Events In Honduras

[Magda Hassan]

Honduran Coup Regime Mocks UN Security Council with Embassy Attacks

Posted by Al Giordano - September 25, 2009 at 3:23 pm By Al Giordano

After today’s emergency session of the United Nations Security Council in New York, US Ambassador Susan Rice emerged to read a warning to the Honduras coup regime:

"We condemn acts of intimidation against the Brazilian embassy and call upon the de facto government of Honduras to cease harassing the Brazilian embassy.”

The wording is unequivocal. After investigating the claims (and the de facto regime’s denials) of constant technological and chemical attacks on the diplomatic seat in Tegucigalpa, and illegal impediment of ingress and egress to and from the embassy, where legitimate President Manuel Zelaya and at least 85 aides, supporters and some members of the news media are sheltered, the UN Security Council has concluded that said harassment i s real and it is ongoing.
If the coup regime believed that its use of chemical and sonic devices would render its attacks less visible, it has already lost that gamble.
Article 31 of The Vienna Convention on Consular Relations of 1963 is titled “Inviolability of the consular premises,” and states:

“Consular premises shall be inviolable to the extent provided in this article… The authorities of the receiving State shall not enter that part of the consular premises which is used exclusively for the purpose of the work of the consular post except with the consent of the head of the consular post or of his designee or of the head of the diplomatic mission of the sending State… the receiving State is under a special duty to take all appropriate steps to protect the consular premises against any intrusion or damage and to prevent any disturbance of the peace of the consular post or impairment of its dignity… The consular premises, their furnishings, the property of the consular post and its means of transport shall be immune from any form of requisition for purposes of national defence or public utility.”

Article 33 states: “The consular archives and documents shall be inviolable at all times and wherever they may be.”
Article 34, titled “Freedom of movement,” states: “the receiving State shall ensure freedom of movement and travel in its territory to all members of the consular post."
Article 35, titled “Freedom of communication,” states:

“The receiving State shall permit and protect freedom of communication on the part of the consular post for all official purposes. In communicating with the Government, the diplomatic missions and other consular posts, wherever situated, of the sending State, the consular post may employ all appropriate means, including diplomatic or consular couriers, diplomatic or consular bags and messages in code or cipher… The official correspondence of the consular post shall be inviolable. Official correspondence means all correspondence relating to the consular post and its functions… The consular bag shall be neither opened nor detained.”

In light of those international laws, the device you see in the photograph up top, deployed by Honduran coup regime security forces at the gates of the Brazilian Embassy, offers a smoking gun of proof that the regime is violating the Vienna Convention.
Narco News and its team of technical engineers and counter-surveillance consultants has identified the apparatus as the LRAD-X Remote Long Range Acoustic Device, manufactured by the American Technologies Corporation.
The instrument is an offensive weapon, used on US Navy warships and by other nations, which can emit sounds that, “Through the use of powerful voice commands and deterrent tones, large safety zones can be created while determining the intent and influencing the behavior of an intruder.”
The LRAD-X machine can shoot sounds of up to 151 decibels. According to the US National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders sounds less loud than those it produces can cause Noise Induced Hearing Loss (NIHL): “Sources of noise that can cause NIHL include motorcycles, firecrackers, and small firearms, all emitting sounds from 120 to 150 decibels. Long or repeated exposure to sounds at or above 85 decibels can cause hearing loss. The louder the sound, the shorter the time period before NIHL can occur.”
The front of the device looks like this:

And this is the back of the device:

In other words, the LRAD-X is the source of the high-pitched and pain-inducing sounds that have been fired both at those inside the Brazilian Embassy and turned around when anti-coup demonstrators have tried to come close to it. As such, it interferes with the Vienna protected inviolability of the Embassy and its free communications.
Under international law, this violation already serves as sufficient justification for intervention by UN Peacekeeping Forces of the multinational kind that the country of Brazil has led in Haiti.
But that’s not all: Narco News has received the following photos of a C-guard LP Cellular telephone jamming device designed for low power indoor use. The black out range can be set to cover an area of 5 to 80 meters. The device was found inside the premises of the Brazilian embassy yesterday. Here it is, front:

