You are hereColombia Peace Presence Update, August 2006
Colombia Peace Presence Update, August 2006
Colombia Peace Presence Update, August 2006
In this Update:
- Wide Mobilization in Favor of Keeping U.N. Human Rights Representative in Colombia
- U.N. Highlights Model Projects for Building Peace in Colombia
- Objector’s Declaration, by Mauricio Montoya
- Letter From the Field: A Simple Response, by Aimee Krouskop
- Join our Team in Colombia. Deadline for Applying: August 31st
Wide Mobilization in Favor of Keeping U.N. Human Rights Representative in Colombia
Since 1996, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR) has maintained a representative in Colombia to monitor the human rights situation there. The representative, among other things, issues periodic written reports and recommendations to the Colombian government aimed at improving the overall observance of human rights in the country.
It doesn’t come as surprise, given the high toll that the ongoing armed conflict is having on civilians, that the UNHCHR reports have been controversial. Last spring, in its annual report, the UNHCHR documented serious violations to international humanitarian law, including summary executions and indiscriminate attacks on civilians by the Colombian armed forces.
The agreement that lead to the presence of the UNHCHR representative is set to expire in October. Vice President Francisco Santos, has indicated the Colombian government’s intention to severely limit the role of the UNHCHR office in Colombia so that, in Santos’s words, “it becomes a more useful and less polarized” entity. Such a change of terms would constitute a serious setback for the human rights situation in Colombia.
To avoid such a setback, U.S. grassroots organizations have undertaken a mobilization effort that resulted in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed by 78 members of Congress -- including several Republicans — expressing support for the UNHCHR office in Colombia and for the renewal of its existing mandate. The European Union Presidency issued a similar statement on June 26.
To learn more, go to:
http://www.lawg.org/countries/colombia/alert_un_mandate.htm
http://www.actualidadcolombiana.org/archivo.shtml?x=1416
http://www.delcol.cec.eu.int/es/novedades/boletin_370.htm
U.N. Highlights Model Projects for Building Peace in Colombia
On July 26 and 27, the Caribbean town of Carmen de Bolívar, in the Montes the María region, witnessed the first regional gathering of mainly grassroots and community-based “model projects” for building peace and mitigating the impacts of the war in Colombia. It was an opportunity to exchange experiences, build linkages, and strengthen and inspire one another in nonviolent ways to address the war.
The anti-recruitment program of the Medellín Youth Network (Red Juvenil), the Mothers of La Candelaria, and the Reconciliation Project of AMOR (Women’s Association of Eastern Antioquia) are among the 250 best practices compiled by the United Nations Development Program. FOR works with each of these three groups.
A second regional gathering, organized by the United Nations Development Program, is scheduled for the Valle region in southern Colombia on August 10 and 11.
For more information (in Spanish) see:
http://www.saliendodelcallejon.pnud.org.co
The Medellín Youth Network (Red Juvenil) organized the International Gathering of Solidarity with Conscientious Objection in Colombia on July 18-19 in Bogotá. The Red points out that even though the Colombian Constitution guarantees that “no one will be obliged to act against their conscience,” the same Constitution requires Colombians to take up arms when public needs demand it.
The Red Juvenil has also promoted conscientious objection to military taxes, with an analysis of the country’s huge investment in war machinery. In the weeks leading up to the international gathering, the Red published the personal statements of several Colombian conscientious objectors. (see http://www2.redjuvenil.org/content/blogcategory/8/8/) Here is one of them.
OBJECTOR’S DECLARATION
“War is a massacre between people who do not know each other but kill each other, for the benefit of people who do know each other, but don’t kill each other.”
By Mauricio Montoya, translated by John Lindsay-Poland
A long time ago I declared myself a conscientious objector, but now that I am of age I reaffirm my position. NO ARMY DEFENDS PEACE.
Since I was a kid I never liked playing cops and robbers, gunmen [pistoleros] and all the other games that reflected the crude reality of war, since I refused to live out the armed conflict waged in my neighborhood. At that point the only game that possible for me and my family was to be under the bed or on the floor, hiding so no shot from a gun could pierce us in the forehead.
To hear the shouts of the armed groups, “sons of bitches get down so you know what’s good for you,” “if we get in we’ll wipe out even your bitch mothers”… and the “bitch” mothers praying and lighting candles so that their children would return safe and sound after the being away for the night. [“pernota”].
