Peace & Community

“Body guards are not going to protect our lives. What it’s going to protect us is understanding that our work is legal and legitimate… a strong rejection by those holding political power to (threatening) pressures” said yesterday Claudia López, a prestigious Colombian researcher with New Rainbow Corporation, now victim of threats for their work on links between paramilitary and politicians.

1. No Better Defense than an Offense
   
   • Little Letter Creates Big Flurry
2. Objector Freed by Army
3. Call to Investigate US Military Policy: Report by FOR and Amnesty International
4. Colombia, a Presidential Campaign Issue?
5. Letter from the Field: The night of FOR and the tatabra…
6. Events: Unrecruited dreams, Justice across borders, Nonviolent rock stars

This coming weekend, communities across North America will participate in the annual "Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia." It is an opportunity to show solidarity with the Colombian people, who continue to endure war, violence, displacement, and political unrest. Indeed, another massive scandal struck the Colombian government this week, as President Alvaro Uribe's cousin and confidant, Mario Uribe, was accused by prosecutors in that country of ties to right-wing paramilitary death squads.

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?

By Andrew Gorby

Yuri Neira has spent the last one-thousand and fifty-eight days bringing his son’s dreams to life--dreams that the riot police of Bogotá ended with the savage swinging of their batons on May 1, 2005 during city-wide protests. With their faces cowardly hidden by ski masks, and their bodies and minds protected by thick black armor, they brutally beat 15 year-old Nicolas Neira as he gasped for air. The tear gas which was thick in the air had induced Nicolas’ asthma. He died days later, his head not full of dreams, but full of blood and fluid from severe cerebral hemorrhaging.

On Friday evening, March 21st, the Fellowship of Reconciliation's "youth arts & activism" delegation arrived safely in Colombia. The delegation of eight young adult leaders from across the United States will spend eight days traveling in Colombia, meeting with young adult activists in the region working to end war and support the rights of conscientious objectors.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that yesterday, when the Organization of American States held an emergency session to deal with Andean crisis, the United States was the only country that spoke out in support of Colombia’s strike. Every other country in the Hemisphere condemned Colombia’s military strike in Ecuadorian territory as a breach of sovereignty.

Those who follow Colombian affairs know well that life there is anything but boring. Kevin Coulombe, a Canadian volunteer in our Colombia Peace Presence team told me yesterday "One day in Colombia is like one year in Canada." In Colombia, amazing events happen all the time and at a speed that often leave you breathless. So, I can't say that the current Andean crisis, with ambassadors expelled, embassies closed, tanks and troops moved to the border is that extraordinary. Do you remember when the now all but forgotten para-politics scandal broke?

Luis Eduardo Guerra at SOA.
Photo by Linda Panetta.On February 21, 2005, eight members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó were murdered by individuals alleged to be members of the Colombian Army. The group, which included two of the community's leaders, Peace Community co-founder Luis Eduardo Guerra and Alfonso Bolivar, and three children between the ages of 1 and 10, were brutally hacked to death. The brigade accused of killing these innocent civilians was led by a graduate of the U.S. School of the Americas, otherwise known as the Western Hempisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.

Their murders resonate today in a period of great uncertainty regarding U.S. policy towards Latin America. In a period where U.S. media coverage of the region is dominated by Fidel Castro's resignation as president of Cuba and Hugo Chavez's diatribes against the Bush administration, the anti-Communist paradigm still reigns. The only headline news from Colombia this month has been the mass demonstrations against the FARC leftist rebels, reinforcing that perspective.