Colombia’s biggest coal companies dodge specifics over“payment to armed groups” allegations (Alabama

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Colombia Reports

Colombia’s biggest coal companies dodge specifics over“payment to armed groups” allegations (Alabama based co.)
Jul 1, 2014 posted by Nicolas Bedoya

Mining companies Drummond Ltd. and Glencore subsidiary Prodeco denied allegations the companies provided financial and logistical support to armed groups, but declined to provide substantive details on Tuesday.

According to a report published Monday by a Dutch NGO, the companies allegedly funded and encouraged the proliferation of paramilitary groups responsible for 2,600 selective assassinations, 500 killed in massacres, 240 disappearances, and 59,000 internally displaced people in the northern Colombia state of Cesar between 1996 and 2006.

The NGO’s report was based on testimonies by victims and victimizers of the now-defunct AUC paramilitary group.

“But not to your questions”

American company Drummond and Prodeco onTuesday refuted the allegations found in the 142-page investigative report by Dutch peace organization PAX.

Neither multinational responded to specific questions from Colombia Reports about the nature of the relationship between the companies and the paramilitaries; why security personnel had alleged links to paramilitaries; and the stance of the companies on the victims of atrocities in the vicinity of the mines.


Read more: http://colombiareports.co/coal-companies-operating-colombia-call-ngo-accusations-unsubstantiated/

---

The Drummond Company is based in Birmingham, Alabama.

More information on the Drummond Coal Company from earlier articles:

Steel Workers to Attack Drummond Coal Co. Role in Columbian Unionists' Murders
Wednesday, July 11, 2007

(Press Associates, Inc.)
By Mark Gruenberg

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. --The Steel Workers, aiding
their Colombian union brethren, will attack the role
of Alabama-based Drummond Coal Co., in murders of
three top union leaders at Drummond’s La Loma mine in
the South American nation.

~snip~
One link, the witnesses told the lawmakers, is that
Drummond knew about the killers’ plans, and did
nothing, even when the unionists asked for the same
protection--such as sleeping in the guarded barracks
at the mine--the company gives its Colombian on-site
managers.

“As became apparent shortly after the killings, the
Drummond Co. was well aware of the threats posed by
Right Wing paramilitaries in the region,” Kovalik
testified. Drummond denied the union leaders’
requests for protection, and instead said “they hoped
the (Colombian) government, and in particular the
agency known as the DAS”--a special security
service--“would be able to assist them with their
concerns."

Kovalik, quoting the DAS chief’s affidavit, said the
president of Drummond’s Colombian subsidiary “handed a
suitcase full of cash” to the leader of the
most-prominent paramilitary group, AUC, and “openly
stated the money was in exchange for murdering” the
first two union leaders at La Loma mine, Locarno and
Orcasita. AUC murdered all three.

“Drummond’s leaving the fate of its workers to the DAS
was tragically ironic, for in early 2006, the DAS
itself was collaborating with right-wing
paramilitaries to have trade unionists killed,”
Kovalik said. “Indeed, according to former DAS
intelligence officer Rafael Garcia, the DAS was
keeping and providing the paramilitaries with a list
of trade unionists it wanted them to kill.”

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2928336


Ex-Uribe adviser to testify in Drummond-Paramilitary unionist murder trial .
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014110167

Drummond Union: Govt Muffles Key Witness (Alabama coal company, death squad, Colombia)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2928336

Colombian families appeal Uribe's immunity in Drummond murders trial
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101493385

Widow of slain mine union leader speaks out against Alabama's Drummond Co. in Colombia
http://www.democraticunderground.com/110820376

ETC., ETC.

[Judi Lynn]

1. From last year: Alabama Coal Billionaire Battles Murder Suits as Prices Ebb

Alabama Coal Billionaire Battles Murder Suits as Prices Ebb
By Anthony Effinger and Matthew Bristow Jul 15, 2013 11:01 PM CT


[font size=1]
Photographer: John Wathen

Drummond Co.'s Shannon mine is located outside Birmingham. Most of the company's coal is mined in Colombia.[/font]

Gustavo Soler knew he was in trouble. It was 2001, and Soler was union president at a coal mine in Colombia owned by Drummond Co., which is controlled by the wealthiest family in Alabama.

Soler’s predecessor, Valmore Locarno, and Locarno’s deputy, Victor Orcasita, had been killed seven months earlier, and now Soler was getting threats, says his widow, Nubia, in an interview in Bogota. He told his family to pack up. They would leave the area as soon as he got home from the union office in Valledupar, a city in the country’s coal belt. He never made it.

Armed men stopped his bus, asked for him by name and abducted him. He was found under a pile of banana leaves with two bullet holes in his head, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its August issue.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-16/alabama-billionaire-battles-murder-suits-as-prices-ebb.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. The Colombian Connection

The Colombian Connection
U.S. aids a dirty war against unions
By David Bacon

In mid-March, Valmore Locarno Rodriguez and Victor Orcasita were riding from their jobs at the Loma coal mine in northern Colombia. Locarno and Orcasita were president and vice president of the union at the mine, a local of Sintramienergetica, one of Colombia's two coal miners' unions. As the company bus neared Valledupar, 30 miles from the mine, it was stopped by 15 gunmen, some in military uniforms.

