Pubdate: Wed, 17 Apr 2002
Source: Mobile Register (AL)
Copyright: 2002 Mobile Register.
Contact:  http://www.al.com/mobileregister/today/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/269
Author: Joe Danborn

COLOMBIAN ACTIVISTS PRESS COAL GIANT'S RIGHTS RECORD

Protests Come as Congress Considers More Aid with Fewer Strings Attached

U.S. companies doing business in Colombia are contributing to that 
country's political and economic hardships, even as Congress seeks to 
increase aid to the South American country, according to Colombian activist 
Ligia Ines Alzate.

Alzate told a gathering Monday in Mobile that companies such as Alabama 
coal giant Drummond Co. Inc. have caused further strife in a country so 
war-torn that women head more than half of all households.

"We are the widows, the mothers, the sisters of the armed combatants," 
Alzate, an elementary school principal and activist for women's rights and 
unions, said through a translator.

Lawyers for the United Mine Workers of America and the International Labor 
Rights Fund filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Drummond last month in 
federal court in Birmingham. The lawsuit alleges the company paid 
paramilitary groups to torture and murder three leaders of the union that 
represents workers at Drummond's Colombian mines.

Those allegations and U.S. foreign policy will dom inate a four-day 
"mobilization" by human rights demonstrators -- including a pair of nuns 
from Mobile -- this weekend in Washington, D.C. The protests come as 
Colombian President Andres Pastrana and President Bush ask Congress for 
more anti-narcotics aid to Colombia, a notion loathe to some, including 
U.S. Rep. Sonny Callahan, R-Mobile.

A Mobile Register interview request left Tuesday with a secretary for Mike 
Tracy, a Drummond vice president in Birmingham, went unacknowledged.

Instead, the company issued a statement denying the allegations in the 
lawsuit and questioning the motives of the groups filing it. The 
International Labor Rights Fund, the statement noted, has made similar 
allegations against and sued other corporations, including The Coca-Cola 
Company, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Del Monte Foods.

Drummond's statement also accused the United Mine Workers of America, which 
has a contract with the company and has criticized its Colombian 
operations, of seeking "to destroy the jobs of the Colombian worker."

Drummond has shut down several coal mines in northern Alabama in recent 
years as it has expanded its operations in Colombia. Last year, the company 
imported 7 million tons of coal through the McDuffie Island Bulk Terminal 
at the Alabama State Docks in Mobile. The bulk of that coal feeds Alabama 
Power Co.'s Barry Steam Plant in north Mobile County.

Drummond has lobbied in the past for billions in U.S. aid to protect 
American investments in Colombia, appropriations that Callahan has 
supported. But last week, during a House appropriations subcommittee 
hearing, Callahan said that money seems to have gone for naught and 
compared U.S. involvement in Colombia to that in Haiti and the Middle East.

"We have provided Colombia with more money than any other nation in this 
hemisphere," Callahan said. "Now, we're proposing another half a billion 
dollars toward that effort to resolve a problem that really ... is our own 
problem, because we keep buying these drugs and creating the market."

The Bush administration has identified Colombia's three major guerrilla 
groups as terrorist organizations, an increasingly common criterion in 
requests for federal dollars since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New 
York and Washington. Bush's plan also would ease restrictions attached to 
the billions of dollars already committed to fight Colombian drug 
traffickers, requirements that limit U.S. military involvement and mandate 
human rights monitoring.

The vast majority of the more than 200 kidnappings and killings of union 
members worldwide in 2000 took place in Colombia, according to a U.S. State 
Department report. Colombia's decades-long infighting has claimed tens of 
thousands of lives, with a sharp increase in violence since the U.S. 
government stepped up its involvement about 12 years ago, said Sandra 
Alvarez, who translated for Alzate.

Alvarez's California-based nonprofit group, Global Exchange, sponsored 
Alzate's appearance at Mobile Gas Service Corp.'s auditorium in conjunction 
with The Quest for Social Justice, a recently formed interfaith group in 
Mobile that emphasizes civic action. Two Quest members and Sisters of 
Mercy, Magdala Thompson and Marilyn Graf, left Tuesday for the 
demonstration in Washington.

Alzate spoke Tuesday in Montgomery and plans an appearance in Birmingham 
today. She will not be meeting with Drummond officials, organizers said. 
Drummond, regularly listed in Forbes Magazine as one of the 500 largest 
private companies in the country, has real estate developments in 
California and Florida. It also owns the 2,500-acre Liberty Park 
residential development in Birmingham and still operates the Shoal Creek 
Mine in Jefferson County.
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