Is the Colombian Government Conspiring with Drummond to Silence Francisco Ramírez?

By Sean Donahue
Special to The Narco News Bulletin

October 18, 2006

Francisco Ramírez Cuellar is no stranger to death threats. The President of SINTRAMINERCOL, the union representing the workers of Colombia’s now privatized and disbanded state mining company, has had his office bombed and has survived numerous attempts on his life. In 2004, after Ramírez and his two young nieces barely escaped being shot by a gunman on a motorcycle, the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States ordered Minercol Ltd. and the Colombian government to provide the union leader with protection in the form of an armored car and two armed bodyguards.

But through his work exposing how multinational mining companies are exploiting workers and displacing communities, Ramírez has made himself some powerful enemies – foremost among them, Drummond Coal, the Alabama-based company that his union is suing in a U.S. court for conspiring with right-wing paramilitaries to murder and torture two labor organizers. Drummond has friends in high places. On October 5, the Administrative Department of Security (DAS) announced that it had determined that, despite a recent increase in threats and harassment, Ramírez was in a “low risk situation” and no longer needed the same level of protection. They took back his armored car and cancelled his guards’ radio service, leaving him vulnerable to attack.

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