Imagine that you are walking down the street, in your hometown, on your way to work or school. You are 18 and the world is your oyster! Just as you are about to cross the street, you are stopped by the military and asked for your military service card. You don't have one because you never did want to go to war. Tough luck -- up you go into an army truck. You are taken away to a nearby battalion where you will begin your obligatory military service. Just like that: snatched off the streets and out of your regular life, to begin the life of a soldier.
In Colombia, this is called a street round up and it happens all the time. In fact, according to the Red Juvenil, a youth organization based in Medellín, it happened nine times in the last week. Here are the details: on September 8th at 9:40am, an army truck was being used to take away young people who had not defined their military situation and who were passing by, disregarding whether or not they were studying and/or working. The same day, at 1:30pm a second truck, without a license plate and with nothing identifying it as a vehicle of the National Army, sought to take various young people to the 4th Brigade despite the fact that they stated they did not want to go, and that they had to study. Various members of the Youth Network of Medellín walked over to dialogue with the soldiers and to point out the illegality of the batidas and the rights of these young people. Those in charge ignored their interventions and proceeded with the round-up. Later that day it happened again, the following day two more times and more recently on September 13, three street round-ups were reported.
We are asking you to take action and support these young people in their efforts to not be pawns for the war in Colombia! Please send an email to the Ministry of Defense in Colombia, expressing your concern about the illegal street round-ups which have taken place recently in Medellín. Remind them that the United Nations has urged Colombia to revise this practice, as it has no judicial foundation or legal basis and urge that corrective measures be taken to prevent them from happening in Medellín or elsewhere in Colombia.
As Albert Einstein said, "The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service."
The Fellowship of Reconciliation will be at the upcoming School of the Americas vigil in Fort Benning, Georgia, from November 18 to 21, addressing the issues of US military presence in Latin America. Stay tuned for our workshop details.
We are also looking for volunteers to help us set up and staff a table at the largest mobilization of Americans concerned about US role in Latin America. Contact Susana Pimiento at spimiento@forusa.org or tel 512-542-1769.
State Dept: "Existing Agreements Permit Us to Continue" Military Presence
By Susana Pimiento and John Lindsay-Poland
As the dust settles on the August 10 Colombian court ruling declaring invalid the US-Colombia military bases agreement, politicians and analysts are giving kudos to the Constitutional Court ruling saying that it was for the better. Most of those voices come from former supporters of the deal -including Liberal Party presidential candidate, Rafael Pardo- can be explained largely by the strong anti-Chavez sentiment that saw the base agreement as a strong deterrent against Venezuela.
Increasingly it appears that a new agreement will not be negotiated or submitted for Congressional approval, since such a move would not only provide space for opponents of the agreement, but risk its defeat, if not in Congress, then in the Constitutional Court's mandated review. The Washington Post reported on August 27 that Santos was "leaning toward" not submitting the agreement to Congress, and quoted a State Department official as saying "We're confident that in the intermediate period, or if there is no agreement for whatever reason, our older, existing agreements will permit us to continue our robust and effective cooperation with the Santos administration on counterterrorism and counternarcotics."
The Constitutional Court ruling declaring the agreement invalid came at a perfect time to help mend broken Colombia-Venezuela relations. Unlike other US military bases in the region that were established for drug interdiction exclusively, the wide scope of the US-Colombia deal was interpreted as a threat to Venezuela, prompting President Hugo Chavez to sever diplomatic relations with Colombia. Supporters of the deal in Colombia interpreted it as a guarantee against the supposed prospect of Venezuelan aggression. Yet, the broken relations had a disastrous economic effect on Colombian exports: until the military bases deal was signed, Venezuela was the second largest market for Colombian exports.
Furthermore, countries in the region were not happy with the tension and had offered to mediate. So, it did not come as a surprise that only three days after Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos took office, he received President Chavez in the Caribbean town of Santa Marta, at the hacienda where Simon Bolivar died, and both governments committed to mend their broken relations. Reestablishment of Venezuela-Colombian relations has been widely praised. Colombia and Ecuador have also been progressively patching up of their differences, since the March 2008 Colombian raid into Ecuador that prompted Quito to sever diplomatic ties. With these bilateral détentes, the militarist rationale in Colombia for the base agreement disappears.
Since it is an international treaty, it requires Congressional approval and then it would go back to the Constitutional Court, this time to make sure it is compatible with Colombian constitution. While President Santos' majority in Colombian Congress would surely afford him a swift approval, the same cannot be said about the deal's transit through the Constitutional Court. Indeed, as many opponents of the deal have pointed out, Colombian constitution does not allow stationing of foreign troops in Colombian soil (only transit) and the constitution, in its preamble, commits Colombia to integration with other Latin American and Caribbean nations.
