Death threats an everyday reality in Colombia, unionists say

[Judi Lynn]

Death threats an everyday reality in Colombia, unionists say
26 November 2009

Trade unionists in Colombia have expressed their commitment to stand up for labour rights in the face of persistent threats to their lives, delegates attending a seminar in the country heard last week.

The transport workers from Colombia highlighted the “fear factor” as the main obstacle to union organising at a SASK-sponsored ITF seminar in Bogotá from 17 – 19 November. Many delegates outlined their own personal experiences of threats to their lives or those of their families. As a result, workers were reluctant to join a union, they reported. Figures from the Colombian ITF-affiliated transport union Sindicato National de los Trabajadores del Transporte (SNTT) indicate that 2,600 unionists have been assassinated in the past eight years; Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Colombia, one of the key trade union centres, reports 4,800 murders over the past 23 years.

Esteban Barboza, president of SNTT explained: “We know many workers organising unions in other countries face victimisation, imprisonment and sometimes death, but in Colombia death threats against many trade union leaders are a constant reality. I too have been threatened by the paramilitaries and was forced to spend five months in exile in Spain as a result of my trade union activities.”

In a bid to defend labour rights, the unions stressed the importance of working to amalgamate the many small unions into national unions or federations. This they believed would help to build union power to combat problems facing workers, including the impact of privatisation, behind which lay, in many instances, corruption and violence.

http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/3983?frmSessionLanguage=ENG

[Peace Patriot]

1. "In Colombia death threats against many trade union leaders are a constant reality."

“We know many workers organising unions in other countries face victimisation, imprisonment and sometimes death, but in Colombia death threats against many trade union leaders are a constant reality. I too have been threatened by the paramilitaries and was forced to spend five months in exile in Spain as a result of my trade union activities.”--Esteban Barboza, president of SNTT

And then some stranger shows up at the door of some poor worker or campesino, and starts asking nosey questions about the political views of the people who live there. "Do you approve of President Alvaro Uribe and the job he's done for Colombia?" "Oh, yes," says the poor man or woman, "I approve! I approve! I voted for him, too! Yes, yes! " He or she answers all the questions that way--gushing support for Uribe--and so do the people at the next shanty and the next and the next, as each one is visited and questioned, and quietly closes the door with the deep, relieved sigh of those who have just dodged another bullet. And the pollster reports to his boss--some guy in Washington DC--that Uribe (the go-to guy for the Medellin Cartel, later graduated to being the go-to guy for the Bush Cartel, now with 50 members of his government, including family members, under investigation, indicted or in jail, for their ties to rightwing paramilitary death squads and drug trafficking) is "wildly popular" in Colombia, and that gets trumpeted throughout the corpo-fascist media and quoted here by rightwing posters at DU, who don't seem to have a clue what democracy IS.

In Colombia, you can get your head shot off merely for expressing leftist political views, let alone organizing. And this is a country on which we lard $6 BILLION of U.S. taxpayer dollars in military aid. According to AI, the Colombian military and its rightwing death squads are responsible for 92% of the murders of union leaders in Colombia--about half and half, respectively. The military and its death squads routinely murder union leaders, people who criticize the government and corporate bosses, people who try to do something for the poor--human rights workers, religious advocates, environmental activists--journalists who tell the truth--small peasant farmers who are in the way of big corps, the military or big drug lords (the protected ones), 2 to 3 million of whom have been displaced, and others. Such murders are the unspoken but in fact OFFICIAL policy of the government. They are almost never prosecuted--in part because the prosecutors and judges are also threatened with death.

"In Colombia death threats against many trade union leaders are a constant reality." --Esteban Barboza

Mr. Barboza may die for saying that.

And this is the country that the U.S. considers its main friend and ally in South America!

This is an utterly despicable U.S. policy.