"The country is in jail"

You will remember the ouster of the elected President of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, a few weeks back, in a coup that has been supported by much of the right side of the blogosphere, not to mention a few crackpot newspaper columnists.

Ostensibly this was to defend the country's constitution. Zelaya wanted a non-binding referendum on constitutional change to take place at the time of the next election--when he wouldn't even be running.

That was too much for certain forces in Honduras, wary of the President's leftist way of thinking, so they ran him out of the country. For some, as I've noted before, democracy is far too precious a commodity to be squandered on the people.

Since that time, according to the International Federation for Human Rights, the new defenders of democracy have violated the rights of Hondurans in a "generalised and systematic" manner, including:

thousands of arbitrary arrests, systematic persecution of independent press, extrajudicial killings, inhuman and degrading treatment, physical and psychological torture, death threats, unlawful deportation or expulsion, persecution of foreigners especially Nicaraguans, as well as persecution of civil servants, members of parliament, mayors, judges and prosecutors who have opposed the coup.

Now Zelaya, as we know, is back in town, holding court at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa. Excited crowds gathered immediately when the news got out, and to stamp out such popular outbursts the coupsters immediately declared a curfew and suspended the constitution--you know, that document the sanctity of which was the pretext for exiling Zelaya in the first place.

Shades of Ben Trế.