The North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee Blog
See our home page.(Our old blog on tripod.com is still active, but it is now also appended to the archives of this blog.)
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
from: Garry Leech
Hi,
The Spanish language version of the new book about the displacement of
communities by the Cerrejon Coal Mine and the international solidarity
campaign that has evolved around this issue is now available. It is titled:
Bajo el Manto del Carbón: Pueblos y multinacionales en las minas de El
Cerrejón, Colombia
For information about the book visit:
http://www.colombiajournal.org
The English language version should be available by the end of August.
Regards,
Garry Leech
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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
from: Juan David Gastolomendo
 |
| Campaign to Stop Killer Coke
News Release For immediate release For more information, contact Coca-Cola Suffers Two Big Setbacks in SRI Community: | Campaign to Stop KILLER COKEWe are seeking your help to stop a gruesome cycle of murders, kidnappings, and torture of union leaders and organizers involved in daily life-and-death struggles at Coca-Cola bottling plants in Colombia, South America. "If we lose the fight against Coca-Cola, we will first lose our union, next our jobs and then our lives." SINALTRAINAL VIce President Juan Carlos Galvis Please donate to the Campaign. Learn the truth about The Coca-Cola Co. "We believe the evidence shows that Coca-Cola and its corporate network are rife with immorality, corruption and complicity in murder." |
North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee: http://home.comcast.net/
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
from: Cathy Crumbley
Colombia Vive Asado/Barbecue Fundraiser
Sunday, July 15 from 2:00 until roughly 8:00 pm
60 Rice Street, Cambridge, MA
$20 donation requested
Please RSVP: 978-441-9488 or colombiavive@mindspring.com
Dear Friends,
Some of you had the opportunity to meet Colombian trade unionist Hector Giraldo when he stayed in Boston 5-6 years ago. He is a union leader from Antioquia who has continued to stand up for working people, human rights, and social justice in the face of many threats to himself and his family. We are pleased to tell you that Hector will be joining us for our asado/barbecue this Sunday in Cambridge.
Two movies have been made about Hector and we will be showing both of them on Sunday. He will be available to talk informally with people throughout the day.
We hope that you can join us on Sunday but if you cannot, please consider giving a donation to Colombia Vive. We educate the public about the situation in Colombia, sponsor tours of Colombians working for human rights and social justice, and provide humanitarian assistance to Colombian organizations. We are a 501-c-3 organization and donations to Colombia Vive are tax deductible.
Over the last few years, Colombia Vive has supported courageous individuals and organizations in Colombia. These have included:
AFRODES, an organization of displaced Afro-Colombians that seeks to defend their rights and cultural identity as well as work for peaceful solutions to displacement and other problems facing Afro-Colombians.
MINGA, Asociación para la Promoción Social Alternativa (MINGA means "collective work project" in an indigenous language), protects and promotes basic human rights by representing political prisoners and families of victims of violence.
The Catholic Archdiocese in the department of Arauca, which provides humanitarian programs and assistance for displaced people in a particularly dangerous region.
ONIC, the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia, which supports the rights of indigenous people throughout Colombia.
We hope that you can join us next Sunday. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please feel free to let us know.
Cathy Crumbley
We condemn all forms of political violence and therefore do not support any of the armed actors in the Colombian conflict.
Colombia Vive
31 Holden Street
Lowell, MA 01851
978-441-9488
colombiavive@mindspring.com
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
from: Juan David Gastolomendo
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories
Alabama Coal Company Accused Of Bankrolling Colombia's Killer Right-wing Militias
LA LOMA, Colombia, Jul. 9, 2007
(AP) The bus had just left Drummond Co. Inc.'s coal mine carrying about 50 workers when gunmen halted it and forced two union leaders off. They shot one on the spot, pumping four bullets into his head, and dragged the other one off to be tortured and killed.
In a civil trial set to begin Monday before a federal jury in Birmingham, Ala., union lawyers have presented affidavits from two people who allege that Drummond ordered those killings, a charge the company denies.
