President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya confirmed he is in Costa Rica, as he was kidnapped by Honduran military officers, who dragged him from his residence.
During a telephone contact with TELESUR (), Zelaya made clear he continues in his post, he did not request political asylum and intends to attend a meeting of Central American presidents scheduled for Managua, Nicaragua, to condemn the coup in his nation and demand the restoration of constitutional order.
Zelaya called on the Honduran people, their social organizations and unions to unite and fight peacefully for their rights, without violence, through civil disobedience.
‘The leaders of the armed forces have deceived me, they have offended me, they stormed my house early morning, breaking the door,’ he explained. ‘It is a brutal kidnapping what they have done against me, with no justification but our desire to do good to Honduras and install a participative democratic process.’
He said that today ‘we were scheduled to carry out a non binding survey, as any other international pollster usually does.’
The objective was to know the people’s opinion about the possibility to vote in November in favor or against convening a Constituent Assembly in the future and reform the Constitution.
‘This cannot justify the interruption of democracy or the coup,’ considered Zelaya.
‘We have no way to communicate with the people because radio and TV broadcast were shut down, and they cut the power,’ he denounced.
‘The people have the right to uprising if their rights are violated, as established in article three of the Constitution,’ he noted.
In Zelaya’s opinion, the coup has been perpetrated by a voracious elite with power, influence in the State and in the national economy, a small group that is even far from the stand of many Armed Forces soldiers and officers.
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