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29 January, 2007
On 15 January, a death squad in Guatemala killed Pedro Zamora, general secretary of the STEPQ Dockers’ Union in Puerto Quetzal. The International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) has pledged that justice will be done in what it is calling a “dirty and cowardly act.”
Trade unionists are urged to respond to ITF’s “Campaign for Justice for Pedro Zamora,” an immediate call to the Guatemalan government to bring arrest to the perpetrators of this vile crime. Please click here and sign ITF’s Charter for Justice ‘No Hay impunidad.’
Pedro Zamora
Killed on 15 January
Your help is urgently needed in order to put maximum pressure on the Guatemalan government. An ITF-assembled delegation representing a global labour voice arrived in Guatemala City over the weekend, and has called for discussions with police, state and national justice leaders, prosecuting attorneys, as well as President Oscar Berger Perdomo. The delegation includes ILO and ITUC representatives, as well as Spanish and US unionists. Trade unionists from Guatemalan unions ISCOD/UGT, UITA-FESTRAS, and USTAC joined the delegation.
“The Guatemalan government will never be forgiven if it doesn’t investigate and then bring the murderers to justice,” said ITF Gen. Sec. David Cockroft after Zamora was slain in front of his children. “It’s a filthy little act that makes the blood of any decent person boil.”
Zamora, 43, was driving his car on 15 January after gathering his children, ages 3 and 5, from medical appointments, when a white truck with several assailants in it pulled along side and riddled the car with some 100 shots of automatic gun fire. As the STEPQ union leader lay critically wounded in the front seat of his car, one of the assailants came up to him at close range and shot him in the face. His 3-year-old son was severely wounded in the attack.
“Pedro’s commitment to the union cause is the reason he was targeted for political killing,” declared the ITF. “His death must not be in vain.”
The port workers in Quetzal have been waging a battle to retain their proper trade union recognition in the face of privatisation. In October 2006, they took industrial action, and the strike was met by 300 armed riot police. Their grievance was the company’s failure to negotiate a collective agreement, and failure to respect dockworkers’ views on modernisations to the port.
The ITF delegation, currently in Guatemala, will also lend a protective voice to other activists of STEPQ, five of whom have received telephone death threats and have been followed before Pedro Zamora’s death.
Sign the Guatemalan Charter for Justice, and bring as much heat as possible on the country’s judicial system: http://www.itfglobal.org/campaigns/zamora.cfm.