Vigil at U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa

Tegucigalpa, July 10, (RHC).- A group of U.S. citizens stood vigil in front of the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa on Thursday, calling upon their government to strongly condemn the military coup in Honduras. Earlier in the morning, the group had a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens.

The delegation of U.S. citizens is from the School of the Americas Watch - an organization pressing for the closing of the U.S. Army training school that teaches techniques in torture to soldiers from Latin America, including Honduras.

While applauding the fact that the Barack Obama administration initially used the term "coup" to define the overthrow of Honduras' democratically elected president Manuel Zelaya, recent statements from high-ranking State Department officials have backed away from describing it as such.

The delegation called on the U.S. government to: (1) join the international community and call for the unconditional return of President Manuel Zelaya to his rightful position as president; (2) withdraw the U.S. ambassador from Honduras; (3) suspend all U.S. aid that could be channeled towards supporting the de-facto regime of Roberto Micheletti; (4) withdraw all U.S. troops in the Soto Cano/Palmerola airbase and all other military bases - a total of more than 600 troops; and (5) close down the School of the Americas (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Ft. Benning, Georgia - from which military coup leaders in Honduras graduated.

The U.S. delegation currently in Honduras are: Rev. Roy Bourgeois, founder of the SOA Watch movement;Rev. Joseph Mulligan, S.J., Christian Base Communities, Managua Nicaragua; Dan Kovalik, Senior Counsel, United Steelworkers, AFL-CIO; Kent Spriggs, SOA Watch Counsel; and Lisa Sullivan, Latin America Coordinator, School of Americas Watch.