by LILI ESKINAZI
Canada beat the U.S. to it—the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CCFTA) entered into force on August 15, 2011 despite widespread concerns over the morality and transparency of the agreement. A nearly identical trade agreement between the United States and Colombia remains halted in the U.S. congress due to the controversy over Colombia’s record of human rights abuses. Contrary to the common myth of Canada as a peacekeeping nation, the Conservative government’s current relations with Colombia exemplify an intimate connection between free trade and military aid. Together, these imperialist tactics act to transform Colombia into a so-called Israel of the Andes.
The CCFTA: Trampling on Human Rights
Shrouded in secrecy during a year and a half of negotiations, the terms of the CCFTA were decided behind closed doors and the text released only in November 2008. Without proper parliamentary involvement, and despite outright opposition to the deal on the part of many Canadian and Colombian civil society organizations, Canada and Colombia have pushed full force ahead with the deal.
According to Making A Bad Situation Worse: An Analysis of the text of the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, the deal presents cause for grave concern over development and humanitarian issues, namely in the areas of labour rights abuses, extractive industry investment, agriculture, and the environment.
Colombia is the world’s most dangerous country for trade unionists. According to Colombia’s National Labor School, as of October 2010, 2,860 trade unionists had been murdered since 1986; this is more in one country alone than in the rest of the world combined. Of these, only six per cent of cases have resulted in convictions, suggesting a 94 per cent rate of impunity. (1)
The government is intimately linked to the paramilitary activity related to these and countless other murders. Seventy-eight current and former members of the Colombian congress have been identified by the Colombian Supreme Court as having ties to paramilitary groups (2). As just one example, ex-intelligence officer, Jorge Noguera, has recently been convicted of collaborating with paramilitary death squads; he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for his implication in the murder of a prominent sociologist (3).
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(Thanks to Feroz Mehdi)