of Zelaya to power, and economic trade and aid grants continue to flow. As one commentator said recently, "if the Obama Administration really wanted to end the coup, they could do it with one phone call"!

     Indeed, the claim that the U.S. government was not intimately involved in the coup holds no water. Most of the Honduran army command and other high state officials were trained in the U.S. (including at the notorious "School of the Americas"); the U.S. military/intelligence apparatus knows everything that goes on in Honduras and other weak, neo‑colonial states in the region; and the U.S.‑sponsored, terrorist ex‑Cuban mafia based in Miami have extensive ties with the Honduran oligarchy, including involvement in the lucrative drug trade.

     Imperialism is playing an elaborate shell game: making verbal pronouncements against the coup but privately applauding the coup leaders and shielding them from real concerted international pressure, thus giving the putchists time to snuff out domestic resistance and consolidate their unconstitutional grip on power.

And the reason is simple: Honduras is a training ground to work out new tactics to depose socialist, anti‑imperialist and other progressive or left‑leaning governments in Latin America under present‑day conditions, compared to those of the 1950s, 60s and 70s when U.S.‑backed and engineered coups proliferated  across this Hemisphere.

     President Zelaya lost favour with the Honduran ruling class and its U.S. backers when he began to embrace more independent and pro‑people policies, came out strongly against the privatization of HonduTel and other public utilities, expanded diplomatic, economic and political relations with Cuba, Venezuela and other progressive states, and then moved to join the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA). When the oligarchic circles within the state (the Honduran Armed Forces, the court system, and the Congress) concluded they had lost effective control over Zelaya, and that a mass constituency of workers, peasants and the poor was beginning to take shape, they decided the time had come to act. 

     The Communist Party of Canada joins with labour, progressive and other democratic organizations in clearly and unambiguously condemning the coup d'etat in Honduras and demanding the immediate re‑instatement of President Manuel Zelaya, and the arrest and punishment of the coup leaders. We also demand that the Government of Canada condemn the regime's brutal attacks against workers, youth and other progressive Hondurans opposing the coup d'etat, and demand that the coup leaders immediately surrender power and restore the democratically‑elected President to his rightful office, without conditions. These demands must be combined with the following actions:

* halting all direct and state‑supported aid programs to Honduras that benefit the oligarchy;

* ending diplomatic relations with Honduras and declaring its Ambassador to Canada persona non grata; and

* imposing comprehensive economic, political and military sanctions against Honduras

     Nothing short of these measures will suffice, if Canada's words are to be matched by real deeds. We remain confident that the Honduran people, with the support and solidarity of the people of the world, will succeed in overturning this coup d'etat, defeating this and other machinations of the oligarchy and its imperialist backers!