December 2006 Colombia Peace Update

In this Update:

Colombia's "Para-Política" Scandal: Time for US to Cut the Cord
A widening scandal linking paramilitary death squads to legislators close to President Álvaro Uribe has shaken Colombian society in recent weeks. As Susana Pimiento writes below, the scandal shows that "paramilitarism" is used by key sectors of the Uribe government for money, to eliminate rivals, and to consolidate power.

The shocking revelations have been detailed in front-page reports this week in the San Francisco Chronicle and Washington Post. The reports show that it is time for the incoming Democratic majority in Congress to fundamentally re-cast US policy toward Colombia. The media attention also opens a window for putting your voice forward, through letters to the editor. Please read on, and click here to send a letter to the editor of the Post or Chronicle.

Political Scandal Reveals Systematic Methods for Evading Justice in Colombia
As if taken from a passage of Garcia Marquez' Chronicle of a Death Foretold, in March 2003, Edualdo Díaz, an army major in the small Caribbean town of El Roble (Sucre), spoke to President Álvaro Uribe, at a community council in front of hundreds of people and on national TV. He told how major politicians in the province, including Sucre Governor Salvador Arana, the head of the regional Inspector's office head Tatiana Moreno, and regional police chief Norman Arango, had removed him from his post and would later have him killed. The reason: Major Díaz had accused the governor of supporting paramilitary militias. A few weeks later, unidentified men seized Major Díaz. His body was found five days later with signs of torture.

What followed also seems as if from Garcia Marquez' fabled town of Macondo: President Uribe appointed the accused governor Arana and police chief Arango to diplomatic posts. Moreno, the regional head of the Inspector General's office, was appointed to the Attorney General's human rights office, charged with investigating massacres. In the investigation itself there were many irregularities: witnesses were actively discouraged from implicating the Sucre governor and the regional inspector's office faxed fabricated testimony to the prosecutor conducting the investigation. Former Attorney General Luis Camilo Osorio himself closed the criminal investigation against Governor Arana. He added that the charges "appear implausible, because one can not believe that someone with the track record and education of Dr. Arana —he is a medical surgeon with broad experience in the public sector and no criminal or disciplinary records — would participate in actions as abhorrent as those that are gratuitously attributed to him."

The state of affairs took a turn earlier this year, when a laptop computer belonging to paramilitary leader "Jorge 40" was seized. The computer is said to contain chilling documentation of how politicians, high officials from different branches of power and paramilitaries operate. As a result, the Colombian Supreme Court has ordered the arrest, with no bail, of three Colombian Congressmen. More than two dozen current and former officials are facing accusations of collaborating with paramilitary groups, including diverting public funds to finance the creation of death squads.

One of the jailed legislators is Senator Álvaro Garcia Romero, a close friend and political associate of Governor Salvador Arana, is accused of organizing paramilitary death squads and ordering the massacre in October 2000 of 15 peasants in Macapeyo, who were murdered using machetes and rocks. He also was reportedly involved in the assassination of an election official, Georgina Narvarez Wilchez, in a scheme designed to fix the 1997 Congress election results in favor of Eric Morris. The Supreme Court ordered Congressman Morris' arrest. Garcia's niece, Judith Morantes Garcia, was later appointed to the third highest position in the Attorney General's office.

Confronted with old and new evidence, the Attorney's General Office had no choice but to reopen the investigation of Mayor's Diaz murder, and now former Governor Arana is on the lam from an Interpol arrest warrant for aggravated murder.

The scandal exposes the macabre ways in which paramilitary death squads and politics function in Colombia. It shows how impunity operates, not as a byproduct of a weak judicial system, but as the result of a strategy to appoint people in key positions of power to ensure the outcome.

With just one exception, all the Congress people involved in the scandal belong to pro-Uribe political parties. Two of the congressmen in jail are members of a party lead by Senator Mario Uribe, President Uribe's first cousin and the sponsor of the lenient and controversial Justice and Peace law passed to demobilize paramilitaries. And the lone congressman with a party not closely linked to Uribe, Álvaro Araujo, is the brother of current Foreign Minister Maria Consuelo Araujo.

Many people are asking how much closer the scandal needs to get to President Uribe before the United States withdraws its apparently unconditional support? Under the so-called Leahy amendment, a portion of the US military aid is conditioned on the Colombian army severing ties with paramilitaries and prosecuting cases of collusion between armed forces and such militias. The recently exposed picture of the Colombian government shows that the political forces in place in Colombia prevent such objectives from being fulfilled.

It is time for the new US Congress to cut military aid to Colombia altogether.

