‘COLOMBIA: More than 900 unionists murdered since 2000. Protection now! No to impunity!’
Excerpts from an article by Lori Wallach, Director of the Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch:
Shame on the Obama administration: Two years after it announced its “Labor Action Plan” to grease passage of a Bush-negotiated Free Trade Agreement (FTA), death threats against Colombian unionists persist unabated.
Now, a full two years after the Obama administration announced the Labor Action Plan, Colombia remains the world’s deadliest place to be a union member. Unionists in Colombia received 471 death threats in the year after the Plan was launched — exactly the same yearly number as in the two years before the Plan, according to the Escuela Nacional Sindical, the group recognized in the Plan as an authoritative source of monitoring data. This number is even more shocking when one considers the diminished ranks of unionists in Colombia, where more than 3,000 union members have been assassinated since 1986 and many have fled to exile. Meanwhile, many of the accused in the more than 2,000 unionist murder cases remain free.
If that wasn’t enough, violent mass displacements of Colombians rose 83 percent in 2012, adding to the five million who have been forced from their homes and their land in the world’s largest internal displacement crisis. Since the FTA’s 2011 passage, horrific violence and forced displacement has increased in venues targeted for development under the FTA, such as the port of Buenaventura.
Should these disturbing numbers come as a shock? Unfortunately not. U.S. and Colombian unions and human rights organizations warned the Obama administration that the FTA would exacerbate the forced displacements and other acts of political violence that far too many Colombians face on a daily basis.
With all of the talk about Obama’s focus on his legacy, certainly violent repression of human rights and lost American jobs is not the desired narrative. The Obama administration is responsible for ignoring the warning signs and implementing the U.S.-Colombia agreement. Now what will it do to reverse the horrible trend of violence? And will it now stop selling anti-worker FTAs on the basis of empty promises?