They began checking the identification of the workers, and when they found the two union leaders, they were pulled off the bus. Locarno was hit in the head with a rifle butt. One of the gunmen then shot him in the face, as his fellow workers on the bus watched in horror. Orcasita was taken off into the woods at the side of the road. There he was tortured. When his body was found later, his fingernails had been torn off.

Leading a union often means losing a job, even blacklisting. In many countries, it can bring imprisonment by governments who view unions as a threat to the social and economic elite. But the most dangerous country by far is Colombia, where labor activism is often punished with death. By mid-May, 44 Colombian trade union leaders already had been murdered this year. Last year, assassinations cost the lives of 129 others. According to Hector Fajardo, general secretary of the United Confederation of Workers (CUT), the country's largest union federation, 3,800 trade unionists have been assassinated since 1986. Out of every five trade unionists killed in the world, three are Colombian.

U.S. energy, trade and military policies are contributing to the devastation of the country's labor movement. Bush administration energy policies encourage the use of coal in U.S. power plants, and millions of tons are now mined for export by U.S. corporations in the midst of Colombia's civil war. Free market economic reforms, pushed by the International Monetary Fund, are provoking a wave of resistance by Colombian labor, which is being met by violent repression. And U.S. military aid provided by Plan Colombia supports activities by right-wing paramilitary groups, who in turn target trade union leaders.

The Loma mine is owned by Drummond Co., a multi-national corporation based in Birmingham, Alabama. Drummond opened the mine in 1994, and it is now Colombia's second largest. At first, according to Ken Zinn of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers' Unions (ICEM), Drummond promised its U.S. workers that it wouldn't import Colombian coal to compete with its U.S. operations. But since 1994, Drummond has closed five mines in Alabama, laying off 1,700 members of the United Mine Workers. Its one remaining U.S. mine employs about 500 miners.

Alabama used to export coal--13 million tons in 1996, mostly from Drummond mines. Last year's exports totaled only 3 million tons. But 5 million tons of Colombian coal crossed the Alabama State Docks in Mobile last year. It was bound for plants operated by the Alabama Power Co., a division of the Southern Co., which also operates generating facilities in Florida and Mississippi. The plants were formerly fueled by Drummond's U.S. mines. Another half million tons went to the Alabama Electrical Cooperative. At the Loma mine, production rose 4 million tons in 2000, to a total of 11.8 million, after the company built a huge drag line. The company expects to sell 15 million tons next year, and 25 million tons by 2006. For Drummond the transfer has resulted in substantial savings on labor costs. A union miner in Alabama earns $18 an hour, or $3,060 a month, plus benefits.

More:
http://inthesetimes.com/issue/25/17/bacon2517.html

[starroute]

3. The larger political connections are what interest me

I started looking into Drummond Coal when the Don Siegelman case got me curious about Alabama corruption and I found Drummond's name coming up as one of the companies that makes extensive political donations that are laundered through Alabama's complex network of state PACs. Drummond is chiefly in the business of supplying Colombian coal to Alabama Power (part of Southern Co.) -- which has its own dubious history. And it seems that Bush administration shenanigans were a major reason why nothing has yet been resolved.

(On edit: The first of these quotes is from the same In These Times article cited above -- but it's the part that really jumps out at me.)

http://inthesetimes.com/issue/25/17/bacon2517.html

July 23, 2001

Drummond clearly sees an interest in supporting a Bush administration policy that encourages the increased use of coal in electrical generation. And it sees U.S. military intervention in Colombia in its interest as well. "We are in support of the Colombian Plan and the U.S. efforts in the drug war," Mike Tracy, a Drummond spokesman, told journalist Stephen Jackson, writing in the Latin American Post.

That support translated into a $50,000 donation by Drummond to the Republican National Committee last July; $25,000 to the National Republican Congressional Campaign; and $20,000 to the National Republican Senate Campaign last October. Overall, the coal industry dumped $3.8 million into the 2000 elections, and gave 88 percent of it to Republicans. In turn, the Bush campaign pursued a "cars and coal" strategy to win mining states, among others, based on an industry-friendly perspective. (And after the election, the administration dropped a campaign pledge that it would back carbon-dioxide emissions reductions from coal-fired power stations. That policy change has a big impact on the Alabama plants burning Colombian coal.)

On November 3, Bush told a crowd in West Virginia, where he would beat Al Gore four days later, that "coal is going to energize America." He didn't promise, however, that it would be mined in the United States.


http://www.thepanamanews.com/pn/v_12/issue_16/business_07.html

September 2, 2006

Three of Estupinan’s union predecessors have been murdered “by the paramilitary in collusion with Drummond,” claims Estupinan. Those 2001 killings are the focus of his labor union’s unusual and controversial civil lawsuit in a US District Court in Birmingham, Alabama where the case is proceeding at a snail’s pace and --- if Drummond has its way --- may never be presented to a jury.

