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The education sector has become a major target of the rising violence in Colombia, yet trade unionists in the sector go on fighting, as UNISON members on a recent War on Want delegation discovered. Helen Taylor reports

A harsh lesson

A university porter is killed by assassins on motorbikes who shoot him twice in the head and three times in the body. A school teacher is shot five times through the windscreen of his car as his wife sits next to him. The president of the university workers union is ‘disappeared’ and hasn’t been seen for three years.

This is Colombia, where one teacher is killed every week by paramilitary forces and workers at all levels of the education sector are victims of violence on a daily basis.

When anti-poverty charity War on Want took a group of trade unionists from the education sector to Colombia earlier this year, what they saw shocked them deeply.

They witnessed the extent of paramilitary violence and the mounting attacks on those working in the education sector. They also learnt of the grinding poverty of many Colombians and the policies of the current government which seek to diminish the rights of trade unionists and introduce widespread privatisation.

Anne McCormack, from UNISON’s education service group, and the union’s international officer Tammy Sherar were among those on the delegation, along with the president of NATFE, Gerard Kelly, and general secretary of the NUJ, Jeremy Dear. And they all found it difficult to comprehend the levels of violence in Colombia.

Thirty thousand people are murdered each year. Around 6,000 of these murders are politically motivated and 95% can be attributed to the paramilitary umbrella organisation AUC. Yet no one has been prosecuted for these crimes. As well as these killings, countless people have been ‘disappeared’ and hundreds have been forcibly displaced.

In Colombia today, protest is gradually being outlawed and those defending public services have become a target of the country’s death squads, in what is the most dangerous country in the world to be a trade unionist.

And it’s no surprise that teachers and students have become one of the main targets of this violence. Whenever the fabric of a society begins to collapse, those committed to learning – from the students of Tiananmen Square to the intellectuals of Iran and the school children of apartheid South Africa – are seen as a threat to those engaged in repression.

In some areas of Colombia schools have now been closed altogether because levels of violence are so intense. And those schools that do remain open are in a state of emergency.

UNISON delegate Anne McCormack experienced the situation at first hand in the notoriously violent town of Medellin. The delegates were due to visit a school in a neighbourhood known as Communa 13, where 10 schools have already closed due to violence and up to 300 students have been forced to leave the area.

The delegation was told by higher education union ADIDA, who had just suffered the murder of a senior official, that their safety could not be guaranteed on a planned trip to the school. But eventually just two of the delegates, including Ms McCormack, were accompanied to the school by a local teacher. There they found just 28 teachers teaching 880 children, aged from five to 15, and all staff were under enormous pressure.

“The teachers told of us of their increasing problems,” explained Ms McCormack. “Some had not been paid for over three months yet their workload had been increased considerably. The biggest problem facing the pupils was poverty and 20% of the children could not afford the 800 pesos (approximately 5p) to purchase a school meal.”

The awful poverty of most Colombians was only too apparent to the delegation throughout their visit. Ms McCormack still finds it difficult to forget their visit to an area known as Aguablanca, which has been settled by those forced to flee their homes as a result of mounting violence. Groups of two or three families live in areas three metres square, electricity and water had been cut off at the time of the delegation’s visit and there are no schools in the settlement.

“We were shown a building that housed many families separated by sacking hanging from string to allow a vestige of privacy. There was only one bed in each of the cubicles together with a chair where clothes and possessions were stored,” recalled Ms McCormack. “Each person we met told us how they had been forced from their homes – many had been forced to move several times after being threatened with violence and death.”

Settlements such as Aguablanca are just temporary, however, and many Colombians are forced to move time after time. The delegation also heard that government security forces had been involved in slum clearances, with state bulldozers flattening the settlement in Aguablanca recently, destroying the few possessions that people had brought with them from their old homes. With nowhere else to go, the residents simply rebuilt the slum.

There are two million internally displaced people in Colombia and the delegation was able to meet many who had been forced to flee under threat of violence. One woman, a teacher for 23 years in a school near Bogotá, has been persecuted for 15 years for being a trade unionist and member of the Communist party.

Her husband, also a trade unionist, was kidnapped in October 2000 and killed by paramilitaries. And her teenage daughters have been targeted for organising a march for schoolchildren.

The country’s universities have also been badly affected by violence, with temporary closures and an increased military presence bringing many lectures to a halt. The War on Want delegation witnessed this at the public university of Valle in the city of Cali, when students and lecturers looked on as police in riot gear and armoured vehicles blocked the entrance to the university.

The reason for the closure was unclear but it has become a frequent procedure which is damaging the education of many students. President Uribe’s government have said that the creation of military zones in certain areas is an attempt to halt terrorist action. Yet, the targetting of teachers by paramilitaries has actually increased in these zones.

Students, too, have become targets. One student from Bogotá university received a death threat on his mobile phone during a meeting with the War on Want delegation.
And at least two student leaders have been assassinated so far this year.

In a particularly bloody episode, a number of students at the University of Atlantico in Barranquilla were killed in front of their classmates in the lecture room. And a final year student in Santander, who was a community activist in a poor neighbourhood, was ‘disappeared’ in April this year.

He is just one of 5,000 people who have been ‘disappeared’ by paramilitaries over the last five years. Yet the government refuses to acknowledge the problem, saying that the ‘disappeared’ have simply run off with guerillas. The delegation also heard that employees of the government have been found guilty of connection with disappearances and there is a fear that members of the security forces photograph those taking part in anti-disappearance protests.

At the same time as violence is making education nearly impossible, privatisation and cuts in education spending are further damaging the sector. Teacher numbers have fallen, recruitment has halted and only 10% of those remaining are on full time contracts.

Meanwhile, new legislation has diminished workers’ rights to collective bargaining and as a result pay has fallen. With staff shortages, school places are also reduced and three million children are without schooling. University funding is also being cut as repression mounts. Governors are appointed over the head of existing staff and student records are being passed to military security.

The policies of President Uribe are making life unbearable for those working in the education sector and for all Colombian people. Far from reducing the levels of paramilitary violence the government is adding to the daily privations and lack of security of the country’s poor.

In the face of mounting repression, however, Colombians are refusing to give in. In spite of fear, trade unionists continue to protect their own members and demand social justice and an end to poverty in the wider community.

The War on Want delegation were horrified by the violence against those working and studying in the education sector in Colombia. On more than one occasion they held in their hands the death threats that had been issued to fellow trade unionists. Yet their lasting impression was of the courage and resilience of the Colombian people who refuse to abandon hope.

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