(OPENPRESS) July 7, 2009 -- Bertha Oliva, Founder and Co-ordinator of the Committee for the Disappeared, from Tegucigalpa, Honduras, speaks to TRNN journalist Jesse Freeston about what she calls the "military dictatorship" taking power in the country.
"They've suspended our personal freedoms. And now they are using the Army to repress the public reaction to that, at the request of a man who declared himself president," Oliva says.
Roberto Micheletti is currently the acting President of Honduras after a military coup dispatched of elected President Manuel Zelaya on June 28. Many international governments have refused to recognize Micheletti's administration.
The Honduran government has temporarily abjured several constitutional rights, such as giving the police access into civilian homes during curfew hours and to detain them for 24 hours without charges.
Oliva says that the military "view those who demand their rights as if they were enemies, and we're at war."
"They made me return to the 1980s," Oliva says of the current suspension of civilian rights. "When we had the National Security Doctrine. The country was militarized [then]. The reason this experience is reminding us of that is because they've brought us back to when they wanted us to feel like they could dispose of our lives, rights, and freedoms."
Oliva believes that the military and elite classes of Honduras, frightened by the idea of a politically engaged civilian population, took such drastic actions June 28th because "[t]hey were scared of submitting to the people by way of referendum."
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