Parliamentary and trade union leaders from 13 countries joined Mexican union leaders and legislators yesterday to call for an end to the persecution of the Mexican mineworkers’ union and its leader, Napoleón Gómez Urrutia.

The international delegation with members of the special commission of the Mexican Senate established to investigate the strike at the Cananea mine, which has ruin for nearly two years.  The meeting also included federal deputies and leaders of the National Union of Workers (UNT) and Mexican Electrical Workers’ Union (SME).

Jack Layton, leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party (NDP), raised the delegation’s concerns in a meeting with Mexico’s Labor Secretary.  “We made it clear that the government’s interference in union governance, it’s jailing of union leaders and freezing union bank accounts, declaring strikes illegal and failing to prosecute the killers of union leaders, are serious and unacceptable violations of basic human rights,” he stated ... more