There are more credible allegations of violence against supporters of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya:
Ulises Sarmiento, a devout and wealthy follower of ousted Honduran President Manuel ``Mel'' Zelaya, paid a heavy price for his loyalty: A few weeks ago, hit men attacked with grenade launchers and a deluge of bullets, killing his two bodyguards.
An iron door kept the assassins at bay.
``Why do they come with grenades? You could hear this from a half mile away,'' said Sarmiento, 65, an Olancho businessman and a leader of Honduras' ``Resistance Movement,'' formed after Zelaya was kicked out of the country at gunpoint in June.
``They knew the police were never coming, and, sure enough, they did not come,'' said Sarmiento, now watched by six men, one of whom stays perched beside his bullet-ridden armored Ford F-250.
As Zelaya approaches his sixth month of banishment, human-rights organizations here and abroad say Honduras has experienced a serious deterioration of civil rights in a country where death squads and extrajudicial killings already were commonplace.
Here's the takeaway from the article:
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights visited Honduras this summer and could only categorize a handful of cases as state-related.
``We have been dealing for years with violence against defenders of human rights,'' said commission member Paolo Carroza, a professor at Notre Dame University. ``My presumption is, yeah, some are politically motivated, because that has been a pattern in Honduras for a long time, not just since the coup.''
So, essentially the goal of the coup mongers was to maintain the miserable status quo. Sounds like they've accomplished their goal.
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