The report, commissioned by CUPW and authored by Asad Ismi, details the impact of Canada’s trade policies with and investment in Colombia.  The author reports shocking human rights abuses linked to prominent Canadian companies.  The report alleges that at least six Canadian owned companies are linked with military and paramilitary repression in Colombia and two companies in particular are linked to at least eight murders of trade unionists and human rights activists.

Ottawa, Canada – Talisman Energy is creating environmental damage in the Peruvian Amazon rainforest and operating in Achuar indigenous territory without consent, a group of Achuar leaders claimed today during a press conference on Parliament Hill. The press conference was sponsored by New Democratic Party MP Hélène Laverdière, who offered introductory comments, and was also attended by NDP MP Craig Scott.

Police arrived at the Santa Isabel mine in Colón-Génova on February 21, 2012. The officers asked these local miners to attend a meeting to see if they could sort out their licensing request; However, when the roughly twenty-five miners arrived, they were read their rights and arrested. 

About a week later, a report ran on television stating that police had arrested a group of illegal miners in Colón-Génova who were making over 150 million pesos ($CAD 84,500) per month and using their earnings to fund the FARC and Los Rastrojos, a paramilitary group. 

Chiquita, the global banana producer, was ordered this week to face a federal court over their role in paying off right wing death squads in Colombia. Villagers allege that the death squads used “random and targeted violence in exchange for financial assistance and access to Chiquita’s private port for arms and drug smuggling,” according to a lawsuit filed on their behalf by EarthRights International and Cohen Milstein.

It is with deep pain that we inform you of the death of comrade LUCIANO ENRIQUE ROMERO MOLINA, a leader of SINALTRANAL who was assassinated in the city of Valledupar, Cesar. Luciano was seen alive at approximately 9pm on 10 September, then on the morning of 11 September his dead body was found tied up, tortured and with 40 knife wounds. He was living under the PROTECTIVE MEASURES scheme of the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the Organisation of American States.

A former AUC paramilitary member will testify before a U.S. court that Alabama-based coal giant Drummond Ltd. ordered his group to kill union organizers at its mine in Colombia, the victims' defense said Monday.

The member, who uses the alias "Samirio," will testify Tuesday during a hearing in a northern Colombian courtroom, according to attorney Terry Collingsworth.

“We can live without gold and silver but not without water. Not without peace and quiet.” At El Volador (near Arboleda, Nariño Department, Colombia), the people considered moving the school due to its proximity to drilling noise. The mining company Gran Colombia Gold gave gifts of school supplies and toys for the children. The notebooks read: “The calm follows the storm. The mining company is your friend.” A forum is being held at the Universidad de Nariño (Pasto) on February 28–29, 2012 to lay the table for dialogue with the departmental and national governments.

Increasingly, politically-motivated incarceration threatens Colombian unionists, human rights workers, and political activists. They are already too familiar with killings and disappearances at the hands of armed enforcers. International solidarity with victims has grown over recent decades, with the labor movement in particular taking on a prominent role in defending human rights in Colombia.

MARMATO, COLOMBIA -- The preparations for the evening Mass on Jan. 15 in the Church of Santa Barbara in Marmato, a mountainside mining village in central Colombia, were ordinary in every detail but one. Shortly before the service began, the village priest, Fr. Carlos Valencia, threaded his way through a tangle of horses and donkey carts into the town square at the wheel of a battered jeep. As he arrived, the bell in the church tower rang out.