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March/April 2008
Help Protect our Activist
Colleagues in Colombia
from Death Squad Violence
Tens of thousands of Colombians
marched on March 6 in Bogota (See Sara Koopman's photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/sarakoopman/M6Marcha)
and many other cities to stand with the victims of right-wing
paramilitary violence and to protest violence by all armed
groups. Solidarity events occurred in New York, Washington, and
San Francisco.
Now, in the wake of accusations by a presidential advisor that
the activists in Colombia who helped organize these peaceful
marches are guerrillas, they are being targeted with
paramilitary threats, kidnappings, and even killings.
Lethal attacks on Colombian labor activists also continue. On
March 4 in Washington, President Bush called on Congress to
approve the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, although
Colombia is the most dangerous nation in the world to be a trade
unionist. As if in response, in the four days following his
statement, four labor leaders in Colombia were murdered.
It is crucial that we act to detain the US-supported Colombian
government from its threats to nonviolent activists. Please call
your member of Congress today and urge her or him to sign a
letter to President Uribe and to oppose the anti-labor Free
Trade Agreement.
In the days leading up to March 6, José Obdulio Gaviria, a close
advisor to President Uribe, went on national radio to suggest
that the March 6th rally was "convened by the FARC." In the days
after the march, dozens of organizations, including Peace
Brigades International, received emails informing them they were
military objectives of the paramilitary group "Black Eagles." In
a downtown Bogota hotel, masked men broke into a conference
organized by a known human rights group and kidnapped two men at
gunpoint, threatened them, and left them on the sidewalk.
Several march organizers around the country were threatened, and
at least two were killed.
President Bush says passage of the Free Trade Agreement with
Colombia is a matter of US national security, and plans to
submit the bill in the coming month despite the opposition of
every labor federation in Colombia and the US, indigenous
people, Afro-Colombians, the major Colombian opposition party,
Democratic Party leaders and human rights organizations. The FTA
is more likely to generate displacement than security, just as
NAFTA is estimated to have led millions of Mexican farmers going
under because the market was flooded with US-subsidized grains.
For background, see the the excellent resource produced by the
American Friends Service Committee, "Violent Intersections of
Commerce and Conflict." (http://www.tradeandwar.org/connections.html)
Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
are circulating a "dear colleague" letter (http://www.forcolombia.org/sites/www.forcolombia.org/files/McGovern_Schakowsky_Threats.pdf)
to President Uribe. The letter calls on the Colombian government
to fully investigate these threats and murders and to bring
those responsible to justice. The letter also urges President
Uribe to take concrete actions to ensure government officials
stop making comments that put the lives of human rights
defenders at risk.
Please contact your Members of Congress and urge them to:
1.
Support McGovern-Schakowsky Letter on Recent Wave of Threats and
Killings in Colombia, and
2. Oppose the Colombia Free Trade Agreement that President Bush is
pushing onto Congress
Call your member of Congress today!
Simply dial the Capitol Switchboard 202-224-3121 to be connected
to their office and ask to speak to their foreign policy aide.
Urge them to oppose the Colombia FTA and sign on to the
McGovern-Schakowsky letter on Colombia.
If your member of Congress is interested in signing on, they
should contact Cindy Buhl in Rep. McGovern's office, or Megan
Garcia in Rep. Schakowsky's office, by close of business on
Thursday, April 10. As the administration seeks more aid for war
and approval of the U.S.-Colombia free trade agreement, we have
to demand our elected officials take human rights seriously.
FOR joined with twenty-three other
groups to send a strong letter to President Uribe also urging
him to publicly disavow his advisor's comments and to express
support for the legitimate efforts of human rights defenders.
You can read the letter here. (http://www.forcolombia.org/sites/www.forcolombia.org/files/JointNGOlettertoUribe.pdf)
Let's continue to work together to ensure our Colombian partners
who speak out and work for human rights are neither threatened
nor harmed.
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"Leap
Into Action" for Jubilee
Call Congress on the week of February 25 - 29
Use your "extra" day
this Leap Year to call your Senators AND Representative about the
Jubilee Act for Responsible Lending and Expanded Debt Cancellation
(HR 2634 / S 2166).
www.jubileeusa.org
Right now, Congress is discussing the most important piece of debt
legislation in seven years! Since Jubilee 2000, we have seen 23
countries receive near 100% cancellation of eligible debt to the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Paris Club
of lender countries. In countries like Zambia, Tanzania, and
Nicaragua, debt relief has produced results - eliminating fees that
had blocked access to primary education and rural health clinics for
the poorest, helping millions of children return to school and
providing access to basic medical care.
