Dying for a Living: As Global Economic Crisis Continues,Union Activists in Many Countries Pay the Ul

[Judi Lynn]

Julie B. GutmanExecutive Director, Program for Torture Victims
Posted: September 5, 2010 11:48 AM
Dying for a Living: As Global Economic Crisis Continues, Union Activists in Many Countries Pay the Ultimate Price

On June 19, Ibio Efrén Caicedo, a teacher and trade union activist in Colombia, was murdered. He was the seventh unionized teacher killed this year in that country's Antioquia region.

Caicedo's murder was hardly an anomaly. More than 100 union activists were killed in 2009, according to a report released this summer by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). This represents a 30 percent rise over 2008, and reflects an increasingly aggressive stance toward labor organizing in a global economy still reeling from the collapse of financial markets two years ago.

As Americans mark Labor Day amidst a seemingly endless economic downturn, our national focus is understandably on the hard times faced by workers in this country. But as the preeminent world power, our moral obligations do not end at our borders.

Sadly, the U.S. too often turns a blind eye to the harassment, torture and killing of union activists, sending the wrong message to allies and opponents alike.

The ominous uptick in violence against union activists underscores the often overlooked relationship between human rights and workers rights. The right to collective bargaining is enshrined in numerous international covenants, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While human rights and workers rights are not always synonymous, it is no coincidence that some of the nations with the most egregious record of human rights violations are also guilty of mercilessly persecuting labor activists.

A case in point is Colombia. Nearly half of the union activists murdered in 2009 lost their lives in this country, which has long been singled out by human rights organizations for its rampant kidnappings, beatings, torture and killings. Though much of the public attention has rightfully focused on the torture and murder of union activists at Coca-Cola plants in Columbia, labor leaders representing everyone from teachers to oil workers have also been targeted in the world's most dangerous place to be a union supporter.

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julie-b-gutman/dying-for-a-living-as-glo_b_706149.html

[Peace Patriot]

1. The U.S. is "...sending the wrong message..."?

"Sadly, the U.S. too often turns a blind eye to the harassment, torture and killing of union activists, sending the wrong message to allies and opponents alike." --from the OP

---

Look, money talks. The U.S. lards the Colombian military with $7 BILLION in military aid, and the Colombian military then commits half the murders of trade unionists in Colombia, and their closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads kill the other half. (Amnesty International report.)

Mission accomplished. Colombia is now prepped for "free trade for the rich," and will continue to 'elect' fascist, pro-U.S. governments, cuz the poor have "gotten the message" that raising your head in a leftist cause in Colombia may get your head shot off. Thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, peasant farmers and others are dead (can't organize, can't propose candidates, can't work to "get out the vote"), and ONE TENTH of Colombia's population (five MILLION peasant farmers) have been displaced from their lands by state terror.

The "message" is loud and clear.

No matter what the U.S. government SAYS, its funding says otherwise. And it's not that "opponents" of the U.S. "get the wrong message." They know perfectly well what that $7 BILLION is for--and all the other billions that the U.S. is spending for MORE military bases in Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast--wherever the Pentagon can get a boot in--in addition to the 4th Fleet in the Caribbean.

I just don't think we should mitigate the truth with words like "sadly," and "allies and opponents" somehow "getting the wrong message." The think we should tell it like it is. The U.S. government policy in Latin America is proxy killing of leftists, among other things (such as USAID funding of rightwing groups throughout the region). It is a blood-soaked horror in the Colombia, and is on the rise in Honduras--the two most dependent U.S. client states. And I strongly suspect that, in Colombia, it has not been entirely killing "by proxy." (One of the mass graves in Colombia, in La Macarena--with some 2,000 bodies in it--was in a region of particular interest and activity by the U.S. military and the USAID. Also, Blackwater has been conducting allegedly "unauthorized" trainings of Colombians for use in Iraq and Afghanistan, under contract to the U.S. State Department. They just got "fined" for it, in what is probably a coverup of a Bushwhack policy of training assassins in Colombia, where all U.S. soldiers and all U.S. military contractors have "total diplomatic immunity"--a provision of the Colombia/U.S. military agreement that Bushwhack ambassador William Brownfield got SIGNED, by the outgoing president, in SECRET negotiations, only last year. )

This UNCONSCIONABLE policy of the U.S. government--which included the Colombian military REWARDING soldiers for upping their "body counts" in the Colombian fascists 40+ year civil war with the leftist FARC guerrillas, with the soldiers then murdering civilians and dressing their bodes up like FARC guerrillas (the infamous "false positives" scandal)--was DESIGNED to cleanse the country of legitimate, peaceful advocates of the poor majority and terrorize the survivors. The Bush Junta-supported president of Colombia said as much. He said that ALL opposers of his government were "terrorists." He was spying on everybody, and drew up "lists" of trade unionists and others to be targeted by the death squads. And the Bush Junta gave him a "Medal of Freedom" for it!

I don't think it's right to minimize U.S. complicity in these horrors by saying that the Colombian government and military "got the wrong message." They didn't. They got exactly the message that the Bush Junta intended them to get.

And I also don't think it's the best tactic to use, with the Obama administration--which is clearly covering up for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld's horrendous war crimes--to plead with them about U.S. policy in Colombia and to coddle them with words like "sadly." It is not "sad" and "unfortunate" that trade unionists and others are STILL BEING MURDERED in Colombia, well into the Obama administration--and now in Honduras, an Obama-engineered coverup of a rightwing coup d'etat. The Obama administration's "message" to Latin America may not be quite as blunt as the Bush Junta's; it may come with U.S.-funded democracy cosmetics plastered over rightwing coups; but it is quite well understood by most Latin Americans, as a continuum alternating between brutality, militarization and threats, and U.S. corporate profiteering from the brutality, militarization and threats.

You only have to look at Obama's AG to know this. Eric Holder was the lawyer who got a handslap from the Bush Junta for Chiquita executives who admitted hiring rightwing death squads in Colombia, who murdered hundreds of trade unionists on Chiquita farms. They got a "fine" (just like Blackwater), and the lawsuit against Chiquita by survivors of these death squad hits was made to go away.

The message is lawlessness in service to U.S. corporations--and those who want to get on, or stay on, the U.S. gravy train are still hearing it. Maybe because that very same pResident of Colombia--who drew up the death lists for the hit squads--just got appointed to a prestigious international LEGAL committee (investigating Israel's firing on the aid boats), by the Obama administration? Could there be any clearer message about lawlessness in service to U.S. corporations?