Dear Friends, here's your Colombia update for this month.
Five Years After Colombian Massacre, Justice Is Still ElusiveBy Moira Birss The case against 10 soldiers involved in the Peace Community massacre is just the first step in a long journey toward justice. February 21 marked the five-year anniversary of a brutal massacre of eight people, including three children, from the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. Horror about the crime -- in which bodies were beheaded, and others cut into pieces before being thrown into a common grave -- resulted in a six-month suspension of U.S. military aid to Colombia and the de-vetting of the 17th Brigade. Ample evidence points to military-paramilitary collaboration in the crime, yet five years later, not a single individual has been punished. Civilian killings during Colombia's decades-old internal conflict have not received much attention, but the 2005 Peace Community massacre generated enough notice and outrage to suspend U.S. military aid, in large part due to the Community's courageous stance of neutrality. As the 2005 massacre and other attacks against the community demonstrate, the Community's strategy doesn't always work because the armed actors -- including the military -- see it as a threat to their power in the region. Nonetheless, the members of the Peace Community believe that pacifism and communal work are the best way to keep their dignity and integrity and continue to live on their land. The 2005 massacre case is emblematic not just as an example of the brutality suffered by civilians at the hands of the Colombian military and paramilitaries, but also of the Colombian state's efforts to maintain impunity in such cases. While the Peace Community always insisted that the army and paramilitaries committed the crime, the Colombian government tried to place blame squarely on the victimized community itself. Shortly after the massacre, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe publicly accused the community of guerrilla collaboration, backing up army officials who claimed the FARC had committed the massacre to punish the community for collaboration gone awry. It has since been proved that army officials paid false witnesses to testify that the FARC committed the massacre. Several former paramilitaries have since admitted their participation in the massacre and described the military's role. After being implicated, Captain Guillermo Gordillo, who commanded one of the companies involved in the military operation that led to the massacre, pled guilty to a lesser charge. As a result of these testimonies, 10 low-ranking soldiers have been charged with collaboration in the massacre. However, more than 100 soldiers who participated in the operation and their superiors who ordered the operation have never had to answer for it. Despite the damning evidence against them, the accused soldiers maintain that the paramilitaries secretly infiltrated the army and committed the massacre without the soldiers' knowledge -- a claim that is hard to believe when Captain Gordillo and two paramilitaries testified that the army and paramilitary guides camped together for three nights before the massacre. As the victims' lawyer Jorge Molano says, "You don't spend three nights with someone and not know he's there." Observation Mission Finds Electoral Process at RiskBy John Lindsay-Poland An international pre-electoral observation mission, sponsored by the Colombian Misión de Observación Electoral and Global Exchange, ran from February 3 to 15, included 20 members from seven countries, and met with political parties, officials, National Election Council, NGOs, victims, journalists in Bogotá, Antioquia, Valle de Cauca, Córdoba and Santander departments. I coordinated the Antioquia group. The mission will issue a final report March 8. Our team's declarations led to more than 70 print news stories and editorials as well as stories in electronic media. The head of the national welfare agency (Acción Social) felt compelled to very publically and immediately respond to our findings. After the release of our initial findings there was a wave of electoral complaints coming in from around the country reflecting just the types of intimidation and manipulation we identified. From our preliminary report: Human Rights Violations Are an Electoral Risk. The protection of human rights, as well as effective justice in such cases are key to ensuring that voters can fully participate in a democracy in a transparent, free and informed manner. The mission would like to express alarm over the human rights situation in the country and the grave violations of these rights on the part of legal and illegal armed groups and narco-traffickers to life in Antioquia, Santander, Córdoba and Valle del Cauca. In our visits, we found that levels of violence remain high especially among vulnerable populations including youth, women, Afro-Colombians, Indigenous, internally displaced, LGBT and poor persons. In addition to selective assassinations, the mission was informed by diverse sources that a new modality of forced disappearances has taken hold in order to not influence the official murder statistics. This violence and impunity in these cases greatly prevent citizens from trusting the authorities. It leads many voters to decide not to participate in the electoral process. Read the full preliminary report. Pentagon and CIA get in the gameObama's Budget and Colombia
