Might the Corporations Pay Victims?

U.S. corporations which have escaped charges of responsibility for human rights violations in Colombia because the alleged events happened in Colombia might feel a bit more nervous now, thanks to a recent ruling by a U.S. judge.

Multiple U.S. companies, including Coca Cola, the Drummond coal company, Chiquita banana and others have been accused in U.S. courts of financing illegal Colombian organizations, particularly right-wing paramilitaries, which committed severe human rights abuses, including assassinations, massacres and forced displacements.

But U.S. courts have consistently ruled that the alleged victims of those atrocities and their relatives could not sue in the U.S. because the relevant events took place in Colombia. The courts don't even examine the crimes themselves or the U.S. corporations' relationships with criminal groups.

Hernán Giraldo Serna, ex-paramilitary
leader on trial in the U.S.

However, the other week a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that victims of one Colombian paramilitary extradited to the U.S. on narcotrafficking charges can pursue charges against him there. The one-time paramilitary leader, Hernán Giraldo Serna. ex-leader of the Tayron Block of the so-called self-defense forces, was extradited to the U.S. in 2008 on narcotrafficking charges. However, the family of a social activist and ex-member of the M-19 guerrillas named Julio Henríquez, who was murdered on Giraldo Serna's orders in 2001 joined the case.

A district court ruled that the family did not have standing to participate in the case, but a Washington appeals court reversed that ruling and ordered Henríquez's killing be included in the case, according to El Tiempo.

I'm no lawyer and my understanding of these issues is superficial. And this paramilitary has admitted ordering Henríquez's killing, whereas the corporations are generally only accused of financing outlaw groups which committed crimes, perhaps without even the companies' previous knowledge.

Nevertheless, Henríquez's ability to sue in the U.S. for a crime committed in Colombia seems to offer at least a glimmer of hope for other victims.

The most notorious case is probably Chiquita banana company, which in 2005 confessed to the U.S.

Chiquita, worried?

government that between 1997 and 2004 it had paid millions of dollars in what it called 'protection money' to Colombian paramilitary abuses. During the same years, the paramilitaries were committing severe atrocities, including massacres and forced displacement. Chiquita claims it had no choice but to make the payments in order to protect the lives of its workers, altho the company could have sold its operations and withdrawn from Colombia. Chiquita paid a $25 million dollar fine to the U.S. government, but nothing to the paramilitaries' victims.

Victims of Colombian paramilitaries and their families filed numerous lawsuits against Chiquita in U.S. courts under the Alien Tort Statute, but the cases were dismissed because the relevant events had taken place in Colombia.

Might this latest ruling make a difference?


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

One Last Chance for Terror Victims

During the 1990s, the Nigerian government brutally repressed residents of the Ogoni Niger River Delta who were protesting against the Royal Dutch Shell oil company's efforts to drill for oil in the region.

The details of who did what on whose orders in that far away place and time may now determine whether victims of Colombian paramilitaries receive compensation from the Chiquita banana company in United States courts.

Victims of the Nigerian repression sued Shell, an Anglo-Dutch multinational, in U.S. courts, using a 1789 statue known as the Alien Tort Claims Act. The victims accused Shell of being behind the Nigerian government repression. But a U.S. court ruled that the case did not fall under U.S. jurisdiction because the events had occurred outside of the U.S. and the defendant was also a foreign company.

Relatives cry at the funeral of victims of a 1998 paramilitary
massacre in the oil town of Barranabermeja.

The ruling was important, because it limited the jurisdiction of the Tort Claims Act by creating a
presumption that the statute did not apply extraterritorially.

The ruling dealt a blow to Colombian victims of illegal armed groups who claim that U.S. companies, including Coca Cola, Drummond Coal Co. and Chiquita banana, promoted and financed rights violations and should compensate victims in Colombia.

So far, in part because of the ruling in the Nigerian case, the Colombian plaintiffs have lost. However, the strongest of those cases, against Chiquita banana, is now being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Paramilitary fighters pose for a photographer.

