(PROBIDAD/IFEX) – Harassment of the Tegucigalpa-based Association for a Fairer Society (Asociación por una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ) have intensified. An on-line daily newspaper has published an anonymous paid article alleging that the organization has not been paying to the government social security system contributions it is obliged to make under the law for its […]
(PROBIDAD/IFEX) – Harassment of the Tegucigalpa-based Association for a Fairer Society (Asociación por una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ) have intensified. An on-line daily newspaper has published an anonymous paid article alleging that the organization has not been paying to the government social security system contributions it is obliged to make under the law for its employees.
The on-line publication “Hondudiario.com”, in the anonymous piece, which is presented as “journalistic information”, has indicated that “authorities of the Honduran Social Security Institute (Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social, IHSS) confirmed that they have begun a campaign to identify companies and non-governmental organizations which fail to pay contributions to the IHSS on behalf of their employees.”
They quote an alleged statement by the IHSS affiliations unit chief, Mercedes Midence, to the effect that there are over 600 companies in the country that do not contribute to the IHSS, including the ASJ, “that has not fulfilled its obligations for several years and may be punished for this failure.”
The piece goes on to allege “the NGO called ASJ, coordinated by journalist Dina Meza, promotes the interests of unorganized sectors, arguing that some companies violate human rights and fail to fulfill their obligations to their employees; however, they themselves do not fulfill their obligations to their employees, as the IHSS confirms,” says the piece.
The article, paid for by an anonymous client, is accompanied by photographs of journalists Rosa Morazán, Robert Marín García and Dina Meza, all of whom are ASJ members and who had, together with journalist Claudia Mendoza, begun a series of investigations about the way Delta Segurity and Setech private security companies have been operating.
The two companies, according to ASJ’s investigations, not only violated their employees’ labour rights but also have signed questionable contracts with the government to provide security services to six government institutions.
ASJ members showed to the Committee for Free Expression (Comité por la Libre Expresión, C-Libre) documentation on their monthly payments to the IHSS for over a decade, which calls into question the story in “Hondudiario.com”.
“This is part of a campaign against us, using false and twisted information, which some print media almost repeated, but we managed to stop it in time, after presenting the evidence proving it was false,” said ASJ projects coordinator Meza.
Morazán said that the photographs that appear in the paid internet article “were taken by Delta Segurity employees when they forced their way into our facilities over a week ago.” Morazán told C-Libre she was followed by the same photographers employed by Delta Segurity on 26 September when she was at a shopping centre with some friends, and that “when I identified them and commented on their presence to my friends, they played innocent and took off.”
The four other journalists working at ASJ who are in charge of research projects published in their monthly magazine, which can be read at http://www.revistazo.com , have also been threatened and under surveillance.
On 29 September the Committee of Relatives of the Detained and Disappeared of Honduras (Cofadeh) issued a public condemnation, distributed internationally and filed before international human rights bodies, concerning the harassment, threats and acts of intimidation to which ASJ staff are being subjected, as did the Paris-based international freedom of expression organization Reporters without borders (RSF), a week before.
BACKGROUND:
Delta Segurity is owned by businessman Elvin Richard Swasey; its headquarters are in La Ceiba, a city on the country’s Atlantic coast. ASJ and its journalists began an investigation over three months ago and found that the company, in order to continue obtaining contracts with the government, had created another similar company called Setech.
According to the journalists’ investigations, the same people who used to work at Delta Segurity, where they were paid without being provided the benefits stipulated under the law, were fired without compensation and then rehired by Setech, in violation of their legal rights. Aside from the labour rights violations, the journalists also found that there were irregularities in the procedures by which the companies obtained contracts to provide security services to the government.
There are over 100 private security firms operating in Honduras legally, and about the same number operating illegally. Recently, security ministry officials stated they were unable to monitor and control these companies.
This alert was prepared by PROBIDAD with information provided by C-Libre.
