Colombia: Unionists under threat (Amnesty International)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Latin America Press

Thursday, July 26, 2007
Unionists under threat

Noticias Aliadas. Jul 26, 2007

Between 1991 and December 2006 2,245 union members have been killed in Colombia, and 138 have disappeared, according to a July 3 Amnesty International report. In more than 90 percent of the cases the authors of the murders have not even entered the legal system.

The report, titled “Killings, Arbitrary Detentions, and Death Threats: The Reality of Trade Unionism in Colombia,” says that paramilitaries backed by the army, as well as the security forces, are behind most of the killings.

Unionists “have been subjected to repeated death threats, killings or enforced disappearances by paramilitaries in recent years,” the report says, adding that a climate of almost complete impunity prohibits authorities from cracking down on the issue.

Workers in the health care, education, public services, agriculture, mining, energy and food industries are most at risk. Sixteen unionists have been killed so far this year.

“Trade unionists across Colombia are being sent a clear message: Don’t complain about your labor conditions or campaign to protect your rights because you will be silenced, at any cost,” said Susan Lee, Amnesty International’s Americas Program Director. “By failing to adequately protect trade unionists, the Colombian authorities are sending a message that abuses against them can continue, while companies operating in Colombia risk being held accountable for human rights abuses for which, through their conduct, they may bear responsibility.”



Read more: http://www.latinamericapress.org/article.asp?lanCode=1&artCode=5251

[Tom Joad]

1. I doubt that Hillary will have any trouble meeting with Uribe, though

he is tied to the death squads. But in fairness to Hillary, this will be typical of any US president.
They don't usually take human rights seriously, unless they can use it to advance the cause of the elite.

[MrPrax]

3. Are they worst?

Reagan-era Third Way corporatists usually contend there is no real problem in those countries that can't be solved by increased trade arrangements and prosperity!! As those countries modernize and technology spreads, things like free speech and military rule fall away through some magical process of western mimcry. All that happened of course is that the world's regimes have been able to use that same technology to furnish themselves with even MORE control and centralization.

It's usually conservative types that want trade initiatives tied to some performance clause which is usually moral based and generally unacceptable to most progressives...like tying aid to not distributing condoms or some shit.

Both twins of the same coin whose vision of humanity is tied to a machine forever; you can only pursue 'freedom' if you are privileged and can bribe your way off the global shop floor.

[Help me help Earth]

2. This is a serious issue,

the developing world needs it labor rights protected most of all, and its workers have the most to loose if they are not. It was the unions that did most of the work ending military rule in Brazil.

[Warren Stupidity]

4. Will our HugoNots come here to bemoan the real problems in

Colombia?

Rhetorical question. They could not care less.

[Help me help Earth]

5. I guess I don't have enough posts to recommend a thread,

but TTT!

[Omaha Steve]

6. When a story is over 24 hours old, nobody can recommend it

It was nothing personal. Welcome to the DU. :-) It is nice to see more stories about labor worldwide in LBN>

[High Plains]

7. Ah, c'mon, it's not that bad!

At least they're not ruled by a "fucking bastard asshole dictator."

[Judi Lynn]

8. That's RIGHT! In Colombia, you just call the "opposition" MARXISTS, and you KILL THEM.

After all, who needs pesky union workers getting the others all stirred up, agitating for conditions better than you would allow a hopeless slave? Why have human rights activists getting in the road? Hell, they're MARXISTS. Kill 'em.

Fortunately, there are so many poor young men it isn't always too hard to pay them to go kill their countrymen/women/children/infants/old people with chain saws, machetes, clubs, machine guns, and hang some of them on meat hooks while cutting them apart in front of their fellow potential "Marxists" to show them all the error of their potential ways.

Poll takers know this plan of action is the right one, as every time they call the ones who are well off enough to have their own phones, they always say they love their President!

Reporters report these polls to the rest of the world, as part of their wish to do a good job. Sure they do, or maybe they are actually TOO AFRAID to write anything remotely related to real events of any serious nature:

Colombia press silenced by self-censorship

Joshua Goodman
Bogota, Colombia, May 24, 2006 (AP) - It was the sort of scoop any ambitious journalist would jump on. But reporting it could have cost Jorge Quintero his life.

With the help of local officials, a bank manager in the small southwestern Colombian town of Florencia allegedly funneled $11 million in public funds into the foreign bank account of a convicted drug trafficker.

