Body of missing Colombian labor leader found in dump

Source: EFE Ingles Via Acquire Media NewsEdge

Bogota, Jul 16 (EFE)- The body of missing union leader Guillermo Rivera, 52, was found at a dump near the town of Ibague, about 100 kilometers (60 miles) west of Bogota, Colombia's CTC labor federation said Wednesday.

Rivera, a Bogota city employee and president of the municipal workers union who was also active in politics, had not been seen since dropping off his daughter at her school-bus stop in the capital on April 22.

The CTC said in a statement that Rivera died April 28, apparently after having been detained by the police.

Colombia's main opposition party, the leftist PDA, said prior to the discovery of the body that witness testimony and video evidence indicated Rivera was seized by members of Bogota's Metropolitan Police ...

Read more: http://www.tmcnet.com/usubmit/2008/07/16/3551275.htm

---

And the never-ending story:

May the murdering bastards get their true and just rewards

And his position is not far from the Democrats' position, either.

:puke:

and all the $$$ their executives will make if they lay off as many American workers as possible, they can sleep easy at night knowing that Colombia's government will "take care" of every labor leader who might stymie their plans for raw exploitation.

:thumbsdown:

This article is probably going to have a couple of trolls enjoying themselves inordinately while reading it. One less stumbling block remains in the road in Colombia to keeping an entire slave population working for no benefits, and no livable salaries, and in unsafe conditions.

Little fascist states like Colombia come very close to another form of racist Camelot. Everything couldn't be better for the oligarchs, and life is agony for everyone else. We get spectacular, twisted liars insisting that the paramilitaries are demobilized, as they simper and coo over their little spidery Alvaro Uribe, while we ALL know from every single human rights organization that the paramilitary death squads, narcotraffickers most surely ARE NOT DEMOBILIZED BUT ARE VERY MUCH IN OPERATION, and never were gone.

Same old death threats, same old torture, same old mosterous filthy murders. Brand new lies and boasts and claims about how hot Colombia is with their little Rumplestiltskin, the diminuitive _Bush buddy at the helm, targeting his enemies, human rights workers, journalists who get too bold, and wildly unleashing the fury (sometimes with chainsaws, and mass graves or bodies thrown into the river) of the paramilitary cretins against them. How lucky they are to have a President who spares the people all the trouble of having to vote for a referendum regarding his running for unlimited terms, and, instead, sneaks around behind the publics' backs, and bribes the legislature to make it possible by rewriting the law. What could be better than even more years of Uribe?

http://www.cbc.ca.nyud.net:8090/gfx/images/news/photos/2007/03/11/bush-colombia-cp-161514.jpg http://www.tipiloschi.net.nyud.net:8090/nino/ninoland/MartyFeldmanIgor.jpg

Do you ever check the headlines on Colombia? Every week some idiot Republican or right-wing rag is holding forth all over again, berating the Democratic Congress for holding back on this FTA in direct reference to the relentless assault on men and women who seek to improve their unwholesome, degrading work situations seeking collective solutions to hazardous working conditions and exploitation by the multinationals.

They have headlines claiming this is a fine way for those nasty Democrats to treat America's good friend, Colombia.

They miss their Confederate Camelot, and yearn to create their own Colombia right here, where political dissidents can be tortured to death and buried, and the media is simply too terrified to write a word any more, and only self-censors its stories, avoiding investigative journalism (sure sounds familiar), which they freely admit, not wanting to be the next one slaughtered in front of their families and neighbors.

"The events demonstrate that contrary to official propaganda, the state still does not provide sufficient guarantees to exercise the constitutional rights to life, liberty, union and political organization and participation by members of the opposition," the PDA said.

Rivera's body was identified by wife Sonia Betancourt, who said the last she had heard of her husband was that he was under arrest.

More than 2,700 Colombian union members have been slain in the past 20 years, according to figures from the International Labor Organization.

Colombia's status as the world's most dangerous country for trade unionists is one of the reasons cited by congressional Democrats in the United States for their unwillingness to ratifying the trade treaty the Bush administration negotiated with Bogota in 2006. EFE

Guillermo Rivera,
Rest In Peace.
He's a better man
than any of them.

