Eulogising Politics of Assassination

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Eulogising Politics of Assassination

Boycott Coca Cola – Stop The Violence!

Colombian Foodworkers Coca-Cola Campaign Launch

Blair Hands Blank Cheque to Uribe

Answering questions while in Hong Kong, Tony Blair said that the deaths of two of Saddam Hussein’s sons in Iraq were "a great day for the new Iraq". He said that the reported deaths were "a very, very important move forward and I think it is great news".

A few days before, addressing the US Congress, Tony Blair had sworn that the ultimate weapon of the US and Britain "is not our guns but our beliefs". Quoting Abraham Lincoln – "those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves" – Tony Blair declared, "It is a sense of justice that makes moral the love of liberty." Yet here he was eulogising the politics of assassination.

The Prime Minister has a guilty conscience and feels he is on shaky ground. He stands accused, not only of forming a coalition with US imperialism to occupy Iraq to control its oil and dominate the country for strategic and political reasons, but of imposing Western values on that country and throughout the globe.

He felt moved, in his address to Congress, to defend Britain and the US against that charge. "Ours are not Western values. They are the universal values of the human spirit and anywhere, any time, ordinary people are given the chance to choose, the choice is the same. Freedom not tyranny. Democracy not dictatorship. The rule of law not the rule of the secret police."

This was before the death of Dr David Kelly and the news of Uday and Qusay Hussein. Both give the lie to Tony Blair’s rhetoric.

An international boycott of Coca Cola products was launched on Tuesday, July 22. Its main aim is to stop the policy of violent treatment that has left eight Colombian Coca Cola workers assassinated in recent years. The boycott has been called by Colombian food and drinks workers union Sinaltrainal and has the endorsement of the country’s main trade union federation the CUT as well as the World Social Forum.

Sinaltrainal accuses Coca Cola of working in consort with paramilitary death squads to remove union activists and hence the union organisation from its plants. Accusations centre on the murder of Carepa plant in Antioquia where five union members were assassinated between 1994 and 1996.

The union and the families of assassinated Coca Cola workers have also brought a civil court case under the US Alien Torts Act which is being considered by courts in Miami. On March 31, 2003, US District Court Judge Jose E Martinez ruled that the case for compensation for human rights violations committed by paramilitaries on behalf of Coca-Cola bottlers Panamerican Beverages, Inc. ("Panamco") and Bebidas y Alimentos ("Bebidas") in Colombia can go forward.

Lawyers point out it is significant that the US court has held that the allegations were sufficient to allow the case to proceed on a theory that the paramilitaries were acting in a symbiotic relationship with the Colombian government.

The International Day of Action to launch the boycott of Coca Cola was taken up by a number of groups with more than seven protest actions across the country.

The Colombia Solidarity Campaign group in Portsmouth had kicked things off the previous Saturday when they collected a thousand signatures from members of the public on a street stall.

On Tuesday, the Campaign's rally in Piccadilly Circus at 6pm was a huge success. Hundreds of people listened to speeches and danced to samba rhythms as four "waitresses" passed through the crowd offering Coke blood drinks. Marta Hinestroza, a refugee lawyer representing peasant farmers displaced off their land by BP's pipelines in Colombia, called for a boycott of Coca Cola as representative of how multinationals are plundering the natural resources of the Colombian people, and using violent methods to crush opposition.

Earlier in the day a group from the Cardiff Anarchist Network took direct action. They entered Coke bottling and distribution plant in Edmonton, north London. One of the protesters locked himself to a lorry, some locked the plant's gates while others pressed emergency buttons to stop the production line. During the two hour production stoppage for the emergency services to arrive the protesters meantime talked to workers inside the plant to explain their action. And the paramedic who arrived to assist the protester locked to a lorry turned out to be a representative of public sector union UNISON and was completely supportive. The protesters were detained by police, but released after Coca Cola decided not to press the charge of "conspiracy to commit burglary". One protester overheard Coke managers saying over the police radio that £30,000 worth of output had been lost.
Other protests were reported in several cities, including Leicester, Newcastle, Manchester and Cardiff.

On July 22 at the Colombian United Workers Central "CUT" HQ, a press conference was held to initiate the second phase of the World Campaign Against Coca Cola – the Demand Phase.

During the first, or Judgement Phase, the National Union of Food Industry Workers of Colombia, Sinaltrainal, denounced the policies of one of the world’s biggest food transnationals and at the same time source of hunger and misery in all continents.

The Demand Phase will comprise a series of world-wide actions whose fundamental aim is that Coca Cola make good in full the damage caused to thousands of Colombians for its benefit and that it undertake to cease the violence and respect the human rights of workers and communities.

