Colombia remains deadliest country for trade union leaders

Colombia remains deadliest country for trade union leaders

AFL-CIO Solidarity Center reports more than 4,000 trade unions murdered since the mid-1980s.

Washington (27 June 2006) - Colombia remains the deadliest place on earth for trade unionists, says a new report by the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center.

Entitled Justice for All- The Struggle for Workers Rights in Colombia, the report provides extensive background and updated information but sums up the situation in a single chilling passage:

"Since the mid-1980s, approximately 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia, more than 2,000 of them since 1991," the report says.

"More trade unionists are killed each year in Colombia than in the rest of the world combined. In October 2005, the ICFTU reported that Colombia was once again the 'deadliest country for trade unionists.'"

According to ENS (Escuela Nacional Sindical), 70 trade unionists were killed in 2005 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. Thirty-four trade unionists were murdered in 2004, mostly in connection with collective bargaining disputes or strikes.
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http://www.nupge.ca/news_2006/n27jn06b.htm

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http://awol.objector.org/graphics/kid+soldier.jpg

Favored nation status for China, even with it's human rights record. W wants to plant democracy around the globe, but doesn't give a damn about human rights.

Colombian Army Accused In Massacre of Drug Police
Prosecutor Alleges Soldiers Worked for Traffickers

By Joshua Goodman
Associated Press
Sunday, June 18, 2006; Page A17

JAMUNDI, Colombia -- About an hour before dusk, on a dirt road dotted with country homes near the western city of Cali, three trucks carrying an elite squad of anti-narcotics police pulled up to the gates of a psychiatric center for a planned raid.

Within minutes, all 10 officers in the U.S.-trained unit were dead. An informant who led the police squad to the scene promising they would find a large stash of cocaine was also found dead. When investigators removed his ski mask, they found a bullet hole in his head.

The alleged killers were no typical outlaws. They were a platoon of 28 soldiers who unleashed a barrage of some 150 bullets and seven grenades from roadside ditches and from behind bushes, according to a ballistics investigator.

"You could hear the police shouting they had families and begging the soldiers not to shoot," said Arcesio Morales, 56, a patient at the psychiatric center who hid in a ditch during the 30-minute fusillade.

In the hours after the May 22 ambush, the head of the Colombian army stood by his men, calling the massacre a tragic case of friendly fire, with the soldiers likely having mistaken the armed police for leftist rebels known to operate in the area.

But the nation's chief criminal investigator quickly produced a more chilling motive. "This was not a mistake, it was a crime -- a deliberate, criminal decision," Mario Iguaran, the prosecutor general, said on June 1. "The army was doing the bidding of drug traffickers."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700840.html