With my little friends, I also played the guessing game, “who will have been the chulo today?" (a chulo is a dead person), we asked. And tomorrow, who is dead now? Maybe we guessed right, but sometimes not, because we never even thought that, one day, one of us would be the chulo.
Even now I remember him … my friend Meme. They killed him in broad daylight, in front of me, in front of others. I don’t blame those who killed him, because they were also my friends, friends who had no chance to get ahead. They had no more to eat than what their mothers could get, whether by selling candy or selling their own bodies. Friends who decided to sell to the highest bidder – not the best, because the only thing they could guarantee was death. Never did that bidder have to stay out for the night. Never did that bidder have to risk his life. Never did he have to see a family member dead from combat of the day before.
In this society there are many "bidders," whose interest is that we kill each other. That we be their toys, but they’re never interested in what we think, in what we want to build … our freedom.
What I never forgave or will forgive is that my friends forgot that we were all friends.
Sometimes I also played the guilty one, late at night or maybe at dawn. We felt the passage of military boots. And we knew they were military because people in the neighborhood didn’t have boots.
We heard the loud knocks on our doors. The shouts, “open the door it’s the army,” “we’re going to search the house.” The rest of the family and I had to leave the warmth of our beds, as they insulted and threatened us.
The soldiers checked if we had weapons or drugs under our mattresses. Why did they search, we asked ourselves, if they know all the dark places where drugs are sold spots in the neighborhood? If the army is supposed to be defending us, why don’t they intervene to stop the daily killings of people in the neighborhood. Later I understood why … I understood that the guerrillas [milicianos], the paramilitaries, and the soldiers are the same, but with different clothes.
These events and many others that I can’t describe on paper made me think: what of my future? I had already decided to not take part in the war of this neighborhood, nor take part in the war of any other neighborhood or society. But I worried even more, when I remembered that according to the unjust laws of this society, I would have to pick up a weapon when I came of age and be a direct protagonist in the war.
At that point I found a political strategy for non-cooperation with the armed structures, non-cooperation with a state based on militaristic logic. And at that moment I joined that way, which is the Youth Network (Red Juvenil).
Today as an adult and thanks to the Red Juvenil I have no fear of saying: I am not a toy of war! And I reaffirm my conscientious objection, based on a political conviction, staying firm in refusing to join the military ranks of this society. Because there it’s authoritarian, blind obedience, machismo, repression, inequality, denying the possibility of freedom and of thinking as autonomous being. There you can only be a marionette.
Letter from the Field:
" A Simple Response"
By Aimee Krouskop
The last week of June I spent with members of a powerful project that supports threatened campesinos in central Colombia. I was one of two accompaniers traveling with a team of the Asociación Campesino Antioquia (ACA) that is helping the remaining residents of the San Francisco area stay on their land. By our second day, it became clear that the challenges residents there face, represent a variety of the human rights concerns of Colombia today.
Forced displacement
We arrived to the town of San Francisco during its “Festival del Bosque y el Retorno” – a time designated for the displaced residents of the area to return to their former land for the weekend. The mass displacements began 5 years ago. In 2003, there were 10,000 inhabitants in the region. By 2005, nearly half had fled. Each year they come from all over the country for this celebration – from the severely violent Chocó, from Bogotá, Medellín, and further north near Panama. So many former residents arrived this year that accommodations were scarce and families slept in their cars. The jubilation of the event was impressive, but I found the event so eerie. I could sense the intense attachment these travelers felt to their former land, but they had come to celebrate where they no longer had a home… It’s that they have assumed the surrender of their land to such a degree that they have ritualized its loss in this yearly festival.
Fumigations
In one village, we were hosted by the community leader and his new family. He spoke about the challenges that members of this mountainous region have faced in the past five years. His 18-month-old daughter played with corn kernels at his feet, chickens wandered into the house, and in the background stood several dead trees: "In 2003, the first time the fumigations came it was very bad. We got skin lesions, our eyes burned, animals got very sick; trees died…" he explained. He described how the aerial spraying planes drop chemicals from such a high altitude that they rarely reach their target. The residents in this region live scattered along a valley and the wind catches the fumigation spray, carrying it directly to subsistence crops, trees and homes. Additionally, the land throughout this area has lost its fertility due to chemical seepage … "It’s not that people near here prefer to grow coca," he said. "It’s that the state does not offer an alternative." The leader has tried to contact the local state entities and the local head of counter-narcotics, to relay the concerns, but has had no luck. They are very worried, because they know that the fumigations could come again at any time.
