The 4th and last of the public meetings organised by the Oxford for Trade Justice Coalition was held in the Town Hall on September 25 on the topic of the impact of WTO policies and workers’ rights.

Jesus Alfonso Naranjo, the National Co-ordinator of the Human Rights Dept and Medical Missions of ANTHOC (the Colombian health workers’ union), spoke about how the Colombian government, in its drive to implement World Bank and IMF policies of privatisation and corporate takeover of the country’s considerable natural resources, is using the military conflict to crush the civic society’s opposition to such policies. Human rights activists, community leaders and trade unionists are labelled as terrorists by the government and therefore identified as legitimate targets for the paramilitaries (who have well-documented links with the government). The British Government provides the current Colombian Government with military and financial support.

Gerard Kelly, former president of the National Union of Teachers of Further and Higher Education NATFHE, spoke about his visit to Colombia with fellow trade unionists and teachers to see and hear for himself how teachers and students who dare to protest are intimidated, harassed, disappeared and assassinated in Colombia.

Alan Clark, from the No Sweat Campaign, spoke about how corporations need cheap labour, weak unions and no government interference and the horrendous consequences for workers in countries where government are keen to attract foreign investors (a list which includes the UK).

A brief video showed at the beginning gave a quote from the Colombian Congressman Wilson Borja (who will speak in Oxford in November – details to come): ‘Colombians are poor because Colombia is rich.’

The logic highlighted by that statement applies to all the countries the WTO is trying to bully, whether developing (like most African countries), or formerly developed and currently on their knees, like Latin America. What the speakers showed (yet again) was that where a well-established, well-structured civic society is already in place and actively resists the logic of the corporate takeover of the world, oppressive regimes are supported by western democracies to do the dirty work for the multinationals that keep the western democracies in power. Colombia is the bloody battlefield where the crucial struggle for workers’ rights and the survival of public control of services, resources and the environment is being fought: if the Colombian resistance wins, there is some hope for us, too; if they are crushed, we are crushed with them. A Justice for Colombia Oxford Group is being formed to support our heroic brothers and sisters’ struggle against the sale of our world.

For more information visit:
 http://web.amnesty.org/pages/hrd_action
 http://hrw.org/backgrounder/americas/checkbook-impunity.htm
 http://room17.org/colombia_policy_of_fear/view
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1047696,00.html
 http://www.waronwant.org/?lid=5812 (from which you can email President Uribe)

To be kept informed on events for Colombia in Oxford, for further specific background info on the urgent action on the War on Want website and for template letters to your MP, President Uribe and the Colombian Ambassador (all brief Word documents), email  oxtradejustice@yahoo.co.uk.