Palm oil company Dinant accused of land theft and murder of local activists
~ Rob Latchford ~
In the Aguán Valley in northern Honduras, heavily armed men linked to organised crime have been employing intimidation and violence towards farmers, who have recovered their ancestral lands from the palm oil industry. This month, peasant leaders José Luis Hernández Lobo and Suyapa Guillén were assassinated. January saw the murder of activist Arnulfo Díaz. On 24 December 2024, the Los Camarones cooperative was brutally evicted by armed groups. Since then, more than 160 families have been living in extremely precarious conditions, without access to land or resources.
The conflict has taken the lives of more than 150 small farmers since 2010. The Dinant corporation, a palm oil producer, has come centre stage as the main claimant of the peasants’ lands as its property. The company has been at the centre of controversy for more than a decade, accused of links to violence, murders and threats against peasant leaders and human rights defenders. International organisations, such as the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, have denounced these abuses. In February 2022 Honduran president Xiomara Castro promised to investigate and resolve the conflict through a tripartite commission, but no concrete action has been taken.
Palm oil monoculture has expanded across vast territories in Honduras, Guatemala and even Mexico, and is linked to massive deforestation, the destruction of vital ecosystems and soil degradation. In Honduras it covers 200k hectares, over 18% of the country’s total available farming land. The case of Honduras points to the complicity between corporations and paramilitaries in this expansion.
Buyers’ boycott
In a statement, a group of thirty three environmental and human rights organisations has demanded that multinational companies such as ADM, Cargill, Pepsico and Nestlé, refrain from doing business with Dinant. These transnationals are the main buyers of palm oil from Honduras and the rest of Latin America.
Dinant has used paramilitary and military forces to evict peasants who resist the expansion of plantations, using strategies ranging from “physical violence to the destruction of the livelihoods of families who have farmed the land for generations,” the statement said. There have been reports of “land theft, intimidation, targeted persecution and murder of members of peasant and social organisations, as well as the use of violence by security forces and irregular armed groups, which are suspected of having links with Dinant”, the European activists write in the letter.
Following pressure from these international organisations, the companies BASF and Bunge have already suspended their commercial relations with Dinant, while Nestlé has announced its intention to eliminate the supplier from its supply chains.
Photo: Santiago Navarro F
