Colombia labor applauds convictions

Leaders say government is only taking action against organizers' to secure US trade deal.

from the November 13, 2007 edition

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Early this year, the general prosecutors' office established a special unit of 13 prosecutors for crimes against union members. They have given priority to 187 high-profile cases. Then, in July, the special "decongestion" courts were created.

Judge María Judith Durán, coordinator of the special labor violence courts, says the international demands were key to their creation. "All that pressure works," she says.

High level Colombian government officials alternate in flying to Washington to convince lawmakers in Washington that Colombia is taking steps in the right direction with a reduction of murders and increased convictions.

Despite progress, union murders continue

But it's a hard sell. Even as he made the rounds in Washington last week with statistics on how violence against labor leaders had dropped dramtically, Leonidas Silva, a member of a teachers union, was shot dead in his home in eastern Santander Province. And as the vice president returned from his lobby trip to Washington, Jairo Giraldo of the national fruit-workers union was gunned down in western Valle del Cauca province.

The killings bring to 23 the number of union members killed so far this year, which is down dramatically from the peak in 1996 of 275 murders.

More than 2,534 union members have been killed between 1986, when records began to be kept, according to the ENS. About 98 percent of those cases are unsolved.

The government recognizes the dismal record and says it is working hard to improve it. But Vice President Francisco Santos said it is not about getting the US to approve the pact.

"The Colombian government's policies regarding guaranteeing the rights of workers … is not simply a product of the FTA," said Santos on Tuesday while he inaugurated a series of workshops for prosecutors on how to accelerate processing cases of labor violence.

But Mr. Sanin believes that whatever the reason behind it, Colombia's labor movement needs to take advantage of the leverage it now has.

A steady stream of US congressional delegations has been coming to Colombia in the past few months, led by Bush administration officials hoping to convince US lawmakers that Colombia, Washington's strongest ally in South America, deserves free trade with the US.

Sanin has met with most of them. "We tell them that even if the FTA is approved, they have to keep up the pressure on the government," he says. "Otherwise, we'll go back to where we were before."

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