Ottawa – The Council of Canadians is urging Michael Ignatieff to direct Liberal MPs to vote against any effort by the Harper government to reintroduce and fast-track the Canada-Colombia free trade agreement into the House of Commons until an independent assessment of the impact it could have on human and Indigenous rights in Colombia is carried out as recommended by an all-party trade committee in June 2008.
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On February 10, Paramilitaries assassinated two miners from FEDEAGROMISBOL. The Southern Bolivar Agricultural – Mining Federation is a coalition of peasant farming and mining communities in Southern Bolivar province. CPT Colombia has accompanied FEDEAGROMISBOL since the assassination of Alejandro Uribe Chacón in 2006. These communities continue in their nonviolent struggle for the right to their land and dignity. The information below is the public denouncement of the assassination of their two members.
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Colombia: Stop Abuses by Paramilitaries’ Successor Groups HRW Press Release, Frebruary 3 2010. Bogota
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“They are working in search of impunity to protect police who have committed murders”: Yuri Neira This is how a father referred to the case of his son who was murdered during a protest, which has subsequently led to four attempts on the father’s life.
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Montreal, January 28 2009 Att. Jennifer Henderson Canadian Ambassy in Colombia Copy : James Lambert, Director General for Latin America and the Caribbean, Canadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Colombia: Defamation against a Canadian NGO Since 2000, forcibly displaced afro-colombian and mestizo communities from the Lower Atrato region have been carrying out a gradual return to their collective territory.
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We, the undersigned U.S. religious and non-governmental organizations who work on Colombia, are writing to ask that you intervene in the human rights situation in the Bajo Atrato River region of the Chocó. On January 13, Argénito Díaz community leader from Llano Rico was shot dead. This murder follows the killing of three other Afro-Colombians (Manuel Moya, Graciano Blandón and his son Yair) in December 2009, the August 2009 murder of Curvaradó community leader Benjamín Gómez and ‘Chemita’ of the Cacarica community in July 2009.
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When you talk about the violation of human rights, you must talk about Colombia. When you talk about the huge expansion of oil-palm plantations, you must talk about Colombia. Both issues go hand in hand in that country
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While Canada's Parliament weighs in on Bill C-300, and Blackfire Exploration reels over the shut down of their mine in Chiapas, Mexico -- another Canadian company, Cosigo Resources, finds itself implicated in a surge of recent murders in southeast Colombia.
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RADIO INTERVIEW – Canada denounced for complicitness in murdering of Colombian Indigenous (transcript below)
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Call/send letters urging government and MPs to oppose the ratificacion of Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement currently being debated in House of Commons. Instead, demand that the Canadian government pressure Colombian authorities to put an effective end to widespread paramilitary threats against trade union and social movement activists. While being on and off the order paper since September, Bill C-23 is now back on for Nov. 16.
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