Dear Friends, here is our April update on Colombia, U.S. policy, and work to demilitarize life and land in the Americas:
Demilitarize Your Life! (part 2)
José Luis Peña Rueda is a conscientious objector from Bogota, Colombia. He was illegally taken by the Colombian military to fulfill his mandatory military service. Here, he tells his story...
Watch the video here.
Letter from the field (US version): "Perforating our reality"
San José Peace Community leader Jesús Emilio Tuberquia spoke in dozens of communities from California, New Mexico and Colorado to New York, Washington, DC and Chicago, from March 27 to April 22, on a tour sponsored by FOR, Loyola University, Peace Brigades International, and many local groups.
In Syracuse, Jesus Emilio's presentation provided inspiration for a nonviolent demonstration against bombing drones at the Hancock Air Base on Good Friday, where 37 people were arrested. One of those arrested, Julienne Oldfield, said of Jesús Emilio talk to the group beforehand: "They were electrified by Jesus Emilio. He had such a way to coming alike when he spoke. He had a great presence and an ease, very powerful. He pull everyone together. His visit was a perfect prelude to the action against drones: the fact that is peaceful, non-violent and deeply seated. In the language that he used, his manners. So non-violent and yet so powerful. If the Peace Community can achieve and stay through in spite of threats, why can't we?"
In Washington, DC, during a plenary speech at the Latin American Solidarity conference, Jesús Emilio talked about his community, and Colombia, then spoke of the root of the problems in the world. He held up a dollar bill and a Colombian thousand peso note. "This is the problem, is people going after this." Then he tore up the bills into tiny pieces.
Jesús Emilio said more than once that the community has a terminal cancer, that there is no hope. "How can you live without hope?" asked Loyola students in Chicago. "We can question whether it's a cancer or not," says Loyola professor Elizabeth Lozano. "But if it were terminal cancer, would it be realistic to have hope? I think Jesús Emilio see himself as being put on earth to fight for the truth, and he needs every single minute to do that."
Lozano speaks of remarkable moments, when students and community members stayed on for hours to listen and talk, sometimes with their coats on already. "It was a collective thing."
 Callie Rabe, a teacher at Allendale Columbia School in Rochester, New York, provided this account:
"I am a Spanish teacher in upstate New York. Jesús Emilio Tuberquia was on a speaking tour through my area. Due to a stroke of luck, he was able to come speak to students at my school while he was in town. I had no idea the impact it would have on the students, my colleagues, and the school community.
"Jesús Emilio is an articulate speaker, but at the same time he is passionate, sincere and a warm person. His persona immediately intrigued the audience and they were captivated by him. As he began to talk of the horrors of life in Apartadó, my student's mouths dropped open and you could hear a pin drop. They hung on his every word.
"During the question period after his presentation, I could tell from the questions asked that the students were struggling to comprehend the reality of the situation in Apartadó. "What inspired you to become involved?", among others, showed their inability to realize that these atrocities were a reality for Jesús Emilio, not a luxury of deciding to "get involved" in creating a Peace Community. By the end of the presentation there was a silence that suggested to me that it was beginning to sink in. That yes, these situations do exist, that in fact they are perpetrated by our own government, and that we are causing the spilling of blood of our brothers and sisters in Colombia every time that we drink a Coca Cola, buy Colombian bananas, or patronize Nestle.
"For days, students caught me in the hall or came to see me to talk about how they were affected by Jesús Emilio's presentation. They wanted to DO something. They needed to DO something. It had perforated their reality. A parent of a student came to see me to tell me that her son had arrived home at 11:00 that night, following a baseball game that was in a faraway town. He then proceeded to talk non-stop about Jesús Emilio and his presentation. He was so moved, shocked, upset, angry, affected by what he had heard. His mother had never seen him like this...
"Thank you Jesús Emilio. Thank you citizens of Apartadó for your commitment to creating peace."
We Demand Justice, Not Revenge
Statement by the San José de Apartadó Peace Community
Our Peace Community decided, yesterday on April 11, to recover the remains of two paramilitary members that had remained unburied in Arenas Bajas settlement, after combat on April 1 between guerrillas and paramilitaries. The Community had asked to the Ombudsman's Office to facilitate the removal of the bodies by the relevant authorities, a request that was not heeded. According to the Ombudsman's Office, the Army had carried out operations in the area and said that the Community was lying, since, according to the military, there had not been any combat and there were not bodies in the area nor do paramilitary groups exist.
 Nevertheless, the area's residents had observed how on April 2 a group of 25 paramilitaries entered the area to inspect the bodies of their companions, but did not take them, while from the air a military helicopter protected them. Our Community is now used to hearing the Army's and other State institutions' falsehoods, and was not surprised by this way of lying and hiding the crude reality of the facts.
