In the last hours, FENAPES issued a statement on the situation of a group of teachers from the Liceo 1 de San José, who were briefed on February 25, with removal from office and withholding of 50% of their assets to be taken. a photograph in the institution with banners against the reform “Living without fear.”
As a result of the events, the Secondary Teachers’ Union said that “in an unprecedented event since the return to democracy in our country, on February 25, 2021, a group of teachers and officials from Liceo 1 de San José were notified by the General Directorate of Secondary Education (DGES) of the instruction of a summary, with separation from the position and retention of 50% of their assets. It was initiated by alleged acts of proselytism, thereby violating human rights enshrined by national and international standards of the highest rank, especially freedom of association and civil liberties of opinion and expression of thought.
FENAPES assures that the summary has been developed with those involved “outside of their work environments and with an action of the General Directorate of Secondary School aligned to partisan political definitions, which rejected an appeal for revocation of said summary without even analyzing the substantive aspects ”.
They also denounce an action “doubtful and at odds with the guarantees of due process by a part of those who are in charge of the instruction of the disciplinary process.”
The teachers union recalls that on September 10, “two of the teachers summarized were notified of a report from the Legal Division recommending to the General Directorate of Secondary Education the dismissal of both teachers for violating article 58 of the Constitution of the Republic , proselytizing, misrepresenting in their conclusions statements of witnesses that show the opposite ”.
Rejection
In this sense, FENAPES expressed its “most absolute rejection of a process of union political persecution, which, disguised under a cloak of supposed legal guarantees, goes back to practices that the country suffered before and during the fascist dictatorship in public education.” The union assures that these are practices that were already believed to be “banished, but that unfortunately the events of this present evidence a return of said practices, as well as the existence of remnants that are in common with them.”
“The actions contrary to the law by the Secondary Directorate, especially its actions contrary to the recognition and guarantee for the full exercise of fundamental rights, and a management with opacity and little adherence to the guarantees of due process by some of the those who have the responsibility of instructing the disciplinary procedure, constitute a deterioration of the democratic and republican institutional framework, which the ANEP CODICEN has the responsibility and obligation to correct, particularly with concrete actions that stop this process of union political persecution “, indicates the guild.
Complaints
FENAPES assures that the defense of workers against a process of “union political persecution is a national cause of the union movement as a whole, as well as continental and global.”
In this sense, it states that they will promote the complaints and pertinent actions as far as international scope is necessary, if there are no resolutions that put an end to these events, “especially before the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR ) “.
