Rampant violence against workers in Colombia, says AFL-CIO (Canada-Colombia-Peru Free Trade )

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NUPGE

Outrageous that Harper Conservatives
would consider signing a free trade
deal with such a country. - James Clancy

Ottawa (20 Jan. 2008) - As the Harper government proceeds with negotiating a Canada-Colombia-Peru Free Trade Agreement a new report from the United States indicates that little progress has been made in addressing human rights violations in the South American country.

The report produced by the AFL-CIO is called Workers' Rights, Violence and Impunity in Colombia. It presents a relatively complete picture of labour rights and labor relations in Colombia in 2007. Most of this information has been missing from that presented to the public by the Harper Conservatives in Canada and by the govenrment of Colombia.

"While the number of deaths of trade unionists is declining the report clearly demonstrates that violence against Colombian workers is rampant and that the Uribe government is doing little to address the situation," says James Clancy, president of the National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE).

FULL story at link.





Read more: http://www.nupge.ca/news_2008/n20ja08a.htm

[papau]

1. Why the heck was Colombia included with Peru - Peru barely makes the cut and that's based on their

promise to begin enforcing their labor laws (plus a few new labor laws). I know of nothing that Colombia has done to even think of taking them off the shit list.

[flashl]

2. Can't be ...

In US: Testimony in Drummond Coal lawsuit on murders of Colombian union leaders 'our' courts ruled in favor of Drummond.
:sarcasm:

[thunder rising]

3. What good is a Free Trade agreement if those little MF's have human rights

The whole idea is that they supply the bodies and money and we kill them and take the money

[Peace Patriot]

4. The Uribe gov't is "doing little"? Hell, the Uribe gov't IS COMMITTING 92% of

the violence (torture, death) against union organizers.

AI Report: "...cases in which clear evidence of responsibility is available indicates that in 2005 around 49 per cent of human rights abuses against trade unionists were committed by paramilitaries and some 43 per cent directly by the security forces. Just over 2 per cent were attributable to guerrilla forces (primarily the FARC and ELN) and just over 4 per cent to criminally-motivated actions." --Amnesty International Report, 7/3/07 (AI Index: AMR 23/001/2007)

http://www.amnesty.org/en/alfresco_asset/26e626d7-a2c0-11dc-8d74-6f45f39984e5/amr230012007en.html

Colombia security forces = 43%

Paramilitaries (very close ties to the Uribe gov't) = 49%

Total: 92%.

Over the last two years, the very close ties between the rightwing paramilitaries in Colombia, and the Uribe government and its military, have been exposed by courageous prosecutors, judges and others. By close, I mean the head of the Colombian military, the former head of Colombian intelligence, and many Uribe office holders including relatives, have been tied to rightwing death squads, heinous murders (such as chainsawing union leaders and throwing their body parts into mass graves) and drug trafficking. It is absurd to think that they are going to punish themselves, or stop the violence, which is also inflicted on small peasant farmers, community organizers, human rights workers, journalists, political leftists and all manner of innocent bystanders who are merely asserting their human and civil rights. So long as the Bush Junta continues to prop up this fascist government with billions of our tax dollars--in one of the biggest, mostly military, aid packages on earth--the violence will continue. The Bushites prefer a violent, chaotic atmosphere. We have seen this time and again. It enhances war profiteering, creates fear, curtails democracy, reasonable discussion and good government, and provides opportunities for massive looting of resources and expansion of conflicts into new resource zones. They have tried to expand the Iraq War into Iran, but apparently have been stopped by China and Russia. Now they are trying to expand their phony, corrupt "war on drugs" and Colombia's civil war (with armed leftist guerrillas-FARC) into the neighboring Andes democracies (Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador), where most of the oil is.

You can't whiff the psyops, disinformation, dirty tricks and black ops, coming out of the Bush Junta, against Venezuela in particular (the strongest of the Bolivarian countries, and the most defiant of the Bushites), and not see Oil War II: South America, on its way. Colombia is to be the launching pad.