The Chiquita banana company admitted paying right-wing militias known as paramilitaries to protect its Colombia operations. Human rights activists claim such practices were widespread among multinationals in Colombia, and that Drummond went even further, using the fighters to violently keep its labor costs down.
The Drummond case, they say, is their best chance yet of seeing those allegations heard in court.
The union has presented affidavits to the Alabama court from two people who say they were present when Drummond's chief executive in Colombia, Augusto Jimenez, handed over a large sum of cash to representatives of the local paramilitary warlord. They claim the money was for the March 10, 2001, killings of Sintramienergetica union local president Valmore Locarno and his deputy, Victor Orcasita.
Union leaders, former army soldiers and ex-paramilitary fighters also allege that family-owned Drummond, which shifted most of its operations to northern Colombia in the 1990s as its Alabama veins gave out, paid and provisioned the paramilitaries as a matter of policy.
Drummond says neither charge is true.
"Drummond did not pay any paramilitary or illegal or unlawful group," it said in a written response to questions from The Associated Press. Senior company executives declined interviews.
Rafael Garcia, the former technology director of the DAS state security agency, says in an affidavit that he saw Jimenez give "a suitcase full of cash" to paramilitary commanders "to assassinate specific union leaders," naming Locarno and Orcasita. Garcia is in prison, convicted of erasing drug traffickers' names from DAS records.
Former paramilitary fighter Alberto Visbal says in an affidavit that he saw Jimenez pay his boss, who went by the alias "Julian," $200,000 in cash. Visbal, who has fled Colombia, said he understood from another fighter present that the money was in exchange for the killings. Visbal says he was later sent to confirm Locarno's death.
In a filing in an Atlanta circuit court Thursday seeking more time to gather depositions, plaintiffs for the union also alleged that former union treasurer Jimmy Rubio saw a Drummond official _ they didn't specify which one _ pay a paramilitary leader for the killings. Rubio went into hiding when his father-in-law was murdered just before he was to give a deposition in the case, they said.
Affidavits from Rubio, Visbal and Garcia have all been entered into the public record in Birmingham.
Drummond challenged the accounts. "We have evidence that some (of the witnesses) are being paid and/or offered assistance by the United Steelworkers Union," it said in its written response.
The union said the only assistance provided to witnesses was helping some of them leave the country after their lives were threatened.
The lawsuit, filed under a U.S. statute that lets foreigners sue U.S. corporations for their conduct abroad, seeks hundreds of millions of dollars in damages, alleging Locarno, Orcasita and Gustavo Soler _ who was killed after he took over for Locarno _ "were direct victims of Drummond's plan to violently destroy the union."
"I think they thought they could get away with anything, literally get away with murder," United Steelworkers lawyer Daniel Kovalik said.
Drummond's relationship with the Sintramienergetica union, which represents a third of its 6,200 local workers, has long been tense. The union accuses the company o unsafe conditions it says contributed to 13 accidental deaths since 1995, of forcing injured employees to work and of indiscriminately dismissing workers.
Drummond said: "We have a good relationship with our rank and file workforce."
The landowner-backed paramilitaries arose in the 1980s to counter kidnapping and extortion by leftist rebels but grew into terrorist organizations in their own right, killing more than 10,000 people, stealing land from peasants and taking over much of Colombia's drug trade.
As the paramilitaries demobilize under a peace pact with the government, many former fighters are coming forward to describe the groups' ties with business leaders and politicians in revelations that are shaking the nation.
The U.S. Justice Department fined Chiquita Brands International Inc. $25 million this year for giving $1.7 million to the militias from 1997-2004. Chiquita said the regular monthly payments by its wholly owned subsidiary Banadex were "to protect the lives of its employees."
Colombia's chief prosecutor, Mario Iguaran, has opened criminal investigations into both the Drummond and Chiquita cases. Last month, the families of 144 people killed by paramilitaries operating where Chiquita harvested bananas sued the company in U.S. federal court in Washington.
And Rep. Bill Delahunt, D-Mass., said a congressional hearing that he called on the subject last week would be the first of many.
"We don't want American companies to fuel the unacceptable level of violence that exists in Colombia today," he said.
