[Gletkin]

Colombia FTA Passage "Gave Green Light" to Union Killings: AFL-CIO
by Adriaan Alsema
Colombia Reports
Feb. 02, 2012

The United States Congress launched "a new wave of anti-union violence" in Colombia when it approved the country's Free Trade Agreement, the largest union federation in the U.S. told Barack Obama Wednesday.

In a letter to the U.S. president, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka urged Obama to "postpone indefinitely the implementation of the FTA, making it clear to the Colombian government that it will not be implemented until such anti-union violence ceases and workers can exercise their rights to organize and bargain without fear."

According to the union federation, four more labor rights workers have been killed in the first month of this year.

Trumka also calls on Obama to "ensure that the State Department and other U.S. agencies comply in full with the human rights conditions imposed on military aid to Colombia," following a report by Human Rights Watch that accused the U.S. of failing to impose human rights conditions.

Colombia and the U.S. signed a Labor Action Plan (LAP) in April 2011 to ensure the protection of labor rights workers and the prosecution of those threatening or killing unionists. The LAP paved the way for Democrats in Congress to approve the FTA, the passage of which had been delayed since 2006 over human and labor rights concerns.

According to Colombia, all the requirements of the LAP have been met. However, Colombia's socialist opposition party Polo Democratico deny this and claim that 58 labor rights activists have been murdered since Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took power in August 2010.

The United States has not responded to Colombia's claim that it is complying to the LAP requirements.

[J Oswald]

Great. An article taking biased sources at face value and using them as the basis for a controversial claim. The article also doesn't even bother linking to the HRW report.

[Gletkin]

Not really. The article is merely stating the allegations/opinions of the AFL-CIO and the PDA...unless you don't believe that these groups officially hold these positions?
Besides how are the AFL-CIO and HRW "biased" in this case?

Nevertheless, for the past 2-3 decades or so, Colombia did lead the world in murdered labor activists. I don't think it's so outrageous to claim that things haven't changed all that much. No more so than to claim, for example, that famine still persists in North Korea.

I wonder if the article was mis-worded though. I mean, improved human rights was at least pro forma part of the conditions for the passage for the FTA. The rest of the article itself says so. What the author probably meant to write was "enforce". I remember posting (last year? Two years ago?) about murders committed by Colombian military units whose human-rights records had been vetted by the US govt..