Unionists' Murders Cloud Prospects for Colombia Trade Pact

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Washington Post

Unionists' Murders Cloud Prospects for Colombia Trade Pact

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 10, 2007; Page A09



SANTA MARTA, Colombia -- Zully Codina was a mother, veteran hospital worker and union activist. The last role was the one that cost Codina her life at the hands of paramilitary death squads, whose records show they collaborated with the country's intelligence service to liquidate her and other union activists.

Codina was killed on Nov. 11, 2003, when a gunman pumped three bullets into her head moments after she kissed her family goodbye and walked out of her Santa Marta home. Her murder remains unsolved, as do those of the vast majority of the 400 union members killed since President Álvaro Uribe took office in 2002.
(snip)

Recent disclosures about the purported role of the Colombian intelligence service, the Administrative Security Department, or DAS, in the murder of Codina and several other union leaders has ignited a political firestorm here that is reaching Capitol Hill just as the Bush administration is fighting for congressional approval of a free-trade pact with Colombia, the third-largest recipient of U.S. aid.
(snip)

A clandestine paramilitary operative named to DAS by Noguera said in a recent interview that the intelligence service compiled lists of union members, along with details about their security, and handed them over to a coalition of paramilitary groups known as the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia.

(emphasis was mine)





Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/09/AR2007040901250.html?hpid=moreheadlines

[damntexdem]

1. And deaths of some other union activists in Colombia constitute the reason I boycott Coca Cola.

I'd like to hear of any other U.S. firms that may be involved in having death squads reduce their 'union problem.'

[Judi Lynn]

2. The Drummond Company, headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama is another one,

as well as Chiquita Banana. Chiquita Banana can be traced back to violence against workers all the way to Guatemala, early 1950's, during Eisenhower's administration, when it was still United Fruit.

Drummond and Chiquita have both been under scrutiny very recently. Hoping MUCH more material will be published on all American companies which have used paramilitary death squads to remove those pesky fair wage union workers from the world, their families, from life. That's a bit of hideous greed which should never been accepted anywhere, no matter how many right-wing pockets it enriches. Here are some recent threads with Drummond, or Chiquita information:

Drummond denies colluding with far-right death squads to kill Colombia unionists
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2777749

Mine explosion leaves 32 dead in Colombia
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2716976

Colombian leader favors extraditing Chiquita execs
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2771246

Bush to ask Congress for continued support to Plan Colombia: U.S. official
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2712511

[Omaha Steve]

3. So few views for a murder?

Wonder what our priorities are?

[Judi Lynn]

4. Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?

Chiquita in Colombia: Terrorism Gone Bananas?
Written by April Howard
Wednesday, 11 April 2007

What happens when "Business as Usual" clashes with the vocabulary of the "War on Terror"? We got a glimpse of one case this March when the Cincinnati-based Chiquita Brands International, Inc., paid a $25 million settlement to the United States Justice Department for paying off right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia, groups which Washington classifies as "terrorist organizations."

Chiquita is one biggest and most powerful food marketing and distributing companies in the world, and one of the world’s largest banana producers. The company shows annual revenues of approximately $4.5 billion and about 25,000 employees operating in more than 70 countries.<1> The banana market, worth about $5 billion a year in 2001, is the most important global fruit export. The majority of the 14 million tons of bananas exported every year come from Latin America.<2>

The charges state that from 1997 to 2004 several unnamed, high-ranking corporate officers from Chiquita and its Colombian Banadex subsidiary made monthly payments, totaling $1.7 million, to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).<3> Even though Chiquita's outside lawyers insisted that payments stop in 2001, Banadex continued write checks to the AUC, though Chiquita executives later decided that cash was a better idea.<4>

The AUC, often described as a "death squad," was incorporated as one of 28 "Foreign Terrorist Organizations" on the U.S. Department of State website in September, 2001.<5> Not without reason; even Forbes Magazine describes the AUC as "responsible for some of the worst massacres in Colombia's civil conflict and for a sizable percentage of the country's cocaine exports." With approximately 15,000 to 20,000 armed troops, the AUC uses "kidnapping, torture, disappearance, rape, murder, beatings, extortion and drug trafficking" among its standard techniques.<6> One of many massacres committed by the AUC took place in 2001, while the AUC was receiving funds from Chiquita. In the early morning on January 17, 80 AUC paramilitaries entered the rural town of Chengue and killed 24 men by smashing "their skulls with stones and a sledgehammer." Only one 19-year-old paramilitary member has been punished, though he named police and navy officials who organized the mass murder.<7
More:
http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1015/1 /

There's excellent background on Chiquita's bloody Latin American history in this article.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Colombian activist decries violence, drug trade

Colombian activist decries violence, drug trade
T.J. GILLES

Yaneth Perez spoke rather matter-of-factly about everyday occurrences in her war-town region of Colombia: the hyper-militarized countryside with government, paramilitary and leftist guerrilla forces fighting for turf and young hearts and bodies; the arbitrary arrests, kidnappings, selected killings and disappearances; the constant threat of rape or forced prostitution.

It was only when she began speaking of the effect that drugs – and anti-drug campaigns – are having on her country that her voice begin to waver; her throat begin to choke.

“If there aren’t consumers, we don’t have many of these problems,” says Ms. Perez. She said U.S. schools and society need to work to curb the seemingly insatiable appetite for drugs such as cocaine that is at the root of many of Colombia’s problems, with factions of a civil war that’s lasted more than four decades financing their operations through drug sales and corruption.
(snip)

A single mother of three, she showed slides of close friends and co-workers who had been killed, arrested without charges and jailed for years, or taken to hiding to avoid such fates.
(snip)

She urged Americans not only to begin to solve their country’s drug problems, but to “stop military aid” to Colombia and instead “use social investments” to create schools and jobs that will help rural Colombia advance.
(snip)

More:
http://www.billingsnews.com/story?storyid=22816&issue=384