Posted by ALBERTO on March 22, 19102 at 04:50:30:
Publicado en el semanario británico conservador "The Economist", edición de hoy mismo.
Violence in Colombia
Gunned down
Mar 21st 2002 | BOGOTA
From The Economist print edition
Threats against labour and the church
Reuters
An archbishop pays the price of speaking out
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TWO men pulled Valmore Lacarno off a bus last March and shot him in the head in front of his fellow workers. The gunmen also picked out Victor Hugo Orcasita, tying him up and throwing him into a truck. Mr Orcasita's tortured and bullet-ridden body was found hours later. The dead men were leaders of the trade union at La Loma, a large open-pit coal mine in northern Colombia owned by Drummond, an Alabama firm. They were just two victims of a steadily mounting massacre of trade-union leaders in Colombia. Last year, 177 unionists were killed, up from 128 in 2000 and 69 the year before.
Last week, in a desperate effort to prevent further killings, the two men's families and union colleagues filed suit against Drummond in a court in the United States, claiming that the firm conspired with the right-wing paramilitary vigilantes of the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC) to have the men killed. Witnesses allege that vehicles driven by AUC members regularly visited the mine, sometimes refuelling there. Drummond denies any involvement in the killings.
The case, like a similar suit filed against Coca-Cola in Florida last year, highlights the campaign of terror against trade unionists, and other civilian leaders, in Colombia.
The paramilitaries claim that some unions harbour guerrilla supporters, whom they consider to be “military targets”. But in many cases, say political analysts, the AUC has murdered union activists with no guerrilla link.
A UN human-rights report this week referred to “grave, massive and systematic” abuses, many of them the result of collusion or active collaboration between the paramilitaries and members of the armed forces.
Not even the Catholic Church is immune. On March 19th, Colombian politicians joined priests and ordinary citizens at the funeral of Isaias Duarte, the archbishop of Cali, Colombia's third city, gunned down as he left a church after a service. The most senior cleric to be murdered in Colombia, Archbishop Duarte had spoken out strongly against guerrilla kidnappings. But he had also denounced corruption. He had complained that drug traffickers, many of whom have close links to the AUC, had financed several successful candidates in this month's congressional election. He had been due to meet a prosecutor to elaborate on those allegations. As so often in Colombia, uncertainty surrounds the identity of the killers.
Comentario: Naciones Unidas y The Economist (conocidos thatcherianos) ¡Malditos comunistas!