In other cities around the world, social organisations and thousands of men and women who dream that another world is possible, also call for and demand that the violence cease in Colombia so that we all can live with dignity.

Against Impunity, "Sinaltrainal cries out for Justice" and demands full reparation for the victims and communities.

by Andy Higginbottom*, 15/07/03

Despite significant protests from British trade union leaders, MPs and campaigners, and especially the Guardian's detailed revelations of British military involvement, as well as energetic opposition from Colombian NGOs, as the dust settles on last week's London Meeting on International Support for Colombia one point is clear. Blair has orchestrated an international breakthrough on behalf of Colombia's ultra-right Uribe government. The UK has opened the door for the worst human rights offender in the Western hemisphere to receive a new round of international loans.

The gathering of senior representatives from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the EU, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Switzerland, the USA, the UN and the IMF, World Bank, Andean Development Bank and Inter-American Development Bank was brought together on Blair's personal initiative, fully backed by Aznar of Spain. With this duo once again working in tandem as the pro-US axis within Europe, the details of the initiative were worked out by the British Embassy in Bogotá, in close consultation with Uribe's team.

Process

It is instructive to follow the tightly managed process, to see how Blair exercises "spin" to get what he wants on the international stage.

The diplomats knew that some fancy footwork was needed. Widespread and well founded criticism from the trade unions, social movements and human rights organisations is being listened to outside Colombia. The process had to be seen to be taking the views of civil society into account, but at the same time to contain the impact of those views. Like the well behaved child in Victorian times, civil society was to be seen but not heard.

A two stage tactic was devised. On the first day would be a pre-meeting consultation with the NGOs, with a report from them going into the second day's meeting of governments and international finance institutions. The space for criticism of Uribe had to be carefully controlled of course. On the second day just two NGO representatives would have one hour to present their case, and then asked to leave. The remainder of the time was for Uribe's people to make their sales pitch.

And so the manipulation was set up. Through the auspices of the hitherto unknown "European Centre for Strategic Thinking", some thirty representatives of trade unions, peasants, indigenous, women’s and peace and human rights organisations were brought to London. As were various employer federations and "foundations" – a code word for a well funded government or CIA front.

Positions on the War

The Colombian government is seeking what it calls "an international coalition for peace in Colombia". What this amounts to is unconditional financial and political support for its war to defeat the guerrilla movements, the FARC and the ELN. "The violence caused by illegal groups has become the principal obstacle to development and has caused a great loss of human and social capital, as well as a troubling increase in emigration."

The NGOs highlight that in Uribe's "democratic security" policy "the population is not conceived as essentially entitled to rights, or as the object of State protection, but above all as an instrument of war". Moreover "President Uribe has publicly declared that he does not believe that the principle of distinction between combatants and civilian population is valid in Colombia". The persecution of rural communities, trade unionists and other groups is a direct consequence of this militarised concept.
Uribe does not want peace, he wants foreign aid to win the war. As one human rights defender put it, "There is a fundamental incoherence between the idea of a negotiated political solution to the conflict and Uribe's policy of all out war".

The Real Human Rights Situation

Uribe claims "a downward tendency" of human rights violations (consistently spread by the UK government). The report from the Colombian Commission of Jurists reveals that in Uribe's first year in government there have been nearly seven thousand political homicides and disappearances, which is worse than the average during Pastrana's four-year presidency. In fact the number of human rights violations did peak during Pastrana's last year in office. But even here, the argument boils down to whether 19 people being killed daily (July 2002 to June 2003) is any more acceptable than 20 people killed daily (July 2001 to June 2002).

The Commission of Jurists shows how official propaganda deliberately distorts the human rights situation. In March 2003 the Vice-Presidency published a report recording an increase in the homicide rate in Colombia, as well as a record number of displacements due to the violence. In 2002 269,693 people had to leave their homes, 31.8% more than in 2001. And yet the President's office issued a press release, ostensibly based on this same report, under the title "Significant reduction in human rights violations in Colombia".

Outcomes

There are two outcomes of the London meeting. In the short term Uribe's position has been strengthened, there will be a follow up donors' co-ordination conference "to be organised by the Inter-American Development bank at a date convenient to the Colombian Government and the donor community".

The other outcome is that the NGOs and the social movements are deeply angry at their manipulation by Uribe and Blair. The pretence that official policy has been agreed in partnership with civil society is a complete sham.

There does indeed need to be an international coalition for peace in Colombia, but it will take a very different form than that hatched in the corridors of the Nariño Palace and 10 Downing Street. It will be an alliance centred on the Colombian people and their need to defeat the power of Uribe's militarised state.

* Andy Higginbottom is Secretary of the Colombia Solidarity Campaign