Labor killings in Colombia become issue in U.S. trade deal

[Joanne98]

BOGOTÁ: Lucy Gómez still shudders when speaking of the killing of her brother, Leonidas, a union leader and bank employee who was beaten and stabbed here last month. His death was part of a recent surge in killings of union members in Colombia, with 17 already this year.

"I want those who did this to pay for their crime," said Gómez, 37, a seamstress, clutching a faded photograph of her brother, an employee of Citigroup's Colombian unit, who was 42. "But I feel in danger myself. This is not a country where one can express such a wish without fear of being eliminated like my brother."

Gómez's fear, and the dread felt by union members and their families throughout Colombia, has long been a feature of labor organizing during this country's four-decade internal war. More than 2,500 union members in Colombia have been killed since 1985, and fewer than 100 cases have a conviction, according to the National Labor School, a labor research group in Medellín.

Now these killings are emerging as a pressing issue in Washington as Democrats and Republicans battle over a trade deal with Colombia, the Bush administration's top ally in Latin America. The Colombian government is already struggling to recover from the latest salvo in the fight, a vote by U.S. House Democrats on Thursday to snub President George W. Bush and indefinitely delay voting on the deal.

Since President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002, there has been a marked decline in union killings, accompanying a broader decline in overall murders and kidnappings. Still, 400 union members have been killed since then, and dozens of his supporters in the Colombian Congress and his former intelligence chief are under investigation for ties to rightist paramilitary death squads, which are classified as terrorists by the United States and responsible for some of the union killings.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/13/america/bogota.php

[PerfectSage]

1. I wonder if those dead Colombians are bitter?

[Dr.Phool]

2. When Citi announces job cuts, they ain't kidding.

[ima_sinnic]

3. not one HRC "supporter" has responded to my question about whether this concerns them

apparently it does not--they are as unprincipled and without conscience as the lying, double-dealing candidate they stupidly think is so wonderful. Let's relive the Bush Sr 80s, when all of Central America was being slaughtered by clandestine, US-funded death squads--maybe Hillary could bankroll them with secret arms sales--I wouldn't put it past her. She has indicated she'll go after Chavez--as if he didn't represent the best thing that's happened to Venezuela in several generations. Her ties to Uribe, the mass murderer and torturer of union organizers, should be exposed every minute.

[FrenchieCat]

4. Well, HRC supporters don't comment on her support of Clusterbombs either......

so I'm not suprised that Death Squad violence wouldn't qualify either. Better that they make hay about Obama's Bitter statement. That's what they are good at; Molehill politics of distraction.

[Judi Lynn]

5. She needs to take some time out to do some serious thinking about her alignment against a Democratic

Latin American leader, and her strange blindness to American and Colombian union workers' interests.

The Democratic Party has ben associated with workers for ages. Colombia KILLS union workers. The American AFL-CIO condemns this, opposes the FTA because of it, expresses solidarity with Colombian workers.

She needs to get her priorities straightened.