Earlier statement on the kidnapping:

Brussels, 25 April 2008 (ITUC Online): The ITUC has expressed its outrage and firm condemnation following the disappearance of Guillermo Rivera Fuquene, President of the Public Servants Union of Bogota (SINSRVPUB), affiliated to the CTC Colombia, and a civil servant in the Colombian Comptroller’s office. This is the latest in a long line of daily violations of fundamental workers’ rights in Colombia.

Rivera Fuquene disappeared on 22 April at 6.30 in the morning in the “El Tunal” district as he was leaving his house to take his young daughter to school. This event, which has taken place against a background of harassment, threats and attacks against trade union leaders, firmly belies the claims by the government of President Uribe that the situation of workers and trade union activists in Colombia is improving.

http://www.protectionline.org/Guillermo-Rivera-Fuquene-missing,6763.html

in Colombia:

Media Imbalance And Escalated Violence
January 27, 2003 By Simon Helweg-Larsen

As U.S. Special Forces arrived in early January to train Colombian troops in the protection of oil pipelines, violence by both leftist guerrillas and right-wing paramilitaries soared. The first few days of 2003 were violent, with guerrillas branching out into a new form of attack: suicide car bombs: while paramilitaries continued their systematic executions. True to the usual one-sided coverage of the North American press, however, guerrilla-sponsored bombings have made headlines while dozens of paramilitary murders have gone virtually unnoticed. Additionally, the delivery of military aid has been reported on without accompanying contextual analysis.

In the span of just ten days, five separate suicide car bomb attacks hit Colombia. While responsibility has not been claimed, the targets of the bombings suggest that the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) is behind the attacks. On January 8, a car drove into a military base manned by the 46th Anti-Guerrilla Battalion in Arauquita in the department of Arauca, killing one and wounding four. The next day a suicide bomber drove into a military checkpoint in Fortul, Arauca, killing four and injuring 15. Another military checkpoint in the same city was attacked two days later, resulting in four deaths and 14 people wounded. On January 12, a car bomb claimed the lives of three people and wounded three more: all the victims were military personnel: in La Palma, Cundinamarca. And on the January 16, one more car bomb exploded, this time killing four civilian employees and wounding 32 at the attorney general's office in Medellín.

Meanwhile, the paramilitary massacres continue. In the mid-sized eastern town of Cúcuta, right-wing assassins killed 57 civilians in the first 10 days of January. In one particularly bloody episode, eight people were killed in two of the city's poor districts between 10:30pm and 11:00pm on January 9. Security guards and unarmed civilians, including a pregnant woman, were dragged into the streets and shot. In a separate incident, paramilitary forces killed the leader of a teacher's union in the eastern town of Tame in Arauca. Such information is disseminated slowly, and it is quite probable that many more civilians have been killed in similar attacks so far this year.

The events of early January and their subsequent coverage highlight the media blackout on Colombia, which serves to perpetuate North American ignorance on the conflict. As noted above, both guerrillas and paramilitaries committed violent atrocities in the first days of 2003. The suicide bombings do merit heightened coverage since these inaugurate a new tactic for the country's armed groups. However, the number of murders committed by paramilitary forces far exceeds that of leftist guerrillas by at least 58 to 16. A fact that is not evident in North American media coverage.

A study of media coverage in major North American news sources shows overwhelming attention to the guerrilla bombings with no mention of paramilitary violence. Of the 39 stories dealing specifically with Colombian violence, politics, or economics distributed by the Associated Press (AP) between January 8 and noon on January 17, 20 dealt with the suicide car bombs. None of the 39 stories even mentioned specific events of paramilitary violence, and only two articles described the arrival of U.S. troops in Arauca. In the same time period, the Reuters news distribution agency dedicated five of their nine Colombian stories to the car bombs, and none to the paramilitaries. Many major newspapers neglected to cover the escalating violence in Colombia. The New York Times only printed three stories on Colombia: one from AP, one from Reuters, and a third by their own correspondent. None of them mentioned the car bombs or paramilitary massacres. USA Today surpassed the New York Times, failing to print a single story on Colombia during the period in question.*

