I left my home in London to come to Colombia at 4.10am on Friday morning, 31st January. At 4.30am there was a telephone call to my home, and another ten minutes later. My partner answered the third call at about 4.45am A man asked "Is this Andy's home?", my partner said "Yes". The caller then said "Andy will die soon". His next called was left unanswered, and yet another call. This time the threat was more direct: "We're going to get Andy".
And so now I am a threatened person, an honorary Colombian living under intimidation that has also touched my family.
This is the fifth time that I have visited Colombia in the last two years. And the first time that I went to the Colombian Embassy in London beforehand to advise them of the timing and purpose of my trip. Is this a coincidence?
The Embassy meeting was on Wednesday 29th, called at short notice to protest against the liquidation of EMCALI. While three of us were inside, the Colombia Solidarity Campaign picketed out front demanding that Uribe respects the Agreement of 29th January 2002 not to privatise. We knew that messages had also come from public sector workers UNISON and the TUC.
SINTRAEMCALI asked us last Monday night to send volunteers immediately as international observers. The workers had gathered in their workplaces and were being threatened by armed police surrounding the plants. On Tuesday the situation looked as though it was easing, with a political block of Senators, Congress representatives and Cali's mayor and city councillors declaring for EMCALI to stay in the public sector. Then on Wednesday the police broke up SINTRAEMCALI's rally with arrests, beatings, tear gas and even explosive grenades.
There are four of us from the Campaign here in Bogotá. The plan is that two delegates will join the international trade union delegation that starts on Tuesday. One of our delegates will go to Arauca, under military rule for the last two months, and another will be in the group that visits Barrancabermeja, the oil city overrun by the paramilitaries two years ago. And the plan is that two of us proceed to Cali, but the threat against me has held this up. Our friends are evaluating the situation.
Yesterday's edition of El Tiempo is not good news. Uribe spoke yesterday at the launching of the Sixth Division. This 13,000 force will for the first time combine units of the army, navy and airforce. It will be deployed in the south charged with hunting down the principal leaders of the FARC. Uribe thanked the United States for its aid through Plan Colombia and called on the Colombian armed forces to take whatever decisions they have to, to defeat terrorism. "The decisive moment has arrived for the Military Forces to deliver results".
What limited incentive Colombia's guerilla movements have to lay down their arms is indicated by an article in the same newspaper. 72 members of the Current for Socialist Renewal CRS have been assassinated since the party was formed in 1994 when 730 guerilla fighters from the ELN handed over their weapons and sought integration into civilian politics. For many it was their death sentence.
This is not exceptional. Today's El Espectador reports that demobilised militants from the Maoist EPL movement have met a similar fate, 250 ex-combatants and 350 sympathisers have been assassinated.
In the vortex of the supposed "war on terrorism", left wing movements are treated as enemies to be eliminated. Communist Party leader Carlos Lozano reports that for several days 5 cars have been parked near his home. He noted the number plates and passed the information to DAS, department of administrative security that is supposed to be protecting him. All they would tell him was that the vehicles were not their's.
The state offensive against the left has a real criminal content. As one friend put it, "In this country we don't have a bourgeoisie, we have mafias".
It is not just that the trade unions are being caught up in a fight not of their making. The trade unions are themselves a target of the onslaught.
This morning a leader of the union at Bavaria beer company told us their story. In the last three years the membership of SINALTRABAVARIA has plummeted from three thousand to 580 workers. Since the removal of import controls in 1991 the company has stopped buying hops grown in Colombia. It imports all its raw materials, from the USA, Canada and Australia. The union has just come out of a 72 day long strike and is now in negotiations. Bavaria wants to sub-contract more and more of its operations, thereby casualising the workforce, do away with any security of employment and break the union. The comrade explained that this is all part of the employers preparing for ALCA, the Free Trade Area of the Americas that aims to turn the whole continent into a maquiladora sweat shop zone at the service of the USA.
ALCA is due to start in 2005. Uribe's government is intent on destroying the union movement within the next two years.
Certainly the trade union leaders we have spoken to over the last day say that their security situation is far worse than just two months ago, my last visit. Military intelligence follows them and their visitors ever more closely. The hardest hit are the local leaders in the regions and provincial cities, away from the limited protections of Bogotá. One leader who was forced into exile in Chile several years ago, returned for a family visit to his home city of Barranquilla recently. He was followed from the airport and never made it home.
Uribe has let the hounds off the leash. This is indeed the moment of decision. Will the international community come to Colombia and give direct assistance to the political left, to SINTRAEMCALI and a trade union movement on the point of liquidation?
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