by James Parks, May 2, 2007

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists. Nearly 2,300 union leaders and members have been murdered there since 1991 and the government routinely ignores or violates internationally recognized workers’ rights.

Last year alone, 72 trade unionists were murdered in Colombia. Yet the Bush administration continues to push for a trade deal with that country.

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe found out today that U.S. working families will not tolerate their country making deals with a corrupt regime. Uribe was met with strong opposition to the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) from protesters, activists and union leaders as he traveled across Washington, D.C., trying to sell the deal.

The Bush administration submitted the deal to Congress in time to be considered under  its Fast Track trade-promotion authority, which expires June 30. But workers in both countries say the deal with Colombia should be renegotiated because it will hurt workers and push back efforts to bring an end to the violence against union leaders and ordinary citizens.

Outside the Center for American Progress near the White House, where Uribe held a press conference today, nearly 100 demonstrators marched, carrying signs saying “Just Say No to FTA” and “Colombia: Frightening Terrorist Agreement.”

Nine demonstrators laid on the sidewalk in body bags to dramatize the violence against innocent people in Colombia.

Bob Baugh, director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council, told the crowd, “This is a rotten deal.”

John Garces, a Colombian exile whose father was murdered by paramilitaries, said, “It pains my heart that the Uribe government has done nothing to stop the killing of innocent men like my father, whose only crime was to work to help better the lives of his fellow workers.”

Now, after all these years of weakening the rights of workers, of harassing them and murdering them, the Colombian government has negotiated a free trade agreement with the United States that will make it almost impossible for workers in Colombia to ever recover. The entire labor movement in Colombia is protesting this agreement.  If the FTA was actually going to bring jobs and development to Colombia, then that wouldn’t be the case.

Earlier in the day, the AFL-CIO issued a strong statement condemning the free trade agreement with Colombia. Four hundred trade unionists have been killed in Colombia since Uribe took office in 2002. And his government has made “repeated—but ineffectual—promises to end the situation of impunity in the country,” the statement said.

In those cases where the killers are known, government-supported paramilitary groups or the armed forces or police have been found to be responsible. Many of Uribe’s senior advisors have been revealed to be connected to the paramilitary,

This is a corrupt nation and a corrupt regime.

Therefore, we stand with working people in the United States and Colombia and say no to the [free trade agreement] with Colombia.

After meeting with Uribe this afternoon, AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said he delivered the message that the federation is strongly opposed to a trade agreement at this time.

Colombia’s atrocious human rights record sets it apart from the rest of the world. There is no labor language that could be inserted into the U.S.-Colombia FTA that could adequately address the extraordinary—and unpunished—violence confronting trade unionists in that country.

No labor chapter, no matter how well crafted, will be sufficient to reduce, much less end, the incidence of the most extreme and deadly violations of the right to free association and collective bargaining. And no trade agreement with Colombia should be considered until the country meets an established set of human rights benchmarks.

According to the AFL-CIO statement, those benchmarks for Colombia should include:

• Severing all ties with paramilitary organizations and international criminal networks.
• Making significant advances in investigating and prosecuting crimes against trade unionists.
• Providing protection for unions and trade unionists.
• Bringing Colombia’s labor laws into conformity with International Labor Organization (ILO) standards.
• Supporting the ILO office in Colombia to monitor labor rights compliance and investigate key cases of assassinations of trade unionists.

At the press conference, Uribe tried to defend his government’s actions, saying he has committed no crime, but that he has made mistakes. He said he is trying to move Colombia toward “institutional democracy” and fight terrorists at the same time.  But at times it seemed Uribe confused opponents of his government with terrorists.

For example, when asked if he would prosecute multinational companies that had been shown to have hired paramilitaries to maintain order among workers, Uribe replied that one of the first things terrorists do is try to discredit institutions such as employers, the army and the police.

Responding to another question about reports that human rights abuses by security forces are on the rise in Colombia, Uribe said he wants to move toward better protection of human rights but must be careful not to destroy the army and police in the process. Never once did he say he would commit to stamping out human rights abuses or ensure workers’ rights.

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