Honduras to restore liberties after criticism

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — The coup-installed government in Honduras is backing off of its increasingly desperate measures to hold onto power.

Interim President Roberto Micheletti says an emergency decree restricting civil liberties for 45 days will soon be lifted.

He made the statement Monday afternoon, less than a day after his government imposed the emergency order.

Supporters of ousted President Manuel Zelaya tried to demonstrate in the Honduran capital, but riot police surrounded them and prevented them from marching. They sat down in the street and vowed not to move until their protest was allowed.

Before the announcement about the restriction being lifted, the coup-installed government had suspended civil liberties, silenced dissident broadcasters and faced off with hundreds of protesters in the street.

Protest leaders insisted that thousands more Zelaya supporters were trying to join but were stopped from leaving poorer neighborhoods or from traveling from the countryside.

“There is brutal repression against the people,” Zelaya told The Associated Press in a telephone interview Monday from the Brazilian Embassy, where he has been holed up with 60 supporters since sneaking back into the country on Sept. 21.

Protests have seen little violence so far — the government says three people have been killed since the coup, while protesters put the number at 10. But protest leader Juan Barahona said that could change.

“This mass movement is peaceful, but to the extent they repress us, fence us in and make this method useless, we have to find some other form of struggle,” he said.

Authorities cited their fear of violence when they issued an emergency decree Sunday that limits civil liberties for 45 days. The decree bans unauthorized gatherings and lets police arrest people without warrants, rights guaranteed in the Honduran Constitution. It also allows authorities to shut news media for “statements that attack peace and the public order, or which offend the human dignity of public officials, or attack the law.”

Government soldiers raided the offices of Radio Globo and the television station Channel 36, both critics of the Micheletti government, and silenced both. Afterward, the TV station broadcast only a test pattern.

Radio Globo employees scrambled out of an emergency exit to escape the raid that involved as many as 200 soldiers.