Over a year ago, I wrote about the murderous conditions facing unionists in Colombia. Despite this, the Administration is pushing ahead with the so-called "free trade" deal with Colombia. From CongressDailyPM:
The White House is pushing for a vote on the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade agreement before the August recess, a top administration official said this week. In arguing for swift action, Commerce Undersecretary for International Trade Christopher Padilla acknowledged that election-year politics are likely to swamp lawmakers when they return in September. But he said, "I don’t think that it’s impossible to do a trade agreement in an election year." In an interview with CongressDaily, Padilla echoed recent comments by Trade Representative Schwab that President Bush is preparing to send the Colombia FTA implementing legislation "immediately or very shortly" after lawmakers return from the spring recess. Schwab is leading a delegation of lawmakers to Colombia April 4. Under "fast-track" trade negotiating authority rules, the administration would have to submit the deal to Congress no later than April 8 to ensure the 60-day clock for House action will run out by the end of July. The Senate would have another 30 legislative days to act.
The grave danger facing unionists in Colombia has not abated, as this excellent contribution by the United Steel Workers shows:
On March 22, 2008, Adolfo Gonzalez Montes, a Colombian coal miner and leader of the union SINTRACARBON, was assassinated in his home, leaving behind his wife and children. Adolfo Gonzalez Montes was the 13th unionist murdered in Colombia this year, putting Colombia on course to far exceed its rate of 40 trade unionists killed last year.
Since 1991, around 2,300 union leaders have been killed in Colombia — a country which continues to lead the world in the murder of trade unionists. It must be noted that 433 of these unionists have been killed since President Alvaro Uribe took office in 2002. Some of these, moreover, have been killed by the Colombian military itself. And, all were put at risk by the Uribe Administration, which continues to wrongly stigmatize trade unionists as “guerillas” and “terrorists.”
As the LA Times recently reported, the Colombian military’s share of extra-judicial killings has been on a steady increase recently, with the military responsible for the killing of 287 civilians last year alone — a 10% increase over the previous year. In total, the Colombian military has been responsible for over 955 extra-judicial killings since Alvaro Uribe was elected president in 2002.
You can read the rest of the article here.
