GILBERTO TORRES IS FREE!
-----------------------

After 6 weeks in the hands of the paramilitaries, GILBERTO TORRES a regional leader of the Colombian oil workers union USO [Unión Sindical Obrera] was freed on Sunday 7th April.

GILBERTO was kidnapped as he left his work on the OCENSA pipeline in Casanare on Friday 22nd February. The OCENSA pipeline transports BP's oil from wells in the eastern Andes to the Caribbean port of Coveñas.

The paramilitary group AUC [United Self-Defence of Colombia] kept GILBERTO shackled a hole in the ground covered with barbed wire. They finally handed him over at midday last Sunday to a special commission comprising the International Red Cross, the Presidential Peace Commissioner and the People's Defender.

GILBERTO's disappearance had triggered a national strike by USO that originally lasted several days, and was restarted on 20th March after another USO leader RAFAEL JAIMES was assassinated in Barrancabermeja. USO's stoppage only ended last Saturday when the union heard of GILBERTO's impending release. Union leaders spent last week in negotiations with the top executives of state oil corporation ECOPETROL demanding that management do more to protect the oil workers. Union President Hernando Hernández pledged USO to fight on to defend human rights of its members.

The Colombia Solidarity Campaign mounted two pickets of the Colombian Embassy in London demanding GILBERTO's release. The TUC, UNISON and many other unions and individuals have sent messages of protest. To our knowledge this is the first time that the paramilitaries have released an abducted trade unionist. It is a great victory, primarily for the solidarity of the Colombian oil workers who took immediate and united militant action, as well as those of you in the international community who responded to the call to take urgent action.

We celebrate this victory with USO, and with them we fight on.


CONTINUING GENOCIDE AGAINST THE CUT - UNITED WORKERS FEDERATION OF COLOMBIA

ASSASSINATIONS

· On 8th April 2002 DIOFANOL SIERRA VARGAS was assassinated. She was on the executive of the Barrancabermeja branch of the Food Industry Workers Union SINALTRAINAL, affiliated to the CUT, and a member of the Popular Women's Organisation - OFP. DIOFANAOL was a trade union and social leader. She was taken by force from her family home and executed by the paramilitary group that operates in the oil city of Barrancabermeja, in Santander Department.

· On 9th April 2002 OSCAR ALFONSO JURADO was assassinated in the city of Cali, Valle del Cauca Departament. He was a leader of the Yumbo Branch of the Chemical Industry Workers Union SINTRAQUIM - CUT. OSCAR was waiting for transport to take him to his work place when he was attacked by an unknown man who shot him twice, taking his life.


KIDNAPPING

· On 5th April 2002, ARTURO VASQUEZ GALEANO was kidnapped as he was travelling from his work in the town of Abejorral towards the city of Medellín in Antioquia Departamento. ARTURO is a social leader and an activist in the Workers and Employees Union of Antioquia, affiliated to the CUT.

We call for URGENT action to save the life and personal well being of our comrade, so that he may be returned safe and sound to his family, to the community where he does his social work, and to his trade union.

These barbarous acts form the dramatic situation in which we in the CUT are suffering - as a result of all the assassinations, disappearances, kidnappings, death threats, detentions, forced displacement, temporary or permanent exile. We ask the democratic and progressive movement, Human Rights NGOs and the trade union world that you demand of the government of Doctor Andrés Pastrana Arango that it urgently defines policies that will guarantee the exercise of union activity in Colombia.

This should be through special measures of protection such as fighting to capture the intellectual and material authors of the these murders which in their great part are carried out by paramilitary groups. This decision would in the first place remove impunity and must, as well, rapidly provide adequate protection schemes for our leaders who are being assassinated totally undefended for the lack of such measures. These measures would immediately mitigate the high risk that we are in for carry out our responsibilities as trade union leaders.

With all respect we consider that Doctor Juan Somaviva, the governments, employers and workers with representation and responsibility at the International Labour Organisation - ILO - must now take careful note of this GENOCIDE that is being carried out against the United Workers federation of Colombia - the CUT. And that if the National Government with president Pastrana at its head does NOT implement the policies necessary for us to carry out our union activity, then a COMMISSION OF ENQUIRY is agreed at the June 2002 meeting of the ILO Council of Administration. This would be a mechanism to call the attention of the Colombian State and Government to halt this genocide against our federation, and the systematic, massive and serious violation of Human rights.