At the same time, it appears that the regional objectives of the accord have been substantially reduced. In other words, let the agreement die and go back to the status quo ante, which permitted US-Colombian military cooperation in the war within Colombia, as well as training of other nations' militaries.
At the end of August, George W. Bush's top Pentagon bureaucrat for Latin America from 2007 to 2009, Stephen Johnson, published some very telling observations in Foreign Policy. He recommended that the Pentagon:
"…embrace new methods. While we might need to continue tracking using conspicuous 1950s-vintage planes for now, flexible staging locations using smaller, less noticeable, civilian sensor platforms should become the model. With help from Congress, we might update our technology to do more tracking from ships or remote radar locations. These steps could help shrink our military footprint, reducing the need for facilities upkeep and status of forces agreements that take forever to negotiate and create headaches for partner countries."
The references to "headaches for partner countries," "less noticeable" platforms, and the virtues of "shrinking[ing] our military footprint" give backhanded credit to the movements in Colombia, the rest of Latin America and the United States that have campaigned against this and other U.S. base agreements in the region. In that respect, we should recognize the court's ruling - and Washington and Bogota's apparent decision not to resubmit or renegotiate an agreement - as a substantial victory.
But it doesn't end there.
Many of the most pernicious aspects of the military base agreement - especially regarding U.S. intentions for extraterritorial uses of the bases in the region - were not contained in the accord itself, but in U.S. budget and planning documents. The use of Palanquero air base for "contingency operations" (White House budget document for FY2010), the Southern Command's ambitions to expand beyond counternarcotics operations to establish a base with "air mobility reach on the South American continent" (Air Mobility Command planning document), and references to the capacity for "full spectrum operations" from Palanquero to confront "narcotics funded terrorist insurgencies, anti-U.S. governments, endemic poverty and recurring natural disasters" in the region - these were unilateral U.S. statements of the bases' missions. It is not clear that scrapping the base agreement will neutralize these regional interventionist plans, or whether those with such ambitions were chastened by the strong opposition the agreement encountered.
Moreover, of the seven bases specified in the October 2009 agreement, the US was already using all of them, except possibly the Palanquero air base. Palanquero was slated for an upgrade to facilitate new operations, but it had already been re-approved for U.S. assistance, after being suspended for five years in the wake of a 1998 bombing that killed 17 civilians. U.S. planes bound for Haiti as part of the militarized response to the January 2010 earthquake left from Palanquero. Both Colombia and the Pentagon still have an incentive to revive the base agreement, since current legislation makes the $43 million upgrade of Palanquero contingent on entering such an agreement. But sources in Washington report that Congress authorized the funds for five years. Any U.S. activities on Palanquero, then, must draw from other funds.
The United States has also had access to other bases not named in the agreement, such as the Tres Esquinas base. Access to these bases will not be denied under the court's decision, though it is possible that the additional privileges for U.S. forces spelled out in the agreement, such as U.S. troops bearing arms, the wide scope of immunity for crimes committed in Colombia by U.S. troops, and access to the electromagnetic spectrum, will be excluded.
What's more, foreign military assistance - central to the U.S. military presence in Colombia prior to the bases agreement - can be as pernicious a form of military intervention as "bases." This is because any nation's armed forces are granted extraordinary power and privilege - wielding lethal force - in exchange for a commitment to constitutional process and legitimacy. Training that force, especially its leadership, on the scale the US has in Colombia gives the United States itself extraordinary power within the country, even without the profound and institutional violations and illegitimacies that permeate the Colombian army.
Meanwhile, any hopes that the Santos government might use political capital to negotiate with the FARC are dim, with President Santos refusing Brazilian president Lula's offers to mediate and announcements of a large offensive against the FARC. The Obama administration shows no interest in a negotiated solution, which would require at least tacit U.S. support. U.S. military assistance and presence, then, will continue to help perpetuate the armed conflict. Accusations of Venezuela support for the FARC serve to rationalize the U.S. military involvement in Colombia, as well as destabilization of Venezuela.
The October 2009 military base agreement served as a wakeup call for social movements in the Americas to the growing militarization of U.S. actions in the hemisphere - from assault ship deployments in Costa Rica, to the U.S. role in the Honduras coup, to military control of humanitarian disaster response in Haiti and elsewhere, to the impact of U.S. military aid on political violence in Colombia. TheAmericas Social Forum in Paraguaylast month brought together social activists from the whole region for a continental campaign against all foreign military presence in the Americas. There is a lot of energy and concern. It is now our task to strategically mobilize such energy in nonviolent action.