While the Birmingham trial focuses on the union leaders' murders, witnesses will also accuse Drummond of employing paramilitaries to protect its operations, which exported more than 25 million tons of coal last year from Colombia to the United States and Europe.
Previous efforts to use the Alien Tort Claims Act to make mulitnational corporations accountable for actions in other countries have failed. To win this case, the families must show the slayings amounted to war crimes sanctioned by state officials. Their attorneys say they can prove this since union activists have been systematically slaughtered in Colombia. l Three people unaffiliated with the union told The Associated Press that Drummond paid paramilitaries to guard its 25,000-acre La Loma mine and its coal trains against leftist rebel sabotage. They said the company supplied the mercenaries with pickup trucks and motorcycles and routinely fed them and let them gas up on mine property.
Two of them have offered testimony to Colombian and U.S. authorities: Edwin Guzman, a former army sergeant who later joined the paramilitaries, and Isnardo Ropero, who worked as the personal bodyguard for Drummond's community relations director. Both have fled Colombia.
The third is a former midlevel paramilitary member who worked in the region until early last year and spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains in Colombia and fears for his life. He said paramilitaries guarded Drummond's coal trains on the 120-mile rail line from La Loma to the coast. Every few miles, a motorized team shadowing the train on a parallel dirt road would hand off to another team, he said.
In an affidavit, Javier Ochoa, an ex-paramilitary who is serving time for murder, named the people he said collected "taxes" from Drummond, including between 20 and 32 cents per ton of coal produced. His affidavit was provided to the AP by Llanos Oil Exploration Ltd., which has sued Drummond separately for alleged theft of oil rights in an Orlando, Fla., federal court.
Rubio, the former union treasurer, said in an affidavit that he saw the mine's community relations director, Alfredo Araujo, hand over two checks to a known paramilitary member on mine grounds. Araujo denied the claim.
"That's false and will be so proven in court," he said in a telephone interview.
------------------------------
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
from: Juan David Gastolomendo
Am sure that this isn't news to most but nonetheless, it's good that it's still being reported and receives attention.
-JD
-------------------
A new Amnesty report says paramilitaries are still operating and colluding with the security forces to eliminate and intimidate union members.
The Colombian authorities have taken steps to improve union members' safety, Amnesty says, and the number killed has fallen in recent years.
Nevertheless, in 2006, 77 trade unionists were killed or "disappeared".
Since 1991, some 2,245 members of trade unions have been killed, 3,400 threatened and more than 130 have "disappeared", according to figures from Colombia's National Trade Union School.
Trade unionists involved in labour disputes and campaigns against privatisation are particularly targeted, Amnesty's report says.
Also at risk are those who work in some of Colombia's key sectors, such as oil, mining, gas and energy.
"Trade unionists across Colombia are being sent a clear message: don't complain about your labour conditions or campaign to protect your rights because you will be silenced at any cost," said Susan Lee, Amnesty's Americas programme director.
Demobilisation
Thousands of paramilitary fighters have demobilised in a controversial government process over the past three years.
But Amnesty International says there is strong evidence that paramilitary groups still operate and are responsible for human rights violations including threats, killings and enforced disappearances, sometimes in collusion with the security forces.
One case detailed in the Amnesty report is that of Luciano Enrique Romero Molina, who was found dead in September 2005.
His hands had been tied and he had been stabbed more than 40 times.
His body was found in a neighbourhood of Valledupar, an area still said to be controlled by paramilitaries, despite the fact that paramilitary forces operating there were supposedly engaged in a process of demobilisation between December 2004 and March 2006.
Guerrilla forces were also blamed for some, although far fewer, deaths of trade unionists.
Amnesty notes that the Colombian authorities have taken action to improve the safety of trade unionists, including providing bodyguards, bullet-proof vehicles and mobile phones for those who have been threatened.
But the group says that sometimes these security measures have been withdrawn or curtailed, with lack of funds often used to justify this.
