Communiqué Regional Committee for the Promotion of Community Health

The Regional Committee for the Promotion of Community Health, comprised of organizations, networks and movements in Central America, Chiapas and the Caribbean working for the observance of peoples’ Health Rights, considered to be the attainment of decent living conditions for all, in view of the coup d’état in our neighbouring Republic of Honduras, hereby states the following:

This action reveals how the privileged sectors that historically have controlled the State apparatus oppose changing the conditions of exclusion and impoverishment in which the majority of the population lives, as well as their determination to maintain their neoliberal, submissive policy, aligned with foreign colonial, despoiling interests.

We do not accept the excuse of the coup’s leaders that their action is a response to the intent to reform the country’s Constitution in order to permit the re-election of President Manuel Zelaya. A long-standing demand of the Honduran people has been the establishment of a Constituent Assembly that will take the populace’s desires and ideas into account in drafting a Constitution that will lead to an institutional structure that ensures the satisfaction of rights in a framework of equitable social relations.

We the people have always spoken out for social change that, grounded in the voices and experiences of the people, creates the equitable, egalitarian conditions necessary for us to attain wellbeing, a change that is not possible if the people’s interests and sovereignty are not respected.

We recognize that the Right to Health can only be guaranteed when society is engaged consciously and actively in attaining it, and that the current situation in Honduras not only limits respect for this right, but also makes its achievement unlikely.

We express our support and solidarity with the Honduran people and all their efforts to organize and mobilize against the coup from its beginning.

We express our concern for the possibility that the mediation is turning into an instrument favourable to the rebellious oligarchy, by recognizing it in actions and providing it with time to consolidate.

We reject governmental violence against the people who are demonstrating and struggling for Democracy and to develop alternatives that can create the decent life the Honduran people merit.

We particularly express our solidarity with Father Fausto Milla and with the INHESCO Centre, with whom we have walked down the same road toward building the Right to Health.

Regional Committee for the Promotion of Community Health

San Francisco Petén, Guatemala, 25 July 2009