A coalition of organizations is calling for local actions on October 11 to oppose U.S. militarization in Latin America. For more, see the call to action.
International Summit of Women and People of the Americas against Militarization
by Rachel Dickson
In August, Colombia hosted the first "International Summit of Women and People of the Americas against Militarization," attended by almost 3,000 people, including around 200 international delegates from the Americas and Europe. The event provided a unique space for organizations and social activists to come together to share, denounce, and make visible the effects of militarization and war on the bodies of women, territories, and civil society, with the objective to systemize the experiences of resistance against militarization and to define a strategic agenda to coordinate a social movement of women and people for the defense of territories. Although the Colombian Constitutional Court deemed unconstitutional the agreement giving the U.S. military access to seven Colombian bases on the second day of the summit, the focus of the attendees remained centered on building strong opposition to the growing U.S. military presence in Latin America.
The summit, convened by the Social Movement of Women Against the War and for the Peace, came out of a long process involving 60 Colombian social organizations that have spent the last four years developing a common agenda against militarization. According to Betty Puerto of the Women's Popular Organization (OFP), the goal of the movement is to eventually present a peace proposal from women to the Colombian national government urging a political negotiation to the armed conflict, along with various measures to assure that human rights are protected in Colombia.
The Social Movement of Women was spearheaded ten years ago by the OFP, when they began to collect information about the suffering of women caused by the effects of the internal conflict. Jacqueline Rojas, the Barrancabermeja regional coordinator, said that they later opened to the movement to other regions of the country, where other organizations already had initiatives, and began a campaign of popular education in schools and neighborhoods, teaching the effects of militarization on the bodies of women and civil society.
The movement now includes indigenous communities, labor unions, housewives, Afro-Colombian communities, political organizations, church organizations, academics, student movements, displaced people, small-scale farmers, community mothers, and regional peace processes, all of whom were represented in the summit, united under the slogan, "We do not birth sons and daughters for war."
The implications for women living around bases are grim, where the number of rapes is alarmingly high. Sexual crimes against women in Colombia have a 98.6% rate of impunity, according to summit speaker Ana Maria Diaz, the deputy director of research at the Colombian Commission of Jurists. According to Diaz, data from the National Institute of Legal Medicine and Forensic Sciences show that in 2004-2009, more than 73% of sexual crimes related to the armed conflict were committed by the armed forces.A 2009 annual report released by the Interamerican Court of Human Rights, suggests that the armed conflict exacerbates the problem. Based on information from 2007-2009, the Commission observed that "the principal perpetrators of the sexual violence are the police, the military forces and the illegal actors in the armed conflict (guerrillas and paramilitary groups)."
Another concern of Diaz is that U.S. soldiers in foreign countries generally receive diplomatic immunity, meaning they can't be tried for their crimes in the countries where they are deployed, and there are numerous cases of sexual abuse committed by U.S. personnel, sometimes of young girls, that remain in impunity. (See interview with mother of 12-year-old girl raped by a U.S. soldier and a contractor in 2007.) Prostitution rates are also high around bases, with military-sanctioned "entertainment houses."
To see these effects first hand, international delegates from 19 different countries participated in humanitarian visits to twelve heavily militarized regions around Colombia in the first days of the summit. They found evidence of multinational companies around the country allied with police, military, and paramilitary forces to end social organizations and gain control of territory, according to the report written and presented during the summit. They found women to be extremely victimized by militarization in these regions, and social movements to be severely stifled by the State.
In Barrancabermeja, the delegates joined over 2,000 Colombian activists from the organizations that make up the Social Movement of Women Against the War for two days of seminars, workshops, and speeches. Colombian Senator Piedad Cordoba, who has been involved with the Movement for sometime, described the effects that the largest business in the world, war, has brought to Colombia - bodies floating down the Magdalena River, women's corpses missing a head or arms, and more than 5,000 "false positives," - civilians killed and dressed up as guerrillas by the army.
Women talked about the issues they face from various perspectives: indigenous, small-scale farmers, Afro-Colombians, urban dwellers, union leaders, artists, and internationals were all represented. One afternoon the Movement held the largest march to occur in Barrancabermeja in eight years; participants carried banners, candles, and rocks to remember those who had lost their lives in the conflict.
On the last day of the summit, the group caravanned to Puerto Salgar, home to the Palanquero air base, one of the seven bases "given" to the U.S. in the 2009 agreement. According to a study contracted by the Social Movement of Women and released at the summit, prostitution is alarmingly high in Puerto Salgar, and the base has had a strong influence on cultural, political, and social life in Puerto Salgar.
