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Colombia Emergency Strike -19 June 2003

Title: Colombia Emergency Strike -19 June 2003
To: Retort
General Strike on 19th June - 'Do or Die' for Colombian Trade Unions

Andy Higginbottom



Colombia's three union centres, the CUT, the CGTD and the
CTC, have called an emergency general strike against
privatisations for next Thursday, 19th June. The stoppage
was announced from Geneva, where the presidents of the
union federations are attending the annual conference of
the International Labour Organisation. The Colombian
unions are demanding that the ILO votes this week to send
an international Commission of Enquiry to Colombia.

The trigger for this action was the announcement last
Thursday night by Telecommunications Minister Marta Pinto
de Dehart that the government is liquidating state
telecommunications corporation TELECOM. An immediate
consequence will be the sacking of up to ten thousand
workers. And the company replacing TELECOM will be ready
to sell off its assets, including to the foreign
multinationals that have been trying to take over the
sector.

Decisive pressure came from Washington. As Miguel Caro
CUT's Director for the public sector points out: "the US
has insisted as a condition for including Colombia in the
Free Trade Area of the Americas negotiations that
one-sided 'shared risk' contracts signed with US companies
be implemented".

The misnamed 'shared-risk' contracts were of course
nothing of the sort, merely a mechanism for foreign
multinationals to rip off the state sector. Back in 1993
TELECOM signed contracts with six multinationals to
provide 2 million telephone lines. They put 1.8 million
lines in place, but only 1.15 million were sold. While the
investment came from state funds, the 'shared risk' meant
that the multinationals were guaranteed an income
irrespective of the number of lines sold. NORTEL and the
other companies demanded a US $2 billion contract
settlement. The previous Colombian government offered $600
million, but this was not enough for NORTEL who lobbied
the US Congress to block any general trade and investment
agreements until its demands are met. Uribe has accepted,
hence the liquidation and sell off which, according to
Miguel Caro "shows once again the submission of the
Colombian government to the dictates of US imperialist
power".

Other unions across the whole state sector, from Bogotá's
telephone corporation ETB, to the agrarian reform
institute INCORA, to the universities and further
education institution SENA, to several health and social
security agencies, are facing privatisation. Uribe has
pledged to push this programme through to meet IMF demands
to halve the fiscal deficit. In practice this means
eradicating the limited social gains of Colombia's 1991
Constitution. The unions who are fighting to maintain
their public services are doing so for the benefit of all
Colombians.

To realise what is now at stake, the plight of the unions
has to be located as part of the broader scenario of
dispossession and repression of the Colombian people.
Alexander Lopez, the former president of public services
union SINTRAEMCALI who was elected as a Social and
Political Front representative to Congress last year,
warns that, "The result of this policy is the elimination
of the public function of the State, leading to misery,
general degradation and conflict".

Life in countryside areas is an unimaginable nightmare.
Civilian populations are being marauded by the army often
disguised as, or working in close co-operation with,
paramilitary forces. The paramilitaries roam freely in
North Tolima and Choco, leaving behind a trail of village
massacres and disappearances. On 5th June Tirso Velez, a
left wing poet and former mayor of Tibu was assassinated.

But it is in the remote oil rich north-eastern department
of Arauca that the human rights violations are the most
acute right now, as reported to Amnesty International UK's
annual conference by Samuel Morales, CUT's organiser in
the region who also works with social and human rights
organisations. For the last two months three hundred
Guahíbo indigenous people from Tame have occupied the
Central Catholic Church in Saravena. They fled their homes
as a result of attacks committed by the Nava Pardo
Battalion of the 18th Brigade of the National Army. On
31st December soldiers wearing AUC armbands came to
Betoyes village. They killed a man and took off his two
year old daughter. They raped four females aged 11, 12, 15
and 16 years old. Omaira Fernández was pregnant. Then, as
human rights workers report, 'the people had to look on
horrified as the supposed "paramilitaries" opened up her
womb, took out the foetus, sliced it up, put the pieces in
a plastic bag and threw them into the river along with the
mother'.

Tame is situated between three zones being taken over by
US corporation Occidental, the Spanish multinational
Repsol, and BP whose expanding Casanare operation is
moving northwards towards Tame.

Welcome to Uribe's Colombia - a heavy hand on the poor but
a kind heart for the multinationals.

Uribe is working hard to get international support for his
project to criminalise popular resistance. Francisco
Cortés, a leader of the ANUC-UR peasant organisation in
the Arauca region is a well known human rights campaigner
who visited Britain two years ago. Subsequently 'Pachito'
visited fellow peasant movements in Bolivia, but on 10th
April he was detained in La Paz, accused of being in both
the FARC and ELN guerrillas. Today he is imprisoned
without trial in a 8ft square cell, 10 to 15 degrees below
zero, at 4,000 metres above sea level.

While the whole movement is under threat, the militant
wing of Colombian trade unions that identifies with
popular struggles has been the most targeted. 90% of
assassinated trade unionists are members of CUT-
affiliated unions. The rate of assassination of Colombian
has decreased, with only (!) thirty murdered in the first
five months of this year. Perhaps with so much
international attention on this aspect, somebody somewhere
decided that Uribe has to be seen to be improving the
situation. Certainly, the modes of paramilitary and state
terror are evolving, but the danger is ever present.
Families are now being systematically targeted. Last week
a flood of graffiti appeared in the city of Cali, with
slogans declaring "DEATH to SINTRAEMCALI", "SINTRAEMCALI =
THIEVES" and "SINTRAEMCALI = GUERRILLA".

Many more trade unionists are being detained. Five members
of the oil workers union USO who have been under house
arrest for a year and a half go on trial this week.

Uribe's government is backtracking on commitments made by
previous governments to provide physical protection for at
least some of the most targetted trade union leaders.
Domingo Tovar, the Director of CUT's Human Rights
Department whose two daughters have been threatened is one
of those at the highest risk. He is battling to keep his
own bodyguards as officially recognised self-defence. The
Ministry of Interior wants to replace them with Department
of Security agents. The difference is a life or death
matter for Domingo.

Meantime Uribe is offering the AUC, Colombia's principal
paramilitary outfit, pardon and immunity from prosecution
as part of a deal to bring them into negotiations. This
move is calculated to encourage the death squads.

There is a chilling logic to Uribe's elimination
programme. With private sector unions virtually
non-existent, the Colombian trade union movement has
arrived at its 'do or die' moment.

It will take enormous pressure from within and without to
halt the march of fascism in Colombia. The CUT Human
Rights Department has called for solidarity, highlighting
the need for mobilisation of protest internationally and
physical accompaniment in Colombia.

On the first front, Tony Blair is convening an
international governmental conference in London on 10th
July to build support for Uribe's regime. We in Britain
have a special responsibility to mount united protest
against the Blair-Uribe axis, and for human rights aid to
go to trade unionists and the oppressed in Colombia. Look
out for further announcements.
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SUPPORT ACTION

Messages of support to can be sent to 'Pachito' Francisco
Cortés in Bolivia through e-mail:
geancorcolbo0. and to the workers of TELECOM
through e-mail: derechoshumanos0

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