Colombian unions fight back

[struggle4progress]

SINALTRAINAL, the Colombian Coca-Cola workers' union, and others will host an International Caravan to Save the Lives of Colombian Workers from June 21-25. Several international delegations have already pledged support for this crucial event, including one from the United States.

The caravan's purpose is to raise global awareness about the courageous women and men who put themselves in the line of fire by defending their jobs, their livelihoods and their unions. In the process, they are also defending human rights and working to build another Colombia where social justice, peace and solidarity prevail.

Workers have been threatened, kidnapped, disappeared, imprisoned, tortured and even assassinated by paramilitary death squads that do the dirty work for the Colombian government and its chief partners, Wall Street and Washington. The threats and violence extend to workers' families. No union leader or activist is immune.

Colombia is the deadliest country for union organizers. Nine out of every 10 union leaders murdered in the world die in Colombia. A recent report released by the International Labor Organization stated: "The workers of Colombia are among the most unprotected of the world as far as their union rights are concerned."
<snip>

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/WO0406/S00114.htm


Anybody want to place bets on whether the Bushistas are behind the Colombian death squads?

[LittleApple81]

1. Don't place any bets. They are. And there a lot of "contractors"

killing people and "protecting" the oil pipelines.

[HuckleB]

2. Kick.

[Judi Lynn]

3. God only knows how this article even got through the filter!

There has been so much going on in Colombia, and sometimes Americans have to find this out from Colombians who have come to the U.S., as we JUST DON'T GET THE NEWS OTHERWISE!

From your article:

The most common accusation against union leaders and other progressive activists, including peasants, Colombians of African descent and the Indigenous people, is aiding the guerrillas. That accusation has led to mass arrests in several regions of the country.

It has also caused the criminalization of protests--which are increasing in frequency and getting more massive, particularly those denouncing privatization and the Free Trade Area of the Americas. On May 18, during talks on the FTAA, demonstrations were called in several cities by a variety of organizations and unions.

Some 60,000 people marched in Bogotá and 20,000 came from different cities in the south to converge on Cartagena, the northern city where the talks were held. The peaceful march in Cartagena was attacked by police with rubber bullets and tear gas.

Colombia's people are under constant assault by the U.S.-backed Colombian military, paramilitaries and police. They show continued determination to struggle in the face of the almost unimaginable repression imposed by "Democratic Security," Uribe's plan to eliminate dissent.
(snip/...)

Thanks for posting this info. You may remember reading Uribe has mocked human rights groups which have tried to look into his country in the last year or so. It's obvious he knows too much public awareness could put him out of business.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(snip)
......Uribe is a self-confessed man of the right, linked to the landowning and cattle ranching elite, and to the emerging class that has been enriched by the profits of drug trafficking. He inherited enormous land holdings and horse ranches from his father Alberto Uribe Sierra, a personal friend of the Ochoa clan of well known drug barons, and himself subject to an extradition warrant to face charges of drug trafficking in the USA.

Alvaro Uribe has always enjoyed protection and promotion from the political and economic elite in his country. At 26 years old and barely out of university, he was named Mayor of Medellín, Colombia’s second city and epicentre of the golden age of Pablo Escobar and the Ochoa family. He was removed from this position after only three months by a central government embarrassed by his public ties to the drugs mafia. He was however posted to a less prominent but by no means less important role as Director of Civil Aviation, where he used his mandate for the construction of airports and airfields, and the issue of pilot’s licences to strengthen and consolidate Escobar’s drug running infrastructure.

Uribe was later elected Governor of the Department of Antioquia, where he became the fundamental defender of the paramilitary groups which he sought to institutionalise as “special private security and vigilance services – Convivir – to group the civilian population alongside the Armed Forces and contribute through armed communications networks”.

As governor, Uribe promoted military and paramilitary violence to such an extent that the well known Medellín lawyer and human rights defender Jesus Maria Valle Jaramillo protested that: “Through a misconceived conception of public order, we are exporting violence to previously peaceful departments such as Choco and along the coast. With the Convivir we are exporting violence throughout the whole country … and the Army and the Convivir share uniforms, share their camps and share the vehicles that they use …” Valle Jaramillo was murdered a few days later on 27 February 1998. When Uribe received a standing ovation at the Cattle Ranchers Association (one of the traditional funders of paramilitary groups) journalist Maria Teresa Herran wrote in the national daily El Espectador, “I didn’t know if he received this acclaim for his defence of the Convivir, or if it was because his Department was being bathed in blood”.

Uribe made a name for himself through the persecution and repression of workers and their organisations. In a statement in February 1996, the local civil service union declared: “It has become clear that all workers in the Department of Antioquia run these risks, that we are all in the gaze of violent groups only for preventing Uribe Velez from throwing us into the streets”.

Uribe’s obsession with violence, both institutional and para-institutional, caused a massive increase in human rights violations. His politics of terror, carried out by the security forces and paramilitary groups which enjoyed the total immunity that the state afforded them, was directly responsible for thousands of murders, disappearances, arbitrary detentions and forced displacements.
(snip/...)

http://www.searchlightmagazine.com/stories/072003_story04.htm

[denverbill]

4. Well, at least they aren't living under a leftist dictator like Chavez!

</sarcasm>

It's amazing that we never hear about the crap going on in Columbia.

[struggle4progress]

5. We keep shipping military aid, too.

[Say_What]

6. Colombia: 3rd largest recipient of US military aid behind Israel and Egypt

and has the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere. 2004 request is as follows:

(Estimated total for Colombia: $332.1 million military/police aid, $135.7 million economic/social aid; approximately $150 million in additional military/police aid is included in another bill, the Defense Department Appropriations Act)

http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/04forops.htm

[struggle4progress]

7. Important point! We're paying for the violence! Thanks for the link!

[Judi Lynn]

8. Harassment of Colombian church workers intensifies

04284
June 14, 2004

Harassment of Colombian church workers intensifies

Law student arrested less than a month after Mejia asks for PC(USA) help

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Less than one month after Colombian church official Milton Mejia
asked for U.S. accompaniment to help stave off harassment of church workers,
a young law student has been arrested who staffs a human rights office on the
Presbyterian Church in Colombia's (PCC) campus.

Military officers dressed in plain clothes arrested Maurico Avilez
Alvarez, 24,on June 10. He is currently jailed and is accused of
collaborating with the FARC, a guerrilla group, in a series of December
bombings in downtown Barranquilla that killed 74 people.

According to church officials, Avilez' arrest is part of a government
campaign to squash dissent by threatening civic leaders who oppose the
security measures imposed by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's
administration in its attempt to curb the violence that has ravaged Colombia
for 50 years, spawning left- and right-wing insurgencies.

The PCC says the charges are trumped up in order to stop Avilez'
human rights work, to scare his colleagues into silence and to end the
church's work with Colombia's displaced persons.

In recent speeches, Uribe has likened the work of union leaders,
human rights activists and non-governmental organizations to terrorism,
prompting the Colombian religious community to testify before the U.S.
Congress that its democratically elected government is jeopardizing the lives
of church workers.
(snip/...)

http://www.wfn.org/2004/06/msg00100.html