A British government apologist for murder of Colombian trade unionists

This video about Colombia from the USA is called Dan Kovalik – Assassination of Trade Unionists [in Colombia].

From British daily The Morning Star:

Apologist for killers

(Wednesday 19 March 2008)

WHAT a nasty little piece of work is Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells, who has reacted to justifiable concern over his choice of friends in Colombia by smearing the solidarity group Justice for Colombia (JfC).

Mr Howells’s abject political lurch from left to right has been stunning even by new Labour standards.

From being, in the mid-1980s, a research officer for the South Wales area of the National Union of Mineworkers and a member of the Communist Party to his current status as an apologist for imperialist wars and privatisation is shameful enough.

But his thick-skinned ability to cosy up to a Colombian army unit that specialises in wiping out trade unionists seems to be taking new Labour degeneracy too far.

But not for Mr Howells. In the wake of the demand by Unite Wales regional secretary Andy Richards, supported by the Wales TUC, for his union to end sponsorship of Mr Howells’s constituency, the former class warrior

Howells did not stop being a ‘class warrior’, he ‘only’ changed what class he waged war for

has claimed, without any evidence, that JfC supports the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

He must know that the main concern of JfC is to build solidarity with Colombia’s oppressed trade unions, hundreds of whose leaders have been slaughtered by death squads associated with new Labour’s friend President Alvaro Uribe.

JfC, which is backed by 40 British trade unions, calls for an end to violence in Colombia, for a reconciliation process and for progress towards democracy.

It supports humanitarian projects to assist victimised trade unionists, to help imprisoned women and children and to raise the curtain that shrouds events in Colombia by sending trade union delegations there.

It also lobbies Mr Howells’s government to persuade it to stop providing training and military equipment to Mr Uribe’s death-squad regime.

JfC and its trade union supporters have no reason to apologise for their principled activities.

What a pity that the same cannot be said for the wretched MP for Pontypridd.

COLOMBIA: IMPUNITY CONTINUES. Assassination of trade unionists; threats against trade union activists: here.

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