Drummond denies colluding with far-right death squads to kill Colombia unionists

[Judi Lynn]

Source: International Herald Tribune

The Associated Press
Published: March 22, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia: The U.S.-based coal company Drummond on Thursday denied any relationship with far-right death squads in Colombia and said it has no intention of settling a U.S. lawsuit that alleges its complicity in the murder of three labor leaders.

A federal judge in Alabama this month allowed a civil suit to go forward against Drummond Co. Inc. for allegedly paying a hit squad to kill three union leaders at one of its Colombian mines in 2001.

Colombia's chief prosecutor on Tuesday also announced a formal criminal investigation into allegations Drummond, based in Birmingham, Alabama, had ties with the paramilitaries.
(snip)

This nation is embroiled in its worst political scandal in decades as revelations continue to emerge tying the country's political class — many of them backers of President Alvaro Uribe — to the AUC, which has trafficked extensively in cocaine, committed massacres and stolen millions of hectares (acres) of land from peasants.




Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/03/22/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Drummond-Paramilitaries.php

[Stargazer99]

1. Do they really expect Drummond to admit it?

[Judi Lynn]

2. U.S. company denies colluding with death squads to kill Colombia unionists

Source: Associated Press

BOGOTA, Colombia -- The U.S.-based coal company Drummond on Thursday denied any relationship with far-right death squads in Colombia and said it has no intention of settling a U.S. lawsuit that alleges its complicity in the murder of three labor leaders.

A federal judge in Alabama this month allowed a civil suit to go forward against Drummond Co. Inc. for allegedly paying a hit squad to kill three union leaders at one of its Colombian mines in 2001.
(snip)

Garcia says he was present when the president of Drummond Colombia, Augusto Jimenez, handed over "a suitcase full of money" in 2001 to a representative of regional paramilitary warlord Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, better known as "Jorge 40".

"Mr. Jimenez indicated at this meeting that this money was to be given to Rodrigo Tovar Pupo to assassinate specific union leaders at Drummond," Garcia said in a May 13, 2006, written statement to the lawyers of the three murdered union leaders. Garcia said later that the union members killed were the same as those mentioned in the meeting.




Read more: http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/international/news/20070323p2g00m0in011000c.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. Background: Drummond case shows danger facing Colombian unions

Drummond case shows danger facing Colombian unions
16 Nov 2006 19:51:49 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Hugh Bronstein

LA LOMA, Colombia, Nov 16 (Reuters) - A labor union leader at the U.S.-owned Drummond coal mine was pulled off a bus in northern Colombia and shot to death by masked right-wing gunmen one March evening in 2001, according to court papers accusing the company of ordering the killing.

The body of Valmore Locarno was displayed to the other passengers as a warning about what happens to labor activists in this war-twisted country where leftist guerrillas are pitted against right-wing paramilitaries. The union's No. 2, Victor Orcasita, was thrown into a pickup truck and killed later.

"The paramilitaries boarded the bus and asked for Locarno and Orcasita by name, saying that these two had a problem with Drummond," a court document says.
(snip)

More than 4,000 Colombian union leaders have been assassinated since 1986, according to the U.S. State Department, a figure it says accounts for most union murders in the world.

"Local managers working for transnational companies have been free to take illegal steps against unions because authorities look the other way," said Mauricio Romero, a political commentator and paramilitary expert.
"They have been known to contract armed groups to kill union leaders in order to keep workers quiet about wages and other conditions," Romero said. "These cases don't go to court in Colombia because witnesses would also be threatened."

The killings, which Romero said are carried out mostly by paramilitaries and state security forces, have fallen over the last four years under President Alvaro Uribe, popular for his tough, U.S.-backed security policies.
(snip)

http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N16333983.htm

[Judi Lynn]

4. Birmingham's Drummond Company is a heavy Republican donor:

In mid-March, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Orcasita were riding from their jobs at the Loma coal mine in northern Colombia. Locarno and Orcasita were president and vice president of the union at the mine, a local of Sintramienergetica, one of Colombia's two coal miners' unions. As the company bus neared Valledupar, 30 miles from the mine, it was stopped by 15 gunmen, some in military uniforms.