Yet, despite the remarkable track record of debt cancellation, more
than 40 poor countries, such as Haiti and Lesotho, are still
waiting to see their debts canceled. Every day over $100 million
flows out of impoverished countries in the form of debt payments.
This is money that could be invested in health care, clean water and
education.
The Jubilee Act (HR 2634 / S 2166) builds on past debt cancellation
successes, by calling for expanded debt cancellation to all
countries that need it to reach the United Nations Millennium
Development Goals to cut extreme poverty in half by 2015.
The Jubilee Act would prohibit specific harmful economic and policy
conditions while insisting on transparency and accountability. The
prohibited harmful conditions include user fees for primary health
care and education, increased cost for the poorest for clean
drinking water, measures that compromise worker' rights, and IMF
constraints on government spending for essential health care and
education.
Research by the Jubilee Debt Campaign (UK) found that in order to
access debt cancellation under the IMF's HIPC Initiative:
· Zambia had to privatize its national bank in the face of
parliamentary and public opposition. IMF policies also forced it to
restrict public sector spending through a wage and hiring freeze,
leaving it unable to employ 9,000 teachers;
· Nicaragua had to privatize electricity. Electricity prices rose by
200%, pricing the poor out of the market, and blackouts became
frequent.
· Sierra Leone has had to prepare for privatization of 24 state
enterprises, including water, power, and telecommunication.
Another problem addressed in the Jubilee Act is that of so-called
vulture funds. When countries such as Nicaragua receive substantial
debt cancellation, they suddenly have more access to cash freed up
by the cancellation - and thus look more attractive to opportunistic
vulture funds which have bought the country's debt for a few cents
on the dollar but now demand payment in full. An August 2007 report
by IMF and World Bank staff found that 11 out of 24 poor countries
approached said they were involved in litigation by commercial or
vulture creditors worth a total of $1.8 billion with 46 creditors.
At this very moment, Zambia, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of Congo,
Republic of Congo, Uganda, Sierra Leone, Nicaragua, Honduras and
Liberia are facing judgments to pay, pending suits, or the threat of
litigation from vulture funds or other commercial creditors.
The Jubilee Act calls on the Secretary of the Treasury to
collaborate with appropriate government agencies to stop the
practices of vulture funds by designing legal remedies to curtail
vulture fund activity; by providing legal support to countries being
sued by vulture funds; and by providing technical assistance to
advise governments likely to be targeted by vulture funds.
Another challenge facing nations that have received debt
cancellation is the fact that new lenders often threaten to send
countries that benefit from debt relief back into unsustainable
debt. To ensure that this doesn't happen, the Jubilee Act calls on
our government to provide that the international financing needs of
low-income countries are primarily met through grants rather than
new lending and mandating the development of policies to ensure that
all creditors work together to preserve the gains of debt relief.
The Jubilee Act is one of the most widely supported anti-poverty
bills in Congress. We have a historic opportunity to end debt and
make big step forward in the fight against poverty.
CALL TODAY
Capitol Switchboard: (202) 224-3121 Senator Feinstein and Rep.
Pelosi have not signed on.
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Support Anti-sweatshop legislation in
2008:
Decent Working Conditions and Fair
Competitions Act
Thanks
to the National Labor Committee (NLC) members who contacted Nike and
reported the illegal firing of 48 workers for organizing a union at
STARSA factory in Honduras’ free trade zone (owned by US Anvil, a
t-shirt company). To its credit, Nike immediately sent a
representative to Honduras who concluded the workers were unjustly
and illegally fired. The 48 workers were reinstated to their jobs
with back wages and legal recognition for their union.
The
United Steelworkers Union anti-sweatshop legislation is moving in
the US Congress. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Congressman Michael
McCaul (R-TX) introduced the Decent Working Conditions and Fair
Competition Act (S-367) and (HR-1992), with 152 co-sponsors in the
House and 18 in the Senate in 2007. The bill would make corporations
legally accountable for basic worker” rights, including: no child
labor, no forced labor, freedom of association and the right to
organize unions. Products found to be made under illegal sweatshop
conditions would be prohibited from entry into the US and sale or
export from the US would also be banned
Contact your members of Congress and make sure that they have signed
on to HR-1992 in the House of Representatives and S-367 in the
Senate. More co-sponsors are need now!