A closer examination of the events of early January suggests that the North American media overlooked more than paramilitary massacres. Those news articles that reported the suicide attacks tended to announce them as a new tactic contributing to intensification of the conflict. However, many of these pieces failed to report that the first three of the five car bombs hit military checkpoints or bases in the province of Arauca, all on the roadway to Saravena. In the second week of January, some 60 U.S. troops from the 7th Special Forces Group arrived in Arauca, heading for a military base in Saravena. This marks the first arrival of U.S. troops in Colombia on an expressed anti-guerrilla mission. The troops will train a 1,000-strong Colombian "Critical Infrastructure Brigade" to protect a 483-mile long oil pipeline owned and operated by the California-based Occidental Petroleum (see, Uribe's Dictatorial Rule Suits Oil Companies).

More:
http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/11110

He wonders why the Dems are fighting this.

The flower production industry in Colombia is a stronghold of antiunion employers, who also promote the establishment of phony cooperatives and pro-management unions. At the company CI Bochica, a subcommittee of the National Union of Agroindustry Workers (SINTRAINAGRO) was formed and immediately dismantled. Guillermo Rivera, president of SINTRAINAGRO, spoke with Sirel and announced that the first steps are under way to launch an international campaign to raise awareness on this situation.

-Could you give us some background on the current situation at the CI Bochica flower production company?

-We have been informing for some time now that a SINTRAINAGRO subcommittee had been formed at this company and that several workers had joined the union. As a result of pressure from management and the bribes it handed out, this subcommittee did not obtain the approval of the Ministry of Social Protection (MPS), and the company took advantage of this situation to fire all the members of the subcommittee and, immediately after that, to lay off every worker who had joined the union. Negotiations over the List of Demands presented by the union were effectively paralyzed. Following a report filed with the MPS, the company attended a negotiation with representatives of the workers. It continued in this way for 20 days without accepting any of the proposals presented, among which the main demand was the reinstatement of the laid-off workers. Last week marked the end of the 20-day term established by law for the parties to come to a direct solution, with no real results attained, as Bochica refuses to rehire any of the workers and claims that it is unable to adjust salaries under the Collective Agreements.

-What comes next, after this dead end?

-Now, as we have no one left inside the company, it’s impossible to call a strike, so we must move to a stage that involves the tripartite Arbitration Board. This puts workers in an unfavorable position, as the strategy that is typically applied by companies in this situation is to take advantage of the six-month term that the law establishes to appoint representatives to the Board. When the six months are almost up, the companies appoint representatives that resign the day before the negotiations are set to begin, thus gaining another six months to appoint new representatives. A company can pull this stunt several times with the aim of wearing down the union.

-What will SINTRAINAGRO’s reaction to this intolerance be?

-We are coordinating with the IUF to launch an international campaign to denounce the situation, not only against Bochica, but also against all flower producers in general, as they all behave in the same manner. We want to campaign strongly in the countries where these companies export their products to, basically the Unites States and Europe. Consumers must become aware of the situation that affects those who work day in and day out to produce the flowers exported by Colombia, how they are persecuted and have no guarantees for the enjoyment of their union rights. We’ve reported this situation to the ILO, since the Colombian government is going around the world boasting about the union freedom that exists in this country, when the facts tell an entirely different story.

-How many people does the flower industry employ?

-There are some 200 thousand people working in this industry, of which approximately 70 percent are women. Bochica employs 400 workers.


-Representatives of the US Congress have traveled to Colombia in the framework of the discussions towards the approval of a Free Trade Agreement between the two countries. Have they been able to witness this persecution?

