Colombians sue Chiquita over alleged paramilitary ties

Source: CNN/Reuters

updated 4 hours ago
Colombians sue Chiquita over alleged paramilitary ties

NEW YORK (Reuters) -- A group of Colombians sued top banana producer Chiquita Brands International on Thursday, alleging it supported paramilitary organizations in Colombia they said terrorized and killed their relatives.

The suit, filed in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, seeks class-action status and unspecified damages against Chiquita for "funding, arming, and otherwise supporting terrorist organizations in Colombia, in order to maintain its profitable control of Colombia's banana-growing regions."

Between the early 1990s and 1997, Chiquita funded and helped arm violent guerrilla groups, including the paramilitary organization Autodefensorias Unidas de Colombia, also known as the AUC, the suit said.

The unnamed Colombian plaintiffs, who include family members of trade unionists, banana workers and political organizers, said the AUC killed their relatives and thousands of others to control regions containing banana plantations.

Read more: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/07/19/colombia.banana.reut/

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Lawsuit: Chiquita Funded Terror Groups
By JEFFREY GOLD 07.19.07, 4:11 PM ET

NEWARK, N.J. - Relatives of people said to be murdered by paramilitary groups in Colombia on Thursday sued Chiquita Brands International Inc., accusing the banana company of funding terrorists.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Trenton and transferred to the Newark courthouse, seeks class-action status. It came four months after the Cincinnati-based Chiquita admitted it paid such groups $1.7 million in protection money over six years to protect its most profitable banana-growing operation.

The lawsuit was brought on behalf of at least six alleged victims by EarthRights International, a human rights group, and seeks unspecified monetary damages for the families. It was filed in New Jersey because the company is incorporated in the state, EarthRights legal director Marco Simons said.

It is at least the third such lawsuit since Chiquita entered into the plea agreement with U.S. officials.

The group said, "Chiquita's involvement violates not only Colombian law and U.S. law, but also international law prohibiting crimes against humanity, extrajudicial killing, torture, war crimes, and other abuses."

United Fruit Company, otherwise known as The Octopus, still mucking up things in the Banana Republics after all these years. Some things never change.

Chainsaws in Colombia
Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, July 20, 2007



A handout photo shows Colombian aboriginal activist Kimy Pernia Domico, who "disappeared" in 2001. What are euphemistically described as "human-rights violations" in Colombia are, in fact, kidnappings and murders-by-torture, Dan Gardner writes, and Canada needs to be wary of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe's connection to them.
Photograph by : Amnesty International

Dan Gardner, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, July 20, 2007

The victims were dragged into the town slaughterhouse. Amid chains and meat hooks, they were bound, suspended and interrogated. Where are the guerrillas? Are you a guerrilla? The men had machetes and chainsaws. Whatever the victims said, however they pleaded, they lost a hand. An arm. A leg. Finally, almost mercifully, they were decapitated.

When Stephen Harper flew to Bogota earlier this week, the news stories mentioned "human rights concerns." They didn't say much more than that, which is a pity because in Colombia "human rights concerns" are not vague abstractions. They involve men who torture and murder with chainsaws: A few have been caught and punished; some have walked away whistling; and many are still at it.

Mr. Harper acknowledged that all is not well in Colombia, but he defended his decision to launch free trade talks. "We are not going to say fix all your social, political and human rights problems and only then will we engage in trade relations with you," the prime minister said. "That's ridiculous." That sounds pretty reasonable. But things get a little murkier when you know that growing evidence suggests the president whose hand Mr. Harper shook leads a government with deep connections to men who torture and murder with chainsaws.

The timing of Mr. Harper's trip was strangely apt. Almost precisely 10 years earlier -- on July 15, 1997 -- paramilitary thugs entered a village in the southeastern jungles of Colombia. What followed was a four-day orgy of rape, torture and murder that came to be known as the Mapiripan massacre. It is believed that 49 people died, although only three, headless, bodies were found. All the others were dismembered in the slaughterhouse and the body parts dumped in the Guaviare River.

Colombian history is riddled with massacres. But two things set Mapiripan apart.
One was the use of chainsaws. After Mapiripan, it became the paramilitaries' signature.

More:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=f746a53a-adee-4953-9199-3e8f6a65f0d2

PM's visit to Colombia raises spectre of slain aboriginal
Assassinated protester testified in Parliament about effects of dam

Published: Monday, July 16, 2007

~snip~
Kimy Pernia Domico, a former leader of Colombia's Embera Katio Indians, left an indelible mark in Canada in 1999 when he testified in Parliament about the impact of a hydro-electric development in the forested river valley where his people live.
(snip)

Mr. Domico returned to Canada in 2001 to make his case at the "people's summit" outside the meeting of leaders at the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City. He repeated his pleas that year to Maria Minna, then-Canadian minister for international co-operation.

Less than two months later, Mr. Domico was kidnapped in the town of Tierralta, Colombia -- grabbed on the street and forced onto the back of a motorcycle by masked gunmen -- and never seen again.

His disappearance prompted public demonstrations in Canada and pleas by dozens of Canadian MPs for an investigation into his case.

In 2006, Salvatore Mancuso, the leader of one of Colombia's paramilitary groups, named Mr. Domico in a long list of people who had been killed by army-backed paramilitaries.

More:
http://www.canada.com/story.html?id=f88b799a-4441-4724-9c63-5d26dfcd21f6

On edit, adding photo of Kimy Pernia Domico: