Colombia leads the world in union murders: report

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More trade union members are killed in Colombia each year than in the rest of the world combined, a U.S.-based global labor advocacy group said in a report to be released on Thursday.

The report by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center chronicles a number of obstacles faced by Colombian workers, including workplace discrimination, child labor and forced labor, and is being released just as the United States and Colombia prepare to finalize a free trade agreement.

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-06-15T005102Z_01_N14278938_RTRUKOC_0_US-COLOMBIA-UNIONS.xml&archived=False

It took reading Raging's post to jar my gray cells: suddenly I grasped your message! Better by God late than never!

looking forward to it.

Colombia is nowhere near as bad as people want it to be. it would be alot better without the FARC though.

...I understand you need a little win of your side every now and then not to get depressed.

Hey, don't be sad, there's always the good ol' US of A to console yourself. (Until this fall, at least)

a Democratic victory this fall will only make it better. but I don't lament being an American since 2000 either like so many here seem to.

I will be traveling to Argentina in November. went to Brazil last year. I do not select my travel destinations based on the politics of the president of the country. with the exception of Venezuela since Hugo the Clown has politicized the country so much. but I have been there several times before. I can also spell Colombia correctly.

I'd love to go to Cuba too as I am sure you would. however, YOU better head to Cuba quick. time is running out in paradise.

Go to freerepublic and see how many halfwits blather RW crap about Colombia while writing "Columbia".

People more well versed in world affairs (like Judy Lynn here) of course spell it correctly.

or Fox News or Rush. there is another mystery to me. why so many here on DU watch, worry, fume over conservative news and sites.

and yes, some people have been "learned" not to repeat the same mistakes over and over. I also tend to think that being well schooled in world affairs involves more than cutting and pasting from propaganda sites and selectively choosing articles that fit your point of view.

like two of a kind. Uribe has raged against Human Rights workers for years, really hating the people who have questioned the wild, unconstrained government and paramilitary violence there.

The people who want to see Colombia as a perpetual right-wing bastion in South America are going to fight like wildmen to keep the union workers beaten down, the human rights workers muffled, and voices raised against them in the States ridiculed and mocked. You remember when Paul Wellstone went to Colombia he was unexpectedly the victem of a thorough spraying from a crop duster which just happened to sweep over him in one visit, drenching him in pesticide, and, on another trip, a bomb was discovered by the roadside where his car was expected to stop only a short time later.

From the article:

Some of the problems occur in other countries, but the report concludes that the level of violence and assassination is unique to Colombia: about 4,000 union leaders, members and activists have been murdered in the country since the mid-1980s.

Most of the murders can be directly linked to the victim's participation in a labor dispute but are rarely investigated, it adds. For example, of the thousands of union-related murders committed between 1986 and 2002, police conducted only 376 criminal inquiries, and courts returned only five guilty verdicts.

"These deadly threats represent attempts by employers ... to stop dissent, silence workers and destroy the only mechanism that gives workers some control over their economic lives," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney writes in the forward to the report, titled "The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia."
(snip)

Historically, the United States has been Colombia's largest trading partner. The two nations recorded $14.3 billion in two-way trade in 2005, and Colombia was the second-largest U.S. agricultural market in Latin America.
(snip)

Thank you, NorthernSun. Great article. Welcome to D.U.

The extreme displacement of internal people is disenfranchising his opposition voters.

Columbia is one sick mess thanks to Herr Dictator(s):
http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/colombia.cfm

in fact, quite a bit better than most. I'll let you know when I am there next month.

another poster who can't even spell the country's name correctly.

The internally displaced populations are larger than most places
on earth outside zaire and chad. Internal displacement of
3 million people shifts the voter roles. I'll wager you'll not
be visiting those areas when you travel there.

Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay. I would bet Ecuador and Brazil on average too.

I went to Aipe when I was there last. going to coffee country this time. I bet you wouldn't go there.

failed states are uninteristing

not that you care since your knowledge of Colombia and latin america is limited to the bad news published in the press. Maybe you will come away with the capacity to spell it correctly though.

is happening, yet we have been forced to support the Colombian government as the third in line for U.S. financial assistance right behind Israel and Egypt. What a pity.

