Reply #18: More from this article on the murderous problem with this FTA:

[Judi Lynn]

~snip~
As to the second point, the U.S. has provided the Colombian military, which has carried out its own share of massacres -- including the admitted murder of at least 3,000 civilians killed during the administration of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister Juan Manuel Santos (now President) in what has become known as the "false positive" scandal -- with over $7 billion since the year 2000. And the U.S. did so even as the U.S. State Department itself concluded year after year that the military has been collaborating with illegal death squad groups, including the AUC, by providing them with weapons, ammunition, soldiers and logistical support. In short, by protecting Chiquita, the U.S. was covering up its own culpability for heinous violence in Colombia.

And now, the U.S. is set to pass the long-stalled Colombia FTA even as massive violence is being carried out in Colombia against labor leaders (7 of whom have been murdered so far this year), peasant leaders, Afro-Colombians and Indigenous. Indeed, the FTA is designed to benefit companies, just as Chiquita, in their quest to intensify the exploitation of Colombian land and labor -- many times through violence. For example, the FTA will support the massive expansion of palm oil companies, about half of which are actually owned and controlled by paramilitary death squads.

And, what's more, such violence in Colombia is only accelerating in order to prepare for the FTA. And so, according to the The Black Communities Process (PCN) of Colombia, a group advocating on behalf of Afro-Colombians, the Colombian army has been forcing Afro-Colombians from their home -- including by burning down their homes and bombing their villages, leading to the deaths of civilians, including children -- in order to make way for new ports and tourist infrastructure which will be built once the FTA is passed. In one area alone, the PCN reports, 3500 Afrocolombian families have recently been displaced for such purposes, adding to the more than 1.5 million internally displaced Afrocolombians.

In total, Colombia already has over 5 million internally displaced peoples -- the largest in the world, even surpassing that of The Sudan. And, the FTA, by accelerating the further exploitation of Colombia by corporate interests; by allowing cheap, subsidized agricultural products from giant U.S. agricultural interests to be dumped into Colombia duty-free, thereby wiping out the livelihood of tens of thousands of small farmers (just as such trade policies did in Haiti and Mexico), will only add to the violence, displacement and misery plaguing Colombia.

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Unbearably wrong, all WRONG. The murders, and murder threats should have ended long ago before this FTA could EVER be considered.