Trade unionism deadly in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Trade unionism deadly in Colombia
By: Daniel Bland

26/06/2010 1:00 AM

A much debated Free Trade Agreement between Canada and Colombia passed in the House of Commons on June 14 and now needs only Senate approval to become law. The deal received the backing of the Liberals with the NDP and Bloc Québécois voting against it.

Colombia has led the world for over a decade in the number of union members murdered each year and violence against labour organizations there has been endemic for many years. Not surprisingly, human rights concerns have stalled a similar U.S.-Colombia FTA in the U.S. Congress since 2007.

Almost half of the 101 trade unionists murdered worldwide in 2009 were Colombian, according to a report released by the International Trade Union Confederation. According to the report, 48 Colombian trade unionists were assassinated last year. Twenty-six of them were union leaders, five of them women. Guy Ryder, the secretary general of the ITUC, said "Colombia has returned to being the country in which to defend fundamental worker's rights means, with more likelihood than in any other country, a death sentence, despite the government's public relations campaigns to the contrary."

In 2008, an all-party Commons committee recommended holding off on ratifying a Canadian free trade agreement with Colombia until an independent human rights assessment had been carried out. That never happened. Instead, a Liberal-brokered amendment to the proposed agreement, calling for annual government reports on the impact free trade is having on human rights, was accepted by the Conservatives on March 25. Liberal trade critic Scott Brison characterizes the deal as "a new gold standard for human rights reporting in free trade agreements." Really?

Threats, assassinations and massacres have forced more than four million people from their homes in the Colombian countryside. Most of Colombia's displaced are poor. But the land they are forced to flee is not. They are displaced for strategic reasons -- in order to gain control of drugs and arms-smuggling routes -- and for economic reasons -- to take over resource-rich regions and eliminate any opposition to large-scale development projects.

More:
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/westview/trade-unionism-deadly-in-colombia-97217034.html