Colombia Commits "Crimes Against Humanity" as Free Trade Pacts Are Debated

Despite the claims of the Colombian government and those in the U.S., Canada and the EU eager to consummate "free trade" pacts with that regime, the human rights situation in that country is deteriorating fast. Indeed, by key measures -- the killing of unionists, extra-judicial killings by the military, and the forced displacement of civilians -- Colombia's human rights situation is among the worst in the world and getting worse. In the case of union killings, it remains the very worst.

Funeral Procession After Military Massacre of Civilians
in San Jose de Apartado (photo from Semana Magazine)

Union Killings and the Hand of the State

So far this year, 17 unionists have been killed in Colombia -- allowing Colombia to maintain its long-running title as "most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists," and putting Colombia on a pace to exceed the figure of union leaders killed last year (49) and the year before (39) - figures which motivated Barack Obama to oppose the Colombia FTA in the first place.

Francisco Javier Ricaurte Gomez, the President of the Labor Section of the Colombian Supreme Court, recently mentioned to me in a meeting we recently held in Pittsburgh, that he sees in these killings "the dark hand of the state." And indeed, the U.S. State Department continues to detail the strong connections between the Colombian state and military and the outlawed paramilitary groups which are largely responsible for these killings, making one wonder if those in charge of negotiating these trade pacts are actually reading their own governments' human rights reports.

According to the most recent 2009 State Department Country Report on Colombia, sectors of Colombia's official armed forces "collaborated with or tolerated the activities of new illegal groups or paramilitary members who refused to demobilize. Such collaboration often facilitated unlawful killings and may have involved direct participation in paramilitary atrocities."

Colombia's Crimes Against Humanity -- Extra-Judicial Killings

The State Department also reported (in its typical understated fashion for countries the U.S. is aligned with) that "[p]olitical and unlawful killings remained an extremely serious problem, and there were periodic reports that members of the security forces committed extrajudicial killings during the internal armed conflict." In fact, according to the AP, around 1,600 civilians have been the victim of extra-judicial killings by the Colombian military itself since President Uribe took over as President in 2002 -- a massive increase from Uribe's predecessor. Indeed, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights recently declared that these extra-judicial killings by the military are on such a scale that they amount to a "crime against humanity."

And, as the State Department explained, many of these killings involved the phenomenon of "false positives" -- that is, of "military officials paying illegal groups to forcibly recruit young men, transport them to another town, and turn them over to local brigades who then killed them and presented them as guerillas killed in combat."

The Colombian Military's Role In Forced Displacements

Of equal concern is the continued displacement of Colombians by the Colombian military's aggressive counterinsurgency program. As noted by Garry Leech in the Colombia Journal, the well-respected Colombian human rights group CODHES reported 380,000 more Colombians displaced last year -- a 24% increase over the prior year, adding to the already swelling ranks of the 4 million internally displaced Colombians. As it stands, Colombia ranks second only to the Sudan in terms of the number of internally displaced persons.

And, as Leech points out, the Norwegian Refugee Council directly attributes this worsening situation to "[t]he government's military strategy which was intended to be preventive, [but] is instead resulting in an increased displacement of people." Morever, if the U.S. and the E.U. consummate FTAs with Colombia, the problem of displacement (already the second in the world only after the Sudan) will only intensify. This is because the agricultural provisions of the FTA would allow cheap, subsidized farm products from the U.S. and the E.U. to flood Colombian markets tariff-free, undermining the livelihood of small Colombian farmers (who make up 23% of the Colombian population), many of whom will lose their land as a result and join the ranks of the displaced.

We saw this with small farmers in Mexico, 1.3 million of whom were displaced by similar NAFTA provisions -- a phenomenon which has led to Mexico's status as a "failed state." The New York Times, in its March 24, 2009 piece entitled, "Nafta's Promise, Unfulfilled," noted this phenomenon, explaining that "Local farmers were priced out of the market by food imported tariff-free. Many Mexican farmers simply abandoned their land and headed north. Although one-quarter of Mexicans live in the countryside, they account for 44 percent of the migrants to the United States."

In short, basic concern for human rights militates against entering into free trade accords with Colombia. In the end, however, the interests of business appear to be trumping human rights in the current discussions over the FTA's, and indeed, businesses themselves continue to fuel the dire human rights situation in Colombia.

U.S. Corporate Complicity For Union Killings

This fact was brought home again last week when it was revealed (at least in the Spanish-speaking press though not in English) that top paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso (now in U.S. custody on drug charges) has given testimony to the Colombian Attorney General's office about Alabama-based Drummond Coal Company's connection with the 2001 murders of 3 top unionists by the AUC paramilitaries. Thus, Gerardo Reyes of El Nuevo Herald revealed Mancuso's testimony which confirmed that Drummond, through an individual named "Mr. Jim," paid the AUC paramilitaries to carry out these killings.

Mancuso had previously testified that major companies in Colombia, including U.S. companies Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte had also made payments to the AUC paramilitary group -- an illegal group designated as "terrorist" by the U.S. State Department. Sadly, Dole, Del Monte and Drummond have never been charged for their role in supporting this terrorist organization in Colombia. And Chiquita, which admitted to paying paramilitaries over $1.7 million -- leading, according to Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguaran, to the killing of over 4,000 civilians -- Chiquita was given the lightest of punishments, being fined $25 million which it was allowed to pay over 5 years.

