Birmingham, AL – “Who is a terrorist? Drummond is a terrorist!” rang through downtown here, July 9 as members of Students for a Democratic Society at Tuscaloosa and Birmingham peace activists marched towards the Federal Courthouse to demand justice for the three Colombian trade unionists murdered in 2001 and 2002.

Drummond, an Alabama-based coal company, is being charged with arranging the murders to halt unionizing efforts in its La Loma plant in Northern Colombia. Initially the corporation faced both wrongful death and war crimes charges, but the former charge was thrown out by Bush-appointed judge Karon Bowdre.

“The political atmosphere that has been perpetuated by Drummond's actions is despicable. The people of the USA need to realize the damage, terrorism and murder that American companies are doing in Colombia,” said protester Christine Jackson.

While jury selection was taking place inside the courthouse, protesters picketing in the hot sun held signs demanding justice for Colombia. SDS-Tuscaloosa, which organized the event, made sure to stress to onlookers and passersby that Drummond's involvement in the murders is not the case of ‘one bad apple,’ but is indicative of the attitude of many U.S. corporations operating without impunity in Colombia and around the world.

“The people in Colombia become targets for violence when they resist the U.S.'s so called free-trade agreements that impoverish their country and hand over their wealth and resources to U.S. multinationals like Drummond,” said Chapin Gray, a student activist with SDS. “Jobs were exported from the southern U.S. to Colombia so that the company could pay the workers dollars a day, ignore safety and environmental concerns and reap enormous profits at the expense of the people. When workers try to organize to improve their situation, they are threatened, kidnapped and even tortured and murdered.”

The protesters also stressed the role of the U.S. government in perpetrating the violence: the U.S. gives billions of dollars in aid to Colombia that ends up in the hands of right-wing paramilitary death squads. These death squads do the dirty work for Colombia’s President Uribe administration and the big corporations. Colombia has one of the worst human rights records in the world, yet the U.S. continually pumps in money, paying for weapons, for fumigation, for murder. Moreover, the U.S. has soldiers on the ground in Colombia, who are there to protect the economic interests of oil companies and other corporations. Just as it invaded Iraq to promote its own economic dominance, the U.S. is after the rich resources of Colombia and doesn't care how much destruction and death it creates so long as companies rake in high profits.

So far this case is also evidence that the judicial system is in the hands of pro-corporate forces. Judge Bowdre has already dismissed eyewitnesses prepared to testify about the crimes in Colombia and is making it difficult to obtain a conviction against Drummond. The protesters hope that bringing attention to this trial will put public pressure on Drummond and force the judge to carry out justice. They also hope to alert people to the vicious crimes being committed by U.S. corporations and its foreign policy. “We are prepared to continue putting pressure on Drummond and the U.S. courts,” said Gray. “We are not going to let these big corporations literally get away with murder.”

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Lawyers from the International Labor Rights Fund and the United Steelworkers brought the case to U.S. courts under the rarely-used Alien Torte Claims Act of 1789 – originally meant to protect other countries against piracy – to expose Drummond’s involvement with the right-wing paramilitary (the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia) and the U.S. government’s support for the corruption and violence against workers in Colombia.

The cards were stacked in Drummond’s favor from the start. The Bush-appointed Judge Bowdre threw out the wrongful death charge before the trial even began, which left the plaintiffs the difficult task of proving the murders constituted a war crime. Key witnesses who could have convinced the jury that Drummond was at fault were not allowed to testify. One of those witnesses, Rafael Garcia, saw Drummond’s top Colombian executive Augusto Jimenez hand over a briefcase containing $200,000 in cash to a well-known paramilitary member.

During the trial, other witnesses like Sintamienergética union treasurer Francisco Ruiz were flown in from Colombia and testified to Drummond’s lack of concern for its workers’ safety, as evidenced by the poor working and housing conditions in La Loma, as well as the company’s refusal to act when union leaders’ lives were repeatedly threatened. For instance, Drummond would not allow workers – who were in the middle of contract negotiations with the company and had been threatened by the paramilitary – to sleep in between shifts on company grounds for security. And this despite the fact that Colombia is notorious for being one of the most dangerous places in the world for trade unionist, hundreds of whom are murdered in Colombia each year.

However, it was more than simple negligence on the part of Drummond; even more damning was the fact that several witnesses, including retired army sergeant Edwin Manuel Guzmán and former security guard Isnardo Ropero González, say Drummond regularly paid the paramilitaries as well as allowed them free range at the mine.

Drummond claims the acquittal proves its innocence, and maintains that the company only pays the Colombian military for protection. However the facts of the case and the situation in Colombia as a whole suggest otherwise. Under the guise of a ‘war on drugs,’ the U.S. government has given billions of dollars under Plan Colombia to protect U.S. business interests, fund death squads, and quell peoples’ movements for social and economic justice.

“No one else but Drummond had an interest in murdering and terrorizing these trade union leaders,” said Jim Toweill of the Tuscaloosa chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). “Drummond benefits from the violence against Colombians – with an absence of strong unions, the company is free to exploit the workers for its own gain. Both the U.S. government and the Colombian government under Colombian President Uribe work to protect the interests of the multinationals and use paramilitary death squads to carry out their dirty work. That Drummond got off scot-free only proves that the U.S. courts are corrupt, and serve the interests of big business, not of justice.”

This is not the first incident where U.S. multinationals have been caught red handed working shoulder-to-shoulder with the Colombian paramilitary. In recent years, organizations like the Colombia Action Network have campaigned against Coca-Cola and Chiquita, who also face heat for their role in human rights abuses in their Colombian plants and for giving arranging and funding the murders of workers who were trying to improve working conditions. As news spreads about Drummond’s role in the murders, European power companies such as DONG of Denmark and Essent of the Netherlands have pledged to stop purchasing Drummond coal.

The trial did have some positive outcomes for working people. The case paved the way for other U.S. corporations operating in Latin America to be tried in U.S. courts and held accountable for their crimes against workers. While Drummond will not suffer from negative publicity like companies that depend heavily on name recognition, such as Chiquita and Coca-Cola, the trial was observed by people all over the world. Local activists and students were inspired to demand justice for Drummond workers and all Colombians who are under attack from the U.S. government and multinational corporations.

“We will continue this semester to take a stand against the actions of U.S. corporations and the U.S. government in Colombia, especially if the case is appealed,” said Toweill, who helped organize the picket against Drummond in July. “Drummond is not acting alone. They have the support of both the Colombian and U.S. government. The corporations are arranging assassinations; the U.S. is sending billions of dollars of aid to the corrupt Uribe administration under Plan Colombia. Our campaign against Drummond is also a campaign to end stop Plan Colombia and U.S. intervention in Latin America.”

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