FOR Begins Partnership with Spanish Group Acompaz
The FOR Colombia program has recently signed a partnership agreement with the Spanish organization Acompaz. As result of this partnership, the Colombia Peace Presence Team in San José de Apartadó will be expanded to accommodate an additional Colombia Peace Presence member, bringing the team to three. The expansion of the team, to begin in February 2007, will provide invaluable help in strengthening international support for the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, specifically supporting the Peace Community's return to lands from which they had been forcibly displaced and establishing Humanitarian Zones there. Additionally, the Peace Community will benefit from increased outreach and advocacy in the European Union.

Acompaz was formed in 2005 by members of peace and justice collectives and activists throughout Spain to support the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. In their efforts to support peace communities, Acompaz has focused on: collaborating with other Spanish and European Union NGOs in defense of human rights for the civilian population of Colombia; supporting projects in the community to improve basic health, ecology, sustainable agriculture, community history, and education; supporting the international judicial process that hopes to prosecute the crimes against humanity committed against the Community and end the impunity that has allowed these crimes to continue since 1997; offer support and cooperation with the multiple and diverse collectives in different parts of Europe and the world created in solidarity with the Peace Community of San José, other peace communities and the civilian resistance in Colombia; and participate in the struggle for a nonviolent world and access to land in which peace prevails. For Spanish readers, check their excellent web site: www.acopaz.org.

"Free Trade" — or a New Deal?: Free Trade Agreement Update
In September we asked you to take action to oppose the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA), which the White House had indicated it would sign and forward to Congress for approval.

True to its word, the Administration signed the FTA on November 22, but Congress has not been as compliant as the White House would like. Representatives Charles Rangel (D-NY) and Sander Levin (D-MI), who will chair key committees on trade in the incoming Democratic-majority Congress, have called for renegotiation of the FTA, citing insufficient Colombian labor protections as a major sticking point.

This is good news. But Rangel and Levin's calls for change to the Agreement have been based almost solely on labor objections. They will need to hear from constituents besides labor so that all the problems with the FTA — environmental, agricultural, and more — are also addressed.

Those problems include:

Increased ability for multinational corporations to avoid or change Colombian laws protecting Afro-descendent and indigenous peoples and their land. Mining projects such as the massive Cerrejon Norte coal mine in Colombia, owned by a consortium including an Exxon-Mobil subsidiary, have resulted in the forced internal displacement of entire communities of Afro-descendant peoples. Many of these projects are also polluting rivers, lakes, and rainforests of the Amazon.
Rules on intellectual property, privatization and deregulation of essential services like water, health care, and education that would lead to increased costs and reduced access for the poor. For example, these rules will cause a nearly $900 million annual increase in the price of medicines, according to a study by the Pan American Health Organization, leading to increased illnesses and death among Colombians.
Lowered tariffs on agricultural products, making the country vulnerable to overwhelmingly subsidized imports from the U.S. and severely undermining local farmers. This very thing has happened in Mexico since NAFTA was implemented 12 years ago, where more than 1.3 million farmers have been displaced.

As a recent letter from more than 40 Afro-Colombian organizations to the U.S. Congress opposing the FTA states:
Rather than undermining our local markets, we need increased access to credit and technical assistance for small farmers, we need to improve the systems for transportation and distribution, we need to improve land use and ownership policies, and we need fairer prices for the commodities we produce.

We must work to assure that Congress either rejects this raw deal, or brings about its renegotiation. If renegotiation happens it must involve a complete reworking of the agreement to fully respect human dignity and environmental sustainability. Next month we will ask you to join us in communicating these concerns to your representative in the new Congress.

Mothers of La Candelaria
Path of Hope Awarded Colombian 2006 National Peace Prize
by Susana Pimiento Chamorro

Every Wednesday, in the atrium of La Candelaria church in downtown Medellí, over 100 women meet. They all carry blown-up pictures of their "disappeared" family members. The group that started in 1998 under the name "Mothers of la Candelaria, Path of Hope" last month was awarded the prestigious Colombian National Peace Prize.

They are mothers, wives, children, and relatives of people forcibly disappeared in the Colombian war. Colombia holds a high number of people forcibly disappeared, between 7,000 and 14,000. According to the attorney general's office, in 2005 alone, 839 people were forcibly taken. Over 80% of cases are attributed to right-wing paramilitary forces, often with the support of the Colombian armed forces.

Each member of Madres de la Candelaria group carries a tragic story of the loss of a close relative. Like that of Zaira Viviana Torres: "My mom's name was Lilia Maria Torres George. On August 14, 2001, she was at a notary office in Medellín when the paramilitaries arrived and took her. First they said they were intelligence agents, with the police, and then that it was a robbery. My mom was 34 years old when they took her. That same day, my grandmother went to file a complaint, but she was detained at the police station while they took my mom out of Medellín. The next day, my mom called us saying to pick up all the children. She never called again.

