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10 August, 2005ICEM News release No. 75/2001
Gustavo Soler, President of the El Paso section of the energy workers' union Sintramienergética, has been murdered in Colombia.
His death adds one more name to the long list of Colombians slain for defending workers' rights.
Labour activists are among the most frequent targets for assassination in Colombia - mainly by right-wing death squads, and sometimes also by guerrilla movements.
Sintramienergética seems to have been singled out for particular attention.
In a protest letter to Colombia's President Andrés Pastrana today, Fred Higgs points out that in the El Paso-Cesar area alone, five Sintramienergética activists have been murdered this year. This is "a real policy of extermination directed against the leadership of Sintramienergética," writes Higgs, who is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).
Amnesty International has described attacks on trade unionists in Colombia as "widespread and systematic."
Human rights campaigners inside the country allege that the death squads are linked to the Colombian military.
Colombia is far and away the most dangerous country in which to be a trade unionist, according to the 2001 trade union rights survey just published by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
Last year, the ICFTU says, no less than 153 of the 209 trade unionists assassinated worldwide were in Colombia.
Many other Colombian trade unionists and their families are subject to death threats and other harassment, and some have "disappeared".
Almost all the murders of trade unionists in Colombia have gone unexplained and unpunished.
"It is inadmissible that crimes of this kind keep on happening and the perpetrators keep on escaping punishment," Higgs tells President Pastrana. "It is the responsibility of your Government and of your country's Supreme Court of Justice to track down and punish the murderers
His death adds one more name to the long list of Colombians slain for defending workers' rights.
Labour activists are among the most frequent targets for assassination in Colombia - mainly by right-wing death squads, and sometimes also by guerrilla movements.
Sintramienergética seems to have been singled out for particular attention.
In a protest letter to Colombia's President Andrés Pastrana today, Fred Higgs points out that in the El Paso-Cesar area alone, five Sintramienergética activists have been murdered this year. This is "a real policy of extermination directed against the leadership of Sintramienergética," writes Higgs, who is the General Secretary of the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM).
Amnesty International has described attacks on trade unionists in Colombia as "widespread and systematic."
Human rights campaigners inside the country allege that the death squads are linked to the Colombian military.
Colombia is far and away the most dangerous country in which to be a trade unionist, according to the 2001 trade union rights survey just published by the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU).
Last year, the ICFTU says, no less than 153 of the 209 trade unionists assassinated worldwide were in Colombia.
Many other Colombian trade unionists and their families are subject to death threats and other harassment, and some have "disappeared".
Almost all the murders of trade unionists in Colombia have gone unexplained and unpunished.
"It is inadmissible that crimes of this kind keep on happening and the perpetrators keep on escaping punishment," Higgs tells President Pastrana. "It is the responsibility of your Government and of your country's Supreme Court of Justice to track down and punish the murderers