Urgent Action: Attack and Threat on Women’s Leader Yolanda Becerra
by O.F.P., Human Rights Colombia and others Sunday, Nov. 04, 2007 at 1:44 PM

‘When the men knocked at the door, Yolanda Becerra Vega thought it was the women who had returned and opened it. The men pushed the door and started to hit Yolanda, pinning here against the wall. One of them pointed a gun at her, and they told her “son of a bitch, your story is over. You have 48 hours to leave, if not we’ll wipe out your family. You won’t escape us”.’

Report by Richard Solly, Secretary, London Mining Network, 41a Thornhill Square, London N1 1BE.

BHPBilliton plc AGM, 25 October 2007

Trade unionists from Colombia and representatives of mining-affected communities in the Philippines attended the BHPBilliton plc AGM in London on 25 October.

COLOMBIA

Javier Correa (m), the National Union of Food Industry Workers (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos, SINALTRAINAL)

José Domingo Flores (m), leader of the Santander branch of SINALTRAINAL,

Members of their families

Other members of SINALTRAINAL 

According to Álvaro Uribe, the paramilitary groups have demobilised, however the truth is that they are more active than ever.

Each time the government and the management of Ecopetrol implement programmes of privatisation of the the Colombian peoples’ state oil corporation, or hand over our natural resources, the threats against the union increase. This is what is happening now as we, the workers, are against the sale of ECOPETROL shares.

At about 4pm on 27th September 2007, ANDRES DAMIAN FLOREZ RODRIGUEZ (son of JOSE DOMINGO FLOREZ, a worker at a Coca-Cola bottling plant and a leader of the trade union SINALTRAINAL) was returning from college to his home at No 204-102, 38th Avenue in the Andes barrio of Floridablanca in Santander when he was accosted by three individuals from a black van, they were carrying arms, communications radios and were wearing balaclavas. The three men took Andres in the van by force, threw him on the vehicle floor and started hitting him.

On November 12, 2002, the military and police rounded up more than 2,000 people in Saravena and took them to the sports arena in the first mass arrest in the state of Arauca.  On September 27 of this year, more than 2,000 people again filled the arena – this time to denounce the human rights abuses committed by the military and police during the past five years.  The Human Rights Commission of the Colombian Senate held a public hearing in the arena that day which lasted for more than six hours.