Despite sitting on a pile of incriminating documents, Quintero wrote nothing.

"I wanted to do something but I was afraid," said Quintero, correspondent in Florencia for Colombia's largest daily, El Tiempo. "You know in this town who to mess with and who not."

A year later, when Colombia's slow wheels of justice acted and the criminal ring was dismantled, the story was front-page news.

Journalists across Colombia share Quintero's dilemma. The biggest gag on the country's media often comes from journalists who fear for their lives, especially in far-flung provinces, where the government presence is weak.

Exposing outlaws _ be they drug traffickers, leftist rebels or right-wing militias _ risks assassination.

Over the past decade, 28 journalists have been killed in Colombia, making it the second-most dangerous country to report from after Iraq, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists. Most of the crimes against Colombian journalists, committed by all sides of the country's civil conflict, are never solved.

Only one journalist has been slain over the past two years, a decline President Alvaro Uribe has attributed to the success of his strong-handed security policies. Yet several journalists say there are fewer killings because their work has never been more muzzled.

A CPJ report last year entitled "Untold Stories" found more than 30 radio, TV and print journalists who acknowledged soft-pedaling or turning a blind eye to important news.
(snip/...)

http://www.quepasa.com/english/news/latinamerica/Colombia.self.sensorship/472905.html





What journalist wouldn't welcome the sight of this piece of shit showing up, with
THE BOYS to tell him/her how much he liked his/her article on death squads?

I am more comfortable saying "this P.O.S." now that I know he has been murdered,
himself, and on the orders, as it is claimed, of his own death squad leader brother!

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

Bogotá—On May 3, 2001, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) named Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos Castaño to its annual list of the ten worst enemies of the press. Six weeks later, a reporter from the Paris daily Le Monde caught up with Castaño in northern Colombia and asked how he felt about the distinction.

"I would like to assure you that I have always respected the freedom and subjectivity of the press," said the leader of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), Colombia's leading right-wing paramilitary organization. "But I have never accepted that journalism can become an arm at the service of one of the actors of the conflict. Over the course of its existence the AUC has executed two local journalists who were in fact guerrillas." He no longer remembered their names.

Since 1999, in fact, forces under Castaño's command have been linked to the murders of at least four journalists, the abduction and rape of one reporter, and threats against many others, according to CPJ research. "Against the violent backdrop of Colombia's escalating civil war, in which all sides have targeted journalists, Carlos Castaño stands out as a ruthless enemy of the press," CPJ's citation noted.

This self-confessed murderer of journalists is now turning to the local press in an effort to rehabilitate his image in Colombia. To that end, Castaño has launched a uniquely Colombian public relations campaign, seemingly modeled after tactics employed by legendary drug lord Pablo Escobar. Not unlike Escobar, Castaño's strategy combines a charm offensive with forthright acknowledgements of the AUC's use of terror.

While Escobar attacked journalists who favored his extradition to the United States to face drug trafficking charges, Castaño attacks any journalist whom he suspects of cooperating or even sympathizing with Colombia's left-wing rebels. This year, Castaño admitted that he had murdered journalists and tried to bomb a newspaper for its alleged communist sympathies. He has been implicated in many other attacks on the press in recent years.
(snip/...)

http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2001/Colombia_sep01/Colombia_sep01.html

[Judi Lynn]

9. Colombia´s paramilitaries halt confessions, plunging peace process into crisis

Colombia´s paramilitaries halt confessions, plunging peace process into crisis
Source: CCTV.com | 07-26-2007 16:40

Colombia's peace process with its far-right paramilitary has plunged into crisis after jailed militia warlords have halted confessions to prosecutors.

The paramilitary is fuming over a Supreme Court decision this month to reject the 2003 peace pact. And deprive those disarmed paramilitary's special benefits under the agreement.
(snip)

Uribe's attempts to salvage the process has enraged victims. Under the Justice and Peace Law which governs the peace process, the 70,000 victims who have come forward with reparation claims..are to be compensated directly by the demobilized militias. But officials say the warlords have surrendered only a sliver of their vast fortunes.

According to the National Commission of Reparations and Reconciliation, representatives of 200 victims have received death threats since the inception of the peace process and 15 have been murdered.
(snip/)

http://www.cctv.com/english/20070726/117480.shtml