Published on Sunday, August 25, 2013 by Common Dreams
Colombia Nationwide Strike Against 'Free Trade,' Privatization, Poverty
Ignored by English-language media, rural uprisings spread across industries as hundreds of thousands protest US-backed govt
Protests in Sincelejo (Photo: Marcha Patriotica)A
nationwide strike in Colombia—which started as a rural peasant uprising
and spread to miners, teachers, medical professionals, truckers, and
students—reached its 7th day Sunday as at least 200,000
people blocked roads and launched protests against a U.S.-Colombia Free
Trade Agreement and devastating policies of poverty and privatization
pushed by US-backed right-wing President Juan Manuel Santos.........
Meanwhile, the Colombian government is handing out sweetheart deals to international mining companies while creating bans and roadblocks for Colombian miners. Likewise, the government is giving multinational food corporations access to land earmarked for poor Colombians. Healthcare workers are fighting a broad range of reforms aimed at gutting and privatizing Colombia's healthcare system. Truckers are demanding an end to low wages and high gas prices.
"This is the third or fourth large-scale non-military rural uprising this year," Martin told Common Dreams.
Colombian workers organizing to improve their lives are met with an onslaught of state violence: Colombia is the deadliest country in the world for union activists, according to the AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, and 37 activists were murdered in Colombia in the 1st half of 2013 alone, leading news weekly Semana reports.
Santos, who says he refuses to negotiate while the strikes are taking place, has so far been unsuccessful in his efforts to quell the swelling protests that are paralyzing much of the country, particularly in rural areas.
"[W]e just want solutions to our problems,” Javier Correa Velez, the head of a coffee-growers association called Dignidad Cafetera, told the Miami Herald. “The strike is simply a symptom of an illness that the entire agriculture sector is suffering from.”
(Photo: Twitter/@zonacero)https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/08/25?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitterJourneymanJack Comments: This could make for an uptick in Refugees & Immigration from COL to EC....
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