(VIDEO) Hondurans spread "Tele-Golpe" through internet to defeat media siege

This is translation of an article that appeared in http://www.aporrea.org about the efforts of Honduran youth to defeat the media siege. Please spread the word and let's make sure as many people on this side of the border of La Patria Grande view these first hand videos. Pass it along!

Follow this link to read the original article in Spansh http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/n138160.html
Follow link to video "En Honduras no pasa nada" (Nothing happens in Honduras) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzkJf2vVnU

Hondurans spread "Tele-Golpe" through internet to defeat media siege
By Yvke Mundial / AFP
July 6, 2009- With amateur videos and images taken with mobile phones, Honduran youth that oppose the toppling of President Manuel Zelaya created “Tele-Golpe” using the internet to broadcast the marches and protests that the national television broadcasters, subjected to state control, do not broadcast.

“We call it “Tele-Golpe” because the truth about what’s really happening is not being broadcasted through the national TV channels, of course if they’re able to cut our internet band width we’re dead”, said Cesar Silva, an engineering student. According to Silva, until now they have uploaded close to twenty-six videos on You Tube with the marches and statements made by the leaders that oppose the overthrow of Zelaya, who was expelled from the country on June 28 by the military, and has been prevented from returning to the country.

“Without a doubt, of all the twenty-six, the most popular is one titled “En Honduras no pasa nada” (Nothing happens in Honduras)”, Silva explains. The video is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzkJf2vVnU, although Silva says that it has also been placed in internet servers to prevent removal.

After the Organization of American States (OEA) condemned the military action as a coup d’état, Congress President Roberto Micheletti took power. In the first days after the coup, the military cut the broadcasting signals of community radio stations, such as Radio Progreso and Radio Globo, while the national TV channels have to interrupt broadcasting through out the day and yield to a national broadcast that transmits the official information.

The cable services are not broadcasting the Venezuelan channel Telesur, and even the U.S. based CNN, which was cut the first hours after the coup, goes off the air when the content is not of interest or in favor of the new authorities.

On Saturday, when part of the population was interested in the game between the national soccer team and Haiti for the Gold Cup in the United States, the channels had to interrupt the signal to rebroadcast a message in which the Catholic Church hierarchy assured that what happened in the country could not be classified as a coup d’état.

The initiative to spread the images through Internet came out of a collective of students from diverse faculties of the universities of Tegucigalpa. “We were fed up with only having the voice of those that support the coup being broadcasted on TV”, says Adriana Alvarado, a journalism student.

“We are spreading the web address through word of mouth and with flyers that we pass during the marches, even though the majority of the people of Honduras do not have access to internet, we are doing it so that the world could see it”, she added.

In middle class neighborhoods, the students take their computers to the streets so that the neighbors could see the other side of what’s happening in their country. Only 11% of the households in Honduras have computers and 68% have TVs, while 70.8% of the population uses cell phones, according to 2008 data gathered by the National Institute of Statistics.

During Sunday’s march, in which two marchers were killed when they attempted to enter the landing pathways of the Toncontin airport, some of the “Tele-Golpe” volunteers were the first to alert the foreign photographers and camera crews of what was happening.

“There were few cameras but plenty of cell phones that were able to record the material we are uploading to the internet”, Cesar added.