Public Service Alliance of Canada BC

Prepared by Megan Adam, Public Service Alliance of Canada

In July of 2006, twelve delegates from four Canadian trade unions traveled to Colombia as part of an ongoing campaign to defend public services and trade union organizing in that country. Over twelve days our delegation visited three major cities and several smaller communities, speaking with dozens of people representing trade union, human rights and indigenous community movements. During our densely-packed itinerary we heard the Colombians’ stories of repression and resistance, saw films about police attacks and murders, and were called on to witness the ongoing degradation of public services and Colombian society. The tour was not only a chance to make stronger links with our southern counterparts, but a wakeup call to our future if global social justice and civil society movements do not continue the struggle to halt privatization pressures by organizations like the IMF and WTO.

• The first portion of the Frontlines Tour took place in 2004 when a delegation of Colombian workers visited Canada: read more at the Social Justice Fund website and the psacbc.com archives.

This report will give a brief overview of our activities in Colombia as part of the Frontlines Tour. The four participating unions (PSAC, BCGEU, CUPE and CUPW) are the major representatives of public sector workers in Canada and we met with many of our counterparts in Colombia as well as their human rights and community partners. This initiative in the PSAC is part of the ongoing work of the Social Justice Fund, and a component of the Make Poverty History campaign, incorporating the fight to defend quality public services such as health, education, welfare, clean water, sanitation and energy around the world.

Colombia has a long history of internal conflict, the most recent chapter beginning in the seventies with the rise in uncontrolled paramilitary organizations sanctioned by the government to attack the FARC. Decades of fighting have left over a half a million people dead, tens of thousands disappeared, and millions displaced from their land. The current administration of President Uribe has promised to bring an end to the violence by curbing the paramilitary organizations through the use of a “peace” process, while simultaneously demonizing even the moderate left in order to silence opposition to regressive privatization measures. This has created an untenable situation for trade unions and their members in Colombia who are endangered by unofficially sanctioned violence, their organizations dismantled through laws and the destruction of their jobs and workplaces.

A Human Rights Overview

Colombia has the worst human rights records in the Western Hemisphere – a fact illuminated in numerous reports documenting political murders, forced displacement and kidnappings. But underpinning these most overt forms of human rights betrayal is the absence of the basic necessities to sustain life. 63 per cent of Colombia lives in a state of poverty, with a full 8 million people living in absolute poverty, a situation further compounded by the insecurity created by lawless paramilitary organizations and violent police and military forces who act with impunity against the people.

Our delegation met with many who face these conditions daily, and at the start of our visit, three important organizations provided us an overview of the human rights situation. First was a meeting with the Defensio del Pueblo (the Defender of the People), a government agency of lawyers and investigators tasked with investigating and prosecuting human rights abuses. There the Ombudsman told us that Colombia is still facing a humanitarian crisis, despite messages from other government sectors to the contrary – and that paramilitary violence is an ongoing problem in many parts of the country. In a later meeting with the union representing workers at the Defensio del Pueblo – ASDEP – we learned that despite the fact the government established these offices with the publicized goal of eradicating human rights abuses within four years, they are underfunded, unable to carry out even the most basic aspects of their work, and their lives are often under threat by those they seek to prosecute.

A later meeting at the Lawyers Collective provided us with a geographical history lesson on the intersections between paramilitary territory, rich resource-extraction zones and traffic corridors within the country. These factors fuel much of the internal displacement and violence against the people in Colombia. The Collective’s work with the National Victims’ Movement seeks to bring an end to the impunity the government has granted former paramilitary organizations despite decades of human rights abuses, and seeks redress in the form of reparations and land-return. Despite the fact the Lawyers Collective is not affiliated with any illegally armed groups, segments of the government have accused them of being FARC-supporters – a deadly accusation that has forced them all into a “precautionary measures” program offering some limited security in the face of death threats.

As part of ongoing work to combat human rights abuses, the organization NOMADESC (funded in part by Canadian trade unions) is continuing to expand its program of human rights training among the trade union and community leaders across the country. In the town of Neiva, our delegation attended the graduation ceremony for some of the most recent participants in this training – where it was impressed upon us the continuing importance of this work in developing the base of human rights activists able to document and respond to abuses by the government and paramilitary organizations.

