You are hereColombia Peace News: December 2008
Colombia Peace News: December 2008
Stand up against Colombian government spying on nonviolent organizations!
Call on the State department to act and make a donation to ensure that this vital peace work continues.
- FOR Under Surveillance!
- Indigenous: "We Continue Resisting the Armed Groups that Attack Us"
- Raffle Winners
- Powerful Video on Extrajudicial Killings
- U.S. Presbyterians Call for Engagement with Colombia, End to Military Aid
- Colombia: Social Conflict Replaces Warfare
- Upcoming: No Bases Conference; Volunteer Training; Delegations
FOR Under Surveillance!
"Speak Truth to Power" takes on a new dimension when you realize you are under surveillance! That is exactly the position we at FOR find ourselves in once again. In 2005, we informed FOR supporters that more than 10,000 pages of FBI files had been released to us, documenting decades of surveillance of the organization. Now, we have just learned that for two full years - since December 2006 - our Latin America program has been targeted and monitored by state agents. Specifically, the e-mail messages intercepted include FOR communication in the US and with Colombia!
This covert action is a direct violation of our right to privacy as a humanitarian activist organization. FOR’s e-mail account was among more than 150 e-mail accounts of human rights organizations, journalists, academics, and labor organizations that were targeted. We’ve also learned that the Colombian military paid for computer hard drives "of interest to intelligence" agencies. The June 2007 break-in and stealing of FOR’s Bogotá office computers containing sensitive files on our work with members of Colombian peace communities may have been a direct result of this state-sanctioned surveillance.
FOR is meeting this attack on civil rights by calling on U.S. and Colombian officials for a full investigation, sanctioning of officials responsible, and the erasure of intercepts. Join us in exposing this militaristic intervention. Click here to write to the State Department’s chief for human rights concerns.
We also hope you will take this opportunity to show the Colombian and U.S. regimes that you support democracy, privacy, and self-determination by making a donation reaffirming your commitment to FOR.
Update: Ten days ago, we first announced the intercepts on our email placed by the Colombian judicial police for the last two years, apparently using surveillance software provided by the United States, and asked you to write the State Department. More than 500 of you sent faxes to Assistant Secretary of State Kramer! Click here to read more details and the latest updates on this case.
"We Continue Resisting the Armed Groups that Attack Us"
Last night, the Nasa indigenous community, together with the Indigenous
Guard rescued six officials from Jamabaló County and an Education
Ministry representative who had been kidnapped by an illegal group on the
road between Jambaló, Silvia and the city of Popayán. The
seven were traveling in a mini-bus at 6pm when they were intercepted by
four hooded and armed men who identified themselves as members of the FARC.
After intimidating them they were taken toward the Pioyá Indigenous Territory with purpose of taking them into the jungle. An hour later, the Jambaló community learned of events and immediately called indigenous authorities, who quickly began operations in the area to rescue those kidnapped. When the kidnappers realized they were being pursued by the community, they had to separate in two groups: three guerrillas took a couple and the other group took the rest in the vehicle, at about 9pm. The community continued in pursuit until they surrounded them, so that they were forced to abandon the captives. “The Indians are here, the Council is here, better to leave them,” the guerrillas said when they felt the community near, said Emilce Muñoz, one of those kidnapped.
While this was happening, another group of men, women, youth and children, guided by the community’s radio station, followed the trail of the couple until they caught up with them at midnight. The guerrillas tried to intimidate the community by firing shot in the air, but the resistance of a civilian community with its words and thought was stronger, and they managed to rescue the last two captives. After the pursuit, the subversives left behind a revolver, now held by the Pioyá indigenous authorities.
This is not the first time these events have occurred in indigenous territories,
especially Pioyá, where the Nasa community has taken action to resist – the
rescue of a Swiss citizen in 2003, rescue of helicopter using public funds
in 2006, deactivation of anti-personnel mines in El Carmen settlement,
eradication of marijuana this year, and now the rescue of seven kidnapped people.
In a public act, the events [of November 26] were denounced and the confiscated weapon was destroyed as a rejection of all the armed groups that provoke imbalance in our communities. Because we don’t agree with an army that victimizes the civilian population with ‘false positives’ nor with guerrillas that say they are of the people while the attack the people’s rights.
For a longer first-hand account in Spanish of these amazing events, click here.