You're right. How are all these displaced people going to vote, if they even dared to try, when they actually have no official home any longer?

The article you provided is horrendous. It's unacceptible knowing we are actually contributing to the suffering of all these people proping up a pro-US right-wing, human rights-unfriendly, paramilitary-connected President in Colombia.

Didn't Israel just kill a bunch of Palestinians who were enjoying a day at the beach? Where is the outcry about that in this country?

republic here just like Columbia and Mexico so they could be assured that there would always be a have and have not society and no social mobility so they could sit like kings on top. These people disgust me.

It's spelled correctly in the OP's article. Why can't you people get it right?

and would be again if it ever threatned the order of things.

Unions are dying in this country. Why waste money and kill someone, when they can just send the job somewhere else?

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

because you're using an awfully broad brush there...or drinking some strong kool-aid.

"These deadly threats represent attempts by employers ... to stop dissent, silence workers and destroy the only mechanism that gives workers some control over their economic lives," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney writes in the forward to the report, titled "The Struggle for Worker Rights in Colombia

which directly implicates the Colombian paramilitaries.

Spend some time doing research. It'll clear up some of your confusion.

to the point you'll start doing some self-education on this more than mildly serious problem:

The United States and The War on Trade Unions in Colombia: A Call for Solidarity

By Jeremy Rayner


On the morning of December 5th, 1996, a band of armed men on motorcycles rode up to the gates of the Coca-Cola bottling plant in the small rural town of Carepa, Colombia. They waited for the plant's gatekeeper to open the door, shot him ten times, climbed back onto their motorcycles and rode off. The gatekeeper, lying dead at his post, was Isídro Segundo Gil, the union's chief negotiator. His assassins belonged to one of Colombia's ruthless far-right paramilitary organizations. The paramilitaries were determined to destroy the union, which had dared to ask for $400 a month in wages, health benefits, and greater job security. Later that day they attempted to kidnap another of the union's leaders, who barely escaped with his life, and then firebombed the unions' offices that night. But what sealed the union's fate was when the paramilitaries returned to the plant a week later, gathered the workers in the company cafeteria, and forced them to sign letters of resignation from the union. Any employees who did not sign the letters would be killed. According to Edgar Paéz, one of the workers at the plant, "the company never negotiated with the union after that…. All the workers had to quit the union to save their own lives, and the union was completely destroyed."1

Scenes like this are all too common in Colombia, where organizing a union is very likely to get you killed. The numbers are staggering: more than 3,800 union leaders and labor activists have been murdered in Colombia since the mid 1980's, and more than one hundred have been killed in the first six months of this year alone. In 2000, more trade unionists were killed in Colombia than were killed in the entire world in 1999.2 And the situation is quickly getting worse: in 2001, murders of trade unionists were up by 30%.3 Beyond the obvious human tragedy that lies behind these numbers, this campaign of terror has serious implications for social justice and worker rights in Colombia and beyond.

In the face of such violent repression, the fate of Colombia's trade union movement might very well depend on the solidarity offered by people here in the United States. Support from people in the US is crucial, for two reasons: in the first place, there is abundant evidence that US-based companies are deeply implicated in the attacks on trade unionists occurring in their Colombian operations. At the same time, until the Colombian military severs its links with the paramilitary groups that carry out 90% of attacks on Colombia's trade unionists, US military aid to that country is all too likely to wind up offering indirect support for the paramilitaries' ongoing campaign against worker rights.

