Dole Foods in Colombian paramilitary lawsuit

A lawsuit filed last week alleged that Dole Foods were in cahoots with Colombian paramilitaries.

Much like a previous lawsuit against fellow banana importers Chiquita, the plaintiffs claimed that the company knowingly hired rightist paramilitaries to intimidate and murder labor union activists. One of the attorneys for the plaintiffs said that he will use testimony from a former paramilitary commander who admitted responsibility for some of the deaths mentioned in the suit and claimed that Dole made regular payments to his cohorts.

A statement from Dole denied the “baseless allegations” brought up in the lawsuit. “These terrorists have every reason to lie by making false allegations against international companies like Dole in order to minimize their own culpability and reduce their jail time,” mentioned Dole’s Executive Vice President in the statement.

The case was filed days after an NGO report partially blamed paramilitaries for a startling increase in Colombia’s displaced population:

Some 380,000 Colombians were forced from their homes last year by the continuing armed conflict, a local human rights group has said.

The Center for Human Rights and the Displaced, Codhes, says this is a 25% rise on 2008 and brings the total displaced since 1985 to 4.6 million…

"The great majority live in severe conditions of poverty," the Codhes report said, while their own land and property had fallen into the hands of others in a "de facto expropriation".

Image- Guardian UK (“Two members of the AUC paramilitary group search a bus on the road to Santa Fe de Ralito in northern Colombia.”)
Online Sources- BBC News, AP, businesswire.com