"A week later, on August 21st, a man called us telling us we ought to cooperate, to stop filing complaints because our mother was held by [paramilitary] commander Carlos Castaño. He didn't call again. A week later, a supposed friend of my mother's who was in prison, called to tell us that my mom had been tortured, dismembered and buried in a grave in Medellí. That's all we have been told. I was ten years old; my siblings were five years old and ten weeks old."

One of the group's purposes is to support each other so they know they are not alone in their pain. Members listen to each other's stories and keep the memory of their loved ones alive. As one member told Fellowship of Reconciliation volunteer Trish Abbott, "[W]e console each other and we are there for each other for support and comfort on important days, like anniversaries of our loved ones' disappearances. It is very important to know that we have friends and to have a space to meet every week. Because at home, we do not cry so as to not distress our family members who are still alive and present with us, so that they don't feel they are not as important to us as those who have been taken. It is important for me to have this space where we can express and show our grief."

Their work goes beyond providing mutual support. The group also demands political negotiations leading to the release of kidnapped civilians by armed groups, which the state has undertaken for prominent people kidnapped in the past. Current Vice-president Francisco Santos is one of them. Mothers of La Candelaria demand that similar efforts are also taken to seek the liberation of their relatives and point out that difference in class and income should not be a constraint.

Sadly, most often, the people who are taken are later executed. For that reason, the group seeks disclosure of where the remains can be found. This issue has been a central topic on the implementation this year of the law for the demobilization of paramilitary groups.

Since 2005, FOR's Colombia Peace Presence has supported Madres de la Candelaria. Each delegation to Colombia includes a visit to the group, a sign of international solidarity. Some of the stories will be featured in the Colombian Women Peace report that will be published by FOR next spring.

Letter from the Field
An Unlikely Prisoner
By Gilberto Villaseñor III

"What were your days like in prison?" Janice asked. It was a little odd talking about prison life in Claudia Montoya's living room with her mother and teenage cousins looking on, all of them busily making Christmas ornaments with beads and string. Claudia, a lawyer for the Red Juvenil (Youth Network) of Medellín who is currently under house arrest, had learned this skill in a prison workshop.

Claudia responded, "Each morning we were awakened at 6:30 am by the guards, at 7:30 am we ate a sensible breakfast. During the day they kept us busy with workshops, anything so we wouldn't think. And we were in bed by 8 pm."

Had you been walking through her quiet middle class neighborhood that day, that topic of conversation might have been the furthest thing from your mind. Claudia discussed the process of her arrest. "There were security forces everywhere up and down my block and people with guns on rooftops. I was afraid that I would be seen being arrested and taken out of my house but I was grateful that no one saw me. There was so much police, you couldn't see me anyway." There is an aspect of public shaming related to being a political prisoner, a way of making you look guilty even if you aren't.

As a lawyer for the Red Juvenil, she has been working with conscientious objectors and political prisoners since 2002. The Red works with youth in teaching about nonviolence and conscientious objection to participation in Colombia's civil war. We were all very excited to finally meet her because she had recently been released from prison where she had been held on charges of rebellion since October 18 — one month and twenty days in all. The Red Juvenil, an organization that FOR accompanies, considers her a political prisoner and someone who has been detained because of her political work on behalf of her organization in search of nonviolent solutions to Colombia's civil war.

Her house arrest continues pending the outcome of the judicial process against her — which may last as long as another six months. According to the testimonies of five former guerrillas, she had been seen dressed as a guerrilla and carrying a rifle. She was moved into house arrest when three of the testimonies were considered to be contradictory.

FOR's Colombia team been following her case and issued a letter of support for the Red's work in response to Claudia's detention and threats made against other Red members. We were prepared to visit her in prison on a recent trip to Medellin, when we were told about the good news of her release. On December 12, team members visited Claudia at her house in Medellí.

Claudia isn't the typical image of a prisoner. She is a little more than five feet tall and quite thin. Her face seemed to be chiseled in the way that happens to people when they've been eating less than usual. She is a soft-spoken and articulate person, traits not normally considered to be assets in prison, but in her case made her into an undesirable prisoner. Luckily, Claudia understood very well the legal process against her and knew when her rights were being violated. She protested when she was pressured to submit to being part of a line-up without her lawyer present. Other prisoners with less education or legal experience haven't been so lucky.

Her mother brought us cookies and coffee as we talked. The sun beamed through the skylight in the middle of the house and illuminated the comfortable living room where we were all gathered. Two loud, brusque politicos wandered in, speaking a mile a minute. What was discernable was that they, too, recognized the injustice of what Claudia had been through and wanted to show their support. Family pictures formed the backdrop of our meeting and Claudia smiled back at all of us, along with the rest of her family.

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December 2006 Colombia Peace Update

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End U.S. Military Aid to Colombia

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