Trade Union Justice

As one aspect of the human rights record – Colombia is regarded as the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist – with more union activists killed there each year than in the rest of the world combined. Although outright murders of trade unionists has declined somewhat in the last year, arbitrary arrests, threats, and harassment are on the increase – with a particular spike in attacks on women leaders. Every union we spoke to has lost leaders and members to political violence, and the ongoing erosion of jobs and public services has lead to the disappearance of 600 trade union organizations in the past five years.

Trade union partners we met with included the STPC (Postal Workers), ASDECCOL (Public Comptrollers), ASDEP (Public Defenders Employees), the CUT (United Workers’ Central), SINTRAEMCALI (Municipal workers in Cali), FENALTRASE (Public Service Workers Federation), the ENS (Labour School), and the Public Services International representative for Colombia. Each of these organizations shared with us the realities of public service work and the ongoing privatization aspirations of the Uribe government. A strong feature of the trade union movement in Colombia is its proximity to community organizations as a way of building support. Every union we met took us to their community partners - organizations for human rights, women, poor people and indigenous communities. It is these linkages that unions such as SINTRAEMCALI have built to help develop overall community support in the trade union and public services struggles.

Ever-present among our trade union partners is the continuing violence against union members and their families. SINTRAEMCALI workers showed us documentation to substantiate their ongoing belief that government intelligence forces actively collect information on trade union groups and leaders and share those with paramilitary organizations in order to orchestrate harassment campaigns and even extrajudicial killings. The postal workers from Ad-Postal (STPC) provided us with information showing the Uribe government is not only continuing to privatize the postal service, but is turning the privatized sectors over to “demobilized” paramilitary organizations and leaders who often continue to engage in criminal behaviour. To protest privatization is to protest the paramilitaries – a very dangerous situation to be in, as evidenced by the STPC’s president Porfirio who is currently exiled in-country and hiding following a complaint he made about paramilitary-controlled postal outlets being possible conduits for drug-trafficking. The CUPW and PSAC have taken a special interest in the case of the STPC and Porfirio, have taken their concerns to the Canadian Embassy in Bogota, and are now examining support options.

Across the board, trade unionists we met with reported experiences of harassment, police violence on demonstrations and pickets, routine firings of union activists from the workplace, and extrajudicial killings and kidnappings. One potential support may come from an agreement signed in June between the Uribe government and the International Labour Organization which will see a permanent ILO-presence in Colombia established soon. This presence is expected to assist with documenting information on human rights violations against trade unionists. While it remains to be seen how effective this presence will be, some activists fear Uribe will regard it as little more than a photo-op for his administration. There is a role for international organizations to keep the focus on Colombia and pressure on the ILO to provide real fact-finding missions and assistance through UN channels.

The importance of international solidarity in supporting Colombia’s trade union organizations was stressed in each meeting – not only through contributions of money – but also by the continued provision of an international human rights presence in the country through sponsored delegations and volunteer programs.

Indigenous and Land Struggles

Perhaps one of the worst aspects of the ongoing internal conflict is the displacement of millions of people over the last few decades, many of whom are poor indigenous communities or campesino farmers, forced by the government, the drug barons, or the ongoing fighting to flee to the cities where they live in untenable circumstances. Our delegation was very lucky to be received in three communities representing different aspects of the struggle to remain on the land and stay free from the conflict. As a rule, arbitrary detentions of campesino and indigenous organizers is very common, and many people are arrested under the pretense of being associated with the FARC, held for several years in abysmal conditions awaiting trial and then released due to a lack of evidence. In many cases documented by human rights organizations and even the US government, it has been shown that the accusation of FARC-support has been unfounded from the outset, but it poses one way to imprison those who challenge the government or the paramilitaries.

People are pushed off their land for many reasons in Colombia: the production of cash-crops by multinationals; coca and opium development by the cartels; access to transit corridors throughout the country to transport goods and drugs; and, for the continuous extraction of resources such as oil, coal, precious gems and wood. An additional pressure has been fueled by the United States in the form of Plan Colombia (now called Plan Patriota as it has been taken over by the Uribe administration), ostensibly started to eradicate coca production by fumigating the countryside with toxic chemicals. Human rights organizations have consistently shown that this program is not about eradicating coca as much as it is about defoliating the jungle in order to smoke out the FARC and other insurgents – in the meantime destroying the health and water supplies of communities in affected areas.

