Death Threats to Colombian Trade Unionists

That the Parliament notes with grave concern a communiqué issued on 14 December 2006 in the city of Barranquilla, Colombia, to Mr Euripides Yance, a Coca-Cola worker and member of the national committee of Sinaltrainal trade union, and Messrs Limberto Carranza and Campo Quintero among others; notes that this communiqué is essentially a death threat to various student, social and trade union leaders if they do not leave the city within a week; remembers that Mr Yance visited the Parliament in 2005 as part of a UK tour organised in solidarity with Sinaltrainal members to alert parliamentarians to the dire state of human rights in his country and the persecution of militant trade unionists, student leaders and human rights defenders; further notes that this death threat occurred just days after Colombia’s Vice-President Francisco Santos made a public declaration referring to what he described as campaigns to discredit Coca Cola, Nestlé and other private corporations and contended that they are pushed by “sectors of the extreme left, radicals infiltrated into trade union sectors that are generating absolutely absurd campaigns against the corporations”; further notes that these threats have occurred at the same time as the Sinaltrainal trade union is negotiating its demands in respect of the Coca-Cola bottling plants in Santander, the region in which Barranquilla is situated, and calls on the government of President Alvaro Uribe to ensure that the lives of Mr Yance and the other trade unionists are protected and an investigation into the facts of this communiqué is carried out in order to ensure that its intellectual and material authors are brought to justice.