{"id":1900,"date":"2014-10-18T16:14:24","date_gmt":"2014-10-18T16:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/?p=1900"},"modified":"2014-10-20T11:02:23","modified_gmt":"2014-10-20T11:02:23","slug":"crowe-meets-colombian-trade-union-activist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/crowe-meets-colombian-trade-union-activist\/","title":{"rendered":"Crowe meets Colombian Trade Union Activist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Trade, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, today met\u00a0 Gilberto Luis Martinez, a member of the Executive Committee of the National Central Unit of Colombian Workers (CUT).<\/p>\n<p>Gilberto was in Ireland to speak about\u00a0 on going\u00a0human rights abuses in Colombia, and specifically the violent targeting\u00a0of trade union leaders by the Government, and to encourage TDs to vote against the EU-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) when it comes before the D\u00e1il for ratification.<\/p>\n<p>Deputy Se\u00e1n Crowe said:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00a0\u201cToday my Sinn F\u00e9in colleague Peadar Toib\u00edn organised a cross party meeting with Gilberto Luis Martinez in Leinster House, that was facilitated and supported\u00a0by Justice for Colombia and Christian Aid.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGilberto gave a harrowing and detailed analysis of the dire human rights situation in Colombia and\u00a0it remains the most dangerous country in the world to be an\u00a0active\u00a0trade unionist. In the past 2 years 42 trade union or human rights activists have been murdered because of their advocacy\u00a0work.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGilberto made it\u00a0 crystal clear to us\u00a0that the European Union\u2019s Free Trade Agreement with Colombia will not any way improve the human rights situation in the country.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cColombia is the 3<sup>rd<\/sup> most unequal country in Latin America and the 7<sup>th<\/sup> most unequal country in the world. Gilberto also made clear that this particular trade agreement\u00a0will not improve the lives of the vast majority of Colombians, but will only serve to benefit a\u00a0small minority,\u00a0the rich elite.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOn behalf of his trade union members\u00a0he asked for solidarity from Irish parliamentarians and\u00a0appealed to\u00a0us to collectively to\u00a0vote against this Agreement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSinn F\u00e9in\u00a0has already voted \u00a0against this FTA when it came before the European Parliament and we\u00a0propose do so again when it comes before the\u00a0 Irish D\u00e1il.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need\u00a0to stand with the oppressed people in Colombia, in favour human rights and equality, and to vote against this unacceptable agreement. At the very minimum I\u00a0believe\u00a0Irish parliamentarians should\u00a0delay a vote on this issue until the European Union completes a full\u00a0human rights and economic impact assessment of the Financial Trade\u00a0Agreement with Colombia\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1907\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"width: 300px\"><a href=\"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/20141017_133044.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-1907\" alt=\"Meeting Gilberto Martinez with Justice For Colombia (JFC)\" src=\"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/20141017_133044-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/20141017_133044-300x225.jpg 300w, http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/20141017_133044-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/20141017_133044-1280x960.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Meeting Gilberto Martinez with Justice For Colombia (JFC)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>ENDS<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sinn F\u00e9in\u2019s spokesperson on Foreign Affairs and Trade, Se\u00e1n Crowe TD, today met\u00a0 Gilberto Luis Martinez, a member of the Executive Committee of the National Central Unit of Colombian Workers (CUT). Gilberto was in Ireland to speak about\u00a0 on going\u00a0human rights abuses in Colombia, and specifically the violent targeting\u00a0of trade union leaders by the Government, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,36,50,85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-colombia","category-department-of-foreign-affairs-and-trade","category-human-rights","category-trade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1900"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1908,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1900\/revisions\/1908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1900"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1900"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/seancrowe.ie\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1900"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}