Our delegation was privileged to visit the community of La Maria, an indigenous reservation which seeks security of their culture and landbase and an end to government harassment. On May 17th, 2006 they suffered a violent government attack during an encuentro (gathering) of indigenous communities that attracted up to 18,000 people from around the country. As part of the final day of the gathering, encuentro participants blockaded part of the Pan-American highway in protest of the continued refusal of the government to address their indigenous rights. This spurred a police action leaving one person dead, scores injured, and the infrastructure of La Maria destroyed. Not only did the police move in to clear the road, but continued the assault on the community for up to 48 hours, dropping thousands of rounds of tear-gas canisters, setting fire to community property and individual homes, destroying food and medicine stores, and vandalizing their administrative offices. The Uribe government accepts no responsibility for the incident, although documentary footage makes evident it was government agents who carried out the attacks.

In the hills outside of the city of Medellin, in the barrio La Cruz, our delegation had an invitation to witness firsthand the devastation of displacement. This barrio is one of the many shantytowns dotting the landscape around the urban centers of Colombia, demonstrating the disparaging poverty of the landless campesinos and indigenous. In La Cruz, sewage runs openly in the rutted dirt roads, the tin and scrap shacks are in danger of being swept away by landslides in the rainy season, and the paramilitaries rule with open threats and violence. This community has been lucky enough to be declared “legal” by the government, giving it the protected status an illegal community does not have. On the next hill over we were shown the remnants of an “illegal” community of similarly displaced people who had been attacked by the government and had their homes burned. The tragedy of communities like La Cruz is that Colombia does in fact have enough land for all the indigenous and campesinos, but that so much is has been rendered unlivable due to internal conflict, fumigation, resource extraction and agri-business.

Privatization and the Paramilitaries

A further pressure on the human rights and justice front in Colombia has been the intersection of government privatization initiatives and the aspirations of paramilitary organizations. Privatization in Colombia has become more aggressive since the introduction of Plan Colombia in 2000, which alongside an IMF loan, required further sell-offs of government-owned infrastructure and social services. Predictably, health care, education, municipal water and energy services, postal delivery and many other essential services have been eroded and attacked. Hospital workers in Colombia gave us the most recent news when we met in Bogota – Uribe had just declared that Colombian hospital facilities would now be considered “free trade zones” to be bid on by private contractors without regard for labour laws. Almost ninety per cent of postal services are now in the hands of private “co-operatives”, and over the past decade thousands of public service workers have been fired. Unions and communities who have banded together to defend public services, often find themselves in danger from government-encouraged paramilitaries who seek their own profit in the privatization process.

Several of our Colombian contacts shared stories about the transfer of public service jobs to “worker’s co-operatives” owned by paramilitary leaders, a process encouraged by Uribe in order to “reintegrate” former paramilitaries into mainstream society. Under these arrangements postal services, highway patrols, medical clinics, security services and maintenance contracts are being dismantled, decertified, and awarded to some of Colombia’s worst criminal agents. Because the paramilitaries benefit from the privatization process, they are eager to attack those who oppose it. Campaigners for public services are met with harassment, intimidation, and violence - including selective assassinations.

Our Contribution

Despite the unbelievable amount of repression visited on those who oppose Uribe and the paramilitaries – Colombia is still a country where the spirit of social justice exists in the struggles of the people. It is these struggles our union movement in Canada must locate and support if we are to speak sincerely about global social justice in the face of our own resistance to privatization.

Certainly there have already been some successes through the Canadian union movement funding human rights and trade union organizing in Colombia, and this was acknowledged by all of the partners we visited. These connections can only be strengthened with further tours, sponsorship of in-country projects, speaking opportunities for Colombians in Canada, and perhaps even an international union-sponsored human rights conference in Colombia (as suggested by an activist in Medellin). Colombia is ground zero for trade union activists; it is the job of international labour to bring what relief we can and to be inspired by sharing these struggles together.