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23 March, 2009
In efforts to hold the government of Álvaro Uribe responsible for prosecuting the real perpetrators behind the murders of trade union activists before a US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is enacted, the US House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee heard vivid testimony last month on several murders.
One was the 2001 assassination of Jorge Darío Hoyos, who was once the Colombian coordinator for the Miners’ International Federation (MIF), one of the predecessor trade union federations of the ICEM.
Yessika Hoyos
Testifying in Washington, DC, was his daughter, 25-year-old Yessika Hoyos. She said that despite police arresting two individuals who actually committed the crime, no effort has been made to apprehend and prosecute those who ordered the assassination.
“We know there is evidence of other perpetrators, including members of the national army,” she said. “The investigation remains open, but with no follow-up of the evidence as requested, and no identification of other possible perpetrators.”
Darío Hoyos, then 61, was gunned down in his home town of Fusagasuga, in central Colombia near Bogotá, on 3 March 2001.At the time, a paramilitary group called the Block Centaurs was thought to have carried out the killing. He was MIF’s national coordinator from 1984 to 1991, and then served as an organiser and collective bargaining advisor to unions representing teachers, bank workers, and telecommunications staff.
At the February 2009 US Congress hearing, the House Education and Labour Committee stated, “The Colombian government has not done enough to stem the rising violence against trade union leaders or address the backlog of labor union leader killings.” A representative from Colombia’s National Labour School testified that 60% of all murders of trade union activists throughout the world occur in Colombia.