The women held an eight-hour vigil in front of the base, with musicians, speakers, dancers, and theater. One impressive youth dance group from Barrancabermeja highlighted the devastation to the environment and civilian life in the city by oil company control. Colombian Senator Gloria Ines Ramirez spoke of the need to continue the struggle, and a message of encouragement to the Movement was read aloud, written by Clara Lopez, the president of the Polo Democratico, the only major Colombian political party to oppose to the U.S.-Colombia bases agreement.
The summit successfully brought together many people working against the expansionist interests of the U.S. in the region, people who denounce the growing militarization of the region as a strategy of appropriation of the wealth and natural resources of territories, and the effects on women in particular. Women's bodies are used as commodities in war, and while femicide rates are rising, women also are frequently left behind to raise and support the family when their partners go to war or are killed. The event brought hope and promise to a broken movement, a movement that has been systematically marginalized, threatened, and suppressed by the powers that be.
Already many women who helped organize the event have received subsequent threats - one organizer has been followed by men on motorcycles taking pictures outside her house, another has been forced to flee the country. Around the time of the event a human rights defender was found murdered in retaliation for her participation in public, international human rights events. The picture remains grim inside Colombia and out, but the international community of opposition to the status quo gets stronger after each event such as this one.
Recently arriving in Apartadó's airport after a short vacation, I was dumbfounded by a large poster in the baggage claim that proudly proclaimed, "Thanks to you soldier, there is a people that can work the land in peace and tranquility." I left the airport to continue accompanying a community in their struggle with all the "peace and tranquility" that supposedly surrounded them.
Those of you in the States may have heard this everything-is-OK discourse from the Colombian government, who , or from your own government. In a blog entry this past December focusing on San José de Apartadó, the U.S. Department of State gushed, "Thanks to a reinvigorated effort by the Government of Colombia supported by the U.S. government, this former battleground between the Colombian military and armed insurgent groups is slowly coming back to life."
In part because of the national and international attention San José received after the 2005 massacre of eight peace community members, the Colombian government and military are anxious to make an example of San José to show the prosperity that comes with their dominating presence there. The narrative of San José as a military success also serves the U.S. government by validating the continued massive infusion of military aid to Colombia under Plan Colombia and the war on drugs.
The recent reality in San José unfortunately has looked very different. About a month ago, Álvaro Montoya, the town pharmacist and president of San José's Community Action Council, left his house in San Jose early on a Thursday morning to go to Apartadó in one of the regularly departing jeeps. About twenty minutes outside of San José near a peace community village, two armed, camouflaged men stopped the jeep and asked Álvaro to get off. They killed him and left his body by the side of the road.
Álvaro's murder was not an isolated event but one of many that make up an increasingly tense situation in San José. Soon after Álvaro was murdered, the FARC removed Nelly Vargas, the daughter of a peace community member and mother of three, from her house and killed her in a hamlet near San José. Paramilitaries have also recently been active in Apartadó and San José. In July, pamphlets were distributed throughout the region warning people to stay indoors after 10pm. Along with this threat, paramilitaries held a meeting in Apartadó on July 27 stating that they were prohibiting people from going to San José. In the same meeting, paramilitaries informed people that they had a list of targets in San José to kill. Although their superiors have a discourse that all-is-OK, the military has been mounting an increasing number of checkpoints on the road to and around San José.
There is a very tangible tension I feel when walking through San Jose. Whether it's the large police bunker overlooking the town, the constant gaze of soldiers as I walk by, the collective fear of a guerrilla attack, or just the knowledge of recent events, I can't be sure. The daily reality, though, is clear enough to FOR and all those who live near or in San José: it reveals the Colombian and U.S. governments' discourse of peace and tranquility as a monstrous joke.
Father Javier Giraldo has been a busy man of late. One of the biggest supporters of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, at the start of September he released two books in as many days. One dealt with the interface between Christianity and human rights, while the second focused on the history of the attacks on the Peace Community during its 13 years of existence. The latter, entitled Fusil o Toga, Toga y Fusil (The gun or the robe, the robe and the gun), was launched before representatives of ten North American, European and Latin American embassies, in the presence of various friends and accompaniers of the Community, including FOR, whose team helped plan the event. Father Javier explained that the title itself is indicative of current trends threatening the Peace Community - either members collaborate with the military (the gun) or they will be brought to trial on false grounds (the robe). The book opens with a throwback to a massacre in 1977, etched in the memory of San José de Apartadó locals, in the vereda of Mulatos, a rural zone which would later become (in)famous across Colombia and the world for the ghastly massacre of seven Peace Community members and children. As we report elsewhere in this bulletin, Mulatos was the location of another killing within the last month, this time of a Community member's relative.