Many people who do not know us, who have not walked with us, wonder how it is possible that these paramilitaries that threatened us, that forced us many times to abandon our lands and participated in a mulititude of crimes against us together with the armed forces, should now be treated in a humanitarian way by us, to the point that we recover their remains and bury them with a minimum of dignity. Among the standards of the System of Death and Inhumanity that surrounds us, this is not understood. Instead, in our society the principle of "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" reigns. In their speeches, our presidents incite revenge against the insurgency with barbarous language that makes one shiver.
But we don't share these principles. Our struggle for justice is completely foreign and contrary to any feeling of revenge. We demand justice; we say NO to the armed groups; we demand respect; we do not yeild to their demands; we do not step back from their threats and acts of barbarism. They certainly cause us great fear and intense pain with their criminal actions, but what they have never done nor will they ever do is to create hatred in us. Our hearts beat for life and never [vibrate with] death. For that reason, we demand justice, not revenge. We believe that the dignity of any human being is above the wars, and so our Community's choice has been to recover the remains, bury them, and/or deliver them to their families.
Walking in search of these remains, so exposing our own lives, we only wanted to show that life only has its fullness and expression in carrying out the ideals of justice. We put ourselves against those who plant death, who only cause pain and death with their weapons, though they never manage to kill civilian resistance, that thing that builds and gives meaning to a world free of oppression, of impunity, and of injustice.
We delivered the bodies to the families, who expressed to us their gratitude and could experience the dehumanization of a State that lies and plays with the families' pain in such a repugnant way, after having destroyed the consciences of those who were brought into and trained in the most horrendous crimes.
We reaffirm our principles based on solidarity, and we will continue in the total defense of our lands, while making a testament in all circumstances to the truth, without going back one millimeter in the face of the armed groups' actions of death.
April 12, 2011
The ‘Operational Security’ of Colombian Civilians
By John Lindsay-Poland
During the second term of George W. Bush and the first year of Obama’s presidency, the State Department regularly disclosed which units in the Colombian military were approved to receive U.S. assistance. Although not published by the State Department, the disclosure permitted a minimal level of transparency about how taxpayer dollars were being used in a controversial war. It also facilitated minimal oversight for compliance with the Leahy Law, which prohibits U.S. assistance to any foreign military unit for which there is credible evidence that members have committed a gross human rights abuse.
In January of this year, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela wrote (pdf) to several signers of a letter about military aid to Colombia (pdf), saying that information about which Colombian military units are approved for U.S. aid is now classified to “protect operational security” of Colombian soldiers. He offered no evidence that disclosure of which units receive U.S. aid (and which are suspended from aid because of human rights concerns) presents any risk to operational security. Indeed, reports that the Fellowship of Reconciliation issued with Amnesty International and the U.S. Office on Colombia, which studied the human rights records of U.S.-assisted units and found pervasive non-compliance with the Leahy Law, generated no operational insecurity. But these reports did raise serious questions in Congress about military aid in Colombia.
The month after Valenzuela sent his letter, Colombian Defense Minister Rodrigo Rivera made his own disclosure (pdf) of the Colombian military brigades that received U.S. assistance in the previous two years. The Colombian military apparently perceives no problem for operational security in such a disclosure, so you have to wonder why Mr. Valenzuela sees a threat in this transparency measure.
Defense Minister Rivera’s list of U.S.-assisted brigades raises further questions, because it includes army units that, according to State Department documents and statements, had been suspended from receiving military aid. For example, the United States cut off support in 2008 to the 11th Brigade, which operates in Córdoba and Sucre states, after a growing number of “false positive” killings were attributed to brigade soldiers, and a battalion commander from the brigade was arrested for collaboration with the neo-paramilitary Paisas. The 11th Brigade and its sub-units do not appear on the State Department’s list of units approved for assistance in 2008-09 and 2009-10. Yet Minister Rivera states that the United States gave it assistance in the last two years.
Similarly, the Colombian Army’s 12th Brigade operates in southern Caquetá state. The State Department acknowledges assisting the brigade through 2006, but its records show a suspension of aid beginning in 2007, after brigade soldiers were reported to have executed 14 civilians in the previous two years. Yet according to Colombia, the United States has again supported the 12th Brigade during the last two years.(1)
Minister Rivera’s disclosure is part of responses to questions by Senator Jorge Robledo, who has been seeking more precise information about the U.S. military presence in Colombia. Robledo recently co-authored a book about the controversial agreement for the use of at least seven military bases in Colombia by the United States, currently suspended by decision of the Constitutional Court.
Yet Rivera reveals that the United States has extensive use of military bases in Colombia anyway. In fact, U.S. personnel have operated in 24 different locations – from Riohacha to Buenaventura, from Palmira to Valledupar, from Medellín to San Andrés - during the last two years, as part of military deals between the two countries that were not submitted for consideration by either the Congress or Colombian courts. (2) These are obscure implementation agreements, hidden in annexes to unpublished documents, which Senator Robledo continues to seek to make public.
Apart from the constitutionality of the deals, the presence of U.S. military and contract personnel in two dozen locations throughout the country demonstrates that the core of the controversial base treaty is already in place. That treaty was a way to institutionalize the existing arrangements, and to ensure that the U.S. Congress would continue to finance them, despite serious doubts about a strategic alliance with a military charged with thousands of civilian deaths and enjoying nearly complete impunity. Let the “operational security” of Colombian civilians victimized by “false positives” de damned.
