May 2011 Colombia Peace Update
Contents of this Update:
- Free Trade Moment
- Rights for Conscientious Objectors Now!
- Booklets: What’s Land Got to Do With It?
- Land Restitution in Trouble
- Mercenaries
- Mexico’s Anti-Drug War March Demands Change
- Militarizing Honduras: An open letter to some US companies
- Niña, Pinta, Santa Maria, and the U.S. Southern Command
- Brief: Armed conflict recognized
Free Trade Moment
Representative George Miller was right when he told Congress two weeks ago, at a hearing on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement:
“What do you get when you protest your rights in Colombia? You get assassinations. You get death squads against union members, union leaders and members of union families all across the country. The American worker can compete, but you can’t compete against the Colombian army, the Colombian death squads, the Chinese army – that’s not fair competition. But that’s what is protected in these trade agreements.”
On May 23, Carlos Arturo Castro became the eighth Colombian union leader murdered in 2011.
The time is now! Business interests are pushing the Obama Administration and Congress to pass the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and our best bet to stop it in its tracks is to raise our voices and make our opposition heard. There are a variety of ways you can get involved and join the movement.
Click here to find ways that you can get your message into the media, make sure your elected officials get the message, schedule an event, and organize in your community.
The Presbyterian Peace Fellowship and the Igleslia Presbiteriana de Colombia invite you to join them in a seven day public fast, June 5-12, 2011, to oppose the U.S./Colombia FTA becoming law. 160 Colombian Presbyterians have already committed to join in resisting the US/Colombia FTA! Read more information and how you can participate.
Rights for Conscientious Objectors Now!
The struggle to respect the human rights of young people is gaining ground. We need your help to keep the pressure on.
These days in Bogota, there are more and more people talking about the illegality of street round ups and the right to declare yourself a conscientious objector. There are articles in the press about street round ups and the struggle for conscientious objection.
A month ago, members of Colombian conscientious objector groups from Medellín (the Red Juvenil or Youth Network) and Bogota (ACOOC or Collective Action of Conscientious Objectors) along with international representatives from CIVIS, a Swedish agengy and FOR met with the director of the United Nations in Colombia who reiterated that UN is concerned about the issue. Last week 100 people attended a public forum to discuss both philosophical and political views related to conscientious objection and how these histories of struggle have developed in the United States, Europe and Colombia.
And yet, street round ups continue. We need your help to put a stop to this illegal practice. Please take action here by sending a message to the Minister of Defense that you are concerned about the ongoing illegal practice of street round ups and that the Ministry of Defense should emit a statement to this effect.
We are working to set up a meeting with the Minister of Defense himself and will share the number of people who have taken action from around the world to defend the rights of young people. We will update you on the outcome of this meeting.
See the section on our work to support conscientious obejctors in Colombia.
What’s Land Got to Do With It?
Colombia: Answers to the questions you always wanted to ask
Did you enjoy a banana this morning for breakfast? Cereal or coffee? Did you get to school or work today in a car or a bus that requires gas? Using the earth’s precious resources connect all of us to land: whether that be the land we live on, that land that provides our food or far away lands used to make many other products we consume.
This handy little booklet that fits in your pocket and is full of photos and quotes, explores how all of us are connected to land and in particular how land has been central to Colombia’s conflict over the last 40 plus years. It is a great popular education resource for organizations and individuals alike who are working to educate folks about what drives the conflict in Colombia and how the U.S. is involved.
Available in bulk orders, for $25 for 20 copies postpaid, $60 for 50 copies. Individual copies are $1.75 postpaid.
Click here to order your copies for your community group, you, and your friends.
You can also download a digital copy here (large PDF file, 25 MB) to view on your computer.
Land Restitution in Trouble
By Susana Pimiento
On May 5, Colombian Congress’s Human Rights Commission held a special hearing in San Josesito, a settlement of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community. The Peace community’s security concerns, such as the existence of four paramilitary bases in the area and the persistent attacks by army-backed demobilized guerrillas were highlighted in the hearing.
Rep. Ivan Cepeda said in a radio interview that San José de Apartadó has been seized by paramilitaries. “The collusion between paramilitary structures, the army and the national police in an radius of just few kilometers, is beyond our understanding,” he said. This, “in an area that is perfectly controlled by the army but apparently also controlled by paramilitary groups.”
