ACTION ALERT: Colombia FTA debated in House of Commons -- ACT NOW!

November 16, 2009

We thought we had more time but the Harper government has brought Bill C-23, implementation legislation for the Canada-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, back to the House of Commons floor for debate today at noon. We’re told by NDP Trade Critic Peter Julian’s office that Harper’s goal is to hold a second reading and vote by the end of the week, which will send the FTA to committee for more deliberations.

Remember that the Liberal opposition, led by Trade Critic Scott Brison, is backing away from an all-party international trade committee decision last year that an “impartial human rights impact assessment be carried out by a competent body, which is subject to independent levels of scrutiny and validation,” prior to moving ahead with Bill C-23. The House will debate a motion by the Bloc Quebecois this week that would pull C-23 from the order paper on the grounds that the Harper government ignored this all-party recommendation.

TORTURE IS “GENERALIZED AND SYSTEMATIC” IN COLOMBIA
“Torture continues to be generalized and systematic in Colombia. It is perpetrated by the Public Force, by the paramilitaries and by the guerrillas, but the party principally responsible for these acts is the state,” according to Isabelle Heyer, a member of the Colombian Jurists Commission, speaking in Geneva last Wednesday, citing 337 instances of torture in Colombia between July 2003 and June 2008, up from 187 during the previous five-year period. (The European Union Commission is also pursuing a free trade agreement with Colombia.)

Heyer was part of a Colombia Coalition Against Torture that presented its findings before a United Nations human rights panel last week. The Latin American Herald Tribune quotes Jahel Quiroga, another member of the coalition, stating that in more than 40 years of internal conflict, “there has never been a period as traumatic as the one we’re living now, with the demobilization of the paramilitaries, responsible for thousands of murders that are remaining unpunished.”

WRITE TO THE LIBERALS NOW!
We need our MPs to support the Bloc motion this week. It’s not good enough that Bill C-23 be sent to committee for further study. What we need is to take this free trade agreement off the order paper until a full and impartial human rights impact assessment can be carried out.

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SEND A LETTER NOW:

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Recipients	AlexandrA Mendes, Bob Rae, Brian Murphy, Frank Valeriote, Gerrard Kennedy, Joe Volpe, Justin Trudeau, Keith Martin, Maria Minna, Michael Ignatieff, Paul Szabo, Ruby Dhalla, Scott Brison, Siobhan Coady, Ujjal Dosanjh, Wayne Easter, Irwin Cotler
Compose your letter in the box below.
Dear Liberal Member of Parliament, I am closely following debates in the House of Commons on Bill C-23 and am discouraged to see such strong support from the Liberal Party. Liberal Trade Critic Scott Brison regularly gives out biased information. Colombia continues to be the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists and human rights defenders, who are stigmatized by government officials, putting their lives and the lives of their families in extreme danger. Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities have been massively and violently displaced from their lands by illegal paramilitary actions to make way for investments in agribusiness and resource extraction.  “Torture continues to be generalized and systematic in Colombia. It is perpetrated by the Public Force, by the paramilitaries and by the guerrillas, but the party principally responsible for these acts is the state,” according to Isabelle Heyer, a member of the Colombian Jurists Commission, speaking in Geneva last Wednesday, citing 337 instances of torture in Colombia between July 2003 and June 2008, up from 187 during the previous five-year period. Earlier this year, Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions determined that a significant number of military units were involved in the killing of civilians who were then dressed as guerrillas killed in combat. Human rights groups have documented some 1,400 such cases of “false positives”. Alston has said that the term 'false positive' provides a "sort of technical aura to describe a practice which is better characterized as cold-blooded, premeditated murder of innocent civilians for profit." Former paramilitary thugs have regrouped into lethal organizations that continue to run drugs north and have ties to a number government officials who are under investigation. A free trade deal with Colombia will make a bad situation worse. I urge you to insist on an independent Human Rights Impact Assessment on the terms of the trade deal BEFORE you consider ratification. It’s the right thing to do. Sincerely,
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