The substance of the book meticulously recalls the acts and threats of violence against the Peace Community over the 13 years of its existence, and details the derechos de petición (similar to freedom of information requests) concerning these attacks which have been sent to various governmental representatives, and either ignored or treated superficially. The breakfast also proved an opportunity for the Community representatives to outline their viewpoint on a variety of contemporary issues, be that the long-standing and continued presence/threats of paramilitary actors in close proximity to Peace Community spaces, the shelving of a disciplinary investigation into slanderous comments made against the Community by former-President Uribe, or the recent verdict which cleared ten army officers and sub-officials of any involvement in the aforementioned Mulatos massacre. Father Javier described this judgment as one of the most horrendous that the Colombian State has produced.
Community leaders asked for diplomatic support in launching a Commission of Evaluation of Justice, to look at the structural problems that have led to a complete lack of meaningful justice for attacks against the Community. This Commission is one of the four points that, if satisfactorily addressed by the Colombian government, would lead to the re-establishment of dialogue between the Peace Community and the State. Plans were also revealed for a Community pilgrimage to Bogotá in November, which will encompass visits to marginalized or militarized areas. The Peace Community has sought to nurture its relationships with the foreign Embassies, as part of its non-violent struggle for justice. The United States was represented at the breakfast by the new human rights officer. This event will be followed up with diplomatic visits to San José de Apartadó in the coming weeks. In the context of a new Colombian administration enjoying a honeymoon period, the breakfast enabled members of the diplomatic corps to hear about very real concerns unfolding in the post-Uribe era, in the context of thirteen years of attacks and impunity so painstakingly documented by Father Javier Giraldo.
Redwoods Presbyterian Church, 110 Magnola St., Larkspur, CA
In South America, growing US military involvement is encountering civic movements for peace and human rights and governments seeking independence from Washington. Colombia has become a focus for this encounter, as US policy prolongs a long war that's displaced millions of Colombians, and controversy seethes over pervasive civilian killings, US military bases, and a proposed free trade agreement.
John Lindsay-Poland of FOR and Task Force on the Americas Director Dale Sorensen will discuss US militarization in the hemisphere, impacts on human rights, and grassroots responses. Both recently returned from fact-finding delegations in Colombia. They will show photos of affected Colombian communities and maps of US aid and human rights violations with their presentation.Donations accepted, refreshments served.
Information: Call the Task Force 415/924-3227
Forum: "Beyond Despair: US Militarization of Latin America"
Sunday, October 17, 2010, 9:30am
First Unitarian Universalist Church, 1187 Franklin Street at Geary, San Francisco, CA
John Lindsay-Poland speaks on our increasing presence as a military force in Latin America, how that affects the freedom of people in those countries and whether our country is a force for good or for ill in this hemisphere. Can US citizens effectively stand with threatened communities and activists? How are these changing with the militarization of US policy and people's movements in South America? John is director of research and advocacy for the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a national interfaith peace and justice organization.
Fellowship of Reconciliation Task Force on Latin America •
P.O. Box 72492, Oakland CA 94612 •
Tel: 510-763-1403 Fax: 510-763-1409 •
Web: www.forcolombia.org
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world is your oyster! Just as you are about to cross the street, you are stopped by the military and asked for your military service card. You don't have one because you never did want to go to war. Tough luck -- up you go into an army truck. You are taken away to a nearby battalion where you will begin your obligatory military service. Just like that: snatched off the streets and out of your regular life, to begin the life of a soldier.
We are asking you to take action and support these young people in their efforts to not be pawns for the war in Colombia! 
Militarization,"
Another concern of Diaz is that U.S. soldiers in foreign countries generally receive diplomatic immunity, meaning they can't be tried for their crimes in the countries where they are deployed, and there are numerous cases of sexual abuse committed by U.S. personnel, sometimes of young girls, that remain in impunity. (See 
Recently arriving in Apartadó's airport after a short vacation, I was dumbfounded by a large poster in the baggage claim that proudly proclaimed, "Thanks to you soldier, there is a people that can work the land in peace and tranquility." I left the airport to continue accompanying a community in their struggle with all the "peace and tranquility" that supposedly surrounded them.
José de Apartadó, at the start of September he released two books in as many days. One dealt with the interface between Christianity and human rights, while the second focused on the history of the attacks on the Peace Community during its 13 years of existence.