Anti-personal mines; Guerrilla presence
I had a long chat with a man working with UNICEF on mine accident prevention for the area. He told me that the previous week a 19-year-old man – a civilian, was the last to fall victim to the mines scattered throughout the region. He survived, but has lost a foot. The UNICEF worker explained that mines are placed underneath enticing trees offering shade or full of fruit, on shortcuts, in abandoned buildings, or near power towers. He is working diligently to prevent injuries, and inform victims of their rights to treatment and prosthetics.
While the military use anti-personal mines as well, the majority are placed in this region by the FARC. A town official showed us copies of flyers that the FARC distributed throughout the region. The most recent one referred to the last presidential elections, and explained that it was better that civilians not vote at all, and therefore they were going to close the roads on voting day to prevent any travel.
Military and police presence; Disappearances
The military and police presence in San Francisco is intense. There are always several police stationed in the center of town, watching all who enter and leave. Men on motorcycles followed us each time we entered and left the town center, and our first night we were intently observed by military personnel. I was told that this monitoring is aided by “reinsertados” - former members of the local paramilitary force, now ‘technically’ disbanded but evidently still active. I learned that the head of the local paramilitary is from the region, therefore asserting a continued, powerful presence and organization.
We also spoke to a local official who was very concerned about disappearances in the region. The official explained that in order to fulfill a quota of capturing a certain number of FARC members, the military is killing young men from the area, taking them to other regions where they cannot be identified and posing them as guerrilla. The official cited 11 of such disappearances in 2005.
All these challenges create a great risk of displacement for the communities around San Francisco. In response, ACA’s strategy is to support the campesinos who choose to stay, by improving their agricultural self-sufficiency. Their work is based on the understanding that the cultivation of one’s own food is a human right and they provide community workshops to help protect that right. Simultaneously they offer an alternative to the coca production that is prevalent in the area and are reconstructing the collective memory of ancient permaculture methods lost during the tumult of the war.
I watched as families gathered from nearby villages – with vigor and excitement. They were met by the grace and humor of the alternative extension agent I was accompanying – as he captivated us all, and helped turn the motivation of the groups into action. The main workshop was on the construction of the agro-nivel – an ancient tool made of three poles, string, and a rock that gages the level of the land in order to design terraces for planting. In half a day, a forgotten hillside was transformed into a cultivable space for subsistence crops that could support 30 families. Workshops also included training on re-fertilization of the soil, ancient uses of herbs and roots – such as how lemongrass can aid the common respiratory problems of their hens, and how they can make their own fencing.
So my week was spent in both these worlds. Hearing of the horrors and tragedies, then standing in the soil, enjoying the privilege of witnessing such an inspiring response. I was struck by the contrast. Between the sadly intricate and destructive systems of this war – and the joyous simple brilliance of what a community working together can create– and obtain from the earth.
Join our Team in Colombia. Deadline for Applying: August 31st
The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) is seeking volunteers for its human rights team in Colombia, for service in 2007.
The Colombia Peace Presence is an accompaniment project that started in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, one of several rural communities in Colombia that has taken an extraordinary stand against war by refusing to support any armed group.
In January 2005, FOR opened a sub-team in Bogotá to support this accompaniment and to highlight other Colombian grassroots peace initiatives in order to show positive alternatives that are being built all over the country by people affected by the armed conflict. The current volunteer team has four members who serve for at least 12 months. The San José team shares the lives of peasant farmers striving for a life in peace and dignity, while Bogotá team members visit and report about other Colombian peace communities and efforts. FOR seeks committed and skilled volunteers, with sound judgment and proficiency in Spanish.
Training participants must complete an application for service and qualified applicants will be invited to a training that will take place in San Francisco, California, from October 12-16, 2006. The training is free but applicants are required to pay their way to San Francisco. Application deadline is August 31st.
For more information and to apply, please go to http://www.forusa.org/programs/tflacvolunteers.html OR contact us at: forcolombia@igc.org.
If you have any further questions about the FOR Colombia program or if you need to update your email address or unsubscribe, please contact us. Thank you again for your ongoing support.
In Peace
Susana Pimiento-Chamorro
Colombia Program Coordinator
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean
2017 Mission St. #305, San Francisco, CA 94110
phone: (415) 495-6334, fax: (415) 495-5628
E-mail: forcolombia@igc.org or johnlp@igc.org
www.forusa.org
