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Colombian labor leader seeks refuge, Drummond wants US to drop case by Stephen Flanagan Jackson --- sfjackson10@hotmail.com The current president of the SINTRAMIENERGETICA labor union, which is suing Drummond Coal Company, has taken refuge in Bogota after receiving threats on the telephone and at his house near the Drummond coal mines in northeast Colombia. The civil wrongful death suit against the Alabama-based Drummond, which arising from Colombian paramilitary murders, is being heard in US federal court under the obscure 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act. Omar Estupinan arrived in Bogota in August “because I am in fear of danger to me and my family.” The 39-year-old father of five who has worked for four and one-half years as a front end loader at the Drummond mines at La Loma for $3 an hour says he feels safer in the capital city, along with his wife and two sons and three daughters, after the conclusion of a May strike “for better rights and conditions.” Clad in a gray golf cap, a black cowboy shirt trimmed with bright red roses, a light blue sport jacket, and gray pants with buttons up the side, Estupinan expresses fears that Drummond is in cahoots with the paramilitary that operates in the northeast region of Colombia. Estupinan points out that the leader of the Bloque Norte paramilitary is a powerful man named Rodrigo Tovar Pupo who goes by the alias of Jorge Cuarenta (Forty), and has top aides who go by the pseudonyms Treinta Ocho (Thirty Eight) and Treinta Nueve (Thirty Nine). “Bloque Norte has a grip on drug trafficking, anti-labor violence in the region, and anti-leftwing guerrilla actions,” charges Estupinan. “The Colombian government and military cannot --- or does not --- protect us.” “But we in the labor union are not communists,” maintains Estupinan, as he leaves a meeting with a union delegation from Canada and the US which was in Bogota to discuss human rights and security in Colombia. “We do not have weapons,” he declares. “My only ‘arms’ are my hands and my head.” 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. Estupinan maintains --- as do his union lawyers --- that Drummond also provides the paramilitaries access to Drummond facilities in Colombia, access to their supplies, and monetary support to the paramilitaries, paying them out of a slush fund controlled in Colombia by Drummond’s top man in that country, Augusto Jiminez. A deposition in the case filed in May --- and sealed by the judge --- offers the eyewitness testimony of a former Colombian official who swears he saw Jiminez provide orders and a briefcase to paramilitaries to murder two of Estupinan’s predecessors. 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. In early August, the US Department of State and Department of Justice issued an inconclusive comment regarding the Drummond attempt to close down the case on the grounds of the “political question doctrine” and the “doctrine of international comity.” US officials told the court that they “do not have an opinion at this time as to whether continual adjudication of this mater will have an adverse impact on the foreign policy interests of the US.” Colombia has traditionally been one of the top worldwide recipients of US foreign aid. Three of the actors --- two left-wing guerrilla units and a right-wing paramilitary --- in Colombia’s decades-old civil war are designated “terrorist” groups by the US government. Among Drummond’s largest international clients is the Southern Company --- served through the Port of Mobile. Atlanta-based Southern Company, listed on the NY Stock Exchange, is one of the largest generators of electricity in the United States. The energy giant burns the rich Colombian coal throughout the Southeast for the electric customers of Alabama Power, Georgia Power, Gulf Power, Mississippi Power, and Savannah Electric.
copyright 2006 by Stephen Flanagan Jackson
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