|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Colombian Labor Unions Reeling |
Current rating: 0 |
by Will Weissert/AP
(No verified email address) |
27 Apr 2001
|
Friday, April 27, 2001; 6:11 a.m. EDT
BOGOTA, Colombia Lying face down on a crowded sidewalk, labor leader Wilson Borja watched a pool of his own blood forming beneath him and realized he was one of the lucky ones. |
The president of the Federation of State Workers, Colombia\'s largest union, survived an assassination attempt that left him with gunshot wounds to the shoulder and legs and saw a bullet tear into the top of his skull.
\"There has never been violence against the labor movement like there is now,\" the unionist said in a phone interview from the hospital, where he has been recovering in the four months since the attack. \"But I was not like many leaders in the labor movement who have been silenced.\"
The bloodshed of Colombia\'s 37-year armed conflict and its drug trade has touched people in all professions from supreme court justices to shopkeepers. But being a union leader, or even a member of a labor group, is one of riskiest of all trades.
According to a U.N. labor rights envoy who visited Colombia this week, 30 union members have been killed so far this year, after 112 died violently in 2000.
Colombia has long been a deadly place for labor activists. Fear is one of the reasons why only about 6 percent of the South American country\'s work force is unionized, one of the lowest percentages for Latin America.
But observers say that with leftist guerrillas escalating their war, unionists are increasingly targeted by rightists who equate their activity with communist subversion.
\"In the conflict a lot of assumptions are made quickly,\" said Rafael Albuquerque, the envoy from the U.N.\'s International Labor Organization. \"One of those assumptions is that many union leaders support the guerrillas.\"
In its latest report on human rights in Colombia, the U.S. State Department attributed attacks on labor leaders to \"paramilitary groups, guerrillas, narcotics traffickers, and their own union rivals.\"
The National Labor School, a non-governmental labor advocacy group, reports that about 1,500 union members have been murdered here in the last decade.
\"There is so much fear that many people believe joining (a union) is like asking to be killed,\" said Juan Rosado, the school\'s president. \"Leading one is even more dangerous.\"
In the latest assassinations, an activist in Colombia\'s combative oil workers union was dragged from his home in late-March and shot several times in the head in the northern oil-refining city of Barrancabermeja. Weeks later, a municipal union leader in the Caribbean city of Barranquilla was executed, sparking two days of nationwide labor protests.
\"Problems with violence against the labor movement in our country have gotten very grave,\" Labor Minister Angelino Garzon said in an interview. \"And things are getting worse.\"
During a tightly-guarded summit this week with labor leaders and U.N. officials, the government agreed to install surveillance equipment in the headquarters of dozens of unions. It already provides labor leaders, human rights activists and journalists with bodyguards, armored cars and bulletproof windows for their homes.
Mauricio Gonzalez, Colombia\'s deputy interior minister, said state protection had thwarted two attacks on labor leaders in the last month.
But Rosado said the government was still considering a request for protection from the president and vice-president of a coal miners\' union when the two were gunned down last month.
Garzon said despite the issuing of bodyguards and bulletproof glass, things here will not get safer until the government does a better job controlling the groups attacking labor leaders.
As a result of its mounting labor violence, Colombia faces possible economic sanctions from the U.N\'s International Labor Organization.
\"We hope it won\'t come to that,\" Garzon said. \"You don\'t help a threatened labor movement by imposing sanctions that make it tougher to compete.\"
Borja was attacked Dec. 15 as he and three body guards left his Bogota apartment complex in an armored car. Gunmen sprayed the vehicle and surrounding area with 57 bullets.
In claiming responsibility, paramilitary leader Carlos Castano accused Borja of belonging to Colombia\'s second-largest rebel group. Borja had been serving as an intermediary in government peace talks with the rebels. In February, authorities charged a police captain with conspiring with Castano\'s militias to kill him.
\"I, like the rest of us, am scared all the time,\" said Borja, who plans to return to Colombia this fall. \"But my country, like my cause, are worth fighting for.\"
© Copyright 2001 The Associated Press
|
See also:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20010427/aponline061137_000.htm
|
