By IANS
Madrid : Amnesty International has urged the Colombian government to bring to book those responsible for the killing of over 2,000 trade unionists since the early 1990s.
The rights body called on Bogota to adopt more effective measures to protect labour rights and said tracking down the perpetrators of the murders should be the government's top priority, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
The call was issued during the presentation by Amnesty of a report titled "Colombia: Killings, arbitrary detentions, and death threats – the reality of trade unionism in Colombia".
Trade unionism in Colombia has become "one of the most dangerous exercises in the world", said Esteban Beltran, director of the Spanish chapter of Amnesty International. He added that of the 115 unionists murdered worldwide in 2006 "77 were Colombian" and that "18 have died" this far in 2007.
"Many of them", he said, "have to wear bullet-proof vests, travel under armed guard and in armoured cars".
According to Beltran, their family members also receive threats and in many cases "are killed at the hands of death squads, the army and, to a lesser degree, the guerrillas".
He said 2,245 unionists "have been murdered in Colombia since 1991, 138 have disappeared and almost 3,500 have received threats", adding that the Colombian government cannot allow more than 20 years "of continuous repression of unionists (to go by) without practically anyone paying for it".
Amnesty also called on Colombian guerrilla forces to "put an end to threats and killings of trade unionists and other civilians" and urged multinational companies that operate in Colombia to "call on the government to take decisive action to guarantee the safety of trade unionists and their rights to freedom of association".
The US Congress has already indicated that it will not ratify Washington's free-trade treaty with Bogota until Colombia acts to protect union organisers.