The Hill: Colombian Military Murders More and More Unionists

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.thehill.com/2008/03/26/colombian-military-murders-more-and-more-unionists/

March 26th, 2008

On March 22, 2008, Adolfo Gonzalez Montes, a Colombian coal miner and leader of the union SINTRACARBON, was assassinated in his home, leaving behind his wife and children. Adolfo Gonzalez Montes was the 13th unionist murdered in Colombia this year, putting Colombia on course to far exceed its rate of 40 trade unionists killed last year.

Since 1991, around 2,300 union leaders have been killed in Colombia — a country which continues to lead the world in the murder of trade unionists. It must be noted that 433 of these unionists have been killed since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. Some of these, moreover, have been killed by the Colombian military itself. And, all were put at risk by the Uribe Administration, which continues to wrongly stigmatize trade unionists as “guerillas” and “terrorists.”

As the LA Times recently reported, the Colombian military’s share of extra-judicial killings has been on a steady increase recently, with the military responsible for the killing of 287 civilians last year alone — a 10% increase over the previous year. In total, the Colombian military has been responsible for over 955 extra-judicial killings since Alvaro Uribe was elected president in 2002.

The LA Times article also notes that this rise in extra-judicial killings has been accompanied by an increase in the phenomenon known as “‘false positives,’ in which the armed forces … kill civilians … and brand them as leftist guerrillas.” The LA Times further explains: “A macabre facet of a general increase in ‘extrajudicial killings’ by the military, ‘false positives’ are a result of intense pressure to show progress in Colombia’s U.S.-funded war against leftist insurgents . . . .”

An example of the phenomenon of “false positives” is the murder of three union leaders in the oil-rich region of Arauca by the 18th Brigade of the Colombian Armed Forces. As Colombia’s own Attorney General as well as a well-respected judge of Colombia’s Constitutional Court concluded, these unionists were killed by the Army in cold blood. They further concluded that the Army, after the fact, planted guns in their hands to make it look like they were guerillas killed in a gun battle.

When I recently met with President Alvaro Uribe as part of an AFL-CIO fact-finding mission to Colombia, and stated concern about this and like instances, Uribe expressed his continued belief — a belief held in contradiction of the findings of his own Attorney General and Constitutional Court — that these unionists had been guerillas. Not surprisingly, the judge who made findings belying this belief, and who handed out long sentences to the Army personnel responsible for the union killings, was inexplicably let go by the Colombian government under circumstances being questioned by U.S. Congressman George Miller.

FULL story at link.