By John Lindsay-Poland The Obama White House proposed cutting military aid in the foreign aid package it sent to Congress on February 1, from $263 million to $228 million, according to Center for International Policy's analysis. In its first year, the Obama administration had increased military aid in the package by $23 million. The Uribe government responded immediately by sending Defense Minister Gabriel Silva to Washington to try to restore the military funds. But that was only half the story. Bloomberg News reported on February 5 that President Uribe claims that the military base agreement between the United States and Colombia "will compensate for a proposed decline in U.S. Assistance" in Washington's aid budget. "The declines in Plan Colombia will be compensated in some way, and Plan Colombia will in some way be extended, thanks to this cooperation agreement," Uribe said. The Pentagon does not publish its assistance by country, but Bloomberg said that the Defense Department budgeted $160 million to Colombia this year, including $43 million in funds for work on the air base in Palanquero. In a letter to FOR (PDF), US Ambassador William Brownfield said that DOD counter-narcotics funding to Colombia this year is estimated at $37 million. "These funds complement security assistance program funding but focus on support to counter-drug capabilities and operations, as well as institutional reforms that improve operational effectiveness and support the rule of law and respect for human rights." Brownfield did not specify how much of the additional "security assistance program funding" comes from the Pentagon. However, a DOD source in the Pentagon who works on Colombia policy told FOR that next year the "Mil Group" in the US Embassy in Bogotá "hopes for fifty to sixty-five million dollars." Yet DOD funds are not the only US military assistance hidden from taxpayers and the public. CIA Director Leon Panetta met with President Uribe as well as Defense Minister Gabriel Silva and armed forces chief Freddy Padilla on February 26 and agreed to offer CIA support for restructuring Colombia's scandal-ridden intelligence agency, DAS (Dept of Administrative Security). According to Caracol Radio, the CIA director expressed interest in applying Colombia's intelligence model to other nations. Panetta also reportedly agreed to serve as a direct conduit to Barack Obama for Colombia, including about the stalled Free Trade Agreement. "What professionalism can the CIA show to guarantee that Colombians will have even a whit of honor?" asks columnist Alfredo Molano. "From a terror unit at the service of government, the DAS will become an organ of United States military control in the country, complementing the seven military bases that Uribe handed over to the hawkish gringos." Human Rights Lawyer Investigating ex-Army Commander is ThreatenedAccusations by an army intelligence unit that peaceful human rights, youth and political groups are part of terrorist organizations don't constitute violations serious enough to suspend U.S. assistance to the unit, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela told FOR in February. But a contract on the life of a human rights attorney who was smeared by the U.S.-supported unit should make the State Department reconsider its determination. Bayron Góngora of the Juridical Liberty Corporation (CJL) received word February 9 that paid assassins belonging to a Medellín gang had been contracted to kill him. "The information is highly trustworthy," said Góngora, who has left Colombia for his safety. In April 2009, the Regional Army Intelligence Unit in Medellín produced a report accusing CJL, and specifically Góngora by name, as well as the Polo Democrático political party, Medellín Youth Network and Institute for Popular Training of belonging to the FARC's political arm, PC3. CJL has led efforts for justice in cases of civilian killings by the army in Antioquia. Combined records of government and human rights organizations register more than 800 cases of civilians reportedly killed by the Army in Antioquia since 2002. Góngora has successfully pressed the Colombian Attorney General to investigate former army chief General Mario Montoya and former Medellin-area police chief Brigadier General Leonardo Gallegos, for their alleged alliance with confessed narcotrafficker and death squad chief, Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, alias don Berna. Murillo, who resides in a New York prison, testified last June that Montoya and Gallego had coordinated a 2002 operation to take over a Medellín barrio together with a paramilitary operative under Murillo's orders. In December, FOR and Human Rights First wrote to Valenzuela (PDF) to urge ceasing aid to the Medellín unit and others that have also produced specious accusations against human rights defenders, and to urge the Colombian government to either provide evidence of the intelligence units' accusations or publicly clear the names of those accused and investigate those who produced false reports. Valenzuela acknowledged U.S. assistance to army intelligence units in Medellín and Caquetá, though he said the Caquetá unit had been cut off since 2007 because of unnamed "human rights concerns." The aid has included computer systems and maintenance, communications and audiovisual equipment, and transportation equipment and support, according to a fact sheet provided by U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield. Letter from the Field: The Nature of Revolutionary Love