Negotiation by Death Squad : US-Based Corporations and Paramilitaries in Colombia

There is mounting evidence that American companies are complicit in the persecution of trade unionists at their Colombian operations. In the case of the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, where Isídro Segundo Gil was murdered, the union Sinaltrainal argues that Coca-Cola knowingly stood by and allowed the plant's manager to bring in paramilitaries to destroy the union. The workers at the Carepa plant had been asking both Coca-Cola and its bottler, Bebidas y Alimentos, to intervene on their behalf for two months before Isídro Segundo Gil's murder. The plant manager, Ariosto Milan Mosquera had announced publicly that he had asked the paramilitaries to destroy the union. His declaration had been followed by a series of death threats from the paramilitaries, which had prompted the union to send letters to both Coca-Cola and Bebidas y Alimentos asking that they intervene to secure their workers' safety.4 And this was not the first time that threats against workers had been carried out. Just two years before, in 1994, the paramilitaries had killed two trade unionists at the same plant.5 It should have surprised no one when two and a half months after the union's plea for help, Isídro Segundo Gil was murdered and the union busted.
(snip/...)

http://henningcenter.berkeley.edu/gateway/colombia.html

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

This was written several years ago. There are so many other sources you should check. There is actually no doubt who's behind these killings and other union intimidation, and it surely isn't OTHER UNION PEOPLE. Wake up.

Plan Colombia - Cashing-In on the Drug War Failure
http://www.chomskytorrents.org/TorrentDetails.php?TorrentID=1254
http://www.plancolombia.org/
20 years of drug-wars in the Andes have actually increased cocaine imports to the U.S.
Could there be ulterior motives to a plan focused on beefing up the local military and spraying coca-fields in rebel-held parts of the country when coca is grown all around Colombia?
Featuring Noam Chomsky, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, U.S. Members of Congress John Conyers and Jim McGovern, and many others.

It's not a small detail.

:kick: :kick: :kick:

:kick:

Labour's top brass condemns UK military aid to Colombia

Will Woodward, chief political correspondent
Thursday June 15, 2006

British military aid to Colombia is condemned today in a letter to the Guardian signed by two-thirds of Labour's ruling body.
Twenty-two members of the party's national executive committee, and senior Labour figures including three former Foreign Office ministers, say the aid should be diverted into social and economic development.

Among the signatories are Dennis Skinner MP, Michael Cashman MEP, trade unionist Jack Dromey and ex-ministers John Battle, Tony Lloyd and Doug Henderson.

"Colombia is the most dangerous place to be a trade unionist in the world. In the last 15 years over 3,500 have been assassinated - virtually all murdered by the Colombian military or army-backed paramilitary death squads," the letter says.
(snip/...)

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,,1798224,00.html

(My emphasis, of course.)

Electoral fraud and killings organised by Colombia’s secret police

Colombia’s powerful secret police, DAS, is essentially at the service of paramilitaries and major narcotraffickers, according to testimony from former officials. DAS has drawn up hitlists of union members and leftist activists, plotted to destabilize Venezuela and kill President Hugo Chávez, and organised an electoral fraud to help Álvaro Uribe’s bid for Presidency and to carry to the Congress the candidates preferred by the paramilitary death squads.

The DAS scandals

If you’ve ever travelled to Colombia, then you’ve seen the DAS, the government’s Administrative Department for Security. As soon as you get off the plane, DAS employees are there to stamp your passport and, perhaps, to ask why you’re visiting.

The DAS does much more than stamp passports, though. It is a powerful agency, a sort of “secret police” institution founded in 1960. Its principal purpose is intelligence and counterintelligence, both domestic and international. However,
it is also a law enforcement body whose agents have judicial police powers – they investigate crimes and can arrest and interrogate people. The DAS also provides bodyguards and security services for high government officials and other people at risk.

To someone familiar with the U.S. government, the DAS is a strange beast. It incorporates aspects of the FBI, the CIA, and the ICE (immigration). Plus, it is not part of any cabinet ministry like Defense or Interior – it is a part of the Colombian president’s office.
(snip/...)

http://www.anncol.org/uk/site/doc.php?id=243

Unearthing Colombia's disappeared
By Daniel Bland
Originally published June 16, 2006

A map published this year by the Colombian newsmagazine Semana shows the location of 183 known massacre sites around the country. But the magnitude of the paramilitary slaughter in Colombia likely never will be fully documented.

Typically, paramilitary soldiers enter rural villages and round up townspeople they accuse of collaborating with leftist guerrillas. Some are tortured and killed and many others are taken away, never to be seen again.