Amnesty is also urging companies working in Colombia to use their influence with the government to end and prevent human rights abuses.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr
Published: 2007/07/03 05:05:31 GMT
© BBC MMVII
------------------------------
from: Avi Chomsky
-----------------------
June 29, 2007, 1:17AM
Witness links U.S. companies, Colombia strife
A former right-wing soldier tells Congress of illegal militia ties
http://www.chron.com/disp
By JOSH MEYER and CHRIS KRAUL
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON - A former paramilitary soldier told a congressional panel
Thursday that several U.S. companies provided financial support to illegal
militias accused of killing Colombian civilians.
Edwin Guzman, a former Colombian army sergeant who later became a
paramilitary member, testified that his military units were responsible for
guarding the property of the Birmingham, Ala.-based Drummond coal company,
which has extensive operations in Colombia.
Guzman said the Colombian military also worked closely with right-wing
paramilitary units housed on Drummond premises in an effort to protect the
company and its coal shipments from leftist guerrillas.
Drummond provided company vehicles, gasoline and other supplies to the
paramilitary group, the AUC, or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia,
Guzman said.
It has been illegal for U.S. companies to provide financial assistance
to the AUC since September 2001, when the U.S. government designated it as a
terrorist organization. But Guzman told members of three House Foreign
Affairs Committee panels that protection agreements between the outlawed
groups and corporations were commonplace.
"Drummond is not the only company paying for the services of the
paramilitaries. There are many other companies that are paying," Guzman said
through an interpreter. "I hope the members of the Congress investigate
these things further because every time we raise these things in Colombia,
they try to erase our testimony any way they can."
The chairmen of two of the subcommittees, Reps. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and
Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., said the four-hour hearing was only the
first step in what they hope to be an aggressive investigation into whether
U.S. corporations were underwriting violence in Colombia by paying
protection money to paramilitary groups.
Both lawmakers cited the case of Chiquita Brands International, which
recently admitted to paying nearly $2 million to the AUC and to the
left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to protect its
banana-growing operations and employees in Colombia. Chiquita agreed to pay
$25 million in fines to settle a Justice Department investigation, admitting
to doing business with U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. The FARC
also is listed as a terrorist organization.
The Democratic leadership in Congress, citing such concerns, has begun
re-examining Plan Colombia, the billion-dollar anti-drugs and terror aid
program that has been in place since 2000.
Drummond has denied the allegations and told lawmakers Thursday that it
could not comment on Guzman's allegations because of a pending civil court
case that alleges Drummond was behind the slaying of three union leaders in
2001.
Two of the leaders, Victor Orcasitos and Valmore Locarno, were pulled
off a company bus and killed. Gustavo Soler, who took Locarno's place as
union president, was killed in a similar fashion seven months later.
Guzman testified Thursday that Colombian army training "tells us that we
have to attack the leftists in any way we can, and that unions are guerrilla
groups and we have to attack them by legal and illegal means."
But he stopped short of telling the lawmakers that the military
conspired with paramilitary groups to kill the union workers or other
civilians. And he said he had "no evidence on how Drummond gave money to the
paramilitaries."
In his prepared remarks, Guzman went further, however, saying that an
AUC commander whom he identified as "Cebolla" told him that paramilitaries
were responsible for the murders of Locarno and Orcasitos. He said
paramilitaries and the Colombian army shared the opinion that the Drummond
miners union "represented a subversive organization and consequently a
legitimate military target."
"I must confess that we in the military viewed the murders of Valmore
Locarno and Victor Orcasitos in early 2001 as military victories," Guzman
said. "I do not have that opinion today, but I did back then as a
consequence of my military training."
Guzman also said in the statement that the AUC killed many civilians on
and around the Drummond property, and that he was ordered while in the
military to help cover up any links between their deaths and the coal
company.
Engel said the allegations against Drummond, if true, "would be an extremely
serious violation of our laws. ... It appears that we have only scratched
the surface of U.S. corporate malfeasance in Colombia."
Maria McFarland, a Colombia specialist for the New York-based Human
Rights Watch, testified Thursday that 2,515 Colombian trade unionists have
been killed since 1986, nearly two-thirds of them by paramilitary groups.
In March, Colombia Attorney General Mario Iguaran said in an interview
that his office was investigating claims by a government witness now in jail
that Drummond paid paramilitaries to kill the three union leaders.
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