-The association ASOCOLFLORES, which gathers local companies from the flower industry, organized a “guided visit” of their facilities for these representatives, and prepared meetings with workers who are members of unions orchestrated by management. Management uses these unions by getting them to say that there are no violations of labor rights in their companies. These are outright lies, because these companies don’t even pay their social security contributions. That is why we want to be able to send our own committees to Europe and the United States, to explain the actual conditions of production of the flowers consumers buy there. We have videos and all kinds of evidence that show the conditions suffered by the workers of Colombia’s flower industry. Workers wear no protective or safety gear whatsoever, even though they handle great volumes of agrochemicals. There are workers who have become sterile, and many have chronic skin conditions, and we have reported these problems over and over again, without having ever received an answer.

-The government’s lack of action in this sense is absolute…

-Through the MPS, the government is an accomplice of all these abuses and violations of the workers’ human and union rights, as it benefits and protects the companies. This is why we need to pressure strongly through an international campaign to let the world know what is really happening in this industry.

http://www.rel-uita.org/sindicatos/con_guillermo_rivera-2_eng.htm

So if you are poor, and defenseless, and have to work in order to live, you either will be exploited and harmed, or you will be murdered if you resist it in Colombia.

Ultimately, it's all the same fight.

For those three cans of cola a week that I want to drink. Carbonated solidarity!

Go pick some flowers or buy locally grown ones.

~snip~
Part of the problem is heavy reliance on the United States, where nearly six of every 10 flowers sold are imported from Colombia.

~snip~
As a result, the income in pesos of Colombian growers has plummeted, even though their worldwide exports increased from $966 million in 2006 to $1 billion last year.

Efforts to boost U.S. sales run up against the view that flowers are luxury items rather than everyday adornments in homes.

Annual per capita spending on flowers in the United States is just $25, compared with $50 in Great Britain and $101 in Switzerland, according to a study by the Flower Council of Holland published in 2004, the last year when figures were available.

"Flowers are seen as some sort of extravagance that are just for special occasions," said Robert Weatherford Jr., president of Houston-based wholesaler Southern Floral Co. "I'm not sure why."

Much of the retail business has shifted from neighborhood floral shops to supermarkets and big-box stores, such as Wal-Mart, that now sell half of all flowers purchased in the United States.

But their low prices have cut into the earnings of Colombian producers. All told, about a dozen large Colombian flower farms have closed in the past three years, eliminating 15,000 jobs, Solano said.


The savannah surrounding the Colombian capital of Bogotá was once dominated by dairy farmers. But in the mid-1960s, David Cheever, a graduate student at Colorado State University, identified the region as the best spot on the globe to grow flowers for the U.S. market.

Year-round growth
Flowers can be grown year-round because the area has constant 12-hour periods of daylight and temperatures averaging 57 degrees. In addition, Bogotá is just a three-hour flight to the United States. Colombian and U.S. entrepreneurs read Cheever's term paper and began planting roses, carnations, chrysanthemums and other flowers, and developed high technological standards.

~snip~
Today, only the Netherlands exports more flowers than Colombia.

In a country where many farmers give up on poor-paying legal crops to grow coca, the raw material for cocaine, the flower industry is labor-intensive and provides 100,000 direct jobs. Flowers, for example, require six field hands per acre, compared with less than one for coffee and other agricultural products.

~snip~
Duty-free since 1991
To develop and strengthen legal industries and help these nations fight drug production and trafficking, Washington has allowed flowers and thousands of other products from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia to enter the U.S. duty-free since 1991.

But these benefits must be renewed every year by the U.S. Congress, a process that requires an expensive lobbying campaign by the Colombians.

That's why growers are pushing for passage of a trade deal between the two countries that would enshrine the duty-free status of flowers and allow more American products to enter the Colombian market with reduced tariffs.