In the Chiquita case, the wrong seems almost undeniable. The company has admitted that between 1997 and 2004 it handed over $1.7 million to outlawed Colombian paramilitary groups, labeled terrorists by the U.S. and Colombian governments. (Previously, it had made payments to leftist guerrillas while they controlled the region around its banana plantations.) Chiquita paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government, but nothing to the victims in Colombia. Chiquita also proceeded to sell its Colombian plantations. While Chiquita was paying off the paramilitaries, those groups murdered and robbed peasants and drove them off of their lands.

The paramilitaries' victims allege that Chiquita bears responsibility for the crimes committed by the illegal groups it helped finance. Chiquita disagrees. As a Chiquita spokesman told journalists: 'Chiquita has great sympathy for the Colombians who suffered at the hands of these Colombian armed groups, but the responsibility for the violent crimes committed in that country belongs to the perpetrators, not to the innocent people and companies they extorted.'

Chiquita no longer has banana farms in Colombia,
according to this image from its website.

Chiquita argues that it had no choice but to pay off the illegal groups in order to protect its employees from kidnapping and murder. But of course Chiquita did have a choice: to leave Colombia, as it ultimately did. Those suing Chiquita allege that the company paid off the paramilitaries in return for benefits such as repressing union activists.

Not all recent rulings in Alien Tort Act cases have gone against plaintiffs. In one, a district court ruled that Ugandan member of a sexual minority group could sue a U.S. citizen who had allegedly encouraged Ugandan officials to persecute sexual minorities in that nation. But that case may be different because, among other reasons, the defendant is a person, not a corporation. Another key issue may be whether any decisions to support abuses were made in the U.S. or overseas.

The victims' chances in U.S. courts appear slim. But they have few other options for compensation. Since Chiquita sold its Colombian plantations, there are no assets they can sue for here, where the atrocities were committed.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

How to Get Away With Financing Terrorism

A mural in Bogotá shows bananas and victims of violence. 

Between 1989 and 2004 the Chiquita banana company paid millions of dollars to Colombian guerrillas and paramilitary groups.

The organizations are or were classified as terrorists by the U.S., Colombian and European governments. And, while Chiquita was paying terrorists millions, the organizations were violating human rights in all kinds of horrific ways: torturing, massacring, kidnapping and driving peasants off of their lands and out of their homes. While Chiquita was paying off the paramilitaries, they murdered 4,000 people in Uraba province and drove 60,000 off of their land, according to the leftist organization COHA.

Chiquita claims that it had no choice but to make these payments in order to protect its workers from murder

and kidnapping. But the companies' critics charge that Chiquita also paid the paramilitaries, at least, in return for the far-right organization's repressing unions and peasants - sometimes with violence.

Read horrific accounts of paramilitary violence here.

The paramilitaries also smuggled at least one shipment of weapons - and perhaps several more - into Colombia thru a port controlled by Chiquita's subsidiary Banadex.

And Chiquita clearly did have an alternative to funding terrorists: it could have pulled out of Colombia.

In 2007, Chiquita, whose annual revenues are in the billions, paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government for funding terrorists. (If you or I funded terrorists, we'd probably go to prison. But Chiquita's ex-lawyer is U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.)

The Colombian victims of the terrorist groups which Chiquita was funding received nothing.

However, 4,000 relatives of those victims sued Chiquita in U.S. courts - and yesterday their lawsuit got nixed.

The court didn't reject the lawsuit based on the facts of what happened. Chiquita confessed that it paid off the terrorists, and the terror groups' actions are public record. However, the court ruled that the plaintiffs couldn't sue Chiquita in the U.S. because the crimes were committed in Colombia.

But the plaintiffs' lawyers argue that the decisions to fund the terrorists were made in Chiquita's U.S. corporate offices. According to the Associated Press and Wikipedia, a Chiquita executive wrote a note saying the payments were the "cost of doing business in Colombia" and pointed out the "need to keep this very confidential - people can get killed." Chiquita's outside attorneys had also advised the company that the payments violated U.S. anti-terror laws, but the company continued paying until it sold its Colombian interests in 2004.

The plaintiffs' attorneys say they'll appeal.

Perhaps the victims can now sue Chiquita in Colombia - except that the company sold its Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, in 2004, and no longer has assets here the plaintiffs could sue for.

