Postcards
Urgent Action - Uribe Visit
You may have heard that this week Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez is visiting the British Prime Minister and MPs. We believe the purpose of the mission is to garner additional financial support and to gain access to business leaders.
Please complete the following which will be emailed to David Triesman, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office.
Read our press release on the UK Government siding with terror in Colombia
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To: Dear David Triesman, Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist, with thousands of activists murdered for their political activities every year. I therefore believe that, far from receiving the red carpet treatment, President Uribe should be told that until the human rights crisis in his country is brought to an end, British military assistance will be immediately terminated. Why does the British government offer military assistance to Colombia when: * President Uribe has failed to fulfil a single one of the 24 recommendations of the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, which was made a condition of European aid under the London Declaration in July 2003. * Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist. The overwhelming majority of these assassinations are carried out be paramilitary death squads which have documented links with the official armed forces. * The armed forces themselves have been accused of carrying out assassinations. In August last year, to take one example, the army murdered three trade unionists, and imprisoned two more (Samuel Morales and Raquel Castro), one of whom had been a guest of Amnesty International in the UK only a few months prior to the incident. Both unionists remain in prison while no one has been convicted of the murder. The Defence Minister has described these trade unionists as “delinquents”. * In February this year eight people (four of them children) were massacred in the peace community of San José Apartado. The armed forces have been accused of this massacre. Rather than conduct an investigation into the atrocity, President Uribe accused some community leaders from San José Apartado of being guerrillas, thereby jeopardising the lives of more inhabitants of the community. These are a few examples of the human rights crisis which still grips Colombia, and the role of the current President in that crisis. Last year 240 MPs signed an Early Day Motion calling for an end to British Military Aid. But despite all of this it continues. We believe it is totally unacceptable that British military aid to Colombia continues, let alone the red carpet treatment which President Uribe has been accorded this week, and call for its immediate termination. Yours sincerely, |