Both governments signed the trade agreement in 2006, but it's unclear whether there is enough support in the U.S. Congress, which is now controlled by Democrats, to approve the deal.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/headline/biz/5527261.html


~~~~~~~~~~~
Shouldn't take forever to find out where flowers in one's area are grown.

Absolutely easy to live without buying duty-free flowers, just like Coca Cola!

Threatened Workers Need Legal Recognition

Workers at Bochica Farms formed a union in January and immediately began receiving death threats. The company is refusing to negotiate with the union and the Miami based distributor, Spectrum Flowers, is not responding to requests for intervention.

Write to Spectrum and demand that they defend the workers from threats and intimidation, and help to negotiate a resolution to the conflict that supports the rights of the workers who grow their flowers.

Background:

According to the Escuela Nacional Sindical (ENS) and the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT), on January 28, 2007, the Unión de Trabajadores de Exportaciones Bochica S.A. CI formed at the EXPORTACIONES BOCHICA SA CI flower company. The following day, the union filed the paperwork for legal recognition from the government.

The manager of the company, Hugo Cifuentes, held a meeting with all of the workers in which he stated that the company did not want a union. Shortly thereafter, he approached several union members and pressured them to disaffiliate. At another meeting, in which individuals in military uniform were present, the manager warned workers of the dangers of forming a union in Colombia.

Two days after this meeting, the union president, treasurer, and auditor received written threats, supposedly from the AGUILAS NEGRAS DEL ORIENTE. According to these threats, if the union members did not cease their union activity, they could become military targets.

More:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1618/t/3754/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6913

(This "Black Hawk" paramilitary death squad threatening these union workers is a rearranged group of former A.U.C. right-wing narcotrafficking mercenary killers.

One of the A.U.C. original founding members, Carlos Castaño, was connected to Pablo Escobar, and has been murdered, along with many of his bodyguards, by killers contracted by his own paramilitary death squad brother. Carlos Castaño have an interview discussing his practise of murdering journalists he claimed are FARC supporters.)

Dole Flower Workers in Trouble Again
Tell Dole It's Time to Quit Playing Games and Negotiate Contracts. Period.

Dole Fresh Flowers has revealed itself as an anti-union company in recent years, engaging in numerous union-busting tactics while presenting a public face of corporate social responsibility. After destroying the strongest independent union in the Colombian flower industry, Sintrasplendor, in 2006, Dole is now finding itself on the brink of another union struggle.

At Flores la Fragancia, another fully-owned subsidiary of Dole Fresh Flowers in Colombia, the Untrafragancia union formed in early February 2006. By the end of their first month, it claimed 200 affiliates, almost two-thirds of the plantation's workers. Workers say they joined the union in response to poor working conditions, labor rights violations, and mistreatment from management. Flower workers often endure long work days, repetitive stress injuries from excessive work loads, and pesticide-related illnesses such as respiratory infections, nausea and vomiting, and reproductive problems. Female flower workers report that pregnancy tests are often a pre-requisite of employment.

Sinaltraflor, a company-friendly union used systematically by Dole and other flower companies to prevent the establishment of independent unions, has effectively prevented Untrafragancia from negotiating with Dole for almost two years.

More:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1618/t/3754/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6572

Website:
http://www.usleap.org/actions

coal company which just got underway.

You may recall in the last few years there have been rounds after rounds with the relatives of three murdered Drummond union worker employees trying to seek justice for their loved ones who were murdered by paramilitaries (death squads) hired by Drummond.

Since they took a trial all the way to Birmingham to find justice, they were horrified to see it all all turned out going against them, apparently, and they didn't stand a chance, especially when one of the witnesses wasn't allowed to testifiy.

Here's the new catastrophe waiting ahead:

Workers at Drummond coal mine in Colombia go on strike
July 18, 2008 5:12 PM ET
By Barry Cassell

Drummond Co. Inc. said in a brief July 18 statement that the work force at its Drummond Ltd. coal mine in Colombia declared a strike on July 16.

"The strike continues and so do the negotiations," said the statement. "We are hopeful an agreement can be reached soon."

