Honduran activist Maria Luisa Regalado tells group at El Barrio of President Lobo's brutality

“At my place if I go out, I can be assaulted on the corner right next to my house,” said  Maria Luisa Regalado, a political activist with the National Popular Resistance Front, commonly called the Frente. A local non-profit that supports social justice in Latin America, CoDevelopment Canada, brought the Honduran activist to Vancouver. Regalado spoke at El Barrio restaurant last week to spread awareness about government repression and strengthen international solidarity for human rights.

 She no longer goes out at night to dance or have coffee with friends. Regalado fears she will be the target of violence because she belongs to the Frente. “Our houses become our prisons. I’ll be out working, going from one office to another or to a meeting and I’ll be wondering what could happen to me in the streets,” she said. “There are women that I have worked with who have been assaulted.”

The group opposes President Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo but dissension has high stakes. Intimidation, arbitrary detention, beatings, torture and assassination are well-worn tactics used to silence anti-government activists, according to human rights groups. In the three months since Lobo’s January inauguration, almost 550 politically motivated human rights abuses have been documented by a human rights group, The Committee of the Families of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras. From January to May, there have been 12 politically motivated assassinations, 6 journalists executed and two rapes perpetrated to stop these women's political activism.

“We know that the people in the country that have the economic and political power have basically used the constitution as toilet paper,” said Regalado. She said that people’s constitutional rights have been suspended. Political protests are criminalized by government declared curfews.

The Frente is made up of trade unions representing everyone from teachers to banana pickers, indigenous people, women’s rights groups, and human rights groups who are united in a political fight to give Hondurans a greater voice in government policy. They routinely take to the streets to protest against Lobo’s Conservative government, which has back-peddled on land rights for indigenous people, increased the cost of living and reversed mining laws to attract multinational companies.

The Canadian government supports President Lobo since he represents a return to democracy following last June’s military-backed coup. Left-leaning president, Manuel Zelaya, was ousted by a rival member of his own Liberal party, Roberto Micheletti. Micheletti objected to Zelaya’s deepening alliance with Venezuela’s Socialist President, Hugo Chavez. While still in his pajamas, Zelaya was stripped of the presidency at gunpoint and exiled from his homeland. He was overthrown on June 28, 2009, the day that a national poll on constitutional reform was supposed to take place.

Canada called for democratic elections following the coup in the interests of peace and security. But Honduras’ November 2009 election that brought Lobo to power was controversial. The election was organized by the coup-backed government.

Carlos H. Reyes is leader of the Frente. He ran as an independent presidential candidate but withdrew from the race. He called the elections a farce. The EU and the Organization of the American States refused to send election monitoring teams since Zelaya was not reinstated prior to elections, a recommendation of peace talks.