Press Releases

Mr. Speaker -

Six days ago, on Friday, July 1^st, armed men assassinated a candidate for the city council of Caldas, a town just outside of Medellín. He was the ninth local candidate murdered over the past few months.

Last Thursday, June 30^th, Luis Eduardo Gómez, a Colombian journalist and witness for a high-profile investigation into links between Colombian politicians and paramilitary groups, was shot down and killed in northwestern Antióquia - an area I first visited in 2001. Gómez was 70 years old; he was returning home at night with his wife when he was gunned down.

He was murdered a few days after another witness in the case was killed. And investigators for the Attorney General have said several other witnesses have disappeared.

Antonio Mendoza Moraleswas a councilman in the Caribbean town of San Onofre, Sucre. The 34-year-old Mendoza was also a leader of the Association of Displaced Persons of San Onofre and the Montes de María.

He was also shot and killed last Thursday night. He is at least the eleventh land claims, victims' rights or displaced persons leader to have been killed in Colombia so far this year.

Displaced and victims-rights advocates in the Sucre region received a series of death threats during the month of June. We don't know yet whether Mendoza's killing is related to these threats. But I traveled to Sucre in 2003, and can attest to the daily violence suffered by local leaders, the displaced and campesino organizations.

On June 7^th, Ana Fabricia Córdoba, 51, a leader of the displaced and a land rights activist, was shot dead by an unidentified gunman while riding on a bus in Medellín. She had fled her home in northern Antióquia in 2001 after several of her family members were killed.

She had been campaigning for the restitution of lands to Colombia's displaced and was a member of Ruta Pacífica - the Peaceful Path - a women's organization calling for a negotiated end to the war. In 2008, Ruta Pacífica testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission about Colombia's internally displaced. Córdoba, an Afro-Colombian, had been receiving death threats for months. She had asked the Colombian government for protection, but had not received any. Her children have received death threats following their mother's death.

The Inter-American Commission for Human Rights condemned Córdoba's murder and expressed alarm over the increase in serious threats against Colombian human rights defenders. The situation is getting worse.

Every day I receive news about threats, murders and disappearances of Colombian labor and human rights advocates and community leaders.

I recite this sad litany of recent murders to impress upon my colleagues that these are real people, real leaders, being murdered every day in Colombia. Will their murderers be brought to justice? Or will their deaths be just one more case that remains in impunity? Will the government's promises to their families to seek justice be fulfilled? Will other threatened leaders and their families receive real protection? I hope so, but we simply don't know yet.

Promises are easy. Results take time, commitment and political will to achieve.

This morning, my colleagues will describe the dangers facing Colombia's labor activists. Colombia remains the most dangerous place in the world to be a trade unionist. But violence against Colombia's workers happens in the context of a very threatening landscape for anyone who has the courage to organize their communities, run for public office, or stand up for the rights of the poor, the displaced and the victims of human rights abuse.

The sources of violence are all the illegal armed actors - the FARC, the ELN, the paramilitaries, and criminal networks known as BACRIM; and also includes members and units of the Colombian military and police.

Before any trade agreement is brought to the Congress for a vote, we owe it to the brave people of Colombia to give the Santos Administration time to demonstrate that it can carry out the historic reforms it has announced as priorities.

We need time to see if the initial steps required by the U.S.-Colombia Labor Action Plan actually result in changes on the ground inside Colombia. Will workers be able to exercise their rights, organize freely and bargain directly with their employers, without the fear of death?

And we need time to determine whether violence against rights defenders and community leaders is actually reduced under the leadership of President Santos and whether greater protections are provided and prove to be effective.

We need to see - we should demand to see - results on-the-ground before Congress takes up the Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

Let's use whatever leverage the U.S. has in Colombia to help end a culture of impunity and violence that - by any standard - is intolerable.

I cannot approve an FTA on the basis of good intentions; it must be based on real results.

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, let me just say that trade agreements should be about lifting people up, not keeping them down.