Thousands of Hondurans march with torches against the government

Tegucigalpa., Thousands of right-wing opposition members held a torchlight march in Honduras on Friday against the government of leftist Xiomara Castro for cancelling the extradition treaty with the United States that led to the imprisonment of around fifty drug traffickers.

The mass demonstration, called by the so-called “Citizen Army of Peace” against the termination of the bilateral agreement last week, reached the government headquarters in Tegucigalpa, without any incidents.

Castro announced on August 28 his decision to cancel the pact – in force since 1912 but applied since 2014 – alleging that it could serve to prepare a “coup d’état” in the Central American country.

Opposition National Party (PN, right) deputy Jorge Zelaya told reporters during the march that he joined the protesters “for democracy.”

Right-wing political movements accuse the ruling Liberty and Refoundation (Libre) party, coordinated by Castro’s husband, the former president Manuel Zelaya, who was ousted in 2009, of wanting to install a government in the style of Venezuela or Nicaragua by identifying itself as “democratic socialist.”

The opposition also claims that Castro terminated the extradition treaty with Washington to protect members of his government and his family.

Three days after the decision, a brother-in-law and a nephew of the president resigned: the secretary of Congress, deputy Carlos Zelaya, after admitting to the prosecutor’s office that he met with drug traffickers in 2013, as revealed by a video leaked by a specialized website on Tuesday, and her son, the Minister of Defense, José Manuel Zelaya.

“The Honduran people have been outraged by this narco-video, which clearly shows an alliance between the Liberty and Refoundation Party and drug trafficking,” said another PN leader, Kilvet Bertrand, during the demonstration.

“The alliance has existed since 2013,” said the leader, who was close to former President Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), extradited under the agreement with the United States and sentenced to 45 years in prison in New York in June.

In 2014, torchlight marches of up to 100,000 people took to the streets of Honduras to protest “corruption” under Hernandez’s government.