FOR - Task Force on Latin America and the Carribean

FOR Colombia Peace Update - July 2010

Hollman Morris was the first journalist, after the massacre in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in 2005, to go to the community and talk with community leaders and members in depth about their experience, which became an 30-minute report in May 2005. Shortly afterward, documents obtained by Morris and published by the Center for International Policy show that the Colombian government intensified surveillance and efforts to discredit his work, and even undertook to prevent him from obtaining a visa to visit the United States.

Now, the United States itself has denied Morris a visa. The following piece by Robert Giles of the Los Angeles Times tells some of the story.

Hollman Morris It is not uncommon for international journalists who come to Harvard University as Nieman fellows to be out of favor with their governments. They often work in countries where free expression and the rule of law exist in name only. They report in an atmosphere of danger where threats, and sometimes violence, are common tools to encourage self-censorship and silence truth-telling.

Colombian journalist Hollman Morris has long worked in challenging conditions, producing probing television reports that document his country's long and complex civil war. He has built contacts with the left-wing guerilla group known as the FARC and told stories of the conflict's victims. He has revealed abuses by the country's intelligence service and enraged government officials, including the president, Alvaro Uribe, who once called him "an accomplice to terrorism."

Morris was awarded a Nieman Fellowship in journalism this spring and planned to travel to the United States to begin his studies at Harvard in the fall. But then, last week, he was told by a U.S. consular official in Bogota that he was being denied a visa under the "terrorist activities" section of the Patriot Act.

In the 60 years that foreign journalists have participated in the Nieman program, they have sometimes had trouble getting their own countries to allow them to come. The foundation's first brush with the harsh reality of journalism under repressive regimes came in 1960, when Lewis Nkosi, a black South African and writer for Drum, a magazine for black South Africans, was awarded a fellowship. His application for a passport was denied by the country's apartheid government. Angry and bitter, he applied for an exit visa. It enabled him to leave, but he was forbidden to ever return.

Morris, though, is the first person in Nieman history to be denied the right to participate not by his own country but by ours. The denial is alarming. It would represent a major recasting of press freedom doctrine if journalists, by establishing contacts with so-called terrorist organizations in the process of gathering news, open themselves to accusations of terrorist activities and the possibility of being barred from travel to the United States.

For the rest of this story, go to the Los Angeles Times.

See also statements by the American Association of Univeristy Professors, American Civil Liberties Union, and PEN American Center; the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), which is presenting an award to Morris in absentia in October; Harvard's Nieman program; and radio journalist Mario Murillo,

FOR Releasing Report on Military Aid and Human Rights

The Fellowship of Reconciliation releases a report on July 29, "U.S. Military Aid and Human Rights: Colombia, U.S. Accountability, and Global Implications." Drawing on extensive data from the Colombian Attorney General's and Inspector General's offices, 20 human rights organizations, the U.S. State Department, and the Colombian military, the report addresses what implementation of U.S. human rights law in Colombia requires and explores the relationship between U.S. assistance and the human rights records of Colombian military units after receiving assistance.

The report will be presented in Bogotá on Thursday, July 29 at 6pm in the Benjamin Herrera Auditorium of Universidad Libre, Calle 8, No. 5-80, in an event co-sponsored by the Colombia No Bases Coalition. The U.S. Office on Colombia is also cooperating in the report.

The Other 13 Million Votes

On a drizzly June 20, punctuated by World Cup matches beamed in from South Africa, Colombians went to the polls to elect their president for the next four years. This was the second round of voting, pitting the candidate of the 'U' (National Unity) party, former Defence Minister Juan Manuel Santos, against the ex-mayor of Bogotá Antanas Mockus, running for the Greens. A victory for Santos had been widely anticipated and indeed, the final result appeared overwhelming: 69% for Santos, against 27% for Mockus. Santos will take up the Presidency on August 7, coinciding with the anniversary of the Battle of Boyacá, a moment of great significance in the history of Colombia's independence.

However, despite the apparent high levels of support and a Congress full of allies, not everyone is happy. There are reports of electoral fraud, and he could be arrested in Ecuador for the Colombian bombing of that country's territory in 2008. The following irreverent blog by Luis Fernando Afanador, published on the website of the weekly magazine Semana a day after the election, casts an alternative light on the results.

13 million of us did not vote for Santos

Nine million abstentions, three and a half million in favor of Mockus, and nearly 500,000 blank votes: those of us who didn't vote for Santos are a respectable majority. They can ignore us but they won't be able to crush us.

What next? An uribista government and the traditional parties thirsty for posts and contracts. It was clear that Santos would put distance between himself and Uribe and the high number of votes in his favour allows him to do so. Surely he will now nominate his own people and there will be a much more qualified team - we will go back to having Ministries! - in public office. Relations with the judiciary and the opposition will be smoother and cleaner. Will the paramilitarized right be booted out and the traditional right, which has always governed, return? We will have to wait and see: Uribe and his gang are alive and well, and they won't be swindling those political intriguers who supported Santos - they really did get down to work during the elections - with sweets or subordinate posts. They will claim the lion's share of the votes in this period of "Great National Unity". And the sixty-four thousand buck question is this: will Santos do anything to stop the course of justice in cases - in which he is not involved - against the former government? If he plays dumb over this, then it really will be war and Uribe will be more than just a thorn in the side. The latest desperate tantrums which the soon-to-be ex-president has thrown suggest betrayal and war.

