The following email was circulated Friday July 17 by Nathalie Roque, Director of the Hemeroteca Nacional of Honduras (the archive of newspapers), described by the Minister of Culture, Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle as "a brilliant young historian who has played a great role there, digitizing the institution and bringing out digitized reports".
She identifies herself as the source of critical historical information about Roberto Micheletti's participation in 1985 in an actual attempt to violate the constitution by extending the term of the then-sitting president. Her email is testimony to the persecution of Hondurans for exercising not only their rights of free speech, but of academic freedom, as well as reinforcing troubling reports of the fomenting of repression based on national origin, strictly forbidden by the Honduran Constitution:
Re: MICHELIN REPRESSION AGAINST NATHALIE ROQUE FOR HER HISTORICAL-INFORMATIONAL WORK
Thanks, friends, for your solidarity!
Those that I know, say that I have carried out my work at the Hemeroteca Nacional with great care, and that thanks to the determined support of Rebeca Becerra (unjustly fired and persecuted) and the Minister Pastor Fasquelle (now in exile in Mexico), we have succeeded in carrying out a total process of modernization, restoration, training of personnel, as well as the implementation of new projects tending to protect the documentary patrimony of the nation and generate historical consciousness/memory in the population through electronic bulletins, exhibitions, conversations and cultural events, and publication of books, among many others.
Today I was informed that inquiries are being performed against me and that it was likely that they would summon me to the Public Prosecutor for my offenses: during my free time I decided to investigate the past of the participants in the coup, and because this is public information from newspapers, I decided to share with friends and people of the resistance; in addition, I did not fold for the coup authority and demonstrated personally my position of repudiating the coup d'etat that they have carried out on taking over the Secretariat of Culture, Arts, and Sports.
Apparently, they have weighty evidence against me:
--I have removed and brought to light the past (they forget that I am an historian and that I have been trained in that way)
--I have entered the Hemeroteca outside work hours (I've never had hours, I work Saturdays and Sundays, until midnight, etc.)
--I have published confidential information of the Ministry (newspapers and public orders, of high levels of circulation nationally)
--I have participated in anti-coup demonstrations (it was with work permits and my weekends are my own!!)
--I am of the left (I have never denied it)
--I was born in Russia and was raised in Nicaragua (What a crime!!! To have been politically persecuted from before birth)
I am an honest person and I have not committed any misdeed; to investigate and disseminate history is not a crime and as far as I know to think differently isn't EITHER!
Best wishes from the resistance!
Natalie Roque
Citizen in Resistance
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