The special hearing at the Peace Community occurred amidst a bitter discussion of the Victims Law that was making its transit through Colombian congress and has been used by some, including former President Uribe, to torpedo land restitution efforts, under the excuse that land restitution would promote illegal occupation, thus threatening large land owners.
Indeed, in a May 11 radio interview, President Uribe aired his opposition to acknowledging that there is an armed conflict in Colombia and the land reparation clause in the victims’ law, saying that such recognition would promote illegal occupations. As an example, he referred to the presence of people associated with the Communist Party in Apartado that he said were behind illegal land occupations. On his twitter account, Uribe also posted comments making insidious accusations against Cepeda and other members of Congress for visiting San José de Apartadó.
Revolt in Urabá: Local politicians behind illegal occupation
President Uribe was referring to the revolt that took place during the first week of May, in which hundreds of families illegally occupied lands in several municipalities of Urabá. Those occupations took place simultaneously, and were clearly an organized effort. Press reports indicate that each family was paid between US$10-$50 to take part. The Colombian agriculture minister has long dismissed the argument that the Victims Law promotes illegal occupation, and referring to the invasions in Urabá, he pointed out that politicians were behind them. Indeed, Chigorodó city council member Alexander Londoño Machado, was armed, encouraging illegal occupation and was arrested. The Antioquia interior secretary and two other council members of Chigorodo have been linked to the occupations.
Press reports also indicate that the families that participated in the illegal invasions came from urban areas in Uraba and that, through the illegal occupations, local politicians were hoping not only to get votes in the upcoming regional elections, but also to change development regulations, claiming that those families represent the region housing deficit.
Land Restitution Leaders React
Community leaders see the problem of illegal occupation beyond local elections tactics. In their view, it is clear that paramilitaries are behind those illegal occupation efforts as well as behind torpedoing any land restitution attempts. As Carmen Valencia, with Land and Life Corporation, a grassroots organization working on land restitution, stated when asked the question of who was behind the illegal occupations: “A spoon cannot be moved here without being noted by or the Self-Defense [forces]’ permission, so one cannot explain if it wasn’t them, and if it was another armed group, how 6,000 or 7,000 people could mobilize in three days without the Self-Defense [forces] reacting.”
The Larger Picture: True reparations?
The victims law was finally passed on May 24, without the support of many victims groups. Since his inauguration, President Santos had made the passage of laws for victims and land restitution a big priority of his government, in contrast with President Uribe, who sank a similar bill during his tenure. Although many hail Santos’ efforts as an advance, victims and human rights groups have all along identified serious flaws in the restitution regime.
The victims statute reflects an attempt to move forward within a post-conflict framework, which would be desirable if post-conflict conditions truly existed. There is plenty of evidence that the paramilitary demobilization initiative implemented during Uribe’s tenure was a failure. Even though over a dozen of kingpins turned themselves in and were subsequently extradited to the US on narcotrafficking charges, paramilitary structures were not dismantled, a violent struggle to fill the leadership vacuum took place, while the victims of their numerous crimes saw very little true reparation or justice. The impunity rate for the crimes committed by the paramilitaries is practically 100%. The Colombian state has failed to secure “no repetition” for the multiple human rights violations (forced displacement, threats to human rights defenders, etc)a key condition to move ahead in a post-conflict phase.
Not surprisingly, one of the main critics to the victims statute is its failure to truly recognize the ongoing armed conflict and the paramilitary structures that have been main engines of forced displacement, not only causing it, but ensuring that it persists amidst rampant impunity. For the past two years, a chorus has insisted that in Colombia paramilitaries are a feature of the past. Government, military and even diplomatic missions insist on referring to paramilitaries as criminal bands or BACRIM, and portrayed as examples of organized crime. Article 3 of the recently passed Victims Statue defines victims states as those affected by the “armed conflict”, therefore excluding under this definition victims or organized crime.
Such deliberate exclusion of paramilitaries happens despite a persistent pattern of killing community leaders, particularly leaders involved in land restitution efforts. In March, San Jose de Apartadó’s Bernardo Rios and two other leaders involved in land restitution were murdered by paramilitaries.
The list continued growing: On May 9, Albeiro Valdés, became the sixth person to be killed from the victims’ association Asovirestibi in Necoclí municipality, just a few months after winning a legal battle to get back the land he and several other families were forced off of by paramilitaries. Martha Gaibao, the spokesperson of a hundred families in La Apartada, Cordoba, was gunned down April 27 after the central government relocated the families she was representing. And the list of victims continues growing. On May 17, the Latin American Working Group and Lutheran World Relief issued a report on how paramilitary bands operate in Northern Colombia.
