© REUTERS/Edgard Garrido
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| Public prosecutors (L-R) Jary Dixon, Victor Fernandez and Luis Santos remain here on the 24th day of their hunger strike outside the National Congress in Tegucigalpa April 30, 2008. The lawyers are protesting against corruption which they say is in the judiciary and political systems of Honduras. |
The prosecutors demand the dismissal of the attorney general and his deputy, for failure to investigate cases of corruption. The indefinite hunger strike began April 7 in protest of a decision by the General Attorney Leonidas Rosa Bautista of firing or transferring or arbitrarily rotating attorneys prepared to try officials involved in 16 cases.
DanChurchAid's (DCA) programme officer in Honduras Guido Eguigure explains that the hunger strike comes at a time when the Honduran parlament (the National Congress) has to elect a new attorney general and judges of the Supreme Court.
| The hunger strike |
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| Download: View public prosecutors on hunger trike on Youtube Honduras looses every year 894 million dollars because of corruption. Read more (in Spanish): Revistazo.Com |
"It’s the common opinion that both the General Attorney and the judges of the Supreme Court are seeking another term and that they therefore have to “please” the political system, “says Guido Eguigure, who has written the actual report “Notes for understanding the Hunger Strike of the Public Prosecutor in Honduras”.
The prosecutors on hunger strike demand that Attorney General Leónidas Rosa of the opposition National Party (PN), and his deputy Omar Cerna of the Partido Liberal (PL), be removed from office. Rosa and Cerna are accused of administrative negligence for stalling investigations into alleged acts of corruption for years.
The participants of the protest, headed by the President of the Association of Attorneys of Honduras, Victor Fernandez, demanded immediate presentation of the legal demands in 16 cases of corruption that have been shelved.
Implicated in the cases of corruption are important figures in the political and business world, linked to the PL and the PN, the two parties that have ruled Honduras for decades under a basically bipartisan political system.
Civil society organizations in Honduras; NGO’s, federations and labour unions are supporting the hunger strike that has not yet been lifted in spite of 10 days of negotiations.
Linda Nordahl Jakobsen, lin@dca.dk