See Donald Rumsfeld's op-ed in the WaPo of 12/1/07:
"The Smart Way to Beat Tyrants Like Chávez," by Donald Rumsfeld, 12/1/07
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/30/AR2007113001800.html

And see these threads today:

(The latest Bushite bullshit a la Chavez--that Chavez is a cocaine trafficker!)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3148266

(Subtler bullshit from the Houston Chron - those FARC terrorists love Chavez, see para 11, and my comments)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x3148221

My prediction: The context of the November election may well be U.S. military intervention, in support of fascist coups, in South America, possibly starting with Bolivia. They are working on it, believe me. There is far more at issue here than Colombia's outrageous violence against union organizers, and the Bushites' wish to reward them for that with some "free trade" booty. The Bushite's "swan song" will likely be yet another horrendous, violent mess, this time in South America, that leaves the next president with no good choices. Their purpose is chaos, because that loosens the reins of good government, and democratic control over global corporate predators. They have actively tried to create chaos in Venezuela (starting with the Bush-supported violent military coup attempt in 2002), and keep trying, but failing. Their latest project is Bolivia, where the first indigenous president of Bolivia, Evo Morales--a socialist and ally of Chavez--is beset by rich rural landowners who want to split the oil/gas rich rural provinces off from the central government, to deny any benefit from those resources to Bolivia's vast, displaced, rural peasant population in the cities, and in order to sell off the country's resources to U.S. and other first world corporations. We can be sure that Bushite money (that is, our money) is at work in Bolivia. Colombia's military, paramilitaries, and U.S. military/DEA, forces have also been stirring up trouble on the Colombia/Venezuelan border.

And even though Bushites have caches of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars stolen from us in Iraq, and Colombian and U.S. forces (including Blackwater mercenaries), with which to conduct a private war, there is some urgency to get certain things in motion while Bush is still in office, and also due to pending actions, such as Ecuador throwing the U.S. military base out of the country this year. They want to lard MORE military aid on Colombia, to build permanent bases and other war infrastructure.

And they are horrified at the prospect of Hugo Chavez negotiating peace in Colombia's civil war, starting with his recent successful hostage negotiation with FARC, because that will, a) reduce the justification for pouring war materials into Colombia; b) likely put some portion of Colombia's oil out of reach of Occidental Petroleum (in FARC territory), as well as lands Chiquita, Monsanto and others want for environmentally unsound biofuel production; c) interfere with major drug trafficking (by the big drug lords that Uribe/Bush are protecting, and drugs/weapons trafficking by rightwing forces), and d) will make Chavez and his Bolivarian revolution even more popular in South America than they already are (very popular).

So they've got to do some major disaster-creation work soon, with their "unitary executive" still in place, and before things get too peaceful and positive in the Andes region.

[Judi Lynn]

5. The connections with drugs has only been the appearance, while actually destroying all political

opposition has been the goal, from the very first, just as it has been throughout all the Americas, while U.S. right-wing pResidents worked to destabilize, overthrow, and destroy leftist leaders and replace them with fascists.

Only in the age of more rapid communication have the people of the Americas finally been able to start seeing the larger picture, see all the patterns resemble each other, and that there is actually something moving behind the scenes beyond their own politicians. That's why, when Hugo Chavez was kidnapped at gunpoint in the last coup, people in the streets were filmed shouting it was the C.I.A.!

This may be useful, even though it's several years old. It's easy to see the same patterns are working today:

War on terrorism bonanza
Uribe is just the latest corrupt and repressive Colombian leader to receive US support since the 1960s. With an uncooperative popular government in oil-rich Venezuela and a voracious need to control oil resources for its profligate world-polluting economy, the US government has destined $98 million to help protect a Colombian oil pipeline. A total of US$1.5 billion in military aid has been scheduled for the period 2002-2004. Colombia is the third-largest recipient of U.S. military aid after Israel and Egypt.

In Colombia, poverty indicators are among the worst in Latin America. One per cent of the elite owns 55% of the land. 15.7 million of Colombia's 44 million inhabitants are children, 39% of them in poverty. The latest figures from UNICEF conclude that 67% of the total population live below the poverty line (80% in rural areas). 11 million people live in extreme poverty, unable even to feed themselves properly.

While the country goes hungry, President Uribe plays the "war on terrorism" card, tricking billions of dollars of aid from United States taxpayers to attack his domestic opponents. Similarly, as part of the equally bogus "war on drugs" the US has waged widespread chemical and biological warfare against hapless rural populations - to no avail. Drug production in Colombia has actually increased.(5) Here, as in Iraq, oil industry insiders like Vice-President Dick Cheney, President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice unscrupulously use US military muscle and aid to promote private business interests. Drugs and terrorism are convenient pretexts.

Leading US politicians are aware of the manipulation. In March 2002, US Representative Ron Paul member of the House International Relations Committee and the Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere spoke against a bill authorizing expansion of US intervention in Colombia, "I was only made aware of the existence of this legislation this morning, just a couple of hours before I was expected to vote on it. There was no committee markup of the legislation, nor was there any notice that this legislation would appear on today's suspension calendar.....This legislation represents a very serious and significant shift in United States policy toward Colombia. It sets us on a slippery slope toward unwise military intervention in a foreign civil war that has nothing to do with the United States."

More:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=4154