Raffle Winners
From nearly a thousand tickets sold, the winning ticket for two round-trip tickets from the United States to Colombia were chosen at a San Francisco event full of information, poetry and music on December 7. And the winner is…. John Law, of Portola Valley, California. John first traveled to Central America in 1988 on a delegation led by FOR Colombia Committee member Phil McManus, and it was a watershed in his life. “From my point of view, that was my primary introduction to Latin America.” His wife Peggy Law, a progressive radio producer, will travel with him to Colombia.
Colombian human rights activist Amanda Romero gave a stirring visual presentation about conflict and grassroots nonviolent resistance in Colombia, the Global Fund for Women spoke of displaced women’s organizations building from the ground up, Christy Rodgers read translations of Maria Mercedes Carranza’s dark poetry, FOR presented an award to the Oakland youth organization Bay Peace, and Aluna played its irresistible Afro-Colombian rhythms.
There were 30 other raffle prizes awarded, including one for the most tickets sold – 70, by returned FOR Colombia volunteer Marcie Ley. Thanks to all of those who purchased and sold raffle tickets, those who donated prizes, and to event co-sponsors. We look forward to seeing you all in 2009.
Powerful Video on Extrajudicial Killings in Colombia
A new 13-minute video from Witness for Peace documents the violence
of war. Click
here to watch now.
After seeing this shocking story - just one of thousands - please take action today!
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Demand that Congress immediately end all funding to the abusive Colombian military. Click here to send a message to your member of Congress.
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Please also send a message of support to members of Jose’s family—including Martha—who have risked their lives to speak out about her father’s murder. The Giraldo family urged our friends at Witness for Peace to use their original video footage of the day their father was murdered. We are humbled by their courage to share their story, despite the risks to their own security.
U.S. Presbyterians Call for Engagement with Colombia, End to Military Aid
The U.S. Presbyterian Church (PC-USA)’s General Assembly approved
a strongly-worded resolution on Colombia earlier this year. We conclude
the year with the good news of the Presbyterians’ commitment and
firm witness on U.S. policy toward Colombia. The PC-USA calls on its members
and congregations to study Colombia’s situation, pray for the work
of its church there, advocate with U.S. elected officials
“to lay down the weapons of violence and support the nonviolent struggle of the churches and civil society of Colombia and those in the U.S. who stand beside Colombians to end the violence” The resolution urges advocacy of the following in advocacy with lawmakers:
“a. Withdrawing military support to the government of Colombia.
b. Reorienting U.S. policies toward Colombia in such a way as to encourage a more equitable distribution of that country’s immense wealth, and to protect the rights of groups threatened by the interests of large corporations, including indigenous people, Afro-Colombians, labor leaders, human rights workers, and many campesinos.
c. Ending the aerial fumigation for coca crops and focusing on programs that provide higher levels of support for farmers to convert to alternative crops and that reduce demand for drugs in the United States.
d. Transferring U.S. support to the growing civil society committed to democracy and nonviolence.
e. Providing aid to strengthen health care, education, and nutrition, especially among the displaced.
f. Increasing aid for resettlement of displaced persons in their homelands.
g. Channeling aid through nongovernmental organizations.
h. Supporting the commendable work of the United Nations in Colombia, especially the work of the high commissioner of refugees with internal refuges, displaced women, and threatened indigenous communities.
i. Ratifying and urging Colombia to also ratify, the United Nations Convention Against Corruption.”
The General Assembly also called on its global ministry to continue monitoring the situation in Colombia, to keep the church abreast of its finding, and offer advice on how Presbyterians can continue to support peacekeeping efforts. The church’s Washington Office was directed to educate Presbyterian Members of Congress about the impacts on Colombians of Plan Colombia and the prospective Free Trade Agreement which “would have grave consequences for workers, indigenous and Afro-Colombian populations, and the environment.”
There will be 43 Presbyterian Members of the incoming Congress, including Frank Wolf, the ranking Republican on the House Foreign Operations panel that funds most of Plan Colombia; Lynn Woolsey (CA), co-chair of the Progressive Caucus; and John Spratt, the chair of the powerful House Budget Committee, which writes budgets that show the nation’s priorities in drug policy and other areas that affect Colombia
The resolution also offered support for the Presbyterian Accompaniment Program in Colombia, initiated by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, in response to requests from Colombian Presbyterians.
FOR applauds this prophetic statement by the U.S. Presbyterian Church, and we urge other churches and faiths to follow the Presbyterians’ example.
