Labor Donated
Parararamilitaries amilitaries Number One Killer
Of the 171 unionists confirmed murdered, 84 deaths are attributed
to paramilitaries (about 49%) and five to guerrilla
groups (about 3%), primarily the FARC, the largest of the
rebel groups. Eight-two are attributed to unknown assailants
(about 48%). The vast majority were affiliated with the CUT.
Forty-six (about 27%) of the murdered unionists were members
of their unions’ board of directors, and one of them was
a member of the national board of directors of the CUT (Oscar
Darío Soto Polo, murdered on June 21).
CUT also reports 30 attempted murders of trade unionists in
2001, as well as 82 disappearances. Of these, 40 are still
unaccounted for, 24 were found alive or were liberated by
their captors, and 18 were found dead. CUT attributes the
kidnaping of one trade unionist, who was later freed alive, to
the FARC, while it attributes the kidnaping of 25 union members
(including a group of 12 and another group of 8) to the
ELN (Colombia’s second largest rebel group); 22 have been
freed alive, while the whereabouts of three are still unknown.
CUT also attributes the kidnaping of 13 union members to the
paramilitaries; 11 were found dead, one was freed alive, and
the whereabouts of one is still unknown. The rest of the disappearances
are of unknown origin or are attributed to unknown
assailants.
The violence against Colombia’s trade unionists continues in
2002, with the CUT reporting four murders, one disappearance,
one kidnaping, and two attempted murders of trade
unionists as of mid-January. Two of the murdered were leaders
of their union locals.
Educa Educator tor tors s Har Hardest dest Hit
The hardest hit sector is education, with 71 murdered (about
41.5% of the total), including teachers, professors, school/
university administration and other staff. Public works unions
lost 26 members (about 15%), energy/petroleum unions 22
(about 13%), judicial sector unions 14 (about 8%), and health
care unions 11 (about 6.5%).
The NGO Escuela Nacional Sindical, in a report issued in November
2001, points out that public servants are targeted
because they are in the strongest position to influence public
policy, especially around privatization. As reported in Bulletin
Issue #1, ENS considers more than 70% of all human rights
violations against union members to be related to their normal
union activities (including fighting against privatization),
while it sees only 11% of such violations as being directly
connected to the armed conflict.
Perhaps the most prominent trade unionist murdered in late
2001 was Aury Sará Marrugo, President of the Cartagena
section of USO, the petroleum workers union. He and his bodyguard,
Enrique Arellano, were kidnaped on November 30 by
paramilitaries. The AUC (Colombian United Self-Defense forces),
the principal paramilitary group, claimed responsibility for his
kidnaping on December 3 in an email posted by AUC leader
Carlos Castaño on the AUC’s web site, in which he claimed
that the AUC had tried Sará Marrugo and found him guilty of
“multiple crimes” including extortion, kidnaping and terrorism,
and that he had confessed to being a “comandante” of
the ELN guerrillas. Though the AUC said it was willing to turn
him over to government Peace Commisioner Camilo Gómez,