February 26, 2008
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Support immediate debt cancellation for Haiti!
Haiti's Supporters in Congress Need Your Help!
February 12, 2008
Representatives Maxine Waters (D- CA) and Spencer Bachus (R- AL) are
calling on their colleagues to sign their bi-partisan letter to the
Secretary of the Treasury (below) urging him to 1) expedite the
cancellation of Haiti's debts to the World Bank, the Inter-American
Development Bank (IDB) and other multilateral financial
institutions, and 2) urge an immediate suspension of debt service
payments from Haiti.
Both Representatives have gone out on a limb for the poor of Haiti,
and now they need you to tell your Representative to stand up with
them. Haitians need you too: recent headlines remind us of Haitians
eating cookies made of salt, butter and dirt, because they cannot
afford food. While Haitians are forced to eat dirt, their government
is forced to send almost $1 million each week in debt service to
wealthy banks that were established to fight poverty. Over half of
Haiti's outstanding loans went to dictators like Francois "Papa Doc"
and Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, who spent the money on fur
coats, fast cars and death squads. Haiti's poor are now repaying the
loans, by eating dirt and by foregoing elementary education and
basic healthcare.
The International Financial Institutions (IFIs) recognized that
Haiti's debt is unjust when they accepted Haiti into their debt
cancellation programs last year. But these programs would only
cancel about half of Haiti's debt, after more waiting (a year or
more) and only if Haiti makes changes to its economy that could
exacerbate hunger
(see Debt Cancellation for Haiti: No Reason for Further Delays, by
the Center for Economic Policy Research).
Representatives Waters and Bachus have also introduced H. Res. 241,
the Haiti Debt Cancellation Resolution, but they felt that issuing a
quicker letter right now is warranted by the extreme suffering in
Haiti. Their letter also seeks to broaden its appeal to Republican
House Members who understand that debt relief is the just, the
decent and the right thing to do, but disagree with H.Res. 241's
stance against IFI conditions placed on debt relief. The letter
seeks to immediately alleviate poverty in Haiti by immediately
stopping Haiti's payments to the international financial
institutions, which would allow the government to immediately invest
the money in public services that can save lives.
$1 million per week would go a long way in Haiti, where half the
population struggles to survive on $1 US per day or less. Please do
what you can to keep that money in Haiti.
A call-in script is below. If you need more information, including
fact sheets, analyses and an activist toolkit, see the Haiti Debt
Cancellation section of
www.HaitiJustice.org.
Phone Script to call your Member to cancel Haiti's debt!
(If you are pressed for time, just saying the first paragraph will
help. If you can, go through the whole script). If your
Representative has not co-sponsored H.Res. 241, ask her or him to do
that too!
My name is XXX and I live in YYYY. I support debt cancellation to
release resources to fight poverty in Haiti. I am calling to
encourage Representative XXX to sign on to the bi-partisan letter to
the Secretary of the U.S. Treasury, urging the immediate
cancellation of Haiti's debt.
Haiti is the most impoverished country in the Western hemisphere.
Close to one in four children are chronically malnourished. People
are forced to eat cakes made of dirt, because they have nothing
else. At the same time, the government is forced to send almost $1
million per week to the World Bank and other banks that were set up
to fight poverty.
The bi-partisan letter was issued by Representatives Spencer Bachus
and Maxine Waters. To sign on or for more information, please
contact Kathleen Sengstock in Representative Maxine Waters' office
at (202) 225-2201.
Thank you for your time!
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Week of Action to Protest
Anti-Terrorist Law and Repression in El
Salvador
February 4-8 marks
an international solidarity week of action to demand that
terrorist charges against Salvadoran protestors be dropped. On July
2, 2007 fourteen people were arrested in Suchitoto, El Salvador for
taking part in a protest against water privatization. Police
brutality against the peaceful demonstration and the arrests of 14
of them produced international outrage, and ultimately this pressure
forced the Salvadoran government to temporarily release the
detainees. Nevertheless, protestors continue to be charged under the
“anti-terrorism” law and could face up to 60 years in prison. This
draconian law that criminalizes different forms of public protest as
acts of terrorism is being used to silence the social movement in
El Salvador, criminalizing acts
that do not in any way constitute terrorism!