Colombia: Social Conflict Replaces Warfare
Social conflict has overtaken the center of the political stage, displacing President Alvaro Uribe, who merely repeats the script that brought him so much success in the war: the Indians, sugarcane workers, teachers, government workers, truckers, and anyone else who protests and mobilizes is being manipulated by the FARC guerrillas.
"If you watch what is happening in Cauca department, you can understand that a new political perspective has substituted social action for armed confrontation," says journalist and sociologist Alfredo Molano. In Cauca, in southwestern Colombia, tens of thousands of Nasa Indians along with other ethnicities have been on a "Minga por la Vida," a collective mobilization in support of life values, since Oct. 12. And an equal number of sugarcane cutters have been on strike for two months. Something is changing in Colombia.
So far in 2008, the government has hit the FARC rebel forces hard, but political initiative no longer resides in the president’s Nariño Palace offices. In the street, ways of doing politics are being reconfigured into mass actions that cannot be denounced as terrorism, as the president and his closest ministers would wish. The temptation to criminalize social protest can lead to a grave failure for Uribe, because people are beginning to overcome their fear, and even the union movement is showing its face.
Strong denunciations of human rights violations are beginning to appear at the same time. Uribe was forced to retire 27 military officers in a scandal that cost the Army commander, General Mario Montoya, his job. It was proven that military troops kidnapped poor young men from urban peripheries and later counted them as dead "guerrillas" in the mountains. Three thousand members of the military are being investigated by the justice system. In the last televised U.S. presidential debate, Barack Obama told John McCain that as long as trade union members were being murdered in Colombia, the Free Trade Agreement would not be signed.
Hundreds of Protests
September and October have been filled with strikes, work stoppages, and demonstrations. Federal Justice Department workers carried out a prolonged strike for better wages and a department budget that would guarantee its autonomy. The government declared a state of "internal disturbance," an outlandish reaction showing the mindset of the government that thinks it sees guerrillas behind every union, every strike, and every protest. Shortly afterward, federal workers in the electoral system, the "Registraduría," followed suit, as later did teachers and truck drivers who had been on strike in August.
On Sept. 15, 12,000 sugarcane cutters went on strike and occupied eight sugar mills in Cauca Valley. The cutters, almost all of whom are Afro-Colombians, arise at four in the morning, work from 6:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. under a punishing sun, and return home around 8:00 p.m., after making 5,400 slashes with their machetes and inhaling smoke from the burning canes and the herbicide glyphosate used on the plantations.
They earn about $10 a day and must pay for their own social security, tools, work clothes, and transportation to the cane field. At dusk, long brown silhouettes can be seen along the Pan-American Highway between Cali and Popayán, staggering like zombies after a criminally brutal workday.
At the beginning of the strike, they described their miserable living and working conditions and won the support of a good part of the population that usually turns its back on demands by Afro-Colombians and indigenous people. The authorities were surprised by the long continuation of a strike they thought would be over in a few days. The demands are simple: the cutters want contracts and wages for days not worked when the mills are shut down and for days when they seek medical treatment, since accidents at work disable 200 workers each year. And they want to eliminate the mobile scales that tip in the owners’ favor.
For the government and the Association of Sugarcane Growers, the main problem is that the strike forced the importation of sugar from Ecuador and Bolivia, paralyzed the production of ethanol, and raised the price of gasoline. In a show of little common sense, the minister of Social Protection told the parliament that the strike was not a social problem but a protest by criminals. Several cane cutters were detained, and it was decided to expel foreign journalists who were covering the strike.
The labor reforms approved in Colombia in 1990 and, especially, in 2002, completely deregulated the labor market. In 1992, for each temporary job, five permanent ones were created. With the establishment of the Associated Work Cooperatives (CTAs), labor’s map was turned on its head: in the first 10 months of 2008, for each permanent job, 10 temporary jobs were created, according to a study by the National University.
With the CTAs, employers avoid paying fiscal costs and other taxes to the state and enjoy a huge reduction in labor costs. The U.S. Congress questioned the "dumping" of the labor force, among other issues, in order to freeze the signing of the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia.
The cane cutters redoubled their resistance to the owners, who had to spend 54 days negotiating with delegates from the Sinalcorteros Union. The cutters were unable to eliminate the CTAs or get an agreement on direct contracts, but they won a 12% increase in wages, control over the weighing scales, provision of tools, broader owner coverage of missed work for illness or accidents, and a work day ending at 4:00 p.m. The union came out of this strengthened: it went from 870 to 3,000 members.