The lesson: If you're going to finance terrorists, it helps to be a rich, well-connected multinational.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Dirty Business: Corporations and Violence in Colombia

Rail cars carrying Colombian coal toward the sea.
(Photo: Colabradio)

Drummond coal company's Colombian operations are in hot water, once again. A recent report by the European NGO Pax Christi claims that Drummond and a second coal exporter, Prodeco, paid money to right-wing paramilitary groups which murdered thousands of people and drove tens of thousands off of their land.

Both Drummond, which is based in Alabama, U.S.A., and the Swiss-owned Prodeco, deny paying money to or collaborating with the paramilitaries. Drummond points out that several paramilitary leaders who accuse the company have changed their stories and even received payments from an attorney suing the companies.

Nevertheless, charges that they used violence to repress workers have dogged many corporations

A protester accuses Drummond Coal Co.
of working with paramilitary death squads.
The company denies any links
to the paramilitaries.
(Photo: Southern Studies) 

foreign operating in Colombia.

Undoubtedly, the most infamous case involved the United Fruit Company (predecessor of Chiquita Corp.), which in 1928 faced strikes by banana plantation workers protesting exploitative work conditions. The workers went on strike, and in December 1928 soldiers massacred an unknown number of strike leaders gathered in the town plaza of Ciénaga. That massacre became a key episode in Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' and launched populist leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan to fame.

Some historians believe that the Colombian military acted murderously because it believed that if it did not United States Marines stationed off of the coast would invade Colombia in defense of the banana company.

An oil pipeline bombed by the ELN guerrillas.
Photo: (El Colombiano)

In 2007, Chiquita Corp. confessed to the U.S. government that it had made multi-million dollar payments first to leftist guerrillas and later to paramilitaries which controlled the region around its Colombian plantations. Chiquita paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government, but nothing to the victims in Colombia.

Chiquita claims it had no choice but to pay off the armed groups in order to protect its employees from kidnapping or murder. But Chiquita, like the other companies, did have an alternative - to pull out of Colombia rather than finance violent organizations which were terrorizing and murdering civilians.

A present-day Colombian banana plantation worker.
(Photo: Al Jazeera)

During the late 1990s, U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum found itself in a similar situation around its Caño Limon oil pipeline in Arauca Department, where guerrillas had bombed the pipeline and threatened employees. Occidental responded by hiring AirScan, a private security company, which used its own surveillance aircraft to supply the Colombian military with locations of guerrilla fighters. In 1998, using AirScan-supplied coordinates, the Colombian military dropped a cluster bomb on the small town of Santo Domingo, killing 17 civilians, including 7 children. Survivors of the attack sued Occidental, but have lost. In December 2012, the Inter-American Human Rights Court condemned the Colombian government for the bombing, which the government had alleged was caused by a guerrilla truck bomb.

The Santo Domingo episode also implicated the United States government, which had provided more than $100 million in military protection to Occidental.

The leaders of the banana workers' strike.
(Photo: Wikipedia)

It strains credulity to believe that any company doing business in a region terrorized by leftist guerrillas - who attack foreign corporations for both nationalistic motives and financial ones - would not collude in some way with the right-wing paramilitaries which protect businesses by fighting those guerrillas.

Recent violence committed in Santander Department by ELN guerrillas exemplifies that situation. The guerrilla group, which is 'celebrating' its 50th birthday, has bombed a pipeline and an oil workers' encampment and sowed the region with land mines.

"The military in Colombia was very ineffective at guerrilla warfare," Terry Collingsworth, the U.S. attorney who is suing Drummond as well as other large corporations, said recently in an interview with Alternativa Latina Radio. "The (paramilitaries) were very adept at guerrilla warfare....They were largely successful; they drove the FARC way into the mountains and protected areas where there were coal mines and bananas."

"We believe...that virtually every major company that was operating in these guerrilla areas of Colombia actually was a partner with this terrorist organization," added Collingsworth.

But almost all large companies have denied collaborating with illegal groups, and lawsuits against them have consistently failed.

Cases such as those against Occidental, Chiquita and Drummond suffered a blow recently when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling narrowed the jurisdiction of the Alien Tort Statute, which has been used to sue U.S. companies for alleged crimes committed outside the U.S.

