STATEMENT ON BEHALF OF U.S.  LABOR & PROGRESSIVE ACTIVISTS CONDEMNING THE MURDER OF UNION LEADER VANESSA YAMILETH ZEPEDA & THE REPRESSION SWEEPING HONDURAS

The right to organize is a basic human right of every worker. It is a right defended by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In Honduras, that right is being denied on a daily basis.

Since the 1980s, militarists in Honduras have trained paramilitary forces to torture and murder labor unionists and other activists to prevent the people from exercising their basic right to resist exploitation and oppression.

When the U.S.-backed military coup against the legally elected President Jose Manuel Zelaya took place last June,  many of the military participants were the perpetrators of this travesty. They discharged their military, paramilitary and police forces to torture and murder labor union leaders, students, LGBT activists and peasants.

The U.S. government may claim that the election of José "Pepe" Lobo was a "triumph of democracy," but that is an out and out lie. The remnants and new recruits of the genocidal U.S.- trained Battalion 3-16 are still conducting political assassinations in Honduras. 

Since the coup, our fellow labor activists have been murdered at an unprecedented rate, and murdered stealthily in a way that allows the Lobo government to claim that these murders were not political.

But the murder of the  leader of the SITRAIHSS labor union (Workers Union for the Honduran Social Security Institute),  Vanessa Zepeda,  who was abducted when she was leaving a union meeting, leaves no doubt in our minds that this is an OFFICIAL POLICY and OFFICIAL COVER-UP by the fraudulently elected Lobo government.

We the undersigned members of

U.S. labor unions as well as progressive organizations, declare our opposition to this official policy of neo- fascist repression in Honduras, and call upon our own unions to denounce this illegitimate government, and to support our fellow unionists in Honduras. . .

Furthermore, we oppose the enabling role the U.S. government has played in the election and “legitimizing” of the Lobo regime, which is only an attempt to justify and sanitize the criminal coup of June 2009.