Sir, – I commend Sorcha Pollak for trying to shed light on the Honduran land conflicts ("Death valley – the land war gripping Honduras", May 9th) but the situation she describes is not one that most local people recognise or is reported by the local media. Sadly, Dinant's plantations suffer frequent invasion by highly organised trespassers, many carrying illegal automatic weapons.
Dinant deeply regrets the tragic deaths of the five armed trespassers and 19 Dinant security guards that have occurred during invasions of our plantations. We immediately welcomed the attorney general’s decision in 2014 to undertake a special investigation into the Bajo Aguán, and we eagerly await the report.
In the meantime, we have taken significant steps to address past incidents. Any alleged mistakes by Dinant’s guards should be addressed by the public authorities and appropriate legal action taken as soon as possible.
We have given the police the names, addresses and weapons of all the security guards that were working when the incidents took place.
Dinant is doing all it can to try to ensure that tragic incidents do not happen again. We are fully implementing the voluntary principles on security and human rights that govern how we vet, recruit and train our security men and women, and how they engage with the community.
We have removed all firearms from guards at our plantations, extraction mills and factories. And we are introducing community grievance mechanisms to give local people simple and safe ways of making complaints against us.
Dinant remains committed to helping find a long-term solution to the land conflicts. But Sorcha Pollak’s article is based on anecdotes and politically motivated rumours that are causing considerable harm to Dinant’s 8,000 staff and their 22,000 dependents, thousands of local independent suppliers and the entire region of the Aguán, which needs all the help it can get. – Yours, etc,
ROGER PINEDA PINEL,
Corporate Relations Director,
Corporación Dinant,
Boulevard Suyapa,
Tegucigalpa,
Honduras.
Sorcha Pollak writes: I stand over my report from Honduras, which was based on first-hand accounts.