The last word on the victims law has not been said yet. It will surely go to the Constitutional Court, where many of its provisions will be challenged. Then, victims will have an opportunity to advance the protection of their rights. Among them, indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians, disproportionally impacted by the armed armed conflict, may argue they were not adequately consulted as mandated by the Constitution regarding the victims regime. Just this month, the Constitutional Court struck down the new Mining Code on the grounds that it had not properly consulted indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombians for the impacts of mining on their territories, thus violating the prior informed consent required by the Colombian Constitution.
Construction Companies Urge Not to Bid on “Violent Outcomes” in Honduras
More than 70 religious leaders, organizations, and academics on May 26 urged companies not to bid on a $25 million contract to upgrade a U.S. military base in Honduras, saying the base “violates Honduran sovereignty and the principles of democracy.” The Army Corps of Engineers contract is for barracks for enlisted soldiers at Soto Cano Air Base in Honduras.
Honduras has seen extensive human rights violations since a June 2009 coup overturned the presidency of Manuel Zelaya, who is returning to Honduras on May 28 Soto Cano was used for refueling when Zelaya was illegally and forcibly removed from the country, the U.S. State Department has acknowledged.
Leaders of Catholic, United Methodist, Presbyterian, Jewish, and other faiths, 26 organizations, and 30 university professors and academics, including Noam Chomsky, told the companies that the U.S. military is “supporting anti-democratic, violent and wealthy sectors in Honduran society” and that the contract “is not worth the costs.”
In their letter, the leaders cited the Honduran constitution’s prohibition on a permanent foreign military presence, and said the “use of ‘hooches’ instead of permanent barracks on Soto Cano attempted to paper over this prohibition by making the U.S. base ‘temporary,’ which would be definitively changed by the upcoming contract.”
More than 40 companies (see list) indicated their interest in the Army Corps contract, and some of them conducted a site visit to Soto Cano May 25.
U.S. forces on Soto Cano conduct training and other assistance to the Honduran military. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights and other human rights organizations say the Honduran armed forces have carried out killings and arbitrary detentions of journalists, human rights defenders, gay and lesbian people, and opponents of the current government.
Honduras has among the highest murder rates in the world, as violence and drug trafficking have spiraled since the coup. Defense Department contracts in Honduras have more than doubled since 2007. “Whether or not the U.S. military presence is contributing to the violence, it certainly is not reducing it,” the letter said.
Mexico’s Anti-Drug War March Demands Far-Reaching Political Reforms
By Laura Carlsen
May 9 - Following a four-day march from Cuernavaca to Mexico City, an estimated 90,000 protesters poured into the central plaza. The march was led by relatives of victims and convoked by the poet, Javier Sicilia, whose son was brutally assassinated in March. Protesters in the march demanded far-reaching changes in Mexico’s security policy and an end to the “war on drugs”. In speeches and documents they also called for political reforms to go the root of the alarming deterioration in public safety and well-being since President Felipe Calderón deployed the army in an offensive against organized crime in December of 2006.
Read the rest of this commentary at the Center for International Policy Americas blog.
Mercenaries
By Daniel Coronell
from SEMANA, May 21, 2011
This week, The New York Times published an article about a secret army in the Arab Emirates. Most of these men come from Colombia.
Many of them have no military training at all. They are guards who exchanged their poncho, thermos and shotgun for a rifle, an uncertain destiny and a vocation disdained by many: they are mercenaries. They sell themselves to the highest bidder to kill or die in foreign wars. Today they are in Abu Dabi. Behind the adventure that led these guards of frozen mornings in Bogota to the burning sands of the Middle East there is a strange business.
The improvised soldiers of fortune, signed up by an international company, received lightening military instruction on farms and on Colombian military facilities. For that they used weapons from the government or confiscated from guerrillas. Someone from the armed forces supports the multi-million dollar business in the export of mercenaries.
