Pubdate: Fri, 01 Mar 2002
Source: Helena Independent Record (MT)
Copyright: 2002 Helena Independent Record
Contact:  http://helenair.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1187
Author: Scott Nicholson
Note: Scott Nicholson of Helena is an organizer for the Montana Human 
Rights Network.

COLOMBIA: WAR ON WHAT?

Your Turn

On Feb. 21, the president of Colombia broke off negotiations with the 
guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and launched a 
major offensive into the zone that had been the site of the negotiations. 
The United States is very involved in the war in Colombia-during the past 
two years, more than $1 billion of our tax dollars were given to the 
Colombian military and police.

Now, President Pastrana is urging the U.S. to get involved even further as 
part of the "War on Terrorism."

Additional U.S. support for the Colombian military will lead to more 
terror, not less. In July of last year, I spent two weeks accompanying 
human rights organizations in the city of Barrancabermeja in Colombia. The 
organizations in Barranca (as it is called locally) had requested 
international accompaniment as a way to protect themselves for the 
paramilitary groups that had taken control of the city. The paramilitaries 
are armed civilian that are supported by the Colombian military and police.

The people that I met with described the situation in their country as 
"state terrorism."

On the same day that I arrived in Barranca, Alma Rosa Jaramillow was 
stopped by the paramilitaries at a checkpoint on Morales, 70 miles 
northwest, and taken away. Alma Rosa was a lawyer who had worked with the 
Program for Peace and Development in the Middle Magdalena, the organization 
that facilitated my trip, and was a member of one of their local 
committees. Two days later, all that was found of her body was the torso.

During my second night in Barranca paramilitaries broke into the house of 
Pedro Ospino and shot him to death.

Pedro was a community leader who had denounced the collaboration between 
the police and the paramilitaries. He lived just one block from where I was 
staying.

Since I left Barranca, three of my friends have had to flee the city. 
Carlos Mejia and Gladys Rojas are the coordinators of the Regional Board of 
Permanent Work for Peace in the Middle Magdalena (the organization that I 
accompanied), which works with peasant communities in the region.

In October, orders were issued for their arrest on the charge of 
"rebellion" and they had to go into hiding.

Joan Carlos is a leader of the National Food Industry Workers Union, which 
is developing a campaign against Coca-Cola because of the murder and 
repression of union activists at the bottling plants in Colombia. Seven 
leaders of the Coca-Cola workers union have been killed - two of them were 
murdered inside the plants by the paramilitaries. Juan Carlos had to flee 
from Barranca after receiving death threats from the paramilitaries. 
Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists.

Human Rights Watch recently stated that 152 unionists were reported killed 
and another 33 were forcible disappeared last year.

An average of 14 people is killed every day in combat and political 
violence in Colombia. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, the 
paramilitaries are responsible for 79 percent of civilian deaths and forced 
disappearances, and the guerillas are responsible for 16 percent.

Human Rights Watch stated in October, "Units of the Colombian military and 
police continue to work and tolerate the illegal paramilitary groups 
responsible for the country's most serious human rights violations. 
Colombian military and police detachments continue to promote, work with, 
support, profit from, and tolerate paramilitary groups, treating them as a 
force allied to and compatible with their own."

The justification given by our government of U.S. involvement in Colombia 
is changing rapidly.

When Congress approved a massive increase in funding for the Colombian 
military and police in July2000, the stated purpose was the "War on Drugs." 
On Feb. 5, President Bush released his 2003 budget proposal, which includes 
$98 million for the creation of a special Colombian military brigade to 
protect the Cano Limon Covenas pipeline that transports oil owned by 
Occidental Petroleum. U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson has said that this 
funding is "important for our petroleum supplies and for the confidence of 
our investors." Now, increased support for the Colombian military is being 
requested in the name of the "War on Terrorism."

The escalation of the war in Colombia, and increased U.S. involvement in 
that conflict, will result in further suffering and death for the Colombian 
people.

In order to take effective action against terror, our government should 
eliminate all aid for the Colombian military and police until these forces 
end their support for the paramilitaries and stop their involvement in 
human rights abuses.
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