-Caveat Lector- ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 06 Sep 1999 04:38:18 -0400 From: DAMN <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: DAMN: 30-AUG-1999 - 02-SEP-1999: Colombia General Strike Title: Colombia General Strike Author: various, compiled by <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, DAMN's labor topic specialist Date: 30-AUG-1999 - 02-SEP-1999 Source: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, DAMN's labor topic specialist Reference: Compiled from mainstream and union media sources (Associated Press, BBC World Service, Reuters, ICFTU, etc.) http://infoseek.go.com/Content?arn=a1721LBY677reulb-19990829&qt=union+strike&sv=IS&lk=noframes&col=NX&kt=A&ak=news1486 http://www.icftu.org/english/pr/1999/eprol153-990830-ld.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_434000/434049.stm At least 1.5 million union workers, joined by thousands of members of peasant and grass-roots social organizations, heeded the call for a nationwide strike to protest against government austerity measures and free-market economic policies. Students and housewives joined teachers, health, communications and oil workers and truck drivers in a bid to bring the country to a standstill. Hospitals, schools and the courts were closed, and public transport badly disrupted. The main purpose of the general strike, called by all the Colombian national trade union centres (CUT, CGTD and CTC) as well as the people's movements which together form the Comando nacional unitario (United National Command), is to press home demands on the government for an economic and social recovery plan which respects the needs of the majority of the population. The austerity plan for the 2000 budget, drawn up along neo-liberal lines, and announced by the conservative government of President Andres Pastrana last week, catalysed the trade union protest, at a time when the country is facing its most serious economic crisis for 70 years, and more than one third of Colombia's 38 million population already live below the poverty line. The draft budget foresees a fall in civil service wages, with the exception of the lowest paid, an end to index-linking for wages (inflation is currently at 9%), an increase in the retirement age to 62 for men and 57 for women (as compared to 60 and 55 at present), and a fall in overtime rates and in redundancy costs. Last July, for the first time in its history, Colombia asked the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a loan of 3 billion dollars, now under negotiation, in order to meet the cost of servicing its external debt, estimated at 35 billion dollars. The trade union and social organisations have published a 41-point list of demands making a series of concrete proposals to improve the country's economic and social situation. The demands also include guarantees as to the respect of the freedom to form and join trade unions, of human rights and of the freedom of expression at the workplace. Schools were closed and mass transit crippled as protesters burned buses in several cities on Tuesday. In all of Colombia's main cities, demonstrators hurled rocks at helmeted riot police, who fired tear gas and crouched behind plastic shields. City officials said protesters burned two buses in Medellin, and three more in Cali, Colombia's second and third-largest cities respectively. Tire-burning protesters blocked major roads in some regions and protesters clashed repeatedly with riot police in working-class neighborhoods in the south of the capital. Demonstrators blocked several major highways across Colombia, including a main route through the central coffee-growing region. In a nationally televised speech Monday, President Pastrana appealed to workers to call off the strike, which could complicate talks with the IMF over a $3 billion loan agreement. He said the strike was politically-motivated and would only make things worse. Military sources said they believed Marxist guerrillas could stage attacks to coincide with the strike and block major highways in a bid to snarl traffic across the country. Security forces were placed on alert for possible violence and alcohol sales and firearms have been banned in Bogota and many major cities from Sunday. Last Thursday, seven bombs were detonated outside savings and loans corporations in the capital, causing heavy damage but no injuries. Military sources suggested the blasts could have been carried out by Marxist guerrillas in support of the general strike. Trade unions and leftists suggest that right-wing paramilitaries could be involved in the bombings in order to precipitate a crisis situation. For example, last Saturday, two bombs exploded in the northwest industrial hub of Medellin -- one outside a regional human rights office and another outside a union building, police said. A third bomb planted outside local offices of the powerful oil workers' union USO was defused. In the most serious incident in the capital, gunmen opened fire on Domingo Tobar, an executive member of the Unitary Workers' Confederation (CUT), the country's largest labor organization. The attack was close to the offices where union bosses had been holding daylong talks to plan the indefinite strike. "Domingo escaped unhurt but his bodyguard was wounded. This was carried out by the military working with (illegal, ultra-right) paramilitaries," stated