Dear Friend,

Please respond to the two latest Urgent Action appeals from the Human Rights Department of the CUT Colombia which were issued on Friday, 6th July 2001 (see below in English and español).

Send protest e-mails, faxes and letters demanding a) protection for trade unionists under threat and b) the removal of state impunity from those carrying out the assassinations c) real steps to dismantle the far-right paramilitary groups to:

Doctor Andres Pastrana Arango
President of the Republic, Palacio de Narino, Santafe de Bogota DC
E-mail: rdh@presidencia.gov.co
Fax: 00571 3362109 / 337 1351 / 2867434 / 286 6842

With copies to:

CUT Trade Union Federation, Departmento Derechos Humanos,
Calle 35 No 7-25 Piso 9, Bogota, Colombia.
Tel/Fax: 00571 288 8577 / 323 7550
E-mail: cutcol@col3.telecom.com.co

and

Colombia Solidarity Campaign, PO Box 8446, London N17 6NZ
E-mail: colombia_sc@hotmail.com

and whichever other government or institutional bodies you believe appropriate.

Unceasing Barbarism Against Colombian Trade Union Leaders

Through its Human Rights Department, the Colombian Workers Federation “CUT” denounces:

• On 3rd July 2001 JAIRO DOMÍNGUEZ, a worker at Cairo Cement and a member of the Santa Bárbara, Antioquia branch of SUTIMAC-CUT, the United Building Materials Industrial Workers Union, was kidnapped by armed men. This event occurred on the road that goes from Santa Bárbara to the Cairo Cement Factory, which is situated in Montebello in the Department of Antioquia.

  To this date the comrade is disappeared, for this reason we put out an URGENT call that his life should be spared, so that he may be promptly returned safe and sound to his family and trade union comrades.

   

• Death threats against OTONIEL RAMÍREZ have been increasing throughout June 2001. This campaign was declared when Otoniel’s name appeared on a list put out by paramilitary groups announcing his execution. Otoniel has been followed; calls have been made to his family home and to the trade union; also they have intimidated his wife with all types of threats, including the announcement that a bomb had been place in their residence.

  Comrade Otoniel is the President of CUT-VALLE regional executive and a member of the Yumbo, Valle de Cauca branch of the United Building Materials Industrial Workers Union SUTIMAC.

   

• The Executive Committee of the Cartago Municipality Workers Union, in Valle de Cauca Department, has obtained information concerning the presence of paramilitary groups in this town. The paramilitaries have unleashed multiple threats against social and trade union leaders and human rights defenders; as well as the harassment by persons unknown both of people’s homes as well as the trade union headquarters.

The above events demonstrate the high risk attached to exercising one’s activities as a social leader and defender of human rights, given the permanent declaration by the paramilitary AUC [Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia] that such people are military targets.

These events clearly show that the situation of social leaders, trade unionists and defenders of human rights in Colombia is serious that each day the offensive is growing to weaken these organisations, as can be seen by the lack of guarantees to exercise these activities in defence of human rights. The government is definitely NOT assuming a real commitment to the protection measures that the situation of insecurity merits. Across the country, so far in 2001 there have been 55 assassinations, 30 disappearances and an indeterminate number of threats.

JESÚS ANTONIO GONZALEZ LUNA
Director Human Rights Department

Frustrated Assassination Attempt On USO - Oilworkers Union

Through its Human Rights Department, the Colombian Workers Federation “CUT” denounces:

At 6:00am on 6th July 2001 a workers demonstration took place, that was the culmination of a strike that had developed against contracting temporary personnel at the ECOPETROL [state oil] corporation. This activity took place at the main gate of the Refinery Industrial Complex located at Barrancabermeja, Santander Department.

Comrade HERNANDO HERNÁNDEZ PARDO, Vice-President of the Colombian Workers Federation “CUT” and President of the Oil Industry United Workers Union - USO - was present. Right while he was intervening in the oilworkers’ demonstration, ECOPETROL’s chief of security informed him that his assassination was about to be carried out there and then. And so comrade Hernando suspended what he was doing and rapidly entered one of the buildings in the refinery complex.

The assassination was to be perpetrated by a commando group of paramilitaries who had already been encountered in the area bearing long-arm weapons. This incident, which fortunately came out well due to the prompt action of our comrade, nonetheless makes clear that in one the country’s industrial cities, where there is a great concentration of the state’s armed forces, paramilitary groups move around without impediment to carry out criminal acts against social organisations and their leaders. It demonstrates that the mechanisms of political and military order to dismantle these paramilitary groups do not exist.

The help that we are today asking of the trade union movement, NGOs, communications media, governments, parliaments and the democratic and progressive community nationally and internationally - is to demand that the government of Doctor ANDRES PASTRANA ARANGO truly does make the decision to dismantle the paramilitary groups, and so provide a key element of protection for our free exercise of trade union activity.

JESúS ANTONIO GONZALEZ LUNA
Director Human Rights Department

No Cesa La Barbarie Contra Los Dirigentes Sindicales Colombianos