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Exiled Honduran leader establishes border camp
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-27 10:52 All charges stem from Zelaya ignoring a Supreme Court order and attempting to hold a vote asking Hondurans if they want a special assembly to rewrite the constitution the day he was ousted. Zelaya made a brief, symbolic trip a few meters (yards) into Honduran territory on Friday, turning back without being confronted.
Zelaya now stays at a local hotel and zips about in a convoy of white Jeeps and SUVs trailed by television cameras. He said Sunday that nearly 1,000 Hondurans arrived in the past 24 hours, crossing the border on foot through the mountains to avoid roadblocks and patrols set up by the interim government to thwart Zelaya's return. There was no way to independently confirm the estimate. At one point Sunday, Zelaya strode into a throng outside his hotel, sat on the hood of a car and held up a voter ID card in one hand. "With this weapon we are going to overthrow the dictatorship," he cried through a bullhorn. Supporter Jose Bernabe spent the time somewhat more prosaically, sleeping at a makeshift shelter where dozens of Zelaya followers spent the night on a concrete slab under a tin roof. Bernabe, a 56-year-old Honduran coffee farmer from Villa Santa, said he hiked across the border with four brothers to join Zelaya. He lined up with others for a breakfast of hot-dog buns and butter, preparing to head for the border to greet other Hondurans entering Nicaragua to support Zelaya's return. "Here in Nicaragua we feel free. In Honduras we feel repressed," he said. The Honduran Red Cross took thousands of water rations to the area where the army and police have set up roadblocks to keep Zelaya supporters from reaching the border. In Tegucigalpa, relatives held a funeral for a young Zelaya supporter found stabbed to death Saturday in a field near El Paraiso, the border town on the Honduran side. Both the Honduran police and army denied any responsibility in his death. Honduran farmer Edgar Egiguren, 21, said he still hoped the president would cross back into Honduras after two aborted attempts. "The army won't let him past there," Egiguren said. "That's OK. He can't cross yet because we don't have enough people." Other supporters wondered how long Zelaya could hold the world's attention from his outpost. "He shouldn't let this turn into a show," said Cesar Omar Silva, who writes a pro-Zelaya newsletter. "The journalists aren't going to be able save him from the bullets. And as soon as the interim government captures him, any trace of him will disappear."
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