Colombia Solidarity Campaign

Colombia, 2 October 2006 (ENGLISH/ESPA?OL)

We, the organisations signing below denounce to the nacional and internacional community the new harassment, persecution and attempt to silence and intimidate defenders of the fundamental rights of the most vulnerable sectors in the social and armed conflict in Colombia, and particularly in the country?s south west.

A series of attacks against the very existence of SINALTRAINAL have occurred in different regions of Colombia; ranging from a raid on the union’s national headquarters in Bogotá, to the assassination of one of our activists.

The Barrancabermeja Committee of the Colombian Trade Union Federation (CUT) rejects the vile assassination of one of our comrades JORGE GUILLEN LEAL, 33 years old, that took place on 23 July at 2.30 pm in the barrio Covida in the municipality of Barrancabemeja. The murder was carried out by two individuals who arrived at his house in a taxi and then shot him. His wife was at home at the time with one of his two children who was doing his school homework. Jorge was the father of two young children, a girl and a boy of 10 and 5 years old.

We affirm our motto “It is better to cope with fear than cease to be because of fear”. Once again the Popular Womens Organisation (OFP - Organización Femenina Popular) is being threatened by those who believe they are lords of life, who have for years been deciding who lives in  Barrancabermeja and how long they live, acting with complete impunity in the majority of cases.

Beginning on the 15th May 2006 more than fifteen thousand representatives of campesino, indigenous and black community groups from across the South West of Colombia began arriving at the Indigenous Reserve of 'La Maria' in the department of Cauca, South West Colombia.  They were there to protest the effects of the Free Trade Agreement signed between Colombia and the United States and to criticise the lack of progress on national and regional agreements to expand land rights to indigenous and black communities in the region.