The legal right is on its way then, efficient and intelligent, ready to get rid of that clumsy mountaineer who has passed his sell-by date. The right which, let it be said, has never done a good day's work in its life and has been corrupt and has tolerated paramilitaries and the dirty war and afterwards washes its hands of the whole lot.

And the opposition? Mockus doesn't have the talent to be an opponent (I just hope that, if Enrique Peñalosa - up to now part of his team - accepts the offer of a Ministry under Santos, then Mockus is capable of kicking him out). Gustavo Petro, yes, but his party, the Alternative Democratic Pole, has badly lost prestige. And rightly too. It's no slander to talk of the 20% bite.

For now, we are a majority clamoring for a leader.

You can read more analysis on the election results on the blog of our former team-member Moira Birss.

Declaration against Invasion and Military Impunity

Many people around the hemisphere were dismayed by the Costa Rican legislature's approval on July 1 of a plan to bring thousands of U.S. Marines and dozens of heaivly armed U.S. warships to Costa Rica through December. Here is just one statement of organizations in protest. For information on this deployment, see also Adam Isacson's July 13 post.

We the undersigned and organizations of our support network, categorically reject the U.S. military ships entering Costa Rican USS Kearsarge territory, as well as any further increase of militarism to attempt to solve conflicts in global politics.

We oppose the permission granted by the Costa Rican Legislature, which allows for joint patrols against trafficking of drugs into Costa Rica with up to 46 warships, 200 helicopters, 10 AV-8B Harrier aircraft and 7,000 marines.

With this action, the government of Costa Rica aims to join the U.S. military agenda in Latin America. The solution to drug trafficking is social, not military.

Costa Rica, with its neutral and pacifist tradition, cannot allow its territory to be used for a military objective that violates their sovereignty. This U.S. military contingent will be able to move freely throughout Costa Rican territory with immunity for its troops. Such a military presence in a country without an army is unacceptable.

We call on our respective goverments and peoples to jointly promote all possible action to defend Costa Rican sovereignty, and to reject this military action.

Signed by 29 organizations from 19 nations of the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean, July 8, 2010.

Video Letter: Mulatos Peace Village

Watch the FOR's team 3-minute video letter from San José de Apartadó as they take a tour of Mulatos, the site five years before of a notorious massacre. It is now home to families who are building a peace village in the midst of the war.

Letter from the Field:

The Colombian Odyssey or the Fight over Land

By Marion Hiptmair

Turbo port The humid air entering by the open windows of the already-rumbling Chevrolet Sprint was refreshing us. Our destination: Turbo, one of Colombia's most important port towns on the Caribbean, known for hot weather, dirty town beaches and its mainly Afro-Colombian population. Turbo is full of life, salty ocean-air and fresh fish … and one of my favorite towns in Colombia. I was happy having the chance to accompany Fernando, the friendly lawyer of the Antioquian Farmer Association (ACA), during his job there.

FOR has accompanied ACA's work now for about five years. They mostly support farmers who have been - or are threatened to be - displaced, in defense of their land. In Colombia access to land always has been a source of political power - and of humanitarian problems. This is a social and armed conflict in which members of the elite attempt to defend their political and economic power by putting at risk the fundamental economic, social, cultural and environmental rights of Colombian farmers.

In Turbo, the ACA works with campesinos (small farmers) who had to leave their land because of the violence in the region. When the security situation in the region got better later on and the campesinos came back to their own land, to which they even have the titles, somebody else was living there and cultivating their land. Somebody they have never met before; somebody they are afraid of and who doesn't even let them visit their own land. After this welcome back they often try with different state agencies to recover their land, but it seems impossible - impossible especially for somebody to whom all this bureaucracy is one of the biggest barriers and there is no money to pay a lawyer.

banana field in Uraba The ACA and the Association of Victims for the Restitution of Land and Property in Urabá work together with some of these campesinos to help them to get back their land.

"It's now about ten years, that I've been trying recover my land," one of the campesinos said to me, while sitting in a bar in Turbo waiting for the other two campesinos to come. He was sipping on his aromatica (sweet herbal tea) while reflecting on what had happened to him. When everyone had arrived, Fernando got some information from each of them, and we continued to an Internet café where he finished up his documents. Shortly before 5 pm, when the public offices in Colombia close, we enteed the registration office and deposited the documents. "Now the patience procedure starts" said Fernando to the campesinos, "you have to come here, every Friday, as if they would be holy, and ask for any progress in your process".

Juan, one of the campesinos who started the judicial process with the help of the ACA two years ago, was able to finally resettle his land. "The first thing I did was knock down all those plantain plants, which had hardly been cultivated in this region when I left!" said Juan proudly. As a little thanks for the help of the ACA, Juan gave Fernando some kilos of fresh corn he had just harvested and a big smile.

Let's hope that the judicial process for the other two campesinos in Turbo and for all the other campesinos the ACA accompanies works out all fine, and that they are soon able to cultivate their own land again.