ORIGINAL FRENCH ARTICLE: Hugo Chavez dénonce un "coup d’Etat" au Honduras
by Flash-Actualité (no author’s signature provided)
Translated Monday 29 June 2009, by
On Sunday, the socialist president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, denounced a coup d’état in Honduras, in which his colleague and ally Manuel Zelaya had been arrested by the military, and also called upon the United States president Barack Obama to condemn the putsch.
"The military has been used to carry out a coup d’etat, in a fashion known in Latin America so often these past 100 years, against the people and against a president who was simply in the process of organizing a popular consultation," declared Mr. Chavez on the international television chain Telesur, whose headquarters is in Caracas.
"Behind the military putchists hide the Honduran bourgoisie, the big-shots, the rich who have transformed Honduras into a banana republic, and into a political, military and terrorist base for the North-American empire," he added.
"The Yankee empire has a major hand in this. I launch an appeal to the president of the United States to condemn, as we have, this aggression not only with respect to Honduras, but also against all the peoples of Latin America," Mr. Chavez continued.
The Honduras president was taken by force to an air base [1], while he was completing work on Sunday to organize a popular consultation, one judged illegal by the Honduran supreme court.
Mr. Zelaya, a conservative, elected president in January 2006, has, since his election, taken a sharp turn to the left, and has established close connections with leaders of the anti-liberal left in the region, such as Mr. Chavez.
[1] Translator’s Note: Far more detailed information on Sunday’s events can be found in this article by Eva Golinger, reporting from www.chavezcode.com.