On March 23, just as a group of seven Honduran lawyers were presenting information to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission in Washington DC concerning systematic abuses against the members of the National Popular Resistance Front (FNRP), a death squad comprised of heavily armed men wearing ski masks and civilian clothes killed a prominent FNRP figure in an attack on the school where he worked. José Manuel Flores, a teacher at Tegucigalpa’s San José del Pedregal high school, was assassinated in front of his students.
On March 26, several thousand marched in Tegucigalpa to demand an end to the escalation of repression, and against the neoliberal policies of the new government. The FNRP, a broad alliance of social and political forces that emerged hours after the coup d’etat of last June 28, called the march, which began at the National Pedagogical University and ended in a rally against the National Autonomous University (UNAH). The university has been occupied by its workers since Feb. 23, when they began a strike demanding wage increases. In a speech, FNRP general coordinator Juan Barahona demanded the release of 15 university union leaders, who were arrested ahead of the march on charges of sedition and usurpation of power. (Rights Action, Momento 24, Argentina, March 26)
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