Colombian Trade Unionists Assassinated by Paramilitaries Paid by American Companies, Congress Told

By Rick Maynard
Democracy for New Hampshire

Thursday 28 June 2007

Human rights specialist, Colombian mine union official, former military officer and USW lawyer testify to abuses.

Washington, D.C. - Witnesses ranging from a former Colombian military officer to an American human rights expert testified before Congress today that paramilitary groups are murdering trade unionists in Colombia at a rate unparalleled in the world and on the dime of multinational corporations based in the United States.

Francisco Ramirez Cuellar, president of Sintraminercol, the Colombian mine workers union, and author of, "The Profits of Extermination, How U.S. Corporate Power is Destroying Colombia," told the Congressmen there is proof that Drummond Ltd., the Colombian subsidiary of Alabama-based Drummond Co., Inc., paid paramilitaries to kill three union officials at Drummond. And, he said, several other American companies, including Ohio-based Chiquita Brands International, have been involved in similar practices.

Dan Kovalik, a United Steelworkers' lawyer who has investigated paramilitaries since 2001, promised to provide the Congressmen with affidavits from witnesses testifying to the connections between Drummond Ltd. money, paramilitaries and the murder of three trade unionists employed by Drummond.

Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, principal specialist on Colombia for Human Rights Watch, pleaded with the Congressional committee members to delay any action on the Bush Administration's proposed free trade agreement with Colombia until the country shows real progress in abating the murder of trade unionists and in punishing more than the current rate of 2 percent of the killers.

Another witness, Edwin Guzman, formerly a sergeant in the Colombian Army whose assignment at one point included patrolling a mine owned by Drummond, told the Congressmen from four committees and subcommittees that conducted the hearing that one way to suppress the violence is to forbid multinational corporations operating in Colombia to pay illegal groups, such as the paramilitaries.

The hearing, "Protection and Money: U.S. Companies, Their Employees, and Violence in Colombia," occurred just two weeks before the USW is scheduled to bring to trial in Alabama its civil case accusing Drummond of using paramilitaries to kill three trade unionists. The hearing comes two months after Chiquita Brands International, the Ohio banana company, admitted paying $1.7 million to paramilitary death squads in Colombia.

Guzman, who had to flee Colombia because his life was threatened after he began testifying there about the connection among Drummond, the Colombian military and illegal paramilitaries, told the Congressmen that Drummond gave the paramilitaries vehicles to patrol the company's coal property. In addition, Guzman testified, part of his training in the army was to kill trade unionists "legally or illegally."

McFarland Sanchez-Moreno provided statistics backing up Guzman's testimony. She said Colombia has the highest rate of violence against trade unionists in the world. Labor rights groups have documented 2,515 killings of trade unionists in Colombia since 1986, approximately 120 a year. That is one every three days, as Cuellar, put it. Ten of his close friends have been killed, he said, and seven attempts have been made on his life in the past 16 years.

When the Congressmen asked what the United States could do to improve the situation, Cuellar said the United States should more carefully monitor how its military aid to Colombia is used so that it does not end up the in the hands of paramilitaries. Also, he said, referring specifically to Drummond, American politicians must demand ethical practices by the corporations from which they accept political donations.

Answering that same question, Kovalik said the military that the United States is supporting in Colombia is backing the illegal and violent paramilitary groups, who also get massive amounts of money from drug trade. The United States should use its money for social and economic supports so that young Colombians are lured away from the paramilitary lifestyle, he said.

Congressman Bill Delahunt, the Democrat from Massachusetts who convened the hearing as chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, said this would not be the last hearing on this issue and promised to try to get the Colombia attorney general to testify. Kovalik said after the hearing that this was just the first round in many needed to get to the bottom of the complicated corporate complicity with paramilitaries.

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