Trade and Terror in Colombia

"Paramilitarism has not been dismantled, it has simply been 're-engineered.'" (Amnesty International)

Imagine that you work bundling cut flowers in Colombia. After years of working 10- and 12-hour days for very little pay, you and your fellow workers finally form a union to fight for better conditions and better pay and you are elected president. Your manager calls you into his office and tells you that unions only bring trouble and that you should really consider your family's safety.

Three days later you wake up to find the words "military target" spray-painted across the front of your house. Later that day, while you're at work, your 10-year-old daughter is playing in the street and a strange man comes up to her and tells her to tell her mom to make sure she doesn't get hurt.

The next night a teenager drives by on a motorcycle and opens fire on your house with an Uzi. He just barely misses you and your daughter and your walls are riddled with bullets.

Over 400 union organizers have been murdered in Colombia since Alvaro Uribe became president in August 2002. The majority of them were killed by right-wing paramilitary groups with a long history of close ties to the Colombian military — and to cocaine and heroin traffickers. Despite the fact that the killers made threatening public death threats, stalked their victims and their families and published public death lists, there have only been convictions in 10 of those murders.

This past week, Uribe came to Washington trying to convince Congress that if they passed a free-trade agreement with Colombia and increased funding for prosecutions he could curb the violence against trade unionists.

Read the full article.  Sean speaks in New Brunswick on Friday.