The results of court cases aside, Pax Christi is not the first European NGO to criticize foreign coal operations in Colombia. A 2013 report by urgewald & FIAN called 'Bitter Coal - a Dossier on Germany's coal imports,' observed that "Germany's use of hard coal is on the rise. Although 75% of "our" hard coal is imported, the origin of this coal and the associated impacts do not figure in decisions on the construction of new coal-fired power plants and play almost no role in the debate on Germany's energy policies."

Almost one-third of Germany's coal imports come from Colombia.

The report's English-language summary goes on to list human and environmental harm including forced displacement, chronic poverty and malnutrition and the possible rerouting of a river for the El Cerrejon coal mine. The report did not mention climate change, air pollution or the contamination of seawater when coal is loaded onto ships for export.

"Paramilitary forces waged a reign of terror in the main coal mining provinces La Guajira and Cesar over many years. Although the situation has improved since the official demobilisation of the paramiltary, human rights abuses and repression are still rampant in these regions."

There's a second level of moral issues here. Some of the European nations, particularly Germany, which issue reports denouncing abuses by coal companies in Colombian have been shutting down their nuclear reactors for supposed environmental motives. Nuclear energy, however, produces miniscule amounts of pollution compared to coal and, while there probably are human rights abuses associated with uranium mines, I haven't heard of them.

As I see it, the European nations are exchanging the exaggerated dangers of nuclear energy for the very real dangers and damages of coal.


By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Chiquita: Victim or Victimizer?

A judge in Antioquia has decided to drop an investigation against executives of the Chiquita banana company, concluding that the millions of dollars the company paid to Colombia's leftist guerrillas and later to paramilitary groups were extortion, not voluntary protection payments. 

The distinction is fundamental for the lawsuits and other cases the company faces: Did Chiquita pay off these violent groups voluntarily, to gain benefits, or because it feared attacks and felt it had no choice. 

Some beg to differ. A Bogotá court has ordered that Chiquita's Colombia properties be used to pay off the paramilitaries' victims (a mostly symbolic move, since the company sold its plantations in 2004). And Colombian high officials have expressed a desire to extradite Chiquita's executives, altho Colombia apparently never filed such a request. (Probably, Colombian officials realized that such a futile request would only show Colombia's toothlessness. Chiquita, an emblematic U.S. company, is well-connected in Washington: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder was Chiquita's attorney.) The company also faces lawsuits in the U.S. by families of alleged victims of paramilitary groups which received money from Chiquita.

Chiquita can also point out that it came forward and voluntarily told U.S. officials about the payments, and paid a $25 million fine to the U.S. government for financing terrorists. Undoubtedly, Chiquita was only one of many companies which made such payments, and likely still pay off violent outlaw groups in Colombia. Chiquita can also point out that the Colombian military supposedly even encouraged Chiquita to make the payments. 

While Chiquita undoubtedly faced threats, and likely could not have done business in Colombia without paying off the outlaw organizations which controlled the area around their banana plantations. But it's also likely that Chiquita had more in mind than just protecting its workers, as the company claims. After all, Chiquita is also in the business of making money - lots of it. The company could have stopped making these payments at any time by selling its plantations and pulling out of Colombia. Instead, it stayed and continuing doing business until 2004. Imprisoned paramilitary leaders have also reportedly said that they imported weapons using Chiquita's port.

It's difficult to understand how any company could make payments to an organization which is at the same time terrorizing civilians and claim it was an ethical, moral decision. Just imagine if the case had instead happened in the U.S., and a company had for years paid off a terrorist group which was murdering civilians and driving them out of their homes. Would any justificiation have been conceivable?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

The Terror Support Double Standard

FARC guerrillas: Not all their material supporters are equal.

Which is worse? 

A: Sympathizing and meeting with the FARC guerrillas and then going home to Minnesota and staging meetings, conferences, rallies and hosting someone who may or may not be a FARC representative, all the while running a left-wing cafe and fantasizing about the imminent socialist revolution.

Or B: Giving millions of dollars to the FARC and right-wing paramilitaries and reportedly allowing them to use your infrastructure to smuggle drugs and weapons.

Now, guess whether A or B got raided recently by the FBI and its members subject to a grand jury investigation.

You got it right, A.