A series of photographs, taken in April 2010, shows a retired major named Fierro linked to the opeation, together with a U.S. man apparently named Robert Bowen. With them are another three foreigners and retired sergeant Victor Diaz, also part of the recruiting team. The photo shows a military lectern and in back is a sign on which you can see the acronym CCOPE, which [in Spanish] stands for Joint Special Operations Command, based in Facatativá, Cundinamarca state. [FOR note: CCOPE was approved for U.S. military assistance in 2009-2010, as well as in previous years.] (See photo)
Another image against shows Sergeant Diaz (ret.) giving firing instructions to two people, apparently women. A soldier in camouflage uniform accompanies him. (See photo)
The third photo shows Major William Bode, the operation’s program manager, next to the two women and two soldiers in camouflage. On a desk are bent providers and weapons different from those used by the Colombian military. (See photo)
This week, The New York Times published an article on the appearance of a secret army in the United Arab Emirates. Its mission is to care for the members of the royal family, watch over their oil pipelines and skyscrapers. The majority of these men - presented a members of an elite force - come from Colombia.
The prestigious daily published the entrance permits into the Emirates of three of the international mercenaries. One is from Bogota, another from Medellin, and another from La Guajira [in Colombia’s northeast].
The brains of the business is a well known international trafficker in cannon fodder. His name is Eric Prince and he founded Blackwater and XE Services, the same companies that in 2006 brought ex-soldiers, ex-police and ex-detectives from Colombia to serve as mercenaries in the Iraq war. They were offered a salaries of $7,000 a month, that was lowered to 4,000, then to 2,700, and finally to a thousand.
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Five years ago, the news weekly Semana revealed in an article, “Trapped in Baghdad” the claims of the naive Colombian mercenaries. They were not paid what was promised and had no way of returning to Colombia.
An investigation by the U.S. State Department into XE Services tells the story of Mr. Prince’s unorthodox procedures. The report by the Office of Defense Trade Controls states that the company carried out unauthorized military training in Colombia. At that time, the Colombian link in the business was a company called ID Systems, a curious company that worked at the same time on computer matters for the Colombian Registry and on military issues. The names mentioned were Captain Gonzalo Guevara and José Arturo Zuluaga Jaramillo.
Some years later the same characters repeat. The company is now called Fortox, but it operates in Bogota at the same address as ID Systems, and José Arturo Zuluaga Jaramillo is a member of its board of directors.
Captain Guevara, on the other hand, is no longer. Someone must have hated him too much. They killed him a year after the Iraq affair, as he was leaving a bakery on 127th Street in Bogota.
translated by Fellowship of Reconciliation
Niña, Pinta, Santa Maria, & the U.S. Southern Command
From one conquistador to another, 519 years of repression of the Peoples of the Americas
“They… brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for glass beads and hawk’s bells. They willingly traded everything they owned… They were well-built. with good bodies and handsome features… They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane… They would make fine servants… With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want”
- Log entry by Christopher Columbus, on his first encounter with the native peoples of this hemisphere, from Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States.
519 Years of Militarization
Join us on Invasion Day (Columbus Day) Weekend
October 8-10, 2011
The U.S. Southern Command, located outside of Miami, Florida, is the brains behind the U.S. military domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. We would like to close it. Reclaim the sacred land for the peoples of the Americas. Bring an offering from your part of the Americas to inaugurate a new spirit of peace and justice and end and end U.S. military, economic and political intervention in Latin America and the Caribbean. Close SOA/WHINSEC, de-activate the U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet.
The weekend will include:
- Forum on the militarization of the Americas and resistance movements
- Concert
- Rally and march to the Belly of the Beast
- Solidarity event with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in Immokalee, Florida
Sponsored by: SOA WATCH-SouthCom Watch, South Florida; SOA WATCH National; Fellowship of Reconciliation; Pax Christi Saint Maurice.
Contact Ray at mrrratpp@aol.com 754-423-0051 or Linda at lindaliska@yahoo.com 305-801-0245
News Brief: Colombia Recognizes its Armed Conflict
May 5, Bogota - The coalition Colombia-Europe-United States Coordination (CCEEU), which brings together 220 human rights and social organizations, announced its satisfaction that the Colombian government of Juan Manuel Santos has recognized that there is an armed conflict in Colombia.
For the CCEEU, the recognition of internal armed conflict in Colombia is a framework that makes responsibilities for respecting for international humanitarian law enforcible, as well as permitting punishment for violations by any of the armed groups.
We hope that recognizing the armed conflict in Colombia may also soon bring about the basis for the negotiated political solution of the conflict. In our judgement, peace with social justice is the only sustainable way to put an end to the social and armed conflict in Colombia.
