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12 August, 2005ICEM News release No. 87/1998
Colombia's government must take immediate steps to protect trade unionists, the 20-million-strong International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM) insists in a letter faxed to President Andrés Pastrana.
The strong protest from ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe follows the murder this Tuesday of the prominent Colombian union leader Jorge Ortega.
Jorge Ortega was Vice-President of the national union confederation CUT, an executive board member of the electricity workers' union Sintraelecol and an adviser to the ICEM-affiliated coalminers' union Sintracarbon and to the labour centre USO.
Ortega, who had received numerous death threats, had been leading an indefinite nationwide strike of state sector workers against the harsh austerity measures that have been brought in by the Colombian government and which mainly target workers and the poor. As news of his assassination spread, private sector workers joined in the strike action.
The murder of Jorge Ortega is the latest in a long series of assassinations of Colombian trade unionists. The killings are often the work of right-wing death squads that have close links to the authorities.
Thorpe tells President Pastrana: "The ICEM believes that this most recent assassination of a national trade union leader, following the murder of thousands of trade unionists over the past ten years, is the final confirmation of your government's complete inability to provide even the most basic guarantees of personal safety to the citizens of your country."
So the ICEM demands that the Colombian government ensure:
a full, public and impartial investigation of the assassination of Jorge Ortega
the capture and trial of the intellectual and physical perpetrator(s) of this crime
public, effective guarantees of the personal safety of all leaders and activists of the Colombian trade union movement
a dialogue in good faith with the Colombian trade union movement in order to secure its full participation in resolving the country's pressing economic and social problems.
Thorpe tells Pastrana that the ICEM will be consulting with its affiliates, with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and with other fraternal organisations to ensure maximum economic, political and diplomatic pressure for the implementation of these demands, including through the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO).
The strong protest from ICEM General Secretary Vic Thorpe follows the murder this Tuesday of the prominent Colombian union leader Jorge Ortega.
Jorge Ortega was Vice-President of the national union confederation CUT, an executive board member of the electricity workers' union Sintraelecol and an adviser to the ICEM-affiliated coalminers' union Sintracarbon and to the labour centre USO.
Ortega, who had received numerous death threats, had been leading an indefinite nationwide strike of state sector workers against the harsh austerity measures that have been brought in by the Colombian government and which mainly target workers and the poor. As news of his assassination spread, private sector workers joined in the strike action.
The murder of Jorge Ortega is the latest in a long series of assassinations of Colombian trade unionists. The killings are often the work of right-wing death squads that have close links to the authorities.
Thorpe tells President Pastrana: "The ICEM believes that this most recent assassination of a national trade union leader, following the murder of thousands of trade unionists over the past ten years, is the final confirmation of your government's complete inability to provide even the most basic guarantees of personal safety to the citizens of your country."
So the ICEM demands that the Colombian government ensure:
a full, public and impartial investigation of the assassination of Jorge Ortega
the capture and trial of the intellectual and physical perpetrator(s) of this crime
public, effective guarantees of the personal safety of all leaders and activists of the Colombian trade union movement
a dialogue in good faith with the Colombian trade union movement in order to secure its full participation in resolving the country's pressing economic and social problems.
Thorpe tells Pastrana that the ICEM will be consulting with its affiliates, with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions and with other fraternal organisations to ensure maximum economic, political and diplomatic pressure for the implementation of these demands, including through the UN's International Labour Organisation (ILO).