And back:

(On Monday a large multitude of people, including journalists, including some from pro-coup news agencies, were able to enter the Brazilian Embassy to welcome or interview President Zelaya. It is possible that the cell phone jamming device was placed inside the premises then.)
Sold by Netline under the product category of "Counter Terror Electronic Warfare," the device, the company boasts, "C-Guard LP cellphone jammers block all required cellular network standards simultaneously: GSM, CDMA, TDMA, UMTS (3G), Nextel, 2.4 GHz and more."
The deployment of a cell phone jamming device is in direct violation of the Vienna Convention articles above protecting the inviolability of embassy and consular communications. What’s more, sources inside the embassy that are in constant direct contact with Narco News testify that prior to locating and removing the device, cell phones of the President, his aides and others in the building were impeded by much interference.
Additionally, around noon today, President Zelaya called a press conference inside the embassy, during which a medical doctor testified that two of the people staying inside the embassy displayed symptoms of bleeding from the nose or the stomach, and that a larger number of them displayed symptoms of nausea, throat and sinus irritation and related problems that can be caused by neuro-toxic gases used in chemical warfare that are also prohibited by international treaties.
Zelaya said, calmly and deliberatively, that upon awaking at 7:30 a.m., he had felt an unfamiliar irritation, “first in the mouth, next in the throat, and later a small pain in the stomach. I drank water and milk. And I came out to find others feeling sick. Since then we’ve been trying to figure out where it is coming from.”
Understanding the dramatic nature of this kind of warfare and its capacity to generate panic, fear and anger, Zelaya urged members of the anti-coup civil resistance, “Please, do not attack the police. Maintain yourselves at a respectable distance. Don’t come near enough to be beaten. Protest your grievances peacefully.”
Displaying the cell phone jamming device, President Zelaya said, “This apparatus is installed to interfere and practically act against all telephones inside the Embassy. We practically have a sonic intervention that could also be affecting the health and nerves of people inside."

“They have also aimed frequencies of high intensity against the Embassy. This is also to affect our psychological state. Other machines are installed in the neighboring houses, where the owners have been kicked out and the military has occupied them.”

Hortensia “Pichu” Zelaya, also inside the embassy, sent out this photograph, below, taken earlier today of a device, partly covered by a green plastic bag, that security forces erected from one of the neighboring properties in clear view and air stream of the Brazilian embassy. “As soon as we discovered it,” she wrote, “they immediately took it down.”

Father Andrés Tamayo, also inside the embassy, told reporters at the press conference that he witnessed that device first hand. It is not yet known what exactly it is, or why it was accompanied by a plastic bag, or whether some kind of substance or chemical agent or gas was inside the bag and aimed at the Brazilian embassy.
These evidences and the eye-witness testimonies, including that of the doctor and the priest, demonstrate convincingly that while the Honduran coup regime issues emphatic denials of such attacks on the sovereign embassy of Brazil, it is clearly engaging in them nonetheless. The UN Security Council should not need any high tech apparatus of its own to be able to see and hear what is really going on at ground level, and respond accordingly to the coup regime's mockery of it.
Update 5:08 p.m. Tegucigalpa (7:08 p.m. ET): The coup regime held a "cadena nacional" (mandatory broadcast on all radio, TV and cable channels) this afternoon to deny having engaged in any chemical warfare and to say it would allow the international Red Cross and Dr. Andres Pavon, a human rights leader, into the embassy to check the health of those inside. A group of doctors, including Pavon, just emerged from the examinations and reported the following:
That the symptoms were definitely caused by some kind of "contaminant." Upon review of the photos of the unidentified device in the final photograph above, Pavon concludes that it is a humidifier and that the plastic bag contained some kind of liquid to put where water usually goes, and that it was the likely cause of the contamination of the embassy. It was not concluded whether the contaminant weapon was chemical or biological.
The doctors also confirmed, for Radio Globo, that UN officials had entered the Embassy with them to participate in the investigation.
The coup regime has just called a military curfew for most of the country's population from 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. tonight.
5:32 p.m.: We've just confirmed independently from a source inside the building that UN officials have entered the Brazilian embassy.