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.