Honduras Lawyer Kenia Olivia Cardona subject to threats

Amnesty International has initiated a letter writing campaign for Kenia Olivia Cardona on 29 July 2010. She works as a lawyer in Honduras for the ‘Comité de Familiares Detenidos Desapericidos en Honduras’ (COFADEH). Since the coup in June 2009, the Honduran police violently oppress public protests, often in collaboration with national security agencies. COFADEH helps the victims of the violent government-sponsored oppression and fights for independent investigation of such events. For this reason, COFADEH’s employees are frequently threatened. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called upon the state of Honduras to take protective measures for a number of COFADEH employees, among whom Kenia.

On 21 July 2010, her car was broken open while she was investigating the status of several COFADEH-initiated human rights lawsuits at the Public Prosecutor’s office. When she found out her car had been broken into, she saw that documents in the car had been searched and her laptop was missing. Course material from a human rights course that she had been attending had also been taken. It was not the first time her car had been the target of vandalism.

Amnesty’s action is intended to draw the government’s attention to the threats that have been addressed at Kenia, and to demand additional protective measures. You can find Amnesty’s letter writing campaign here and more information about Kenia and COFADEH here (in Spanish).