According to the Drummond Co. Web site: "The Drummond Ltd. Colombian operation includes Mina Pribbenow, an open-pit coal mine located in the Cesar Coal Basin near La Loma, Puerto Drummond, a deep-water ocean port on the Caribbean Sea near Santa Marta, and coal transportation and handling facilities. Drummond Ltd. transports the coal from the mine 120 miles by railcar on the renovated portion of the Colombian National Railroad System and National Highway directly to Puerto Drummond, the deep-water ocean port. This port has the capability to load all sizes of vessels from handy-size up to the largest capesize."

The site adds: "Heavy investment in production infrastructure over the last few years has allowed Drummond Ltd. to grow shipments of Colombian coal from 1 million tons in 1995 to 22.9 million tons in 2007. Enabling this growth has been the innovative use of a conveyance system and apron feeders to move coal and overburden at our Colombian mine. Through proper management of the coal loading process, Drummond Ltd. has been able to consistently produce a high quality product to world utility markets. In 2007, 247 vessels were loaded via the port facilities."

Much of this coal moves to U.S. utilities along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts, though more of it lately has been going to the lucrative European market.

More:
http://www.snl.com/interactivex/article.aspx?CdId=A-8107232-13157

How long do you think it will be before we hear of yet ANOTHER witnessed story of the paras going onto the bus carrying Drummond union workers away from the site, and simply shooting them at point blank range, or another witnessed story, forcing them off the bus at gun point, and taking them somewhere to be tortured before murdering them?

Don't forget, if it's good, captive cheap workers you want, you can't go wrong with Colombia!

I don't see all the press releases published in the media to saturate the news channel and keep the people "inform" about this.

(death squads) have been responsible for almost all of the murders (called "human rights violations," politely, which would conceal tortures-to-death, and murder by chainsaws, machetes, clubs, mass murders, slaughterings of entire villages by death squads with occassional participation by militaries, or village destruction by death squads with militaries surrounding the towns, not letting people in or out) yet we do not get any word about these events, nor the assassinations of union workers and journalists, often done in front of witnesses in order to plant the seeds of terror in Colombian citizens so they'll be encouraged to keep quiet, which has gone on for so very long, nor do we get the stories of the paramilitaries going into the polling places at election time and intimidating the voters, so they'll be sure, in order to stay alive, to vote for Uribe, and Uribe's party, and to always support Uribe.

Nope we get just enough to get the imbeciles among us all fired up, raving about their right to get revenge on those old FARC commie "enemies" who are dangled before their eyes as the next group to attack. Just like the good old days and the propaganda fed by the CIA and Republican State Departments set up the U.S. population to support any destruction to the Chilean President, Salvador Allende, and his replacement with mass murdering/torturing Nixon/Kissinger puppet, Augusto Pinochet.

In the meantime, we heard almost NOTHING at all about the right-wing U.S.-supported military junta in Argentina which occupied itself killing off leftists, all known and suspected political dissidents, and laid waste to over 30,000 people who simply DIED, disappeared from view, never to return. In some cases, they allowed the pregnant females to live just long enough to give birth, or forced C-Sections on them, so they could take the newborns, and give them to their officers (Hey, free kids!) like prizes at a carnival ring-toss, and THEN THEY KILLED THEM, so often by drugging them enough that they couldn't fight, then throwing them out of airplanes.

This murderous assault on the poor, and defenders of the poor from the oligarchy has been going on all over Latin America for generations, and our own right-wing Presidents, and their evil consorts in the Senate and the House, people like Jesse Helms, have had their ugly snouts right in the middle of it with them, pushing through legislation, helping to keep the flames of hatred going which should never have been there from the beginning.

What's different now? With any luck at all, the surviving victims and their descendants have remembered enough about their methods, their tricks, their dirty ways to be able to start defending themselves, hopefully, in the future. That region wants to be left alone, to be left unmolested by outside forces to deal with their own internal problems and to solve them without the monsters from the North rushing in to help shore up the oligarchy terrorists who have kept those countries hostage while they bled them dry, and stole them blind, and wildly exploited the people, destroying their rights to peaceful lives.

You won't ever see anything in our media, EITHER, not as long as the people who own the broadcasting companies and the newspapers are also the people who want to continue the domination of other peoples' countries and lives in the Western Hemisphere.

At some point the wingers gained TOTAL ownership, and the people who have lost include almost everyone. Only a great awakening can put things right.

people won't be sleeping forever

the HBO video about her kidnapping show a clip were she attacks the political establishment