HONDURAS: Students square up to the military

University students in Honduras are preparing for potential direct confrontation with government security forces as they prepare for a major May Day demonstration against education liberalisation plans tabled by President Porfirio Lobo. The students are promising to resist further military incursions into a campus.

This follows two months of protests by students of the National Autonomous University of Honduras. They are working with striking teacher unions who oppose planned wage and pension cuts, and a new law.

The Education Participation Law, approved by the Honduran congress on 31 March, shifts much of the authority for primary and secondary education from central government to local municipalities.

Students claim this is a harbinger of privatisation and that tertiary education will then be sold off.

So convinced have students been of their case, that they have occupied their university's campus in the capital Tegucigalpa and surrounding streets, blocking major thoroughfares.

This led to the Honduras military invading the campus five times in April, with riot police and special military units called the Cobras clearing student-blocked roads with tear gas, rubber bullets and batons, and then sweeping into the university campus.

Hundreds of tear gas canisters were launched, causing fainting and vomiting among protesting and non-protesting students alike, claim student organisations. A number of students were injured and seven were arrested.

Honduran law requires state forces to respect the autonomy of the public universities, and police and the military are legally prohibited from entering campuses.

The political anger in the country has been heightened by the 2009 coup that deposed former President Manuel Zelaya and paved the way for elections that brought Lobo to power.

Rosemary Joyce, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, whose career has been spent researching Honduras, said the military incursions had serious implications.

"The violation of university autonomy is an instance of the general impunity that was ushered in by the Honduran coup d'état. That event rolled back the clock to the bad old days of the 1980s and before, when repression was at its height in Honduras."

She believes that government's intentions in bringing in the reforms are to improve teacher management, reduce strikes and boost learning.

Opponents of the reform such as Gerardo Torres, a former student activist and member of the pro-Zelaya National Front of Popular Resistance, argue however that it is the first step towards privatising education.

"They are passing the responsibility of education to the municipalities but the municipalities have already said that they don't have the capacity to handle this on their own," he said.

Scarleth Romero, general coordinator of the National Front of Youth Movements in Resistance, said that the trans-university student movement MAU (Movimiento Amplio Universitario) opposed the reform as a central objective.

"MAU released a statement which clearly set out the cause of their struggle - to defend all levels of public education. We reject the possible privatisation of children's education through the Education Participation Law as much as we reject a reform that would privatise higher education.

"This affects us as college students because it indicates the government intends to do as it pleases regarding education. More directly, it is the necessary prelude to the subsequent privatisation of higher education," said Romero

Gerardo Torres said there had been a surge in the number of students joining his resistance movement following the protests and military incursions. He said there were about 30,000 to 35,000 students now involved in the movement within the capital alone.

"The military helped us build in one day a movement that we have been trying to build for many years."