They began checking the identification of the workers, and when they found the two union leaders, they were pulled off the bus. Locarno was hit in the head with a rifle butt. One of the gunmen then shot him in the face, as his fellow workers on the bus watched in horror. Orcasita was taken off into the woods at the side of the road. There he was tortured. When his body was found later, his fingernails had been torn off.

bring imprisonment by governments who view unions as a threat to the social and economic elite. But the most dangerous country by far is Colombia, where labor activism is often punished with death. By mid-May, 44 Colombian trade union leaders already had been murdered this year. Last year, assassinations cost the lives of 129 others. According to Hector Fajardo, general secretary of the United Confederation of Workers (CUT), the country's largest union federation, 3,800 trade unionists have been assassinated since 1986. Out of every five trade unionists killed in the world, three are Colombian.
(snip)

National Committee last July; $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Campaign; and $20,000 to the National Republican Senate Campaign last October. Overall, the coal industry dumped $3.8 million into the 2000 elections, and gave 88 percent of it to Republicans. In turn, the Bush campaign pursued a "cars and coal" strategy to win mining states, among others, based on an industry-friendly perspective. (And after the election, the administration dropped a campaign pledge that it would back carbon-dioxide emissions reductions from coal-fired power stations. That policy change has a big impact on the Alabama plants burning Colombian coal.)
(snip/...)

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/25/17/bacon2517.html

[0rganism]

5. I bet this thread drops off the bottom within a day, but the next anti-Chavez thread gets 150+ posts

Amazing phenomenon, really. Our leading presstitutes just love to spout anti-Chavez and anti-Castro rhetoric, but when it comes to reporting on Uribe's crazy shit or the billions in "military aid" and black ops we fund in Colombia with our tax dollars, they don't know where to begin.

It's the drug war, it's exploitation of a native population, it's resource extraction uber alles, it's rightwing paramilitary death squads vs. leftist guerillas in jungle villages, it's green berets and SOA grads run amok, it's a civilian population displaced and dying by the millions. Too much for our fragile little minds to handle, I guess.

I dare to dream that someday even the capitalists in these sad third-world banana republics will decide they've had enough of this bullshit.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Amazing, isn't it? Angry, aggressive, anal Americans are the loudest, get heard a LOT,

and thoughtful, intelligent Americans usually get stomped flat by the ones who don't have a clue, who have absolutely no actual idea what they're attacking and defending. But the good will win, in the end, regardless. There's a bit of grim satisfaction in that.

More information:

Union Organizing Can Be Deadly in Colombia
By Sergio de Leon
The Associated Press

Wednesday 07 March 2007

Bogota, Colombia - More than 800 trade unionists have been killed in Colombia over the past six years, by government count, yet the number of those murders solved can be counted on one hand.

Union organizing can be a deadly activity anywhere but is particularly dangerous in Colombia, where decades of political violence and lawlessness compel some unscrupulous employers to hire assassins.

"There's almost total impunity," claims Flavio Arias, vice president of the CUT labor umbrella organization, which represents Colombia's 530,000 unionized workers.
(snip)

The union-friendly Democrats who now control the U.S. Congress are so concerned about the unsolved labor murders that they are threatening to derail the trade pact entirely unless Uribe makes clear progress.

In a speech last May Day - the international day of the worker - Uribe boasted of "working with complete devotion so that one day we can stand before the world and say not a single trade unionist has been killed in Colombia."

Yet the number of slain unionists rose last year even as the homicide rate dropped under Uribe's law-and-order government. The Labor Ministry says 43 trade unionists were killed in 2005, and 58 last year. None of those murders have been solved.
(snip)

The biggest threat is hitmen hired by employers, especially in parts of the country where many workers toil in semi-feudal conditions and illegal militias hold sway.
(snip/...)

http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/030707LB.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

7. Drummond Generates Profits and Misery in Colombia

Drummond Generates Profits and Misery in Colombia
by Garry Leech
September 30, 2006


In early August 2006, while driving on the highway that links the northern Colombian cities of Bucaramanga and Santa Marta, a uniformed officer with a sidearm signaled for us to pull over to the side of the road. The officer was speaking into a walkie-talkie as he approached our vehicle and I noticed the words “private security” emblazoned on his uniform and a name badge hanging from his breast pocket identifying him as an employee of the Drummond Company. My Colombian driver and I had just passed the entrance to Alabama-based Drummond’s open-pit coalmine near the town of La Loma in the department of César. The guard said he had orders to detain us until the mine’s chief of security arrived on the scene. Ten minutes later, Drummond’s security chief pulled up with a truckload of Colombian soldiers to question us about our activities in the region. It was then that it hit me; we had just been detained and interrogated on a public Colombian highway by the private armed security force of a U.S. mining company.

