US firm sued after mine union leaders' deaths

The biggest mining company in Alabama is being sued for allegedly colluding in the assassination of union leaders at a giant coal mine in Colombia.

A year after two union leaders were gunned down in cold blood in a coal-mining town in northern Colombia, their families, union supporters and labour rights activists have filed a lawsuit in the United States accusing the company that employed them of complicity in the crime.

The suit, against the Drummond Company of Birmingham, Alabama, is an expression of the frustration many Colombians feel about the convergence of interests between US companies who move their operations to Latin America to cut costs and right-wing paramilitary groups who resort to kidnapping, torture and murder to voice their own virulent opposition to unionisation.

There is evidence that the gunmen who murdered the union president Valmore Locarno Rodríguez and his deputy, Víctor Hugo Orcasita Amaya, in March 2001 were working for Drummond, according to the United Steelworkers of America and the International Labor Rights Fund.

Papers filed earlier this month with a federal court in Birmingham show that the unionists asked Drummond for protection following threats from the right-wing paramilitaries who control much of the land around the mining town of La Loma, in Cesar province. But the company rejected a request for the union leaders to sleep in the mine and was hostile to the membership drive that prompted 1,000 mine workers at La Loma to join a union.

According to the lawsuit, the manager of the Drummond mine threatened the union leaders, telling them repeatedly: "The fish dies from opening his mouth."

Mr Locarno and Mr Orcasita were ambushed on a company bus taking them from the mine into town on 12 March last year. According to eyewitnesses, the gunmen said they were being targeted because of a dispute with Drummond.

Union representatives were also struck by the fact that gunmen seemed to know which bus the two men were aboard.

Mr Locarno was killed on the spot, while Mr Orcasita was dragged off the bus and tortured. His body was found the next day. Mr Locarno's successor, Gustavo Soler Mora, also requested protection, petitioning both the Colombian government and the military. He was issued with a mobile phone, but no security. He too was pulled off a company bus and shot dead. His death does not form part of the suit.

"Drummond could have stopped these assassinations, but they chose not to," the secretary of the Colombia Federation of Mine Workers, Francisco Ramirez, told The New York Times.

"We've brought suit in the United States as a last resort because there is no punishment in Colombia against those who commit crimes against union leaders," Mr Ramirez added.

The situation is far from cut and dried, since Drummond's coal trains came under repeated attack from the UAC right-wing paramilitary group in the months leading up to the unionists' assassinations.

The company has denied any connection with the killings, and some lawyers have said that proving serious wrongdoing by Drummond would be an uphill battle. Nevertheless, the anger felt by many Colombians at Drummond and other companies is palpable. And activist groups in the United States have rallied to the cause.

Kenneth Zinn of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions said: "This company has chosen to relocate production to a place where they murder trade unionists. These union leaders were threatened by the paramilitaries. They brought it to the attention of the Drummond executives who ignored those pleadings. If I were them I wouldn't sleep easy at night."