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U.S.  SHOULD CUT AID TO COLOMBIA

As we move to prosecute Saddam Hussein in Iraq for the massacre of 150 people and other serious human rights violations, U.S.  support for the Colombian army -- the hemisphere's worst human rights violator -- continue to grow. 

Recently declassified State Department documents indicated that the Colombian army works in close collaboration with paramilitary death squads.  One case concerns a series of paramilitary massacres in and around the towns of La Gabarra and Tibu in the summer of 1999.  Paramilitaries killed 150 people in more than a dozen attacks over a three-month period.  Local military forces did not react to the paramilitary incursions. 

The Colombian vice president's office reported to the U.S.  Embassy that Colombian army soldiers "had donned AUC-paramilitary armbands and participated directly" in one of the massacres. 

A U.S.  Embassy official reported that the local army units refuse to combat paramilitaries.  The State Department Andean desk officer reported in January 1999, "Security forces did not intervene during 19 separate attacks in which 143 civilians were killed over four days in January."

Since 2000, the United States has sent more than $3 billion in mostly military aid to Colombia to support a war that has displaced more than 3 million people.  Currently, there are more than 500 U.S.  Special Forces in Colombia training the Colombian army.  Right here in Georgia at the School of the Americas/Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, more than half of the soldiers being trained are Colombian. 

So as we watch events unfolding in Iraq, we should not forget the U.S.-supported war in Colombia.  Tell your representatives that you do not want our tax dollars to support human rights violations in Colombia.  Ask them to vote no on further military aid. 

Noreen Ordronneau

Carrboro