It's the real thing...

Dan Finn

The paramilitaries came to the village at dawn. In the first house they entered, they chopped a woman’s head off in front of her family, then split it open with a machete. Moving quickly to the next house, they placed a grenade in another woman’s mouth with the pin removed. Then they chopped her three children into pieces and set them on fire. By the time their grisly mission was over, the paramilitaries had killed twelve people in a similar fashion.
This massacre was described by one of the survivors to a delegation of Irish student and trade union activists, of which I was part, that visited Colombia in June. Even at the height of the Troubles in Ireland, if such a hideous atrocity had taken place, it would have made front-page news, attracting international condemnation. But in Colombia, such massacres are almost routine.
The guilty parties in this case were not the FARC, whose activities have attracted much attention recently. The extreme-right paramilitaries of the AUC, the most violent terrorist group in the western hemisphere, have carried out hundreds of similar killings in recent years There are two striking features of the AUC’s campaign. One is the sheer cruelty and blood-lust of its cadres. It’s not considered sufficient to murder people with a gun-shot to the head: the paramilitaries often butcher their victims with chain-saws and machetes.
But most shocking of all is the ease with which they operate. The Colombian army has made no attempt to protect its people from this vicious terror campaign. On the contrary, its officers have been working hand in hand with the AUC for years. According to Human Rights Watch, there is “detailed, abundant and compelling evidence of continuing close ties between the Colombian Army and paramilitary groups responsible for gross human rights violations.”[1]
The paramilitaries are active all over Colombia. They represent the most ruthless edge of a campaign by the state to crush all social organisations that resist the imposition of neoliberal economic policies. Anyone who speaks out against this terror campaign is considered a “military target”. There is, of course, an armed insurgency in Colombia, led by the FARC and ELN guerrillas. But it is simply not credible to excuse state and paramilitary violence as a response to this insurgency. Labels like “subversive” or “guerrilla” are applied indiscriminately to anyone who challenges the status quo.
Amnesty International has noted that “government, security force and other state officials are frequently and increasingly treating human rights defenders and social activists as subversives, labelling them as such in public statements and targeting them during intelligence and counter-insurgency operations.”[2] As our delegation travelled around the country, we gathered a shocking picture of this war against civil society.
Ciudad Bolivar is a sprawling urban settlement on the hills outside Bogota, home to a million and a half people. But the hills also contain rich natural resources that are mined in quarries bordering directly onto neighbourhoods of the slum. The companies involved want to expand into these neighbourhoods. In order to secure this expansion, paramilitaries have moved into Ciudad Bolivar and sought to impose their will.

300 members of the AUC moved into the area recently. They immediately began a campaign of terror and intimidation, targeting young people. Posters and leaflets were distributed, bearing the message “good children are in bed by nine o’clock - we take care of the bad children”. In the first half of 2005, at least 150 young people were killed by the paramilitaries.
Any form of non-conformist behaviour that Irish teenagers would take for granted can be enough to single out a victim: being drunk in public, having long hair or wearing an earring. Anyone in the streets after dark is considered a fair target. The paramilitaries call this “social cleansing”. There is no prospect of intervention by the state to tackle the paramilitary terror: AUC members have often been seen going in and out of army bases.
The paramilitary campaign in Barrancabermeja, an oil town in the north of the country, has been particularly savage. In their first year in the city (2000), 539 people were murdered - 25 times the murder rate in New York City. 87% of these murders were attributed to the AUC The paramilitaries now control most neighbourhoods.
The most active social organisation in Barrancabermeja is the OFP, a grass-roots women’s organisation. The OFP provides social services for poor communities, running soup kitchens for children, or helping displaced people build homes for themselves. They also campaign against political violence, urging young people not to join the paramilitaries. This work has enraged the AUC.
Over the course of an afternoon, we were taken to cultural centres run by the OFP all over the city, where children are taught how to dance or play musical instruments. Our guide was a cheerful young woman in her early twenties. She explained that our brief presence in the centres would be seen by the paramilitaries who control the neighbourhoods, and might deter them from launching attacks on OFP workers. In one area, a dance instructor had recently been shot by the AUC.
To understand the reality of life in Colombia today, it’s vital to understand that mundane community work of this sort is considered “subversive”. You’re almost as likely to be killed for teaching kids a few dance moves, as for taking up arms against the state. Our guide had encountered the AUC herself recently. They forced her into a car at gun-point, then poured boiling water onto the soles of her feet for two hours as they drove around town, warning that she would be killed the next time they came for her.
The oil-rich province of Arauca, which borders Venezuela, is one of the areas worst hit by the civil war between guerrillas and the state. “Plan Colombia”, the US-led programme of support for the Colombian army, has channelled vast sums in military aid to the province. Having been suspended in 1994 because of human rights concerns, US military aid to Colombia was resumed in 2000 after intense lobbying by the oil industry, particularly Occidental Petroleum, which owns a 50% share in Arauca’s oil deposits. Under Plan Colombia, $99m has been spent on protecting the oil pipeline in the province; a special brigade of the Colombian army has been set up for this purpose (overall, $3bn has been granted in US military aid since 2000, making Colombia the third-largest recipient).