By Liza Smith "The revolution and a good party are inextricably linked." In almost every presentation she did during her week long speaking tour in the Bay Area, Adriana Roman -- activist, human rights defender, lawyer and youth organizer with the Medellín Youth Network (Red Juvenil) -- reminded her audiences that we are not doing anything if we are not having a good time with one another. We are not building anything for the future, if we are not living those dreams out in the here and now. We cannot talk about solidarity, if we don't work in a network of people we actually, really, deeply care about. It is those friendships that are the basis of everything we do in this world. Adriana spoke to the Berkeley School of Law, to students at San Francisco City College and the California Institute of Integral Studies. She spoke on the radio twice, conducted a workshop with youth from the organization HOMEY, and discussed the current situation in Colombia with members of the local Colombian and Latino community over fresh pan de bono and coffee. She talked about how the Red Juvenil was using the Colombian constitution to protect the rights of conscientious objectors and she told stories of how activists with the organization would intervene during an illegal recruitment of youth by the Colombian military. She explained how the Red Juvenil first came to be, in 1990, amidst incredible violence in her native city of Medellín, when young people were only thought of as victims (because they were getting killed) and victimizers (because they were doing the killing). From events to workshops, Adriana and I chugged back and forth across the Bay Bridge in a 1989 Oldsmobile. I also took her to see the Golden Gate bridge (it was foggy, of course) and to eat sushi (she had never tried it before). In between the fog and the raw fish, we talked about the institutionalization of the movement, our love lives, Marx's "superstate" and the mini-state-in-your-head of Foucault, feminism, the current political context in Medellín, military recruitment and the way youth in the US are targeted, Uribe's reelection, and the relationship between our two organizations. I felt lucky to have all the down-time with her. Aside from everything I learned, her insistence that we build this movement upon the basis of friendships resonated deeply with me. I started out this year at midnight, around a fire in the cold, Colorado air, under a clear sky and a bright moon. A friend said in the first minutes of the new year that instead of each person saying his/her aspiration for 2010, she wanted to hear what question each of us had for the coming year. Mine was, "what is the nature of revolutionary love?" This question had been swimming around in my head for some time -- was I part of this struggle because of love? Did my activism show love? Is the love I give and receive in the world, revolutionary? Is it based on an understanding of freedom? Adriana said that often someone would come to the Red Juvenil house, someone who had never been there before, maybe the parent of a young person who was fighting for conscientious objection status -- and all the people in the house would be glued to their computer screens, hardly noticing the new arrival. She would protest, "Chicos! Unstick yourseleves from your screens! Let's greet this person who has just come into our space. Offer her a cup of coffee, sit down and talk for a moment!" Her words inspired me, at least -- to seek out a few more times in the week for a conversation over a cup of coffee with the real intention that if we get to know each other, listen to each other, think together and care about each other as friends who are part of this collective effort ... well then, we actually might get something done. A Good Day for JusticeSupreme Court issues landmark ruling on political-paramilitary ties By Susana Pimiento One of the most dramatic events in the alliance between political leaders and right wing paramilitary death squads -- known as the parapolitics scandal -- was the foretold death of El Roble (Sucre) mayor Eudaldo "Tito" Diaz. In a February 2003 community council headed by President Alvaro Uribe, Eudaldo Diaz denounced the plan to kill him and pointed, seated in the front row, to the politicians responsible for the plan to kill him, among them governor Salvador Arana and Senator Alvaro Garcia. At that community meeting, Diaz, also spoke about the ties of Sucre political leaders with paramilitaries, describing how portions of the Sucre budget were being funneled to finance dead squads, as well as politicians' involvement in massacres of campesinos, human rights activists, and union leaders. Despite the murder of many key witnesses in the case, ten