SolicitortovisitColumbia

DUNDALK solicitor Sean T O’Reilly last week travelled to Columbia where he is again leading the Irish delegation at this year’s international delegation to Columbia where he will spend ten days meeting lawyers, human rights activists and community groups who live and work under threat in the South American country.

Earlier this month, Sean attended the launch of the judges’ report into 2014 Columbia Caravana, which investigates, records and acts as a witness to crimes, abuse, harassment and killings of lawyers and human rights defenders in Colombia, which was held in Dublin and chaired by the Sunday Times journalist John Mooney.

Former Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, who is the EU Rapporteur in Columbia, spoke of the hopes for future peace and development and the EU’s role in attempting to facilitate and support this.

Sean is again leading the Irish delegation on this year’s international delegation to Colombia, which left Ireland last week.

He said: ‘It’s a great honour to lead Irish lawyers and again we are the second biggest international contingent to travel to Colombia.

‘It is all the more interesting this year given the recent ceasefire between the FARC and government forces there. This year, we are travelling to Cali on the Pacific coast of Columbia where we will be meeting community leaders, trade unionists and lawyers. And while the city is beautiful, we understand there is a lot of lawlessness there and a lot of harassment of community leaders and lawyers, including killings.

‘One of the major differences this year is the ceasefire between the FARC (guerillas) and the government. There have been many false dawns on this front before and the peace process here wouldn’t have the same choreography as the one in Ireland, with some vested interests in Columbia actually opposed to it’.

The group will help to gather testimony from those who are suffering harassment because of their work in Columbia and add to this year’s judges’ report ‘so that people can see what’s really happening here’.

Sean said: ‘From the official point of view, there is no harassment, no-one is being killed and there’s an attitude of ‘ there’s nothing to see here’.

‘But it is believed that lawyers may be under even greater threat now because of the massive ‘development’ going on in rural areas of the country where multinationals, including those from Europe, are putting pressure on local communities to sell their land so they can grow crops on a massive scale, or use the land for mining activities.

‘We want these companies, many of which are headquartered in Europe, to ensure they apply the same standards in Columbia to their land acquisition and development as they have to in Europe. There are trade agreements between the EU and Columbia and it is hoped that lawyers can use these to their benefit so companies will adhere to the same guidelines around development that are applicable in the EU’.