UNI urges President Santos to end death squads targeting union leaders

[Judi Lynn]

UNI urges President Santos to end death squads targeting union leaders
02/05/2013 - Colombia

Nyon, 5 February 2013 - UNI strongly condemns the recent heinous murder of a trade union activist that takes up the toll of trade unionists killed to 21 since 2012. UNI urgently calls upon the competent authorities to bring perpetrators of such crimes to books at the earliest and put an end to the blatant impunity across the country.

“Enough is enough. We condemn such killings but also the impunity that reigns in the country as little or no concrete action is carried out by the authorities to elucidate such murders. On the contrary, what we see is that inaction only allows perpetrators to continue to get away with murder and create a climate of insecurity for Colombian Trade Unionists. Yet, we also want to stress that union leaders in Colombia are not alone. UNI and its affiliates stand by them,” said Adriana Rosenzvaig, the Regional Secretary of UNI Americas.

In the letter attached sent today to the Colombian highest authorities, UNI urged President Juan Manuel Santos and the Labour Minister to take bold steps to make clear progress in stopping such murders and halt the persistent impunity. Colombia remains the most dangerous place for a trade unionist, where many risk their lives more than any other place in the world. In fact, according to Human Rights Watch, more than half of unionists murdered worldwide between 2006 and 2010 were Colombians.

http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/uni.nsf/pages/homepageEn?OpenDocument&exURL=http://www.uniglobalunion.org/Apps/UNINews.nsf/vwLkpById/4606D9F2BB2C5177C1257B0900689D70?Opendocument

[Peace Patriot]

1. The preliminary to U.S. "free trade for the rich": decapitating the labor unions.

That's what the U.S. "war on drugs" and billions of dollars in our tax money has been used for, in Colombia--killing hundreds of union leaders and other advocates of the poor. Looks like Honduras is going that way, too.

This is so corrupt, so murderous and so bloody wrong that it makes you weep. And it isn't over--more billions of our tax dollars are being poured through the Pentagon and the agencies of the U.S. police state, to kill yet more leftists and to create the social and civil mayhem and disruption--for instance, FIVE MILLION peasant farmers brutally displaced from their lands in Colombia--that makes exploitation by transglobal corporations easy and hugely profitable.

If people can't organize, if people are too afraid to engage in political advocacy, if rightwing thugs are looking over their shoulders at the polling booth, if workers suffer slave wages, and the poor majority is exhausted by efforts to feed their families, and taking care of the young, the ill and the old, and other hardships--losing their little plots of land by which they feed their families, forced into urban squalor, oppressed by U.S.-armed/trained police and militaries and associated rightwing death squads--civic life, too, becomes nearly impossible, and the electorate CANNOT elect representatives to attend to their interests. For one thing, many of those leaders are dead.

That's what the U.S. "war on drugs" has done wherever it has shown its ugly, ugly face. It is a lie. It is an excuse. It is the necessary preliminary to Corporate Rule, especially in a region like Latin America, where democracy is being reborn in countries such as Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador. Countries under the U.S. thumb MUST suppress leftist democracy movements, because, believe me, the people in Colombia know what's happening in Venezuela and these other countries. Indeed, tens of thousands of Colombians have fled into Venezuela--for jobs, for health care, for education and for human and civil rights--most of them in flight from the U.S. armed/trained Colombian military and its closely tied paramilitary death squads.

[naaman fletcher]

2. War on drugs

I agree with everything that you said about the war on drugs. So why is it that Santos and Molina are the champions of ending the WOD, while Chavez and Correa are silent?

I think everyone in Latin American and its supporters should rally their leaders behind throwing off the WOD imperialism, do you agree?

What do you think we can do to get Chavez on board?