"Fear the Dark": Suspension of Constitutional Rights

Thursday the Honduran daily paper, El Tiempo, published an unsigned editorial criticizing the de facto government's suspension of constitutional rights; as it notes, the latest actions contradict the claim by the de facto government that the change of regime has been accepted and public objections are limited:

State of siege

A state of siege has been decreed, for "grave disturbance of the peace", with which the regime recognizes that Honduras lives in a situation of abnormality, without doubt caused by the rupture of the constitutional order with the coup d'etat of the 28th of June, 2009.

Constitutional norms establish, in these conditions, that the suspension of the exercise of individual rights should be specifically noted, the decision should be justified, the territory affected and the time the restriction will last should be indicated.

Executive Decree No. 011-2009 enacted by the regime suspends the following individual rights: personal liberty; detention without communication for a maximum of 24 hours and judicial detention for inquiries without exceeding six days; the freedom of association and of assembly; and the right to circulate freely, leave, enter, and stay in the national territory.

This peculiar state of siege includes the entire country, although apparently, only is in force at night, from 9 PM to 6 AM. This arrangement, with its characteristics, cannot be modified as long as the restriction lasts, according to the law. Fear the dark.

In our country a state of siege has almost always been decreed when coups d'etat happen, it is worth saying, for political reasons. For natural calamities, in recent history this "legal dictatorship", as some call it, has only been used due to the catastrophe of Hurricane Mitch.

Governments, in general, do all possible to avoid the application of states of exception, since that signifies the existence in a country of a public disorder that the duly constituted-- or imposed-- authority does not feel capable of controlling with common legal means, and therefore, tends to have recourse to the denial of constitutional guarantees.

This is, as can be appreciated, what is happening due to the demonstrations of popular rejection of the breach of constitutional order, that are the object of hard repression and whose escalation seems uncontainable, even when this does not reach public knowledge in its true dimension due to the manipulations of the system of social communication of the country.

It is worth pointing out that in the decree of a state of siege freedom of expression has not been included, no doubt because it is considered unnecessary to do so. The freedom of expression is being violated in diverse forms, using methods of boycott, of persecution and intimidation, which is the object of strong denunciation with international organizations for the defense of human rights, although not in what corresponds to the national commission on human rights, for reasons known to everyone and that aren't worth the trouble to explain.