Once again, Colombia has been declared the most dangerous
country in the world by the International Confederation
of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in its most recent annual
report of trade union rights world-wide. According to
the ICFTU report, out of a total of 115 trade unionists
killed across the world in 2005, 70 (including 15 women)
were murdered in Colombia alone. In other words, Colombia,
with a population of only 44 million people, accounted
for almost 61% of this world’s trade union killings.
And, incredibly, this was a good year for Colombia, given
that the numbers for 2004, 2003 and 2002 were 99, 91 and
184 trade union killings respectively. Despite this ‘progress’,
the ICFTU reports that other forms of harassment against
trade unionists rose 88.2% from the year before, as did
abductions of trade unionists (by 20%).
One trade unionist is assassinated once every few days
in Colombia, and well over 4000 trade union leaders have
been killed in the past twenty years. And, shockingly,
the trade unionists in Colombia most targeted for assassination
are teachers. As the U.S. State Department itself has
reported, these assassinations are largely being carried
out by paramilitary forces who obtain intelligence, weapons,
ammunition, logistical support and even troops from Colombia’s
regular armed forces – armed forces which, we note,
have received billions of dollars of assistance from the
U.S. since 2000. The State Department further relates
in its most recent human rights report that the collaboration
of the Colombian military with these paramilitary forces,
“often facilitated unlawful killings and sometimes
may have involved direct participation in paramilitary
atrocities.” In one of the more shocking episodes
in recent years, the 18th Brigade of the Colombian military
directly participated in the close-range assassination
of three trade union leaders in the oil-rich region of
Arauca in August of 2004.
In addition, it has recently come out that the Colombian
agency known as the DAS, which is tasked to protect trade
unionists under threat and which has received U.S.-AID
monies to do carry out this mission, has, for at least
the past 3 years, been maintaining hit lists of trade
union leaders for the paramilitaries to target and assassinate.
Meanwhile, as the U.S. State Department reports, only
a handful of the thousands of cases of trade union assassinations
have ever been successfully investigated and prosecuted,
meaning that there is almost total impunity in that country
for violence against trade unionists. The labor situation
in Colombia is so grave that the International Labor Organization
(ILO) just this year took the unprecedented step of agreeing
to set up a permanent mission in Colombia to try to promote
respect for basic labor rights, including the right to
life of those workers who dare to form a union and attempt
to bargain with an employer.
However, none of this
has stopped the U.S. from sending an unprecedented level
of support to the Colombian military – over $4 billion
since 2000 – making Colombia the third largest recipient
of U.S. military aid in the world. Moreover, in spite
of the appalling anti-union violence in Colombia, the
U.S. is poised to sign a new Free Trade Agreement with
Colombia – an agreement which would give preferential
treatment to that country, eliminating tariffs and other
barriers to goods and services exported from that country
to the U.S. In short, the U.S. appears willing to not
only sanction these horrible abuses against trade unionists,
but in fact to reward Colombia for the impunity with which
they are enacted.
This sanctioning of Colombia’s misdeeds appears
to protect and furthers US interests, both in terms of
the U.S.’s ability to freely exploit Colombia’s
natural resources - of which oil is the most important
– as well as the interests of U.S. companies doing
business in Colombia. Indeed, the U.S. State Department
demonstrated this in a Statement of Interest it filed
in an(ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to have a court
dismiss a human rights case against Occidental Petroleum
– a case stemming from Occidental’s participation
in the bombing of a small town called Santo Domingo which
resulted in the deaths of 17 civilians, including 7 children.
The State Department’s letter is largely dedicated
to explaining how the business and investments of Occidental,
and other like companies operating in Colombia, will be
adversely threatened if this lawsuit is allowed to go
forward in the U.S. The State Department urges that the
case be dismissed in the interest of these companies and
in the interest of the U.S.’s continued access to
oil in Colombia. Of course, the sinister implication of
this State Department position is that the business and
investments of multinationals doing business in Colombia
are not safe unless these multinationals are protected
from lawsuits for their egregious violations of human
rights. Note that the State Department does not deny Occidental’s
complicity in the deaths of innocents, it simply privileges
the interests of multinationals over them.
What our country needs is a sensible trade and foreign
policy which elevates the rights of workers and trade
unionists here and abroad above the ability of companies
to earn exorbitant profits at any cost. A good start to
such a policy shift would be a rejection of the Free Trade
Agreement with Colombia which is now being considered
by Congress and the end to the U.S.’s continued
support for Colombia’s repressive military.
Dan Kovalik is a labor and human rights attorney and
blogs at www.dankovalik.com
Editorial note: Union leaders and organizers of SINALTRAINAL
(National Union of Food Industry Workers) account for
a large number of those targeted in Colombia. Workers
at Coca-Cola bottling plants in particular (members of
SINALTRAINAL) have been subjected to horrifying levels
of violence and intimidation over the last few years,
including murders, kidnapping and torture. This goes far
beyond the average garden-variety ‘union-busting’.
In July 2001, the United Steelworkers of America and the
International Labor Rights Fund (www.laborrights.org)
filed a lawsuit on behalf of SINALTRAINAL, several of
its members and the estate of Isidro Gil, one of its murdered
officers. The lawsuit states that ‘Coca-Cola bottlers
“contracted with or otherwise directed paramilitary
security forces that utilize extreme violence and murdered,
tortured, unlawfully detained or otherwise silenced trade
union leaders,”’ and ‘notes that Colombian
troops connected with the paramilitaries have trained
at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas (SOA)
at Fort Benning, Ga., where trainees were encouraged to
torture and murder those who do “union organizing
and recruiting;” pass out “propaganda in favor
of workers;” and “sympathize with demonstrators
or strikes.” This was made public when the Pentagon
was forced to reveal the contents of training manuals
used at the school. (For more information, see www.soaw.org,
the website of SOA Watch.)’.
Read the Killer Coke website (http://www.killercoke.org/who.htm)
for details.