TUC backs UCU's call for stopping EU Free Trade Agreement with Colombia

UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, spoke about a recent visit to Colombia and the people she met who faced death on a daily basis and had lost loved ones, just because they were trade unionists.
 
Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world in which to be a trade unionist. 4,000 have been killed in the last 20 years. The UK government refuses to come clean about how much they are giving and where the money is going, although it has promised that it isn't contributing to human rights abuses.  Backing the motion, delegates at the Liverpool conference said the promise was not good enough and urged the government to follow the examples of Canada, America and Norway and suspend free trade talks with Colombia now.
 
UCU general secretary, Sally Hunt, told delegates: 'What I saw in Colombia will stay with me, like it will for many others, for the rest of my life. We met people who encounter human rights abuses on a daily basis. But people who are still brave enough to speak out against the injustices they witness.
 
'I heard at first-hand about the horror of extra-judicial executions. The Colombian army has been allowed to murder ordinary civilians, allowed and indeed rewarded when they pretend they were guerrillas killed in combat. Abuses like this have claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people and are happening all over the country and yet our government continues to supply the Colombian military with aid.
 
'The UK refuses to come clean about how much they are giving and where the money is going, although they have promised that it isn't contributing to human rights abuses. Well that promise isn't good enough for us.
 
'We are right to be appalled at the ongoing free trade negotiations between Colombia and the European Union. We should have no business with a regime that is complicit in the killings of innocent people and opposition voices. The EU must follow the example of the US, Canada and Norway and suspend free trade talks with Colombia now. Failure to do so gives a green light for the Colombian authorities to continue their regime of killing with impunity and would set a worrying precedent for other countries.'

UCU delegate at TUC Congress, Jim Guild from Sussex University, did a live debate with Colombia's Minister for Social Protection, Diego Palacio Betancourt, on a Madrid-based Colombian radio station. Download MP3 file here. [7mb]