US Supreme Court Rejects Terror Claims Against Chiquita
Published on Monday, April 20, 2015
by Common Dreams
US Supreme Court Rejects Terror Claims Against Chiquita
Ruling 'allows U.S. corporation to finance terrorism without accountability,' says human rights group
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from relatives of thousands of victims of conflict in Colombia aiming to sue Chiquita Brand International.
In its decision, the court referred to a 2013 Supreme Court ruling which limited attempts by foreigners to use U.S. courts to seek retribution for human rights abuses abroad under the Alien Tort Statute (ATS).
"By declining to hear the case, the Supreme Court has created yet another obstacle in the path of victims seeking remedies for abusive corporate actions abroad, and allows a U.S. corporation to get away with financing terrorism without accountability to its victims in U.S. courts," said EarthRights International (ERI), an environmental and human rights legal nonprofit.
ERI continues:
From 1997-2004, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC), used Chiquita’s financial support to spread fear in the banana-growing region of Urabá, Colombia. The AUC tortured and killed thousands of villagers, labor leaders, and community organizers who were suspected of favoring leftist guerrillas or making trouble for the plantation owners.
More:
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/04/20/us-supreme-court-rejects-terror-claims-against-chiquita
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From the New York Times:
United Fruit Company
27 May 2010
Although Rockefeller is best remembered for his oil money and his political family – his grandson was Vice President, he had interests in other monopolies too, copper, tobacco and perhaps least recalled – bananas.
~ snip ~
The United Fruit Company had plantations in Columbia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Santo Dominica and most infamously Guatemala. A number of these states have had problematic relations with the USA ever since. At the height of its powers The United Fruit Company owned a staggering 42% of the entire country of Guatemala and paid not one cent in tax on any of it.
The company also owned the railways, the telephone system, the ports and a large fleet of ships build by some of the finest shipyards in the world.
Not unsurprisingly the people of Guatemala took against this foreign domination, and when offered the opportunity in an election in 1951 to voice an opinion – voted in their droves for Jacobo Arbenz. Arbenz had suggested the not overly revolutionary idea of buying out some of the lands that the Company was not actually using so that landless people might grow food to eat. It wasn’t even appropriation. Arbenz said he would pay them the agreed value The United Fruit Company stated on their own returns. Cute! I mean an American company would never ever undervalue its own assets for tax purposes now would it?
~ snip ~
John Foster Dulles and the firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, had been legal council for the UFC for decades and John Foster Dulles was also a major shareholder in UFC. And at the time John Foster Dulles was also the Secretary of State under President Dwight D Eisenhower. Dulles’s grandfather had also been Secretary’s of State in the time of President Ben Harrison.
Allen W Dulles the brother of John Foster Dulles was also a major shareholder of the company and whiled away his empty hours being the Director of the CIA.
More:
https://theoligarchkings.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/united-fruit-company/