Brazil’s Responsibility in the Zelaya Case

Already a dangerous precedent has been set, not to say that it is being set, in the field of international relations because the government of Brazil has turned its Embassy in Honduras into an unlimited refuge – so to speak – for deposed President Manuel Zelaya. Now, after the presidential elections that no responsible person dares to say were not free, former President Zelaya has said in Tegucigalpa that he would stay indefinitely in the embassy until the Brazilian government determines something else. He has been there for seventy-nine days.

There have been political asylum cases that have lasted several years, such as that of Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre in the Colombian Embassy in Lima, Perú. But in that case, Haya de la Torre was officially protected by the right of political asylum and he did not turn the embassy into a political bulwark against the government of Peru. There is a fundamental difference between both cases, because Zelaya has no official refugee status which comes after the proper filing of documents. This procedure can be violated by the state granting asylum, something that the Peruvian dictatorship did in the Case of Haya de la Torre. But, at all times the personal security of the refugee was guaranteed while Colombia, in the light of American international law, demanded that Peru issue the necessary safe-conduct that it had requested for Haya de la Torre.

Zelaya says that he will remain there as long as the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva allows it. Thus, according to Zelaya the matter rests with the government of Brazil. Now, the new government of Honduras, the result of free elections, must have to claim what is due from Brazil. It should be mentioned that the government of Tegucigalpa has done this before without the Brazilian Embassy having responded in line with what is stipulated in the Convention on Political Asylum and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, both of them violated by Brazil.

It is unfortunate that such a generous institution as the right of political asylum be facing this crisis. And it should be expected that it is promptly solved in accordance with the spirit and the letter of the conventions ruling over the matter.