It was only a couple of years ago some Colombians protested the murderous actions and history of the paramilitaries the Uribe government was loudly claiming had been successfully demobilized.
The organizers of the march started receiving threats then they were killed. Here's a petition sent to Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe begging for his intervention (as if there would be any chance):
LAWG and Others Denounce Wave of Threats and Attacks Following March 6th Victims' Demonstrations
Tuesday, 25 March 2008
S.E. Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidente de la República
Cra. 8 #7-26
Palacio de Nariño
Bogotá
Colombia
Dear President Uribe:
We write to express our deep concern about the recent wave of threats, attacks and killings of human rights defenders and trade unionists in connection with the March 6 demonstrations against state and paramilitary human rights violations. We urge you to publicly and immediately adopt effective measures to stop this violence.
Over the course of one week, between March 4 and March 11, four trade unionists, some of whom were reportedly associated with the March 6 demonstration, were killed. Members of human rights organizations have also been subject to a large number of physical attacks and harassment. Their offices have also been broken into and equipment and files have been stolen.
In recent weeks a large number of human rights organizations, including la Asociación MINGA, the Colombian Commission of Jurists, Reiniciar, CODHES, the Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), and Ruta Pacífica de Mujeres have received threats purportedly coming from the Black Eagles. One threat sent by email on March 11 specifically named twenty-eight human rights defenders. The threat, which was signed by the paramilitary group “Metropolitan Front of the Black Eagles in Bogotá,” accused the individuals of being guerrillas, referred explicitly to the March 6 demonstrations and stated that they would be killed promptly. The next day, another paramilitary email threat to various other groups announced a “total rearmament of paramilitary forces.” In addition to national human rights groups, the threats have targeted the international organization Peace Brigades International Colombia Project (PBI), the news magazine Semana, the Workers Central Union (CUT), indigenous organizations, and opposition politicians. A large number of additional recent instances of harassment, attacks and threats are currently being documented by national human rights groups.
http://www.lawg.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=219&Itemid=68fontcolor~~~~~Rightist Gangs Murdering Trade Unionists in Colombia
by Tom Burghardt / March 22nd, 2008
In the wake of recent mass demonstrations against state and paramilitary violence across Colombia, four trade union activists who helped coordinate the events were brutally murdered.
Convened by the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (MOVICE), the March 6 mobilization denounced the complicity of the Uribe regime with paramilitary gangsters, aided and abetted by the Bush administration’s on-going sponsorship of rightist atrocities through Plan Colombia.
According to the Center for International Policy, MOVICE organizer Iván Cepeda Castro reported in the Colombian weekly El Espectador, that the assassinated union leaders were:
* Carmen Cecilia Carvajal, teacher. Killed 4 March, in Ocaña, Norte de Santander.
* Leonidas Gómez Rozo, member of the bankworkers union, Unión Nacional de Empleados Bancarios (Uneb), president of the CITY-BANK Branco. Killed on 5 March, in Bogotá.
* Gildardo Gómez Alzate, teacher and activist of the Asociación de Institutores de Antioquia (Adida). Killed 7 March, in Medellín.
* Carlos Burbano, vice-president of the Hospitalworkers Union, Asociación Nacional de Trabajadores Hospitalarios. Killed 11 March, San Vicente del Caguán, Caquetá.
Castro went on to describe how,
Carlos Burbano…was disappeared on 9 March in San Vicente del Caguán. He had led the local March 6 demonstration. His corpse was found at the municipal rubbish dump with his face disfigured by acid.1
That these murders were preceded by provocative allegations denouncing the march by dodgy state figures is hardly surprising. José Obdulio Gaviria, an advisor to president Álvaro Uribe, impugned MOVICE when he declared on February 10 that the demonstrations were being “convened by the FARC,” a virtual death sentence for anyone publicly tarred with the “narcoguerrilla” brush. This, despite the fact that MOVICE leaders had “denounced parallel calls by armed groups” to participate, according to Castro.
Gaviria’s inflammatory pronouncement was echoed, as if on cue February 11, when the paramilitary Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), a fascist death squad with documented links to narcotrafficking, “affirmed that the march was instigated by the guerrillas.”
This was followed March 12, when a communiqué appeared on the Colombian Indymedia website from the shadowy far-right gang Aguilas Negras or Black Eagles. The anonymous author declared “all those entities, institutions, diplomatic representations and common people who receive this virtual communiqué are declared PHASE A MILITARY OBJECTIVES.”
In the context of contemporary Colombia society, such rhetoric is not taken lightly.
That these union leaders were “disappeared,” cruelly tortured and then assassinated by state-aligned paramilitaries is ironic, given that the U.S. State Department in its annual “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices — Colombia,” last week claimed there aren’t any new paramilitary groups in Colombia. That such mendacity passes muster in an official government report is indicative of the Bush regime’s panic at proverbial “facts on the ground.” As Latin America moves left, rejecting IMF/World Bank “privatization” (resource extraction) schemes, a corporatist façade of “democratic leaders” committed to “market reforms” and “the rule of law,” drive the North American ruling class and their proxies, to create their own hollow realities.
As analyst Garry Leech points out:
In reality, there is a wealth of evidence showing that there are dozens of new paramilitary groups waging a dirty war in Colombia. Numerous human rights groups have shown that new paramilitary groups operating under names such as the New Generation or the Black Eagles do indeed exist and that they are responsible for a significant percentage of the country’s political violence. In 2006, the Colombian NGO Indepaz reported that 43 new paramilitary groups totaling almost 4,000 fighters had been formed in 23 of the country’s 32 departments. Last year, the OAS estimated that there were 20 new paramilitary groups with 3,000 fighters operating in Colombia. According to Alirio Uribe, a leading Colombian human rights lawyer with the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective:
“There are forty-three new paramilitary groups but, according to the Ministry of Defense, these new paramilitary groups have nothing to do with the old ones. But the truth is, they are the same. Before they were the AUC, now they are called the New Generation AUC. They have the same collusion with the army and the police. It is a farce.”2
More:
http://dissidentvoice.org/2008/03/rightist-gangs-murdering-trade-unionists-in-colombia/ 
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