Human rights groups estimate there are tens of thousands of disappearances in Colombia that can be linked to the country's 50-year-long conflict. A recent campaign by human rights and humanitarian organizations, however, and the creation of a national organization of victims of crimes against humanity have rekindled hope among family members that many of the disappeared will at last be located.

"People are beginning to come forward," says Wifredo Cañizares, director of a human rights center in Cucuta. "They've told us where there are more than 35 clandestine cemeteries, 19 of them in the countryside around La Gabarra."
(snip/...)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/oped/bal-op.colombia16jun16,0,6866650.story?coll=bal-oped-headlines

In Colombia, union membership is deadly
Proposed new trade agreement would only make matters worse.

By HAROLD MEYERSON, Special to The Washington Post

Published: Monday, Jun. 19, 2006

Over the past 15 years, the trade agreements that the United States has entered into with other nations have been, when it comes to ensuring the rights of workers in those nations, merely outrageous and inadequate.

Now the administration is about to send up to Capitol Hill a new accord that takes our trade agreements to a whole new level. The proposed agreement is with the government of Colombia, and it’s ridiculous.

Colombia, you see, has a bit of a workers’ rights problem. It’s not just that more union leaders, activists and members are killed in Colombia than in any other nation. It’s that, year in and year out, more unionists are killed in Colombia than in all other nations combined.

In 2004, according to the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which produces an annual tally of people killed because of their union activities, 145 unionists around the world were murdered. Of these, 99 were killed in Colombia.
(snip/...)

http://www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060619/OPINION/106190120

U.S./COLOMBIA:
Dead Unionists No Hurdle to Free Trade
Felipe Seligman and Juliana Lara Resende

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 16 (IPS)

~snip~
Although the Colombian government claims that it has successfully prosecuted 19 cases involving the murder of trade unionists since 1992, independent data indicate a prosecution rate of less than one percent.

As Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson put it on Wednesday, in an editorial calling the proposed trade agreement "ridiculous", "Kill a unionist in Colombia and you have about as much chance of doing time as you do of being hit by lightning."

Last year alone, 70 trade unionists were killed, while 260 received death threats, 56 were arbitrarily detained, seven survived attacks in which explosives or firearms were used, six were kidnapped, and three disappeared. In 2004, 99 trade unionists were murdered, mostly in connection with collective bargaining disputes or strikes.
(snip)

It then quotes Carlos Castaño, the notorious former head of the AUC paramilitary umbrella group: "We kill trade unionists because they interfere with people working.
(snip/...)

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33658



Carlos Castaño, paramilitary leader, mass murderer, and half-wit.

Colombia's 'Narco-Presidente'
By Jerry Meldon
June 1, 2006

~snip~
In the past few months, evidence has emerged to support some of those Venezuelan suspicions. Rafael Garcia, a cashiered official of Colombia’s federal police agency (DAS), alleged that the DAS plotted to assassinate Chavez.

Garcia, the former DAS chief of information systems, was accused of taking bribes to erase police files that incriminated right-wing paramilitary leaders. He then went public describing the Colombian plot to kill Chavez, as well as DAS help for narco-traffickers connected to a right-wing “death squad,” the United Self-Defense Forces, known as the AUC.

Garcia also alleged that the AUC murdered union activists and engineered voter fraud four years ago to help Uribe get elected.
(snip)

Furthermore, the crystallization of what had previously been a fragmented left-wing underground into an armed revolutionary guerilla movement, occurred in response, not prior, to U.S. intervention.
(snip)

“Trained terrorist counterrevolutionaries thus became assets of the Colombian security apparatus. They were also employed by U.S. corporations anxious to protect their workforces from unionization as well as in anti-union campaigns by Colombian suppliers to large U.S. corporations. Oil companies in particular have been part of the state-coordinated campaign against left-wing guerillas.”

According to more mainstream versions of how the “death squads” were born, rich landowners living in fear of kidnapping by leftist guerillas paid protection money to right-wing militias. By 1981, the right-wing militias had morphed into civilian-murdering squads operating alongside the Colombian army.
(snip/...)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/053106a.html