|
Oscar
González
was murdered at night, on Sunday, April 10.
Interviewed by
Sirel, Noé Ramírez, general secretary of
the Union of Banana Workers of Izabal (SITRABI),
said, “Oscar González had been working in
Bandegua, Del
Monte Fresh
(formerly the United Fruit Company) for seven years, and
he’d been a union leader for the past two months.”
According to witnesses, he apparently got a phone call on
his cell phone when he was in Aldea El Cedro, where he
lived, and later as he was on the highway on his way to the
plantation he was gunned down by two men on a motorcycle.
Asked about possible motives for this crime, Ramírez
said, “it’s too early to say whether his union activities
were the reason he was murdered, as he’d only become a union
leader very recently, but it might be meant as a message to
us, the other union leaders.”
Since
Marco Tulio
Ramírez,
SITRABI’s Culture and Sports secretary and Noé’s
brother, was murdered in September 2007, the banana workers
connected with this labor organization have been constantly
receiving death threats, which is why this new act of
violence against a unionist must be denounced
internationally.
According to Noé Ramírez, “after my brother’s death,
the physical threats have just kept coming, the last one was
last year when my house was shot at and the government was
forced to put a personal guard on me day and night.”
It should be noted that the government’s decision to assign
this guard came as a result of pressure from international
labor organizations, in a campaign where Rel-UITA (IUF
Latin America) played a key role.
Considering this scenario, it is crucial that this new case
be first reported to Guatemala’s Public Ministry (the
criminal prosecuting authority) and then denounced to the
international community. SITRABI will file the
corresponding report today.
We know we can count on Rel-UITA’s solidarity to give
visibility to this situation of ongoing violence that
workers in Izabal are suffering,” Ramírez concluded.
 |
