Photo by Brandon Wu

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe was in D.C. today, lobbying Congress and the media in support of the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. Uribe’s pitch included a speech at the National Press Club where protestors and human rights activists, including members of Public Citizen, the Association of Internally Displaced Afro-Colombians and International Brotherhood of Teamsters gathered outside to protest the trade deal.

Public Citizen field organizer James Ploeser (pictured above with the megaphone) blogs about the protest over at Eyes on Trade.

We made it clear: the only ones to benefit from the US-Colombia FTA will be the the corporate elite and their paramilitary proxies who terrorize already impoverished people for their own profit.

More than 450 unionists have been killed by right-wing paramilitaries – and in some cases by the Colombian army – during President Uribe’s reign. You can learn more about the Colombia FTA and why it would be a disaster on several human and environmental fronts on the Global Trade Watch section of our Web site.