Casualties of the ‘Bloodless’ Coup

Many apologists for the thuggish takeover of the elected government in Honduras still claim that what happened last June 28 was a “bloodless” coup. In a Wall Street Journal editorial on October 10, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) went one step further, denying there even is a political crisis here, and referring to the ousting of President Mel Zelaya as a “supposed military ‘coup.’”

But the hundreds of peaceful demonstrators who have been brutally beaten since the putsch might disagree with adjectives like “supposed” and “bloodless.” As might the family of Jairo Sanchez, the most recent victim of government-sponsored violence, who after weeks of drifting in and out of consciousness, died in the capital on Monday, October 19.

According to the report prepared by the Committee for the Families of the Disappeared in Honduras (COFADEH), Sanchez, a 38-year-old husband and father, was shot in the face during a police raid against unarmed marchers on September 30. Three other peaceful demonstrators were critically wounded in the same attack. Apparently none of this well-documented violence made an impression on DeMint. The senator recently returned from a brief visit to Tegucigalpa, were he’d been the guest of the same political elites who worked with the military to orchestrate the putsch. “As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves, Honduras has moved on,” DeMint opined.

During his visit, Honduras was under martial law, independent media were shuttered and police and soldiers attacked peaceful protestors just blocks from the Senator’s hotel. Yet upon returning home, DeMint reported “there is no chaos there,” that like the coup itself, this is all merely “supposed.”

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