years later, on February 23, the Colombian Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling, sentencing Senator Alvaro Garcia to 40 years in prison, the longest sentence given to a legislator in Colombian history. Garcia is a senator with Colombia Democratica, a political movement headed by Mario Uribe Escobar, president Uribe's first cousin and close political ally. He was found responsible for sponsoring paramilitary death squads, embezzlement of public monies to fund the death squads and ordering the October 2000 Macapeyo massacre, in which 15 campesinos were brutally killed by paramilitaries. The Court also found evidence of Garcia's responsibility in the killing of Georgina Narvaez, an election official. On December 3, the Colombian Supreme Court had also found former Sucre Governor Salavador Arana responsible for ordering the killing of Eudaldo Diaz and for his ties with paramilitary groups, and sentenced him to 40 years in prison. Julian Roberts has produced a moving documentary about paramilitarism in Sucre (in Spanish with English subtitles) that features Diaz's dramatic story in Part 2. News Briefs
Threat to Activist who Denounced Army Killing of Father Martha Giraldo, a Colombian activist whose father was an innocent victim of the Colombian army, fell subject to a death threat herself in mid-February. As Witness for Peace reported, Martha was forced off the road in Cali, after which her aggressors pointed a gun at her, clearly an attempt to silence her. Martha has been a vocal critic of the impunity rife in Colombia, and was a speaker at the 2009 vigil at the School of the Americas. Respond to the threat against Martha. Reports released Two reports were released in February, which drew attention to different aspects of the consequences of Colombia's armed conflict. The prestigious Berkeley Law School examined the effects (PDF) of the extradition of Colombian paramilitary leaders to the USA, arguing that the arrangements neither guarantee justice for the victims of paramilitary violence, nor are in the interests of U.S. foreign policy.
In another report, Amnesty International pointed out that the indigenous communities of Colombia are still subject to the threat of violence, not just from paramilitaries, but from State forces and the guerrillas as well. Recent high-profile stories include the killing of members of the Awá community by the FARC in Febrary and August 2009. But this year has already seen the 17th Brigade of the Colombian Army launch attacks in Chocó department, in which two Embera-Katio persons were injured. The Colombian Constitution affords special protection indigenous peoples, but despite government statements to the contrary, Amnesty's report is a reminder that their situation is as vulnerable as ever. Human Rights Group Files Suit Against US Bases The "José Alvear Restrepo" Lawyers Collective filed suit against the U.S.-Colombia military base agreement on February 26, charging that the agreement is one-sided in favor of the United States and denies the rights of victims of any crimes committed by US troops present in Colombia, because it grants troops diplomatic immunity. The suit cites the October 2009 Colombian Council of State finding that the agreement is an international treaty, which must be submitted to legislative approval, and asks that the agreement be declared unconstitutional. Defense Minister Gabriel Silva reacted: "It would seem to me a barbarity that this agreement be declared unconstitutional." Upcoming EventsLast Chance to Apply for 2010 FOR Colombia TrainingMay 10-15, San Francisco, California: FOR seeks committed and skilled volunteers, 23 years or older at the time of service, with sound judgment and proficient in Spanish to serve for 12 months and longer on our accompaniment team in Bogotá and San José de Apartadó, Colombia. Days of Prayer and ActionSunday-Monday, April 18-19: With nearly five million Colombians forcibly displaced from their homes by a debilitating war, Colombia is now the second worst internal displacement crisis in the world. Between now and April, tens of thousands across the U.S. and Colombia will participate in this year's Days of Prayer and Action for Colombia to call for a much-needed shift in U.S. policies toward the war-torn country. Please join us. There are three ways you can get involved:
Learn more about the Days of Prayer and Action. Save the Date! Webinar on US Colombia PolicyMonday, April 26: FOR is presenting a special webinar at 2:00pm EST, with John Lindsay-Poland discussing Colombian human rights, U.S. policy, military bases in Latin America, and what you can do. Watch this space for how to sign up. A New Vision for Peace in ColombiaWednesday, March 10: Join Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for a webcast at 2:00pm EST with:
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The extraditions have been a controversial aspect of the supposed paramilitary demobilization process. Many victims have argued that sending criminals to face drug charges in the States was a convenient way of preventing them from speaking out on subjects that might really hurt, such as their links to powerful senators aligned with President Uribe or the Colombian armed forces.