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