Colombia Project

Tomorrow morning (Friday, July 11, 2008) John Lindsay-Poland of the Fellowship of Reconciliation will appear on the  Pacifica Radio program "Wake Up Call." Lindsay-Poland is co-director of FOR's national Task Force on Latin America and the Caribbean, which has been engaged in human rights accompaniment work in Colombia for the past six years. In conversation with the program's Friday morning host, Mario Murillo, Lindsay-Poland will discuss this past week's dramatic release of several high-profile hostages from the FARC guerillas, and what it might mean for those who to build a lasting and just peace in the country.

This column I wrote was published in the East Bay Express on July 9, 2008.

Hurricane Katrina did it for Escenthio. At his high school in Oakland, he was enrolled in a JROTC program and was on his way to joining the military. But one of his teachers invited him to a benefit for the victims of the hurricane. It made Escenthio question his involvement in the class and our country's priorities in general. "Why are we over there killing people in Iraq when there are people in need right here?" he asked.

Soon afterward, he decided to organize a debate at his school around these issues, and invited the JROTC army officers to the table alongside Pablo Paredes, a well-known conscientious objector. The debates created quite a stir — and Escenthio became one of the central youth activists of BayPeace, an Oakland organization doing counter-recruitment work in high schools.

"He's one of the most amazing young activists I've met," said Susan from BayPeace, who recommended that Escenthio join our Youth Arts and Action delegation traveling to Colombia at the end of March. At eighteen, Escenthio had an important voice to bring: a young, African-American man finishing his last year of high school, a spoken-word artist, and counter-recruitment activist. I was quite excited about him joining us: a group of organizers, activists, artists, and young leaders who would travel to Colombia to meet up with two youth-based organizations working on the issues of conscientious objection and how militarism affects young people's lives.

FOR has worked with and accompanied the courageous anti-militarism youth group, Red Juvenil de Medellín (Medellin Youth Network) since 2003. Red leaders and supporters were recently subject to a death threat from the newly emerged "Black Eagles" paramilitary group. We urge readers to respond to the Red’s appeal in the face of this threat.

Click here learn more and sign our petition.

Below is a letter from our friends at Red Juvenil:

We wish to inform human rights organizations and other official entities that our organization has been the subject of a death threat from the paramilitaries known as the Black Eagles.

Facts:

1. Thursday and Friday May 29 and 30, the Red Juvenil (Youth Network) received an email from the address redesnegras@hotmail.com with the following message:

"Death to anarchists disguised as pacifists, no more drug concerts or communists, this is the last warning." Those threatened were eight people: members and close friends of the Red Juvenil. It was signed by the group Black Eagles.

After hours of waiting in the hot Santa Cruz, California city council room, listening to the impassioned arguments in favor and against off leash dog use at a nearby beach; and seeing a lengthy power point presentation on the plans for a new building in downtown Santa Cruz, we were losing our steam.

It seemed likely that our resolution, requesting that all US military aid to Colombia be re-directed to domestic drug prevention and rehabilitation programs, wouldn’t be considered until after 7pm when the council members returned from their evening recess.Fortunately Santa Cruz Mayor Ryan Coonerty noticed that we had been patiently waiting all afternoon (thankfully we had all brought work with us: the UCSC Colombia research cluster grad students were grading papers and others worked on their laptops) and pushed our agenda item to the top of the list before the break. At 6pm, life-long activist Bert Muhly from 3 Americas took the floor.

When I was in Bogota earlier this month continuing research on US military aid, I caught up with Mike Power, a stringer for BBC and Reuters. He had just come back from the Meta region, where he’d interviewed the mother of a 15-year-old boy killed by the army and passed off as a guerrilla. He talked about how he’d stayed up late transcribing the interview, hearing the woman say over and over on his machine “I came home and I was destroyed.” We spoke of the experience of translating and interpreting, how powerful it is when the personal voice of another, someone in grief, comes through you.

The BBC didn’t run his piece, apparently because the mother’s testimony was not sufficiently ‘credible.’ Fortunately, online magaine The First Post has featured this story, and quotes FOR and Amnesty International (see article below). FOR and Amnesty collaborated on a joint report about US support for Colombian army units that have committed extrajudicial killings. You can see it at www.forcolombia.org/Calltoinvestigate

Tens of thousands of Colombians marched on March 6 in Bogota (see photos by Sarah Koopman) and many other cities to stand with the victims of right-wing paramilitary violence and to protest violence by all armed groups. Solidarity events occurred in New York, Washington, and San Francisco.

Now, in the wake of accusations by a presidential advisor that the activists in Colombia who helped organize these peaceful marches are guerrillas, they are being targeted with paramilitary threats, kidnappings, and even killings.

Lethal attacks on Colombian labor activists also continue. On March 4 in Washington, President Bush called on Congress to approve the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia, although Colombia is the most dangerous nation in the world to be a trade unionist. As if in response, in the four days following his statement, four labor leaders in Colombia were murdered.

[Editor's note: Maryrose is the Co-Director of FOR's Youth and Militarism Program, and is currently participating in our Youth Arts and Action Delegation to Colombia.]

I asked Sharon Lungo from the Ruckus Society, one of the awesome delegation members, to talk to me for a minute about her experience so far with the delegation:

MR: Sharon, will you talk for a minute about the delegation so far, and what happened today?