Columbia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist.
On March 7th, Rafael Boada, President of the National Union of Bank Employees UNEB in Bucaramanga region of Columbia was the target of a failed assassination attempt as he arrived home in his car.
Two bullets fired from a motorbike went through his windscreen but mercifully missed him.
Two days previously Leonidas Gomez Rozo went missing. His body was found in his flat in Bogota on March 8th having been brutally murdered.
Leonidas was the chair of the national committee of UNEB in CITIBANK and a district union officer of the Polo Democratico which is the party of the left.
These attacks follow a number of death threats against UNEB leaders since the paramilitary group Aguilas Negras declared trade union UNEB a military objective in a series of emails last summer.
UNEB is the sister union of the Unite finance sector in Colombia.
In early February Unite welcomed a UNEB representative to the UK from Bogota.
He spoke to union representatives in HSBC as well as across the sector and at a meeting at the TUC organised by Justice for Colombia.
His focus at the time was on a strike which took place in HSBC Colombia last October.
Though a collective agreement has been reached since the strike, Unite continues to have concerns about the manner in which HSBC behaved in connection with the strike. He put the strike, and the role of the bank, in the context of the brutal politics of Colombia which is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists.
It is intolerable to Unite that so soon after his return two of his colleagues should have been targeted like this.
Leonidas’ death was the third murder of a trade unionist in a single week. We will not sit back and witness the targeting of decent, hard-working and courageous union representatives by paramilitary organisations. UNEB activists are at the forefront of the struggle for peace, reconciliation and democracy in Colombia and deserve to be honoured and protected.
UNEB is demanding that the authorities in Colombia carry out an exhaustive investigation of both the murder of Leonidas Gomez Rozo and the assassination attempt on Rafael Boada so they do not go unpunished.
Unite is asking what the UK government is doing to pressurize the Colombian authorities to ensure that its trade union activists can go about their legitimate activities without fearing for their lives. At the same time, along with Justice For Colombia, we are calling on our government to cease military aid to this corrupt and violent regime.
UNI, our international trade union, has set up an email campaign directed at the Colombian president. President Uribe is without doubt deliberately fostering the atmosphere of violence against trade unionists in his country.
Follow this link to the UNI site and add your voice of protest.
http://www.uniglobalunion.org/uniindep.nsf/f0fa5a094742095ac125680000253538/449c5939f84d0294c125740b005754eb?OpenDocument
For more information on Colombia go to www.justiceforcolombia.org