Wilson Borja, head of the public sector workers' union. He said he had received a tip-off from within the army that the military would try to kill him and other union representatives during the labor strife. According to the Colombian trade unions, 72 trade union leaders were assassinated last year. In addition to threats from far-right para-military groups and even guerilla groups on the far-left, trade union leaders are also subject to degrading treatment by the Colombian police during arbitrary arrests or the repression of demonstrations, explain the trade unions. The trade union organisations, led by the United Workers' Centre (CUT), the Confederation of Labour of Colombia (CTC), and the Democratic Workers' Confederation (CGTD), have demanded guarantees before the demonstrations and work stoppage planned for Tuesday. Twelve trade union activists were killed during last October's general strike, according to trade union figures. Colombia's most violent strike in recent memory was in 1977 when 20 protesters were killed in a single day amid widespread rioting in Bogota. In an act of solidarity with the strike, armed rebels from the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, took over a hydroelectric plant near the Pacific port of Buenaventura, refusing to allow some 40 employees to leave, the military said. However, the rebels state the number is closer to 100. A guerrilla commander, who identified himself as "JJ", told Reuters by telephone from the power plant near the Pacific coast port of Buenaventura that FARC rebels would stage other attacks around the country "to support the workers". The guerrillas were demanding a reduction in electricity rates -- but their action did not interrupt service, company president Carlos Eduardo Sinesterra told Caracol radio. He said the people being held inside the 360 megawatt capacity plant were mostly employees and did not specify if they were being held as hostages. The plant was privatised two years ago and is operated by Colombian power generator EPSA in conjunction with a U.S. and Venezuelan partner. The FARC unit remained holed up in the plant Thursday morning. In other parts of the country, rebels of the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN) blew up three power pylons in Antioquia province in the northwest and Cesar province in the north, while demonstrators torched buses in the regional capital of Medellin. The strike ended late Wednesday following an upsurge in political violence that authorities said left more than 65 people dead nationwide. There were sporadic reports of violence by strike demonstrators around the country, mostly in and around Bogota, all day Wednesday. In the end, union leaders agreed to further negotiations with state officials on a list of demands including an end to the privatisation programme and a moratorium on debt payments. Students lobbed rocks and Molotov cocktails at riot police, who responded with tear gas and baton charges, outside Bogota's National University. Authorities clamped a curfew on three towns on the edge of Bogota where police fought pitched battles with looters early Wednesday. But the end of the strike, which snarled traffic across the nation, promised to return Colombia to normalcy by midday Thursday The heaviest death toll from strike-related violence came Wednesday around the town of Hato Corozal in oil-rich eastern Casanare province. The military said troops, backed by helicopter gunships, killed up to 50 FARC guerrillas as they tried to flee the town before dawn after a bungled attack. An army statement said 400 FARC fighters fired gas cylinders packed with explosives at the police barracks and a bank in Hato Corozal, then tried to escape when army units surrounded the town. Among the rebel dead was a guerrilla commander who allegedly ordered the brutal kidnap-murder of three American activists in northeast Arauca province in February, the army said. The FARC, which fields more than 15,000 fighters nationwide, was founded in the mid-1960s and is the hemisphere's largest and oldest guerrilla group. In a separate attack, an ultra-right death squad murdered at least 15 peasants in a rural area near the town of Yolombo in northwest Antioquiaprovince, town mayor Dario Orrego said. He said the death squad was led by a rebel deserter who returned to the region to hunt down guerrilla sympathizers. Orrego said the attack, which came 10 days after paramilitary gangs killed 36 peasants in the northeast, was carried out overnight Tuesday, but the bodies were not found until Wednesday. A veritable civil war has raged in Colombia for the last 35 years, with a death toll so far of 120,000. Parties to the conflict are the army, the Marxist guerrilla group, the Guevara-inspired "National Liberation Army" (ELN) and far-right para-military militias. This is the DAMN News Email list http://damn.tao.ca To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Asking to: unsubscribe damn ***DAMN DISCLAIMER - IMPORTANT PLEASE NOTE*** DAMN receives many unsolicited reports and tries but can not verify all information contained within. DAMN therefore disclaims responsibility for the information in this message and urges you to contact the reporter personally for further verification. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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