In the late 1980s, Drummond took advantage of the deregulation that was occurring under neoliberal, or “free market,” globalization by purchasing the open-pit coalmine near La Loma as well as a Caribbean port from which to ship its coal to the United States and other countries. In the ensuing years, the company boosted the Pribbenow Mine’s coal production to more than 20 million tons annually, making it one of the largest coalmining operations in the world and the most significant contributor to Drummond’s $1.7 billion in annual revenues.

The mining of cheaper Colombian coal—partly due to low wages and favorable concession terms from the Colombian government—has allowed Drummond to close five mines in Alabama and lay-off 1,700 higher paid U.S. miners. The payroll savings for the company have been substantial as Alabama mineworkers that earned $18 per hour have been made redundant and replaced with Colombian miners that are paid an hourly wage of only $2.45. These payroll savings alone have boosted Drummond’s profits by more than quarter of a million dollars annually—and this doesn’t include the additional savings from no longer having to provide expensive health insurance and other benefits to U.S. workers.
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=11092

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



The pits are 7 kilometers long. One ton of Cerrejon coal costs $64 US. Drummond coal, mined
nearby (in the Colombian state of Cesar), costs $34 per ton. The difference is the money
invested by Cerrejon in human rights, social programs, workers rights, and infrastructure
within the mining complex, according to the Cerrejon Human Rights Coordinator.

Drummond Inc.

Drummond has fallen from the 318th largest private company in 1999 to a rank of 492. In 2001 it generated revenues of $615 million with 2,800 employees. It mines coal, produces coke, and develops real estate. Drummond's ABC Coke plant in Tarrant, Alabama is the largest single producer of foundry coke in the U.S. Most of Drummond's coal and profits come from the La Loma mine in the Cesar region. Each year Drummond exports about six million tons of coal from Colombia to U.S. electrical utility companies.

Ligia Ines Alzate, a longtime labor activist and general secretary of the Confederation of Trade Unions for the state of Antioquia, toured the U.S. and spoke to groups in Alabama in April. A Colombian union, Sintramienergetica, has sued Drummond Co. in federal court claiming that Drummond hired hit men to kidnap, torture, and murder three men last year for their ties to the union that represents Drummond workers. Alzate said many foreign multinational companies hire paramilitary groups to target union leaders during contract negotiations or when restless workers protest company practices. Coca Cola is also being sued for encouraging death squads to kill union members. The United Mine Workers and the United Steel Workers Unions support the lawsuit against Drummond.
(snip/)

http://zmagsite.zmag.org/oct2002/guevera1002.htm



A 45 year old Wayuu woman and her 12 year old daughter were burnt alive inthis truck on April 18, 2004.




The truck remains in the front yard. The expansion of the port requires grabbing Wayuu land, in order to increase coal exportation and profits for the Cerrejon (transnational) and Drummond Mining Companies (based in Alabama).

La Guajira, Colombia: Wayuu massacre and Coal Mining
http://carolinapeace.org/gallery/LaGuajira?page=10

[Judi Lynn]

8. Witness approved in Drummond-Colombian deaths’ case

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 21, 2007
Witness approved in Drummond-Colombian deaths’ case


BIRMINGHAM (AP) — A former Colombian security official who claims he saw an official of Alabama-based Drummond Ltd. pay for the murders of union leaders in the South American country can testify in the upcoming civil trial over the deaths, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Karon O. Bowdre came on the same day the Colombian government confirmed it was investigating allegations that Drummond collaborated with paramilitary forces to kill union members who work at its huge coal mine on the country’s northern coast.

Drummond has denied any involvement in the killing of its workers, but neither the company nor its attorney immediately returned messages seeking comment Tuesday.

The Colombian union Sintramienergetica filed suit in Birmingham claiming Drummond paid paramilitary gunmen to murder three labor leaders who represented Drummond employees in 2001. Two of the men were taken off a company bus and shot, according to the suit. The union’s wrongful death claims are against Drummond Ltd., the Colombian arm of Drummond, and its president, Augusto Jimenez.
(snip/)

http://www.decaturdaily.com/decaturdaily/news/070321/case.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

9. From Alabama to Colombia - Drummond's "Trail of Tears"

~snip~
The company is importing at least 4 million tons of Colombian coal to Alabama power plants this year. Drummond signed a five-year deal with Alabama Power Co. to ship 3.5 million tons of Colombian coal to a power plant near Mobile. It also provides coal to Alabama Electric Cooperative and a Florida power company.