JESÚS ANTONIO GONZALEZ LUNA
Director Human Rights Departament, CUT
Bogotá D.C., 9th April 2002


SOLIDARITY ACTIONS
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SEND MESSAGES TO / ENVIAR MENSAJES O CARTAS A:

ANDRÉS PASTRANA ARANGO
Presidente de la República,
Presidencia de la República
Carrera 8 No. 7-26 Palacio de Nariño,
Santa Fe de Bogotá
Teléfono. +57.1.5629300 ext. 3550 (571) 284 33 00
Fax +(57)1 - 286 74 34 - 286, 68 42 -284 21 86
Mailto:  rdh@presidencia.gov.co

And to:

FOR THOSE IN THE U.K.
Mr VICTOR RICARDO,
Ambassador to the UK,
Embassy of the Republic of Colombia
Flat 3A, 3 Hans Crescent, London SW1X 0LN, UK
Tel: (020) 7589 9177. Fax: (020) 7581 1829.
E-mail:  mail@colombianembassy.co.uk

FOR THOSE IN CANADA:
Fanny Kertzman Yankelevitch
Ambassador for Colombia
360 Albert Street, Suite 1002
Ottawa, Ontario K1R 7X7
Fax: (613) 230-4416
Email:  embajador@embajadacolombia.ca

FOR THOSE IN THE UNITED STATES:
Luis Alberto Moreno
Embajador de Colombia
2118 Leroy Place, NW,
Washington, DC 20008
Phone: (202) 387 8338
Fax: (202) 232 8643
 as@colombiaemb.org

with copies to:

CUT ;
Colombia Solidarity Campaign ;
National and International Campaign Against Privatisation, Corruption
and the Criminalisation of Social Protest .

BP AGM
------
The Colombia Solidarity Campaign invites you to:

PUT BP ON TRIAL
===============

at BP's Annual General Meeting 10am Thursday 18 April 2002,
Royal Festival Hall, London SE1 (Embankment tube)

BP's oil pipeline companies are refusing to pay compensation to 300 peasants in Colombia whose livelihoods have been ruined. The families were forced to abandon their land after two oil pipelines passing through their farms caused extensive environmental damage. The families now live in acute poverty in shanty towns in the city of Medellín. The Colombia Solidarity Campaign is inviting representatives of the families to BP's AGM to ask why the company has failed to pay adequate compensation.

* BP is the largest foreign investor in Colombia

* Colombia has the world's highest trade union murder rate. Ninety members of Colombia's oil workers' union (USO) have been murdered since 1988. Six USO members were killed January-March 2002.

* BP's drilling sites are militarized. An entire brigade of the Army (the 16th Brigade) is dedicated to defending oil infrastructure in Casanare, the region where BP operates. This brigade is implicated in extra-judicial killings.

* BP refuses to meet the oil workers union and will not allow them to visit the drilling sites.

* Two peasant activists, who protested against BP polluting their land, were shot dead in 1995.

* BP employs a private security firm, Defence Systems Limited. This London-based company was set up by former SAS members and is being investigated by the Colombian state prosecutor for allegedly training the Colombian police in 'lethal' counter-insurgency tactics.

PUBLIC MEETING
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BP IN COLOMBIA - THE HUMAN COST OF OIL

7pm Tuesday 23rd April

Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1
(nearest tube Holborn)

Speakers: Lawyers representing victims of BP's operations
Michael Gillard, investigative journalist
British trade unionist recently returned from Colombia
Colombia Solidarity Campaign


COLOMBIA PIPELINE VICTIMS DEFENCE FUND
--------------------------------------
There is an urgent need to support the victims. Their cases have been held up for several years in Colombia's interminable legal system as the multinational's OCENSA/ODC consortium put in one blocking move after another. Meanwhile the victims are in need of health care, food and welfare as well as financial support for their legal defence. All donations will be put to supporting the victims and their claim. Make payable to "Colombia Solidarity Campaign" and write on the back "CPV Defence Fund" and send to our address below.

For more information contact the Colombia Solidarity Campaign.

 colombia_sc@hotmail.com tel: 07950 923 448
Post: PO Box 8446, London N17 6NZ