In Defence of Marxism

On March 22, a group of men entered the house of Adolfo Gonzalez Montes and proceeded to torture and then kill him. Gonzalez Montes was a leading member of Sintracarbon, the National Union of Coal Industry Workers and had been threatened by paramilitary groups because of his trade union activity. According to a press release from the union Sintracarbon, a number of leaders of the organisation have been harassed in the last few weeks with threatening phone calls, being followed home and with threatening posters.

As the union statement says, these kinds of threats "usually take place when we are negotiating the collective bargaining agreement". The union makes the Colombian state responsible for the well-being of their members and demands from the company, "Carbones del Cerrejón Ltd", full guarantees for the free exercise of trade union activities.

Carbones del Cerrejón Ltd is the company exploiting the world's largest open cast coal mine, producing nearly 30 million tonnes of coal a year, which is then exported, mainly to Europe. The company is a joint venture between Australian-British-South African "BHP Billiton" (the world's largest mining company), the South African "Anglo American" and the Swiss "Xstrata".

In 2004 the company had already been asked to guarantee the security of the union's negotiating team in letters sent by the International Chemical, Energy and Mining Workers Federation and by a group of Socialist Members of the European Parliament.

Speaking to IPS, Francisco Ramirez, the president of Sintramercol union, himself the victim of an assassination attempt by paramilitaries in 2004, explains clearly that it is wrong "to show the problem of violation of human rights in Colombia as the result of a fight between the goodies and the baddies. What we have hear is a war of economic interests".

Colombian trade unionists have denounced "the direct or indirect responsibility of some local subsidiaries" of multinational companies in the country "and the Colombian state, in this long list of violations of human, trade union and labour rights".

In the same press release, Sintracarbon denounces the harassment against those trade union organisations that participated in the organisation of the March 6th demonstrations against paramilitary and state violence and the violation of trade union and human rights. So far six of these trade union leaders have been assassinated by paramilitaries.