"By laying off so many Alabama miners, the company sucked the lifeblood out of our region," said District 20 president John Stewart. "Drummond didn't tell us it was closing our mines and moving to Colombia. Alabama has more than 200 years of coal reserves left. We felt betrayed," he lamented. "Drummond failed to honor its verbal statement to the UMWA never to ship Colombian coal to Alabama. It was bad enough to take away our jobs after making money off our backs," he added, "but to send us coal mined with slave labor is really disgraceful. Drummond also promised to help the miners it displaced, but it did practically nothing."

"This is a classic case of a greedy coal baron who forgot the miners who helped make him prosper," observed L.U. 1948 president John Nolen of Jasper, Ala. The 26-year miner was laid off by Drummond twice prior to his current job at Shoal Creek.
(snip)

Even without the ongoing violence, Colombian miners face "some of the world's most dangerous working conditions," according to In These Times.com. An April 27 blast at the Cava Brava mine killed 15 miners, and another explosion in October 1997 buried 16 coal miners alive in El Diviso mine.

When union activists Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Hugo Orcasita boarded a company-chartered bus after leaving work at Drummond's La Loma coal mine in Colombia, they didn't realize it was their last ride. The local's president and vice president were pulled from the bus and executed by gunmen, some wearing military uniforms, in front of their fellow miners.
(snip)

http://www.umwa.org/journal/VOL112NO4/july3.shtml

[Judi Lynn]

10. Militia boss probed in union murders (right-wing)

Militia boss probed in union murders


BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Colombian prosecutors said they will question a
jailed paramilitary boss about the 2001 murders of two union leaders at a coal
mine owned by Drummond Co. Inc., which is being sued in a U.S. court for
allegedly hiring hit men to kill them.

Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, better known as "Jorge 40," is under investigation for
possible involvement in the killings of Victor Orcosia and Valmore Locarno, the
federal prosecutor's office said in a statement Thursday.

A key witness, former federal intelligence official Rafael Garcia, has said
he witnessed the president of Drummond's Colombian subsidiary deliver a
briefcase full of money to paramilitaries led by Tovar to pay for the murders.
(snip)

Tovar is in jail as part of a peace deal with the government under which
some 31,000 paramilitary fighters have disarmed. In exchange for confessing to
crimes including mass murder and drug trafficking, the paramilitary bosses are
to receive jail sentences of no more than eight years.
(snip)

http://orange.advfn.com/news_Militia-boss-probed-in-union-murders_20044792.html

[Gabi Hayes]

11. thanks for all you do, Judi. I'll be bookmarking this to show to the

anti progressive stooges who infest the Chavez threads.

this is the best example to present in refutation of the idiots who claim that Chavez doesn't represent the aspirations of South Americans who've been under the brunt of colonial/imperial exploitation for what, three or four hundred YEARS!!!

the first vestiges of economic liberty are finally showing up all over South America (too bad for most of Central America, which still suffers under the yolk of corporate feudalism), and it's going to be really interesting to see if they can overcome the forces of international economic fascism.

not holding breath, but can only hope the evolve into the kind of system we USED to have here, sort of, for a few years. I won't be surprised to see them passing us on the way down.

[Judi Lynn]

13. Thanks so much for your comments.This death-squad loving government, living on US taxpayers'

involuntary contributions, since we are given absolutely no choice whatsoever, should get far more attention than it gets in the U.S. press. People should KNOW their money is being spent to keep a man in power who has benefited from the paramilitaries coercing and intimidating voters, and through the support of powerful, greedy, vicious US companies looking for a country where they can make a killing the literal way, in their relentless search for cheaply acquired products and desperately poor people to exploit, by total force, if necessary, for their labor.

[Gabi Hayes]

12. here's a thought.....repost this, or a version, in GD, and PM some people you think

might recommend it, so it can get some greatest page exposure.

this NEEDS to be seen, not that it'll ever see the light of day in the US corporate media

[Freddie Stubbs]

15. The Houston Chronicle isn't part of the US corporate media?

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4675585.html

[Judi Lynn]

14. Brenda Norrell: Blood Money; Chiquita, Drummond coal and Coke death squads

Brenda Norrell: Blood Money; Chiquita, Drummond coal and Coke death squads

2007-03-28 | Chiquita admits its company Banadex paid more than a million dollars to hire death squads in Colombia to kill thousands of human rights activists, union organizers and farmers.