The military presence in Arauca is oppressive. There are soldiers in every town and village. Several times we saw army units based in or near schools and playgrounds, so the children could be used as human shields - a blatant violation of international humanitarian law. The mayor of Saravena, the province’s capital, told us that both of the main actors in Arauca were responsible for violating human rights: the guerrillas and the army. There have been mass arrests of people with no connection to the guerrillas, including the mayor himself.
The most notorious of these operations occurred in November 2002, when over 2,000 people, including most of the town’s human rights activists and trade union leaders, were rounded up by the army and taken to the town stadium. Fewer than 30 of those arrested were subsequently investigated for suspected guerrilla links. Amnesty International has expressed concern that social activists “are increasingly facing a co-ordinated military-paramilitary strategy aimed at tarnishing and undermining them and their organisations through arbitrary detentions and criminal proceedings and thereby paving the way to the risk of violent paramilitary attack.”[3]
When challenged by foreign governments, the Colombian president Alvaro Uribe claims to be doing everything he can to stop paramilitary terror. But the record of his government makes a mockery of this claim. It has allowed the AUC to operate in every part of the country, and its rhetoric helps facilitate the murder of social activists. Uribe himself has described human rights NGOs as “political manoeuverers ultimately in the service of terrorism”. He has now introduced an amnesty for the paramilitaries, the so-called “Justice and Peace Law”; the New York Times argued that it should be re-titled the “Impunity for Mass Murderers, Terrorists and Major C ocaine Traffickers Law”.
If the international community is serious about combating terror, one of its most urgent priorities should be to ostracise the Uribe government until its complicity with the AUC is brought to an end. The Colombian people, who have already suffered such terrible violence in recent years, deserve nothing less.
COKE AND COLOMBIA
The call for a boycott of Coke products was launched by the Colombian trade union SINALTRAINAL in July 2003. They alleged that management in Coke bottling plants had been working with AUC paramilitaries to wipe out the union; eight union members had been killed (some while inside the factory), while many others had been threatened. Coke denied the allegations and insisted that its plant managers had played no part in the AUC’s terror campaign against SINALTRAINAL.
Our delegation met with Coke workers in Barrancabermeja and Bucaramanga. The workers in the Barrancabermeja plant told us that paramilitaries were often seen entering and leaving the plant, and had friendly relations with the managers. Often they would be given free Coke products to distribute in neighbourhoods they controlled. Coca-Cola has claimed that it is unable to stop paramilitaries from entering its plants. However, when members of our delegation began taking photos outside the plant, police arrived within two minutes, having been called by management, and demanded to know what we were doing. The plant workers told us that they have been given strict instructions not to call the police if AUC members enter the plant.
In Bucaramanga, we met two SINALTRAINAL members who had been the victim of a frame-up by plant managers. In the early nineties, over half the workforce in the city were on full-time contracts, with relatively good salaries and benefits. The company was determined to reduce its wage bill, so permanent staff were offered a lump sum if they would sign away their contract.
Some accepted, but many refused, including the two union members we met. In 1996, plant managers told the police that the two workers were guerrillas and had planted a bomb in the factory. They were held for six months and tortured while in custody. Their families were impoverished and forced to rely on charity. The state prosecutor eventually ordered their release, having established that there had never been any bomb planted anywhere near the plant.
The intimidation achieved the desired results: most permanent workers left the company, fearing the same thing might happen to them if they remained active in the union. Now, the majority of staff in Bucaramanaga are on temporary contracts. The distribution workers begin their shift at 6 a.m and work until 10 p.m, for a wage of $3 a day. They have to make their own social security payments, pay for their own uniforms and petrol, and even rent the crates from the company. If they don’t meet a monthly quota for sales, they are sacked, so they often have to make up the difference from their own wages.
This pattern has been repeated at a national level, where almost 95% of the workforce are now on temporary contracts. Workers on these contracts are unable to join unions or take any action to defend themselves, because they can be sacked on the spot. The wage-bill has been reduced, at a terrible price for the workforce. Breaking SINALTRAINAL was a vital part of this business strategy. Coke has claimed that there is no anti-union policy in the company’s Colombian plants. But our delegation was shown documents obtained by SINALTRAINAL that outlined the company’s business plan for Colombia; eliminating SINALTRAINAL was identified as a priority.
Naturally, the plan did not explain exactly how this was to be achieved. But in practice, managers have worked closely with the AUC to target the union. The most chilling example of this co-operation came from the plant in Carepa. Isidro Segundo Gil, a union leader who worked in the plant, was shot dead at the plant by paramilitaries. The next day, they returned to the plant and told the workers that they would be killed if they did not leave the union. The manager had prepared resignation forms in advance, and handed them out afterwards. Having eliminated the union, he was then able to replace full-time staff earning $380 a month with part-timers on $130 a month.
SINALTRAINAL finally called for a boycott of Coke products two years ago, having repeatedly urged Coke’s US board of directors to intervene in Colombia and end the anti-union campaign. Their call was supported by the CUT (Colombia’s equivalent of ICTU) and other social organisations. Since Trinity, UCD and NCAD voted to support the boycott during the 2003-04 academic year, many trade unions and student unions, in Ireland and further afield, have also given it their support. A victory for the Coke workers would also help the broader struggle for human rights in Colombia. If you want to help the people of Colombia, you can start by boycotting Coke.
[1] “The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links”, Human Rights Watch Report, February 2000, p.1
[2] “A Laboratory of War: Repression and Violence in Arauca”, Amnesty International Report, 2004, p.3
[3] ibid., p.2