A jury in South Florida has dominated that Chiquita Manufacturers is accountable for eight killings carried out by a right-wing paramilitary group that the corporate helped finance in a fertile banana-growing area of Colombia in the course of the nation’s decades-long inner battle.
The jury on Monday ordered the multinational banana producer to pay $38.3 million to 16 relations of farmers and different civilians who had been killed in separate episodes by the United Self-Protection Forces of Colombia — a right-wing paramilitary group that Chiquita bankrolled from 1997 to 2004.
The corporate 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 choice, which the corporate mentioned it deliberate to attraction, may affect the end result in different fits, authorized specialists mentioned.
The decision 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 mentioned.
“We’re very comfortable concerning the jury’s verdict, however you possibly can’t escape that we’re speaking about horrific abuses,” mentioned Marco Simons, a lawyer for EarthRights Worldwide, an environmental and human rights group, who represented one household within the authorized declare.
Agnieszka Fryszman, one other lawyer who represented the plaintiffs, mentioned, “The decision doesn’t carry 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 choice after two days of deliberation and 6 weeks of trial in U.S. District Court docket in West Palm Seashore, by which legal professionals argued over the motivation for funds that Chiquita executives admitted making to the paramilitary group.
The State Division designated the United Self-Protection Forces of Colombia, often called the AUC, as a international terrorist group in 2001.
Chiquita, as a part of a plea cope with the Division of Justice to settle fees 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-Protection Forces had been a product of Colombia’s brutal civil conflict, which erupted within the Nineteen Sixties and killed no less than 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 conflict led to 2016 when the federal government and the primary leftist group, which was additionally accountable for killing civilians, signed a peace deal.
Legal professionals 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 concern throughout a 7,000-square-mile fertile farming area connecting Panama and Colombia till it disbanded in 2006.
They mentioned the group killed or compelled out farmers, permitting Chiquita to purchase land at depressed values and broaden its operations by changing plantain farms to extra worthwhile banana farms.
Legal professionals representing Chiquita questioned whether or not the victims had been killed by the paramilitaries or by different armed teams and mentioned that the corporate’s staff had additionally been threatened by the paramilitaries. Executives and staff, protection legal professionals mentioned, 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 mentioned in an announcement. “Nonetheless, that doesn’t change our perception that there is no such thing as a authorized foundation for these claims.”
Legal professionals representing the households declined to offer many particulars about their shoppers’ tales exterior of court docket, citing issues for his or her security. However Mr. Simons of EarthRights Worldwide cited different circumstances filed in U.S. courts in opposition to Chiquita that he mentioned confirmed comparable patterns of violence, together with killing relations in entrance of kin.
In a single case, an unidentified lady was touring to a farm by taxi together with her mom and stepfather once they had been stopped by gunmen, he mentioned. The lads 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 called the United Fruit Firm, can be a defendant in a go well with filed in Medellín, Colombia’s second-largest metropolis, asserting that funds Chiquita made to the United Self-Protection Forces rose to involvement in legal actions.
“The identify Chiquita resonates within the latest historical past of the nation,” mentioned Sebastián Escobar Uribe, one of many legal professionals within the Medellín go well with. “If you examine a company with vital monetary muscle in a rustic like Colombia, the judicial system is weak to being co-opted by that firm.”
In america, it’s uncommon to carry a company financially accountable for human rights violations past the nation’s borders, mentioned James Anaya, who teaches worldwide human rights on the College of Colorado Regulation College.
The lawsuit that resulted within the South Florida verdict had been winding its manner by means of the court docket system because it was filed in 2007 and withstood a number of authorized challenges to achieve a trial.
“It’s not inconceivable for these circumstances to occur,” Mr. Anaya mentioned. “There’s actually a path for them.”
However, he added: “It’s not widespread. The whole lot has to fall into place.”
Human rights advocates in Colombia lauded the jury’s verdict.
Gerardo Vega, the previous director of Colombia’s Nationwide Land Company, which is accountable for returning land to individuals who had been displaced by power, mentioned in a video assertion that the ruling was a vindication of the combat in opposition to impunity in america.
“The Colombian justice system must also act,” Mr. Vega mentioned. “We want Colombian judges to convict the businesspeople who, similar to Chiquita, had been paying” paramilitary teams.
Raquel Sena, the widow of a farmworker who was killed within the banana-producing area, mentioned in an interview with a Colombian radio station that the United Self-Protection Forces had killed him after he refused to promote them his plot of farmland.
“I’m by no means going to beat his dying,” she mentioned in a video posted on X. “We would like Chiquita Manufacturers to acknowledge us as a result of they’re those who paid for individuals to get killed right here.”
