Trading Blacks for Bucks………..

Trading Blacks for Bucks………..

No news does not means good news

Colombia is internationally recognized for its coffee, drugs, murders and kidnappings which have stigmatized the country for the last 20 years. During the  90s the international media focused on drug trafficking and the war against Pablo Escobar and the drug cartels. At the beginning of the millennium, what you could hear or read about Colombia was the high number of hostages kept by the guerrillas groups. There was an increment in the international press with the kidnapping of Ingrid Betancur - a French-Colombian politician - and the 8 foreign tourists kept in captivity for 101 days in the Colombian mountains.

With the number of kidnapped people declining steadily from 3,572 in the year 2000 to 153 last year (latest statistics by the Colombian NGO ‘Pais Libre’) there has been a reduction in the news coverage about the Colombian nation in the international press. Colombia has by far the worst human rights record in the Western Hemisphere. According to Josefina Salomon, press officer of the Americas for Amnesty International “there was an increase in the threats against human rights defenders and killings of trade unionists between 2002 and 2008.” This was a period when the former Oxford University student and former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was in power, leaving us to question why there have been not press coverage about these issues in the British media?

Although the U.S. State Department presented its annual human rights report observing a "remarkable" improvement on human rights issues in Colombia over the past year, the situation still grave for Trade Unions there. More unionists are assassinated in Colombia than in the rest of the world. This leads us to question why there has not even been a small article about these issues in the British media for some time. In an interview with Mariela Kohon (Director of the British NGO – Justice for Colombia) she  states: “52 unionists were killed last year and 6 have been killed this year so far.”

The people of Colombia have lived with this violent history between the poor peasants and the oligarchy, the drug traffickers and also the civil war for over four decades. Over the last decade there have been 97 articles in British newspapers, on the situation of the trade unions in Colombia – 90% of which appeared in the Morning Star (a socialist paper). The rest of the articles appeared mainly in The Independent, The Guardian, The Western Mail and The Times newspapers. A majority of these articles reported on VIP visits from Britain to Colombia to witness the situation. Other articles reported on the numbers of dead or kidnapped persons.

“It is hard to get things in the media here [the UK] about Colombia unless is about drugs, it is quite hard to get coverage about the human rights issues. The Independent did a good story and The Guardian have done couple of pieces as well.” Says Ms Kohon.

This shows how frustrating it is for NGOs trying to raise awareness of the problems faced by trade unions in Colombia. Other problems faced by campaigners include accusations of  being allied with factions such as FARC:

“Last month Mr Howells [UK Foreign Office minster] was forced to withdraw accusations that JfC [Justice for Colombia] had links with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) after trade unions, MPs and campaigners called for him to be sacked.” From The Western Mail (March 22^nd 2008).

Even in Colombia itself, the journalists are reticent to report on the reality of the situation of the trade unions. This form of self-censorship exists due to a climate of fear of retribution from paramilitaries backed by the Colombian armed forces. The main newspapers in Colombia are owned either by the family of the President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos or other families with close links to the president.

Britain spent many years arms trading with Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi who were eventually revealed to have committed gross human rights abuses. The UK is now providing the second highest level (after the US) of military aid to the Colombian armed forces in an attempt to reduce the volume of drugs entering Britain. It has been proved that the Colombian army has taken part in human rights abuses. The media, both in Colombia and the UK, is obsessed with this picture of Colombia as a violent, war torn, drug producing nation, but neglects the fact that such human rights abuses are a regular occurrence in Colombia. “I don’t think that a lot of people realize how bad the situation is because the international image is just linked with the drug trafficking” asserts Ms Kohol.

For more information about Colombian Trade Unions follow this link: http://justiceforcolombia.org/