The continued impunity given these companies, combined with the failure to fully acknowledge the facts about Colombia's worsening human rights crisis, greatly undermines the moral authority of the governments rushing to make a trade deal with Colombia. Those interested in labor and human rights must hold these governments accountable by pressing them to refrain from entering into such deals.

Comments

[soprano]

But it's ok to trade with China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Free trading is OK with an out of control corruption and an inept government in Mexico? Fueled most drugs flowing in the U.S. with our tax money? Wake up! Colombia is and has been our best ally in South America. Uribe has done more good than any president before him. Colombia is our block of the loss of the Panama Canal and trading against China, Iran and Russian implanting a foothold in central and South America.
We have not been paying enough attention to our southern borders and potential partners below us.
Free Trade has hurt us, NOT Colombia. We allow almost all goods into the U.S. from Colombia duty free. Colombia taxes our goods as high as a 40% duty. Where is the balance?

[elcid]

Many Colombians are increasingly objecting to their government either actively or passively using the "security" argument to justify any amount of intrusion or repression.

The brave magazine Semana has helped move forward the nation's search for increased democracy greatly by exposing the long-term use by the nation's domestic security agency to spy illegally on politicians, judges, prosecutors, activists, journalists, etc.

And it goes way, way up, to a degree that if this were not a close U.S. military ally, and were Venezuela or Bolivia, this would be huge news.

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SPY CHIEF ACCUSED OF MURDER

http://www.semana.com/noticias-print-edition/spy-chief-accused-of-murder/123929.aspx

The Prosecutor’s office accused former DAS director Jorge Noguera of murdering several trade union workers and left-wing supporters.

Semana International | May 12, 2009

In a never seen before action in Colombian history, a former director of DAS, the Colombian intelligence service, has been accused of murder. According to the prosecutor general, Mario Iguaràn, Jorge Noguera is responsible for the murder of four persons, and of contracting out DAS services to the illegal paramilitary groups.

The Prosecutor’s office alleges that the DAS gave the paramilitary the names of union trade workers and university teachers that were later murdered. One of the most documented cases is the one of Alfredo Correa D’Andreis, a sociologist and teacher whom DAS performed an extensive intelligence work on, as the files of the institution show.

[ColombianCrusader]

With all this I am trying to say that our government is far away from perfect, it should be held accountable for their responsibility in many crimes, injustice, and corruption, but nevertheless the Colombian problem is way more complicated with many other factors that intervene with the sole intention of keeping the mess as it is. Therefore presenting such an ambiguous article to your readers, with such a lack of investigation, unethical and bias approach is irresponsible reporting and only contribute to build a simplistic stereotype of a huge problem, but I guess it is as easy as for anybody else to say that all Americans are fat, lazy, insensitive, xenophobic toward blacks, ignorant, unaware of the rest of the world happenings and do all kind of drugs all the way from elementary school to college and there after…..bu­t I live here and I know for sure that an statement like that is another stereotype that is NOT true.

[ColombianCrusader]

With all due respect to you Mr. Kovalik and your readers as well, we do not have a “regime” in Colombia as you describe the oldest democracy in Latin America. I do not even like our president, but it does not mean that he was not elected in a transparent process based in the solid structure of our old democracy.
You are dismissing in your article the most important factor in the middle of this entire Colombian struggle before you blame it only on the hands of our government. That is the 60 years old Colombian narco-gerrilla, and paramilitarism, all of them together fighting nothing else but for the control of the drug trafficking business. They have been camouflaging and using the innocent people in the country side as shields for decades, and that is the main reason for displacement.
Just the narco-gerrilla alone is responsible for thousands of killings every year, they still have more than 7000 people kidnapped as of today, and only 25 of those kidnaps are considered political, the rest of them are retained for money, and many of those will be kill and then they will still collect the ransom just to give the cadaver back to the respective family. All this chaos is fuel by drug money and the drug demand that comes from the United States and Europe, $500 billion dollars a year business that will buy arms and power all over the globe.

[soprano]

Bravo Colombian Crusader. You did your homewok perfect.

[Colombian999]

It is true that military armed forces of Colombia have committed intolerable excesses. These killings are an aberration and a humilliation to the Colombian people and a genuine tragedy for those most disenfranchised.
A Free Trade Agreement, however, would do NOTHING TO HELP. IT CAN ONLY HURT THIS COUNTRY THAT NEEDS SOURCES FOR EMPLOYMENT TO KEEP PEOPLE FROM GOING BACK INTO THE DRUG TRADE BUSINESS.
Its depressing to say this, but the only reason why people are opposing a free trade agreement because of these excesses is BECAUSE LABOR UNIONS IN THE U.S. DO NOT LIKE TRADE AGREEMENTS, as they are LIKELY TO SUFFER FROM THEM.

[stack]

Why in the world would Dole, Del Monte and Drummond not get immunity for murders when the military and paramilitaries get it?

[Jackie Ayers]

Dan, Thanks for your insight into humanitarian needs in Columbia.

[RJD78]

Apalling. Thank you for keeping the spotlight on this issue, Dan.