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8 October, 2007
ICEM North American affiliate United Steelworkers (USW) issued a public letter to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe last week warning that a paramilitary group called the “Black Eagles” has recently threatened leaders of food and beverage union SINALTRAINAL in the area of Bucaramanga, Santander state, with death.
The USW said the group stated they would “bury the union members and their families in a mass grave on Christmas Day if they do not cease their union activities and leave the area.” The US-based union specifically named SINALTRAINAL leaders Javier Correa, Luis Eduardo Garcia, and Jose Domingo Florez as the recipients of the death threats.
USW President Leo Gerard
In the USW letter to Uribe, President Leo Gerard writes of a specific incident related to Jose Florez on 27 September. He says the son of the union leader was picked up by armed men, thrown into a van, beaten, and then released with the message they would not stop until Florez’s father was dismembered.
Gerard’s letter to Uribe reminded the Colombia President that the country leads the world in the number of trade unionists who are ruthlessly killed each year. The South American country, Gerard wrote, “represents 54% of all trade union killings world-wide. And so far in 2007, the official Colombian government figure of trade union leaders killed is 23.”
Gerard added, “We are very concerned about this situation, especially as impunity in Colombia for the slaying of trade unionists remains at over 98%.”
Meanwhile, the USW and the US-based Human Rights Fund have appealed a decision by a US district court in the state of Alabama against Drummond Coal, a company that operates in Colombia and the US. The civil suit is on behalf of surviving family members of trade union leaders of Sintramienergética. The USW believes these leaders were murdered in 2001 by paramilitary forces, with the complicity of the American coal company.
In July 2007, a federal district court in Alabama denied testimony from relevant witnesses to the murders of three trade union leaders and ruled Drummond not guilty with connection to the killings. The USW and Human Rights Watch have now appealed that ruling to a US Federal Circuit Court of Appeals bench in Atlanta, Georgia.
The case was filed on behalf of family members of Valmore Lacarno, Victor Oracasita, and Gustavo Soler. The case falls under the US Alien Tort Claims Act, which allows foreign citizens to file financial damage lawsuits in US courtrooms against American companies in crimes committed outside the US. The ICEM is aiding the USW in bringing the correct and necessary testimony to this set of grizzly killings in Colombia to the US justice system.