Chiquita is the successor to the notorious human rights violator United Fruit Company. It comes as no surprise that the Zapata Corporation, an oil company created by H.W. Bush, acquired the controlling interest of United Fruit in 1969.

Now, AP reports that Colombia wants eight Chiquita officials extradited. Further, Drummond Coal, with Israel its primary customer, is now under investigation and linked to those death squads. Drummond has denied it. With kickbacks to the Bush administration and Colombia's president, Chiquita and other corporations have escaped responsibility until now.

Coal shipments carried cocaine:

“The paramilitary has secret employees at Drummond’s La Loma coal mines,” continues Garcia in his private prison cubicle.“I can also tell you that there were two times that the paramilitary affixed shipments of cocaine to the bottom of the boats used by Drummond to send its coal to Europe, Israel, and the US,” offers Garcia.
(snip/...)

http://www.unobserver.com/layout5.php?id=3319&blz=1

There are links at the bottom of this article which will shed more light on this subject for anyone who is interested.

[Judi Lynn]

16. U.S. Mining Co. Denies Link to Killings

U.S. Mining Co. Denies Link to Killings
Mar 22nd - 11:15pm
By TOBY MUSE Associated Press Writer

~snip~
At the news conference, Jose Miguel Linares, a local Drummond vice president, acknowledged under questioning that one of its directors, Alfredo Araujo, is a cousin of Sen. Alvaro Araujo, who was jailed last month on charges of working with the paramilitaries to kidnap a political rival.

The scandal prompted Sen. Araujo's sister, Maria Consuelo, to step down as foreign minister.

Drummond said it has full confidence in Alfredo Araujo.

Drummond appears to have been shaken by accusations by a former paramilitary collaborator, Rafael Garcia, a key witness in the unfolding scandal, who is in prison.

Garcia says he was present when the president of Drummond Colombia, Augusto Jimenez, handed over "a suitcase full of money" in 2001 to a representative of regional paramilitary warlord Rodrigo Tovar Pupo.

"According to what I heard, Mr. Jimenez indicated at this meeting that this money was to be given to Rodrigo Tovar Pupo to assassinate specific union leaders at Drummond," Garcia said in a May 13, 2006 deposition to the lawyers of the three murdered union leaders.

Garcia said that later the union members killed were the same as those mentioned in the meeting.
(snip/...)

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1095811

[Judi Lynn]

17. Alabama based Drummond company (coal) mentioned today in Houston Chronicle:

~snip~
Colombia's Bananagate comes amid a wider scandal in which dozens of Colombian politicians as well as the nation's former intelligence chief have been accused of collaborating with paramilitaries to kill leftists, influence elections and steal state funds. So far, eight members of Congress have been jailed.

Now, authorities are looking into links between paramilitaries and private businesses. The attorney general said that his office has opened an investigation into allegations that Alabama-based coal producer Drummond Co., which operates in northeast Colombia, collaborated with paramilitaries to kill union leaders.
(snip)

In one infamous 1998 incident, paramilitaries burned 11 suspected rebels with acid before killing them. In another, paramilitaries, toting a list of names, stopped a bus and killed eight banana workers execution style, firing bullets into their heads. Later, the surviving passengers saw the killers laughing and shooting pool at a bar next to a police station.

"If you tried to report murders, they would shoot you," said a banana union official who was on the bus and witnessed the massacre.

Even though some 31,000 paramilitaries have disarmed under a government peace process, banana workers in Uraba speak about them in hushed tones because small bands of the gunmen continue to patrol the area. One field hand who asked not to be otherwise identified cut short an interview with a reporter at a restaurant in Apartado, the main town in the region, when a stocky man approached the table and looked him in the eye.

"I saw him kill three people," the worker whispered before slipping out of the restaurant.
(snip/...)

http://chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4679763.html

[Chemical Bill]

18. Thank you for beating this drum, Judi Lynn.

This is done for our electricity.

Bill

[Judi Lynn]

19. They've got skilled p.r. people, too, working hard to keep us from finding out.

As you may have noticed, they promised Alabamians they would not import Colombian coal to power them, after closing so many of their Alabama mines and putting so many Alabama miners out of work, and it was only a matter of a few years before they were using very cheap (no wages or benefits paid to Colombian miners, of course) coal at high prices right back in Alabama.