Month of April, 2007

The following is a statement from the Campaign for Labor Rights.

An article in yesterday’s Washington Post reports that Congress and the Bush administration are nearing agreement on trade deals with Colombia, Peru and Panama. Negotiations between the U.S. Trade Representative and the House Ways and Means Committee have been going on for several months. Since the Democrats took control of Congress last November, approval of the agreements with Colombia and Peru has seemed less likely. This is due in large part to labor and environmental concerns. These are serious concerns, though not the only ones.
Violence against unionists in Colombia is a daily occurrence, with more than 2000 union organizers having been murdered since 1991.

Drummond Coal of Alabama, a family owned corporation worth billions, is going on trial in Birmingham, AL May 14, 2007 in federal court, for the murder of union organizers. For years, the Bush nominated federal judge, Karen Bowdre, clamped a silence order on the plaintiff attorneys, which led to a news blackout on the case. However, a 3 judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court lifted the gag and now stories are coming out.

Drummond closed most of its mines in Alabama, abandoning its union workers here, to move its primary operations to Colombia, where they have two strip mines they value at $2 Billion dollars. They have a private army protecting them from the Colombian people and from union organizers. Colombian witnesses say they have witnessed Drummond Execs pay right-wing paramilitaries, connected with the Colombian armed forces and right- wing government of President Uribe, to murder union organizers.

Statement and analysis from the Colombia Action Network, presented at the Latin American Solidarity Conference in Chicago, April 13-15 2007.

In March, banana giant Chiquita plead guilty in Washington to doing business with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia or AUC, a right-wing paramilitary organization that is responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia’s civil war. The State Department listed the AUC as a terrorist organization in 1997. Despite this, the top 8 Chiquita executives paid the AUC 1.7 million from 1997-2004. In addition, in 2001 Chiquita used one of their ships to deliver 3,000 AK-47 rifles & more than 2.5 million bullets for the AUC.

Colombia's intelligence services compiled lists of union activists and gave them to right-wing paramilitaries, who then carried out assassinations, according to captured documents and a key witness.

The U.S. Congress is considering a proposed trade agreement with Colombia, and news of the government-paramilitary collaboration has put passage of that legislation in further jeopardy.

The Colombian Department of Nariño is experiencing one of the worst protection and humanitarian assistance crisis since Colombian President Alvaro Uribe began his second term in office. The U.S. financed aerial herbicide spray program (fumigations) compounds and exacerbates the myriad of hardships that Afro-Colombian communities are already facing: racism, disadvantaged access to state programs, food insecurity due to the internal armed conflict, internal displacement and vulnerability to human rights violations by the armed groups.

On December 6, 1928, in the municipal plaza of Ciénaga Magdalena, around 3000 men and women were assassinated for demanding that the U.S. transnational corporation, United Fruit Company, resolve the demands of the petitions presented to them by the union. On that day, the Colombian army, commanded by General Carlos Cortés Vargas, fired their arms against the masses of people to liquidate the workers’ protest.

The Colombia Action Network has signed onto this letter circulating in
support for the Cimitarra River Valley Peasant Association. The CAN was
hosted by the CRVPA in 2004 & 2005 on delegations to Colombia. The letter
and the report from the International Peace Observatory explain the
repression faced by the CRVPA.
- Meredith Aby for the CAN
colombiasolidarity.org

Dear President Uribe:

We are writing to you today to express our deep concern for the present
situation of the civilian population and farmers' organizations in the
Antioquian Northeast, the Cimitarra River Valley and the Sur de Bolívar