Bush & Co. Desperate to Portray Colombian Murders in Good Light

Bush & Co. Desperate to Portray Colombian Murders in Good Light
by Tula Connell, Oct 4, 2007

http://blog.aflcio.org/

More propaganda from the Bush administration (yeah, what's new?).

Still, the shamelessness of this latest out of the noise machine is stunning. In a letter to several members of Congress, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez challenges their assessment of Colombia's paramilitary brutality against union leaders and workers. This sudden interest in workers' lives in Colombia is part of Bush's attempt to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. According to today's Daily Labor Report (subscription required):

    In an Oct. 2 letter, Gutierrez said during his visit to Colombia last month, he and the members of Congress who accompanied him on the trip had found that the Colombian government is pursuing those who commit violence against trade unionists "comprehensively, aggressively, and successfully."
"There is no question that Colombia is on the path of positive change," Gutierrez wrote. "The issue is how best the United States can encourage and accelerate that change. The administration firmly believes that the answer is economic growth, continued social progress, and a closer relationship with the United States as embodied in the U.S.-Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement. Refusing to pass the agreement will do nothing to help Colombia reduce violence, either against trade unionists or against the general population."

Guess Gutierrez was so busy writing that letter, he didn't catch the recent International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) report on murder and abuse of unions and workers. Or the recent U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP) report that demonstrates just how little the government of President Alvaro Uribe is doing to bring to justice those who are committing the murders. As we noted last week, the ITUC's Annual Survey of Violations of Trade Union Rights found in 2006,

 

 

    Colombia remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a union member, with 78 killings. Of the 1,165 documented murders of Colombian trade union members between 1994 and 2006, only 56 perpetrators have been brought to trial, and just 14 have been sentenced.

 
The USLEAP analysis shows convictions in only three trade union murder cases in the first half of 2007. Of the 236 murders of union members that occurred between 2004 and 2006, the government has secured convictions in only five cases. Nearly 400 trade unionists have been murdered since Uribe's inauguration in August 2002.

 
The continued violence in Colombia is one of the key reasons working people and members of Congress are determined to stop the proposed U.S. trade agreement with that country. Over the past 20 years, 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered and legal and political and administrative state procedures act as trip wires to impede union organizing and offer little or no support or legal recourse in labor disputes, according to an AFL-CIO Solidarity Center report on the struggle for workers' rights in Colombia.

 
But let's face it. If the Bush administration can reject overwhelming public support of a plan to give more U.S. children access to health care, as President Bush did this week in vetoing the renewal bill for the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), what's a few hundred murdered trade unionists in another country? The Daily Labor Report goes on:

 

    Deputy U.S. Trade Representative John K. Veroneau, however, who spoke to reporters Oct. 2, said the administration, as part of its strategy to win congressional approval of the FTA, is considering bringing a delegation of union leaders from Colombia to Washington, D.C., to discuss the issue with members of Congress. He said the delegation would comprise union leaders who support the agreement, while conceding that some mainly public-sector unions oppose the pact.