EGN NEWS DESK
A jury in South Florida has dominated that Chiquita Brands is chargeable for eight killings carried out by a right-wing paramilitary group that the corporate helped finance in a fertile banana-growing area of Colombia throughout the nation’s decades-long inside battle.
The jury on Monday ordered the multinational banana producer to pay $38.3 million to 16 members of the family of farmers and different civilians who had been killed in separate episodes by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia — a right-wing paramilitary group that Chiquita bankrolled from 1997 to 2004.
The firm has confronted a whole lot of comparable fits in U.S. courts filed by the households of different victims of violence by the paramilitary group in Colombia, however the verdict in Florida represents the primary time Chiquita has been discovered culpable.
The determination, which the corporate stated it deliberate to enchantment, might affect the result in different fits, authorized specialists stated.
The verdict in favor of the victims is a uncommon occasion — in Colombia and elsewhere — by which a non-public company is held accountable to victims for its operation in areas with widespread violence or social unrest, authorized specialists stated.
“We’re very pleased concerning the jury’s verdict, however you possibly can’t escape that we’re speaking about horrific abuses,” stated Marco Simons, a lawyer for EarthRights International, an environmental and human rights group, who represented one household within the authorized declare.
Agnieszka Fryszman, one other lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, stated, “The verdict doesn’t deliver again the husbands and sons who had been killed, however it units the report straight and locations accountability for funding terrorism the place it belongs: at Chiquita’s doorstep.”
The jurors reached their determination after two days of deliberation and 6 weeks of trial in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach, by which attorneys argued over the motivation for funds that Chiquita executives admitted making to the paramilitary group.
The State Department designated the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, often known as the AUC, as a international terrorist group in 2001.
Chiquita, as a part of a plea cope with the Department of Justice to settle costs of doing enterprise with a terrorist group, admitted in 2007 to having paid the paramilitaries $1.7 million, as an investigation revealed.
The United Self-Defense Forces had been a product of Colombia’s brutal civil warfare, which erupted within the Sixties and killed at the very least 220,000 individuals.
They fashioned in 1997 as a coalition of closely armed far-right teams that drug traffickers and businesspeople turned to for defense from leftist guerrilla teams.
The warfare led to 2016 when the federal government and the primary leftist group, which was additionally chargeable for killing civilians, signed a peace deal.
Lawyers representing the households within the South Florida trial argued that Chiquita’s operations benefited from the corporate’s relationship with the paramilitary group, which sowed worry throughout a 7,000-square-mile fertile farming area connecting Panama and Colombia till it disbanded in 2006.
They stated the group killed or pressured out farmers, permitting Chiquita to purchase land at depressed values and increase its operations by changing plantain farms to extra worthwhile banana farms.
Lawyers representing Chiquita questioned whether or not the victims had been killed by the paramilitaries or by different armed teams and stated that the corporate’s workers had additionally been threatened by the paramilitaries. Executives and workers, protection attorneys stated, had been being extorted by the self-defense forces and made funds to make sure their security.
“The state of affairs in Colombia was tragic for thus many,” Chiquita officers stated in an announcement. “However, that doesn’t change our perception that there isn’t any authorized foundation for these claims.”
Lawyers representing the households declined to offer many particulars about their shoppers’ tales outdoors of courtroom, citing issues for his or her security. But Mr. Simons of EarthRights International cited different instances filed in U.S. courts in opposition to Chiquita that he stated confirmed comparable patterns of violence, together with killing members of the family in entrance of kinfolk.
In one case, an unidentified lady was touring to a farm by taxi along with her mom and stepfather once they had been stopped by gunmen, he stated. The males executed the stepfather after which fatally shot the mom as she tried to run away. They then gave the lady the equal of 65 cents to take a bus again to city.
Chiquita, which was previously often known as the United Fruit Company, can also be a defendant in a swimsuit filed in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest metropolis, asserting that funds Chiquita made to the United Self-Defense Forces rose to involvement in felony actions.
“The title Chiquita resonates within the current historical past of the nation,” stated Sebastián Escobar Uribe, one of many attorneys within the Medellín swimsuit. “When you examine an organization with important monetary muscle in a rustic like Colombia, the judicial system is susceptible to being co-opted by that firm.”
In the United States, it’s uncommon to carry an organization financially chargeable for human rights violations past the nation’s borders, stated James Anaya, who teaches worldwide human rights on the University of Colorado Law School.
The lawsuit that resulted within the South Florida verdict had been winding its means by way of the courtroom system because it was filed in 2007 and withstood a number of authorized challenges to achieve a trial.
“It’s not inconceivable for these instances to occur,” Mr. Anaya stated. “There’s definitely a path for them.”
But, he added: “It’s not frequent. Everything has to fall into place.”
Human rights advocates in Colombia lauded the jury’s verdict.
Gerardo Vega, the previous director of Colombia’s National Land Agency, which is chargeable for returning land to individuals who had been displaced by drive, stated in a video assertion that the ruling was a vindication of the battle in opposition to impunity within the United States.
“The Colombian justice system also needs to act,” Mr. Vega stated. “We want Colombian judges to convict the businesspeople who, identical to Chiquita, had been paying” paramilitary teams.
Raquel Sena, the widow of a farmworker who was killed within the banana-producing area, stated in an interview with a Colombian radio station that the United Self-Defense Forces had killed him after he refused to promote them his plot of farmland.
“I’m by no means going to beat his demise,” she stated in a video posted on X. “We need Chiquita Brands to acknowledge us as a result of they’re those who paid for individuals to get killed right here.”
