14 June, 2010
In 2009, according to the annual survey of the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC), 101 murders of trade unionists occurred worldwide. Colombia again was the leader among countries with 48. Despite the gruesome repeat, the ILO’s Committee on the Application of Standards, on 5 June, excluded Colombia from the list of 25 countries sanctioned for trade union rights abuses.
The ICEM expresses disbelief over the omitting of Colombia, and itself sanctions employers’ representatives at the ILO for manipulating the exclusion. The ICEM also calls attention to the fact that President Álvaro Uribe Vélez immediately used Colombia’s elimination to promote free trade agreements with North American nations and the European Union.
It was the first time in 20 years that Colombia, far and away the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists to carry out their activities, was left off the list. The ITUC reports that over the last decade, 63% of all trade union murders occurred in Colombia. It counts at least 10,887 acts of violence against unionists, and over the past 24 years, 2,832 murders occurred.
“The ICEM is appalled at the political power play by employers’ representatives, both from Colombia and elsewhere, to exclude Colombia from the list of 25,” said ICEM General Secretary Manfred Warda. “Not only do murders, telephone threats, physical assaults continue there on a regular basis, but despite government rhetoric, impunity for such crimes is nearly always certain.”
The exclusion, at the 99th Session of ILO’s International Labour Conference in Geneva, came days before Colombia hosted the US Secretary of State in another effort to get America to implement its end of the 2006 United States-Colombia Trade Promotion Act. The US Congress has held up a vote over implementing it because of Colombia’s horrid labour and human rights record.
Uribe welcomed the US foreign minister to Colombia by stating the ILO’s move was a “harbinger of your visit” to the Latin nation.
Similar free trade agreements are also currently pending between Colombia and both Canada and the European Union. Resistance by constituencies, including labour unions, against such foreign trade deals also hinge on human and union rights abuses.
Colombia’s murder rate speaks for itself. In the first five months of 2010, 17 Colombian trade union activists were murdered. And on 5 June, the same day the ILO’s tripartite committee excluded the country, Hernán Abdiel Ordoñez Dorado, treasurer of the prison workers’ union ASEINPEC, was shot dead by unknown assailants on motorbikes in Cali. The number of assassinated trade unionists in Colombia in 2010 is 18.
In 2009, 22 of Colombia’s 48 killings were made against senior trade union leaders, with five of those being women.
Overall, again according to the ITUC statistics, murders of trade unionists jumped 30% in 2009 over 2008, when 76 killings were recorded. But it is a known fact that many murders, and other abusive violations aimed at trade unionists, go unreported.
Compared to Colombia’s 48 trade union murders in 2009, 16 happened in Guatemala, 12 in Honduras, six each in Mexico and Bangladesh, four in Brazil, and three each in the Dominican Republic and the Philippines.
The ITUC survey provides detailed documentation of harassment, intimidation, and other measures on anti-union persecution in 140 countries. The survey can be found here.