Background "A strike for human dignity"
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U.S. Representatives Henry “Hank” Johnson, James McGovern, George Miller, Sam Farr, Rosa DeLauro, Janice Schakowsky, and Barbara Lee sent a letter to Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos expressing concern over threats faced by Colombian land rights leaders.
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The Political Mass Movement of Central-Eastern Colombia have publicly declared an indefinite general strike which began at 6am on February 12th, 2013.
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Colombia’s recent passage of a constitutional amendment that expands military jurisdiction in cases of human rights violations is a major setback for justice. The reform would allow grave human rights crimes to be investigated and tried by the military justice system, in direct conflict with years of jurisprudence of Colombia’s high courts and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
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A stand of plantain trees in northern Colombia, where returning refugees say they are being displaced by a paramilitary-backed banana ‘invasion.’ Residents involved in land restitution say that they live with constant threats, and that abduction, torture and murder remain common fates. Death lists are widely circulated.
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Since Monday January 21st, approximately 1 500 people belonging to different social organizations of Arauca, maintain an on-going permanent pipeline blockade against oil extractive transnational corporations in different sectors of the region. Their objective is to reactivate the pacific mobilization of their demands to transnational oil companies and to the Colombian state.
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You can‟t help feeling indignant when you hear the Autonomous Regional Corporation for the Defense of the Bucaramanga Plateau (CDMB is the Spanish acronym.) call it a victory when the plateau will be declared a regional nature park (PNR is the Spanish acronym.) as is predicted for the coming December 17. It is a fallacy to say that with the scant 10,890 hectares left after several cutbacks, the Santurbán Nature Park will guarantee water in perpetuity for the Bucaramanga metropolitan area, while there are mining concessions of approximately 37,000 hectares in the area.
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On December 13th, 2012 the Government of Canada eased its ban on automatic firearms sales to Colombia and added Colombia to its Automatic Firearms Country Control List (AFCCL). Although controls remain on exporters, Canadian gun merchants now have the possibility of selling fully automatic weapons with high-capacity magazines — banned in Canada — to Colombia. Details of this story can be found in the following CBC report.
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On December 11, Milton Enrique Rivas Parra, an operator and electrician who worked for the company Termotécnica, which is a subcontractor for the Canadian corporation Pacific Rubiales, was assassinated by contract killers. On December 10, Mr. Rivas Parra received death threats because he was affiliated with the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO). Mr. Rivas Parra was a leader of the ongoing demonstrations being held in Puerto Gaitán in defense of workers’ rights.
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While in Paris at the beginning of November 2012, in the midst of a European tour to promote the Colombian social movements, Marylen Serna, national spokesperson of the Minga and the Peoples’ Congress in addition to being a rural producer herself, agreed to an interview.
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