Colombia trade deal will increase repression – Latin American workers – Part 4
An interview with Manuel Rozental conducted by Ish Theilheimer for Straight Goods News.
recorded in Gatineau, QC, on 25 March 2009
Manuel Rozental, an elected member of the directorate for the main opposition party in Colombia, a coalition of all the left democratic parties, was at the roundtable "What role for Canada in the Americas?" hosted by the Canadian Council for International Cooperation (CCIC).
Transcript
Manuel Rozental: I am an elected member of the directorate, an elected member of the main of the opposition party in Colombia, an a coalition of all the left democratic political party in Colombia. And have been working with the indigenous movement in Colombia, in Northern Couca, that happens today to be the strongest people's movement in the Country.
Straight Goods News: What do you fear/ feel will be the effects of this deal?
Manuel Rozental: With Senator Jorge Joleo, a member of the parlamente for two periods at the moment and we fear everything about the free trade agreement. We fear our experience with the free trade agreement in Colombia for the past 18 years without agreements, and we know it will worsen once the agreements are signed particularly because free trade agreements have one principle – the access to cheap labour and resources at no cost. So it implies and involves necessarily the deterioration of working and living condition, the dismantling of freedoms and rights of people and the destruction of the environment. Both in Colombia in Canada. And we are particularly worried about the fact that we understand Prime Minister Harper has introduced legislation to parliament to get this free trade agreement passed and he is violating his own rules. As he had at the very least, established the fact that this agreement has to be tabled and discussed by parliament for 21 days before being agreed. So as opposition to the agreement grows in Canada and in Colombia the government bypasses all democratic spaces. And is about to impose against the well-being of our people.
Straight Goods News: You mentioned that you have a good deal of experience with free trade without an agreement. What is it you mean by free trade without an agreement and tell me what that experience has been?
Manuel Rozental: Correct, since 1990, not unlike your experience with the US and Mexico NAFTA agreement. Since 1990, the government of Colombia has introduced packages of legislation that allows transnational organizations to get in the country in conditions of tremendous advantage – of scale and other benefits. Which has allowed them to dismantle the national industries, extract the national and natural resources from the country at their will, privatize social services and public enterprises like the oil industry, electric industry, hospitals, etc and increasing the costs and decreasing the accessibility to these throughout the country and all these because there it causes concentration of wealth and because the wealth leaving the country leaves people increasingly poor. It leads to increasing social polarization, poverty and misery (it pushes people to), in the case of Coloumbia for example, directly and indirectly produces narco trafficking and the production of cocaine for example because if people cannot produce food because they cannot compete with subsided imported food they are forced to produce Coca and Cocaine the only crop that will sell in a globalized free trade market. So, all these horrendous experiences we have had if the free trade agreement is indeed signed or approved then we will have these established permanently from here on.
Straight Goods News: One last question, Colombia has a terrible reputation for repression of labour activism? Can you tell me your experiences of that labour repression, the people you've worked with the organizations you've worked with?
Manuel Rozental: Absolutely, I can tell you a personal story right now. I was labeled in a national magazine irresponsibly and falsely as being linked to armed insurgents in Colombia. And the reason behind that lie is precisely to silence the indigenous movements with which I have been working. Pricely in the largest mobilization in the countries history, against the freetrade agreement so ways to silence people is to repress them. But then ofcourse there are assisinations, there are human rights violations that are systematic and Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a labour union leader or organisor, and in fact it's easier to establish a gang of crooks, criminals or narco-traffickers in Colombia than it is to establish a labour union?
Straight Goods News: I said that was the last question but I wanted to follow-up. What is the link between free-trade and this kind of repression? Is there a direct link?
Manuel Rozental: Absolutely we cannot achieve free trade without repression and violence. There are three components to free trade: one is propaganda – you have to convince people of the lies and it works all over through media and other strategies, two is whole policy issue that we've talked about including free trade agreements, and three is the systematic use of terror in order to displace and dismantle rights. The specific example for Colombia, Colombia has the second humanitarian crisis in the world after Darfur, 4 million internally displaced people from resource reached territories in order to deliver them to transnational corporations of interest. Therefore, even if Canada signs a free trade agreement with this criminal government, it will become an accomplice to these criminals acts.