Allegations have come to the fore again this August that Drummond has lobbied the US State Department for years in an attempt to have the case dropped on the grounds that the case would interfere with US foreign policy in Colombia --- a move that would “likely signal the death knell for the case,” according to SINTRAMIENERGETICA lawyers. In recent court filings, the union lawyers charge that not only has William Jeffress, Drummond’s lawyer with Baker Botts of Washington, pressured US State to drop the case, but Drummond has also hired Ignacio Sanchez to make unilateral contact with the State Department in Washington at various times since the inception of the litigation. . . .

The dots in the case are extremely difficult to recognize and even harder to connect --- not only for the media and public observers, but for the federal judge hearing the case. Judge Karon O. Bowdre remarked, “Probably 98% of what has been filed has been filed under seal. So I don’t see how anybody monitoring this case can know what is going on in this case.”

Such promiscuous filing under seal has led one journalist covering the case to file a successful petition two years ago --- and now another First Amendment petition to open up the documents to the press and to the public. The judge has not yet acted on that latest petition.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Astounding information on the reasoning used to plead for protection from the US courts. Amazing.

It appears to have worked very well, wouldn't you say? They have learned how to murder with impunity. The political contributions to Republican politicians surely help.

You are right in mentioning Drummond has a horrible history of exploitation of workers in that state, and it has played fast and lose with the trust of the Alabama citizens, to the grave detriment of many helpless people there.

Thank you so much for this essential look at their methods in conniving, all successful so far, it seems.

[burrowowl]

4. K&R!

[Judi Lynn]

6. Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .

Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .

Source: Colombia Reports

Uribe admits receiving 'help' from Drummond .
Monday, 19 November 2012 09:30 Caitlin Trent

Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe admitted Sunday to receiving "help" from U.S. coal company Drummond while in office.

Although direct payments from Drummond to Uribe's lawyer remain unconfirmed, in an interview Sunday with news broadcast Noticias Uno ex-president Uribe admitted to accepting unspecified "help" from the American coal giant.

The murky ties between Uribe and Drummond came to light two years ago when Uribe was subpoenaed as a witness to Drummond's alleged paramilitary ties with paramilitary organization AUC.

The ex-president however received immunity from testifying last year while being defended by prominent lawyer Gregory Craig whose legal fees are speculated to be paid for by Drummond.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/27068-uribe-receiving-help-from-drummond.html

[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Drummond paid to kill unionists: Ex-paramilitary .
Wednesday, 14 March 2012 14:00 Mary Cecelia Bittner

A former paramilitary has testified before a U.S. court that coal giant Drummond Ltd. paid paramilitaries $1.5 million to murder union leaders, Colombian media reported Tuesday.

Alcides Mattos Tabares, alias "El Samario," claimed that as part of the Northern Bloc of the AUC he took part in the murdering of employees ordered by Drummond.

Drummond's union president and vice president, Valmore Locarno and Victor Hugo Orcasita, "had" to be killed because they were organizing a strike that would have generated losses for the company, said Tabares.

From 2002 until his 2005 capture, Tabares patrolled Drummond’s railway lines, where he participated in killings, sometimes directed by Drummond employees, he claimed. He spoke of the trade unionists' murder saying,"I was not exactly the shooter, but I participated in the event as 'Tolemaida's' security chief."

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/22827-drummond-paid-to-kill-unionists-ex-paramilitary.html

More information:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014310626

[Judi Lynn]

7. Why Drummond and Glencore are accused of exporting Colombian blood coal

Why Drummond and Glencore are accused of exporting Colombian blood coal
Jul 2, 2014 posted by Nicolas Bedoya

The push to boycott “blood coal” exported from Colombia by Drummond and Glencore is gaining momentum in Europe after the publication of a report in which dozens of victims and victimizers testified that the multinational mining companies financed and promoted death squads.

What is blood coal?

“Blood coal,” a reference to the infamous “blood diamonds” mined amid conflict conditions in Africa, is the term used by the PAX peace organization to refer to coal extracted from areas in Colombia where paramilitary violence has been particularly severe.

According to the Dutch NGO, coal coming from the Colombian mines of the Glencore and Drummond multinationals has been stained by blood, as several members of the death squads guilty of an estimated 2,600 homicides in the areas surrounding their mining operations have testified their formation was supported and financed by the mining firms.

The report has already spurred a debate in the Dutch Parliament around the importation of Colombian coal. The NGO wants parliament to ban the trade of Colombian coal until the multinationals in question have implemented appropriate measures to guarantee the end of human rights violations related to mining and compensated victims of the violence they are accused of having financed.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/drummond-glencore-blood-coal/

[The Magistrate]

8. Like Something From The Blair Mountain Days, Ma'am

Disgusting.