Colombia Remains Leader In Unionist Murders

By Mario A. Flores
Impunity Watch Reporter, South America

BOGOTA, Colombia – The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) recently released its annual report on union rights violations.

Colombia in 2008 continued to be the most dangerous country in the world to carry out activities in defense of workers, says the report.

ITUC’s annual survey details abuses of workers rights in 143 countries. According to the report, of the seventy six union members killed throughout the world last year, forty nine were Colombians. 

It seems that the number of labor activists slain around the world in 2008 decreased compared to 2007, when the figure swelled to ninety one deaths.

But although the number of labor-related murders is decreasing throughout the world, the number of such killings in Colombia during 2008 amounted to ten more than in 2007. This is "despite assurances by President Uribe’s administration that the situation was improving," says ITUC.

According to the secretary general of Colombia’s central trade union, Domingo Tovar, the numbers show that Colombia is still the most dangerous country in the world for labor activists.

As if to highlight the report’s conclusions, another Colombian union leader was murdered less than two weeks after the results were made public.

The victim, Rafael Sepulveda, 41, was one of the leaders of the National Association of Hospital Workers of Colombia. He worked as a pharmacy manager in the northeastern city of Cucuta’s mental health hospital.

According to witnesses, a hit man shot Sepulveda several times in front of his house before fleeing in a vehicle driven by accomplices.

The ITUC report maintains that despite the high number of Colombian union members’ deaths, the perpetrators of the violence against workers organizations and its members are not being punished adequately. The report denounces the “negligible court sentences” imposed on those found guilty.

Stanley Gacek, representative of the AFL-CIO federation of labor organizations, says that despite the increase in murders of trade unionists, ninety five percent of such murders have gone unsolved and unpunished in the last twenty three years in Colombia.  

"I submit that there has not been, that there is not and that there never will be real progress in this case unless and until the impunity crisis is directly, authentically and honestly resolved," Gacek said.

For more information, please see:
 
El Tiempo - Asesinan a dirigente sindical de Anthoc en la puerta de su casa en Cúcuta - 22 June 2009

Latin America Herald Tribune - Union Leader Murdered in Northeastern Colombia - 21 June 2009

Inter Press Service News Agency - LABOUR: Colombia Still Undisputed Leader in Trade Unionist Murders – 10 June 2009