Carrying a man murdered by FARC. (Center for L.A. Studies) 

That's why a group of Minnesota 'anti-war activists' who visited the FARC years ago have been raided and interrogated by the FBI. The Minnesotans denounce capitalism and want a socialist revolution, so their goals coincide with the FARC's discourse. But the Minnesotans point out that there's no law against supporting socialism, traveling to Colombia or meeting with the FARC. And neither is there any law against being idealistic, misguided and pursuing a failed and discredited cause.

But how about giving millions of dollars to murdering, terrorist organizations? In 2007, Chiquita banana company paid a $25 million dollar fine to the U.S. government for having paid millions in protection money to Colombian paramilitaries. Previous to that, it had paid off the guerrillas.

For a huge corporation like Chiquita, the fine was small change. And its directors haven't been punished personally, despite talk in Colombia about trying to extradite them. Good luck with that. Several members of Chiquita's board of directors have had close ties to the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations. Having represented Chiquita, a company which had paid off terrorists, was no obstacle to Eric Holder becoming U.S. Attorney General.

Many other corporations apparently also paid off Colombian terrorists, and haven't even been fined.

But this idealistic if misguided group of Minnesota 'anti-war activists,' whose idealism blinds them to the fact that the FARC are the reason there's a conflict here in the first place, are being hounded by the FBI.

My impression is that these sorts of rich-country FARC sympathizers are naive 'fellow travelers' infatuated by the guerrillas' facile discourse about social justice and denouncements of evil capitalism, but who ignore the guerrillas' drug trafficking and tremendous human rights violations.

But being fools isn't against the law. And neither is sympathizing with a terrible cause - that's fundamental to a free society.

The FARC have done lots of damage to Colombia, but never in the United States (besides sending drugs there), nor have I ever seen any evidence of their plotting against the States.

All of which makes one ask whether the FBI doesn't have more important things to do than raid the premises of misled idealists?

Why the double standard? It's influence, but also America's religion: capitalism. Everybody knows that Chiquita did what it did to sell bananas and make money, so its motives are transparent. In contrast, this bunch of Minnesota activists who yearn for a socialist paradise which is never gonna happen, least of all in the U.S. or Colombia, are suspicious and dangerous.

Chiquita and other companies may, however, end up paying up by a different route. They are being sued by individuals victimized by Colombian terrorists, including three kidnapped American contractors and relatives of missionaries murdered by the guerrillas.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

More Chiquita Revelations

Grown with blood money?

In 2007, Chiquita banana confessed to the U.S. government that it had paid protection money to Colombian guerrillas and later to paramilitaries, and agreed to pay a fine - to the U.S. government. The fine, $25 million, seems like pocket change for a multinational which had $4.6 billion in revenue in 2007. And, the company made the payment to the U.S. government, even though the guerrillas and paramilitaries were kidnapping, killing and displacing Colombians.

Now, the National Security Archives (a project of George Washington University) has released internal Chiquita memos which appear to show that Chiquita's involvement was more self-interested than the company had admitted, as well as illustrating the very close relationship between businesses, the Colombian military and right-wing paramilitaries. 

Chiquita had argued that it had no choice but to pay extortion money to protect its employees, and that there was no other way to do business in Colombia. That may be true, and the newly-released memos indicate that paying off these illegal groups was standard operating procedure in the industry. But even if that's true, does it justify financing terrorist organizations which commit massacres, plant land mines, displace peasants, recruit children and commit so many other crimes - just to export bananas? After all, Chiquita did have an alternative to financing terrorism: pull out of Colombia.

Colombian paramilitaries

The new memos also indicate that the military had urged Chiquita to pay the paramilitaries. For many years, the partnership between the Colombian military and the illegal right-wing paramilitaries was Colombia's best-kept open secret. And it may still be the case in many parts of the country.

This is not the  first controversial chapter in Colombia for Chiquita, which used to be called the United Fruit Company. In 1928 Colombian soldiers massacred striking United Fruit Company workers, an episode made famous by novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez in One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Guerrilla and paramilitary victims are suing Chiquita in U.S. courts for hundreds of murders by these groups. Chiquita no longer owns plantations in Colombia.

Dole banana has also been sued by victims of paramilitaries.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours