Definitive Report - Report No 211, November 1981

1. 60. The complaint is contained in a communication dated 24 June 1981 from the Latin American Federation of Farm Workers. The Government sent its observations in a letter dated 27 August 1981.
2. 61. Honduras has ratified both the Freedom of Association and Protection of the Right to Organise Convention, 1948 (No. 87), and the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining Convention, 1949 (No. 98).

A. The complainant's allegations

1. 62. The Latin American Federation of Farm Workers (FCL) alleges that massive arrests of peasant leaders have been carried out in the Department of Copán.

B. The Government's reply

1. 63. The Government states that after several peasants had been indicted on charges involving various offences committed against individual persons and the State, and after investigations had established reasonable evidence of their guilt; the respective courts sentenced the persons in question to imprisonment. The Government points out that the offences for which they were prosecuted were in no way related to their participation in trade union activities and it encloses the reports of the First and Second Superior Courts of Santa Rosa de Copán in which the names of the accused and their offences are recorded (usurpation, assault, damage to property, intimidation or arson).

C. The Committee's conclusions

1. 64. The Committee notes that according to the Government the imprisonment of the peasants whose names it provides was ordered by the judicial authorities after it was concluded that there was reasonable evidence that the accused had committed offences in common law, and that the charges were in no way related to the trade union, activities of the peasants, as can be seen from the relevant reports of the judicial authorities.
2. 65. The Committee notes that the complainant has not made use of the procedural right to present additional information and that it gave no information in its brief communication of 24 June 1981 as regards the names of the peasant leaders who had been arrested and the motives and circumstances of their arrest.