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Unions in Forefront of Popular Resistance to Honduras Coup

Posted to the IUF website 02-Jul-2009

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Despite brutal repression, popular mobilization continues to build in opposition to the June 28 coup d'etat which removed Honduran President Zelaya from office. Unions have taken a lead in organizing resistance, and the call for strike action to paralyze public services has been widely followed. Repression of the strikers claimed its first victim on June 30, when a member of the telecommunications union was run down by an army truck as workers sought to block the military's efforts to bring in private telecom workers to restore services.

Carlos Reyes, General Secretary of the IUF-affiliated beverage union STIBYS and an independent presidential candidate in the 2005 election, has been forced underground after launching an appeal for mass resistance at the June 29 mass rally at the Presidential Residence in response to the coup. �It is essential that we stay on the streets", he told the crowd, "and continue protesting. Any act that enables the enemy to take us off the streets is a victory for them because they will occupy them instead."


Demonstrators at the Presidential Residence were violently dispersed by the military on June 29.