Take Action!
1. Call the State Department and demand that the United States
government hold the Salvadoran government accountable for these
acts.
Contact Hillary Thompson at the U.S. State Department’s
El Salvador desk at
202-647-4161. Click
here
for sample script.
2. Call the Salvadoran Ambassador to the U.S. and demand that
terrorist charges against the Suchitoto protestors are dropped.
Contact Rene de Leon at 202-265-9671
in the Salvadoran Embassy
3. Donate to the Suchitoto 13 legal defense fund
by going to
https://chavez.mayfirst.org/cispes/
and writing “suchitoto” next to your donation.
More information:
Click here
(Word document)
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Haitian Human
Rights Activist and His Family in Grave Danger, Says Amnesty
International
Thursday, January 10, 2008
(New York) --
The lives of Haitian human rights activist Wilson Mesilien and his
family are in grave danger, and the Haitian government must protect
them, Amnesty International said today.
On December 19, a man posing as a journalist went to the Mesilien
family home, seeking to confirm a supposed report that Mesilien had
been kidnapped. Fearing for their lives, Mesilien, his wife and four
children fled and have been in hiding since. Mesilien is coordinator
of the September 30th Foundation; his predecessor Lovinsky
Pierre-Antoine was kidnapped in August.
Mesilien has said that Haitian authorities have not heeded Amnesty
International's repeated requests to provide him with protection. He
has been running the September 30th Foundation, an organization which
has worked to defend the rights of victims of the 1991-1994 military
coup, since Pierre-Antoine was kidnapped.
"Haitian authorities have an obligation to protect their own
citizens," said Barbara Joe, a Haiti specialist with Amnesty
International USA (AIUSA). "The threats against Mesilien and the
disappearance of Pierre-Antoine will have an intimidating effect on
civil society in Haiti unless the crimes are investigated thoroughly
and those responsible for them are brought to justice."
The Haitian Embassy in Washington says it has received more than 500
letters of concern about the activists. Amnesty International members
across the world are appealing to Haitian authorities to protect
Mesilien and redouble efforts to find Pierre-Antoine.
Background
Days before he was kidnapped, Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine had announced
his intention to run for election as a senator for the Fanmi Lavalas
party. He is feared to have been abducted by people connected with the
army disbanded by President Aristide in 1995 because he was
publicizing human rights violations committed during the 1991-1994
military government and gathering signatures on a petition calling for
a change to the Constitution that would eliminate all provisions for
the existence of a Haitian army. Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine's whereabouts
are still unknown.
Contact
the President René Preval and ask him to pressure the Haitian
authorities to protect Mesilien and redouble their efforts to find
Lovinsky Pierre-Antoine. The Embassy of the Republic of Haiti, 2311
Massachusetts Ave. NW, Washington DC 20008
Tel: 202-232-4090;
fax: 202-745-7215; e-mail:
embassy@haiti.org
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Support Anti-sweatshop legislation in 2008:
Decent Working Conditions and Fair
Competition Act
Thanks to the National
Labor Committee (NLC) members who contacted Nike and reported the
illegal firing of 48 workers for organizing a union at STARSA
factory in Honduras’ free trade zone (owned by US Anvil, a T-shirt
company). To its credit, Nike immediately sent a representative to
Honduras who concluded the workers were unjustly and illegally
fired. The 48 workers were reinstated to their jobs with back wages
and legal recognition for their union.
The United Steelworkers
Union anti-sweatshop legislation is moving in the US Congress.
Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Representative Michael McCaul (R-TX)
introduced the Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act
(S-367) and (HR-1992), with 152 co-sponsors in the House and 18 in
the Senate in 2007. The bill would make corporations legally
accountable for basic worker rights, including: no child labor, no
forced labor, freedom of association and the right to organize
unions. Products found to be made under illegal sweatshop conditions
would be prohibited from entry into the US and sale or export from
the US would also be banned
Contact your members of
Congress and make sure that they have signed on to HR-1992 in the
House of Representatives and S-367 in the Senate. More co-sponsors
are needed now!
-- January 2008
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The
Americas