Honduran prosecutor's family attacked after he denounces military coup on CNN

The family of Honduran public prosecutor Jari Dixon Herrera were attacked by police on Tuesday shortly after he made statements to CNN en Español and other international media in Washington denouncing the recent military coup in Honduras. Dixon's mother’s house, located in the town of Talanga, was first shot at repeatedly by police agents with automatic weapons. The agents then broke the door of the house down and entered the residence, beat Dixon’s mother and arrested and took away his brother. Jari Dixon is currently in Washington, DC, as part of a delegation of Hondurans that has been meeting with members of Congress, representatives of the World Bank, the State Department and human rights organizations to discuss the rights abuses committed by the Honduran de facto authorities.

The attack against Jari Dixons family comes in the wake of the killing of two leaders of the United Democrat Party. On Saturday evening, hooded armed men stormed the house of Roger Bados of San Pedro Sula and shot and killed him in front of his family. That same night, Ramon Garcia was ambushed and killed in the street close to his home in Santa Barbara.

These violent acts, that have gone largely unreported in the US media, strongly resemble the selective repression that occurred under the previous military dictatorship in Honduras, when paramilitary death squads killed or kidnapped key dissidents to maintain a climate of terror in the population. Human rights activists in Honduras have been speaking out against this development under the new coup regime, which comes on the heels of two weeks of violent repression of peaceful demonstrations, the closure of radio and TV outlets and intimidation of journalists who have criticized the coup and hundreds of arbitrary arrests of nonviolent protesters.

Jari Dixon is lawyer with the Honduran Attorney Generals office, and is Vice President of the Association of Honduran Government Attorneys (Asocación de Fiscales de Honduras). In 2008 he coordinated a hunger strike by lawyers who work for the Attorney Generals office in protest of corruption in the legal system.

Dixon, together with the renowned environmentalist and anti-torture activist Dr. Juan Almendares and United Democrat Party congressman Marvin Ponce, traveled to Washington to demand the restoration of the rule of law in Honduras and the return of its constitutional president Manuel Zelaya.


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A delegation of anti-coup resistance leaders from Honduras is currently in Washington DC to work towards the unconditional reinstatement of President Zelaya.
Please forward the information about the public forum to your contacts in DC.

WHEN: Wednesday, July 15, 2009, 6:00pm
WHERE: Institute for Policy Studies, 16th St NW Washington, DC 20036.
For questions and to RSVP, please contact: natali@mateagroup.com