Deterioration in working conditions and the constant increase in the cost of food is at the root of the re-launching of the work protest. That is why Molano, persecuted by a government that forced him into a six-year exile, insists that: "The current protest is the tip of the iceberg of a social movement that can move toward the democratization of the country." The national strike by the CUT union on Oct. 23, the first of its magnitude in years, can be taken as a sign of evolving changes.
The Great Indigenous "Minga"
The most important protest, which disturbs the government, began on Oct. 12—the Minga of Indigenous Peoples—a mobilization of collective and community work that seeks to reverse the situation of Colombia’s 100 ethnic groups and was called by the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC), Cauca Regional Indigenous Council (CRIC), and Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN).
There are five demands: rejection of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States, which they consider an agreement "between owners and against the people"; repeal of the constitutional reforms that subject indigenous peoples to isolation and death; rejection of Plan Colombia, "which infests our lands and sows them with displacement and death"; government fulfillment of its agreements after the 1991 El Nilo massacre—in which 20 Indians were killed from the Nasa tribe, the most mobilized and best organized indigenous group—and that include the transfer of thousands of acres of land promised by the state as compensation.
The indigenous mobilization began with the blocking of the strategically important Pan-American Highway by some 10,000 people who were brutally attacked by the armed forces, with two dead and some 90 wounded, mostly from gunshots. The communities retreated and occupied other sections of the highway. When the government refused to meet with them, they began a march toward Cali, joined by sugarcane workers and other union groups.
As on previous occasions, the Indians were catalysts for social action, since their demands are more political than those of other sectors, and they are better able to explain them. They denounced the fact that in the six years of the Uribe administration, 1,243 Indians were murdered from the 100-plus ethnic groups in Colombia, and 54,000 were displaced from their lands. The motto, "We are all cane cutters, we are all Indians," showed a new political and social connection in a country until recently polarized, and paralyzed, by war.
In Cali more that 20,000 indigenous people waited for Uribe to show up in order to begin a round of conversations, after having walked for a week along the Pan-American Highway. Uribe finally arrived as the Indians, tired of waiting, were leaving. That mis-encounter of Sunday, Oct. 19, was not improved by the Nov. 2 meeting in La María (Piendamó), where thousands of indigenous people have been gathered since Oct. 12 and have formed what they call a Land of Dialogue, Coexistence, and Negotiation.
After six hours of listening to presidential arrogance and providing data to show the continual violation of human rights in Colombia, the Indigenous and Popular Minga decided to "walk the word," to keep walking in support of life. They actually took the same path as all the indigenous peoples in the continent—after dozens of meetings, they decided to keep moving forward.
For the full text of this article, go to: http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5725
Translated for the Americas Policy Program by Maria Roof. Raúl Zibechi is international analyst for Brecha of Montevideo, Uruguay, lecturer and researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to several social groups. He is a monthly collaborator with the Americas Policy Program (www.americaspolicy.org).
Upcoming events
Security Without Empire: National Organizing Conference on Foreign Military Bases
“The only truly common elements in the totality of America’s foreign bases are imperialism and militarism – an impulse on the part of our elites to dominate other peoples largely because we have the power to do so.” - Chalmers Johnson, former CIA Consultant, Prof. Emeritus University of California
February 27-March 2 at American University, Washington, DC
This inter-active conference will feature workshops, presentations by international and local activists, planning for action, lobby skills session, a Pentagon vigil and Congressional advocacy.
For more information and to register, click here.
Or contact GGold@afsc.org or call 617-661-6130
Organized by the National Project on U.S. Military Bases, made up of organizers from American Friends Service Committee, American University Department of Anthropology, Code Pink, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, Granny Peace Brigade/No Bases, Institute for Policy Studies, , International Women’s Network Against Militarism, Southwest Workers Union, United for Peace & Justice, U.S. Peace Council, Pacific School of Religion/Institute for Leadership Development and Study of Pacific and Asian North American Religion, Veterans For Peace.
Upcoming Delegations
March 27-April 6, 2009: Youth Arts and Action Delegation. Builds on the dynamic experience of the first youth arts and action delegation in 2008 and the groups of conscientious objectors in Medellín and Bogotá. This delegation will be the focus of a documentary film produced by two participants. $1000 from Bogotá.
August 15-29, 2009: Delegation to San José Peace Community, Medellín and Eastern Antioquia. Witness the incredible commitment and experience of the Peace Community of San José and other Colombian grassroots initiatives. $1500 from Bogotá.
