Francisco Ramírez Cuellar, the president of mining union Sintraminercol left his home with his girls to take lunch at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday 10th October. On arriving at the corner of 49th Street and 5th Avenue in the Palermo district of Bogotá, he spotted a red and black high cylinder motorbike ridden by two people and coming towards him. The passenger was looking at him fixedly and had a pistol in his right hand resting on his leg. Francisco immediately got behind electricity and telephone cabinets denying the killers a target to shoot at.

In the December 2000/January 2001 Monitor, I reported that Enbridge Inc., one of Canada's leading energy corporations, was linked to death squads in Colombia according to information provided by Amnesty International. Below, I examine the impact of this revelation in Canada as well as detail the further damage caused in Colombia by the consortium of which Enbridge is a part.

Francisco Ramirez is President of SINTRAMINERCOL, the union representing workers in the Colombian state-owned mining company MINERCOL, and Secretary of FUNTRAMIENERGETICA, the federation of Colombian energy sector unions including the oil industry workers union USO, SINTRAMINERCOL, and SINTRAMIENERGETICA. He is also a member of the Human Rights Committee of the CUT union federation. Francisco is currently touring Britain, meeting with the NUM, UNISON, T&GWU, UNIFI, TUC (Wales), NWTUC. To arrange further meetings contact the Colombia Solidarity Campaign coordinator Richard Solly:

In 1999, Colombia became the leading recipient of US military and police assistance, replacing Turkey (Israel and Egypt are in a separate category). Colombia receives more US military aid than the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean combined. The total for 1999 reached about $300 million, along with $60 million in arms sales, approximately a threefold increase from 1998.