MEDICC staff have spoken by telephone with Dr. Luther Castillo in Honduras. He asked us to thank all of you for defending the lives of Hondurans threatened by the coup. He is spending some hours most nights attending to wounded or to families housed in temporary shelters throughout Tegucigalpa. He moves around, doesn't sleep in one place. The streets after dark, he says, are "completely militarized".
 
He reports that the defacto government is attempting to stop demonstrations and continued strikes by teachers and others, selectively targeting their leaders using a growing "hit list" of names that include his own. He says the attacks are being carried out by the army or by "criminals-for-hire", reminiscent of the death squads of the 1980s. Three grassroots and labor leaders have been assassinated in the last few days alone.
 
Dr. Castillo has two main concerns:
 
ONE: the international press blackout on Honduras, with virtually all media either shut down or expelled. "We can't let silence win; we need your voices," he said.
 
TWO: the fate of the only Garifuna Hospital in Honduras, now without government support. Located in Ciriboya, the hospital is staffed by the group of young Garifuna doctors who founded it, working with volunteer Cuban physicians. Dr. Castillo reports they are down to their last supplies and medicines for 20,000 people living in the surrounding indigenous communities, settlements with nolights or running water.
 
"These are the poorest of the poor, the invisible poor. They are the real victims of the coup," Dr. Castillo told MEDICC.

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