Rights Groups Overseas Fight U.S. Concerns in U.S. Courts
The New York Times
June 26, 2003
By JUAN FORERO
LA LOMA, Colombia — In March 2001, during what union members describe as a labor dispute, two union leaders were pulled off a company bus after it left the coal mining compound here and were shot dead by paramilitary gunmen. Six months later another union leader was also assassinated.
For Colombia, such killings are routine; nearly 90 percent of union leaders reported killed worldwide die here. Few of the murders are ever resolved.
But the company involved, Drummond, is American, and last year an American labor rights group filed suit in a United States district court charging that the killers "were acting as employees or agents" of the company.
Drummond, based in Birmingham, Ala., denies any involvement. "We're not disputing the plaintiffs' claim that it was paramilitary terrorists," said William Jeffress, a Washington lawyer representing the company. "But we do dispute the outrageous accusations that these people were working with Drummond."
The case is one of a growing number of lawsuits that are stirring a fierce debate over whether American companies should be liable — in American courts — for rights abuses committed on or near their foreign installations.
This is the kind of crap that creates anti-americanism, and is never reported on the TV news or discussed by the punditocracy , whether it's Cable or Broadcast, which is why Americans end up asking stupid questions like
Why do they hate us? to which Shrub can then tell us that
"They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other."(-- George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001)