The irony is that while U.S. laws allow Washington to hold other nations’ militaries in judgment – at least to withhold lethal and other assistance – for their human rights crimes, the Obama administration becomes less transparent about that assistance. In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives last month, Admiral James Winnefeld, commander of the U.S. regional command operating in Mexico, declined to give details on aid the United States is giving to the Mexican military, engaged in the disastrous drug war. He said he would leave that disclosure to Mexico.
The State Department declines to debate the ethics, legality, or wisdom of the United States arming an unaccountable military or spreading its military presence in Colombia without legislative approval or judicial review. Instead, it classifies information and lets its clients handle the public relations, at least until the next insider with a conscience, or who is simply fed up, decides to leak the truth.
(1) The other army brigades supported by the United States are: 7th, 8th, 9th, 13th, 21st, 22nd; Mobile Brigades 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 22; the Aviation, Special Forces, and Counternarcotics Brigades, as well as the Center for Military Education.
(2) The other locations are: Apiay, Bogotá, Tolemaida, Cali, Cartagena, Tres Esquinas, Marandúa, Macarena, Facatativá, Armenia, Coveñas, Santa Marta, Barranquilla, Ibagué, Corozal, Palanquero, Espinal, Bahía Málaga, and Puerto Salgar.
Convicted for War Crimes?
Entrepreneurs at a Vacation Resort
By Susana Pimiento
In the Colombian armed conflict, justice has long been considered the exception, as less than three of every hundred gross human rights violations  perpetrated by Colombian armed groups, including the Army, end up with a judicial conviction, according to the United Nations.
Take the November 1998 La Cabuya massacre, in which a group of officers from the 16th Brigade, posing as members of the paramilitary group Los Macetos, killed five civilians accusing them of being “guerrilla collaborators,” in a rural part of the eastern oil town of Tame, Arauca. Among the victims was Alicia Ramirez, a woman who was seven months pregnant. The massacre sent 34 families into forced displacement.
Breaking the 98.5 percent impunity, several army officers were convicted for La Cabuya massacre, including Lt Orlando Pulido-Rojas. The State Department, in its 2004 Human Rights Certification, listed Pulido-Rojas' indictment as one of the examples of the Colombian Government’s efforts to “vigorously investigate and prosecute” members of the armed forces who had allegedly committed human rights violations. His 40-year sentence was confirmed by the Colombian Supreme Court this past February.
In its April 3 edition, Semana magazine revealed the conditions in which many Colombian army officers convicted for gross human rights violations pay for their crimes. At the Tolemaida military base, though there is a detention center, a large number of army officers live in what amounts to a vacation resort, comprised of comfortable cabins, fully equipped with appliances, AC, satellite TV, and internet. According to Semana, convicted officers are allowed to walk out of the military base as they please, stay overnight (provided they send a text message), and even go out of town on vacation to the Caribbean resorts of San Andres and Cartagena. Their families and friends are allowed to stay over-night at the resort center.
Semana reported on the special privileges granted to the Lt Colonel Pulido Rojas: he was allowed to set up a profitable business inside the base, a restaurant in which he sells standard lunches as well dishes a la carte.
He is not the only convicted “entrepreneur”: Juan Carlos Rodríguez, alias Zeus, allegedly the former head of security for drug lord alias Don Diego had a fleet of four taxis.
Wilson Casallas, of the 6th Brigade Pijaos Batallion, was convicted for the horrific 2003 Cajamarca massacre--in which a man was tortured, his body dismembered, his hands and head placed in a plastic bag, then accused of being a guerrilla member. Casallas is the owner of a bus that runs one of the local transportation routes.
And Gerson Galvis Calderón, with the military’s anti kidnapping unit, convicted for the 2006 killing of six merchants in Barranquilla, works as taxi driver. Furthermore, 68% of the officers, even though their sentences have been confirmed by an appeals court, continue as active army officers, receiving salary and benefits.
It is not clear how exactly one can avoid the detention center and enjoy all the perks, which are sold at an informal market (a cabin costs between US$1,000 and 3,000). Semana documents several cases in which top army commanders, such as General Mario Montoya and General Oscar Gonzalez have secured the funding to build new units. Captain Guillermo Gordillo, the only officer convicted for the 2005 San José de Apartadó massacre, after pleading guilty and revealing how the military operation was planned by top ranking generals, including the former head of the armed forces General Montoya, is held at the base, but he is not believed to be enjoying any privileges.
Privileges: At what cost?
Semana includes testimonies of officers that talk about a “pact of silence” between convicted officers and higher-rank officers, so that the latter would not be implicated in the crimes.
A hearing in Congress was held soon after the latest scandal broke, with some members of Congress calling for closing the military base prison and transferring the prisoners to a facility operated by the Colombian prison agency. Members of Congress also called for political accountability of top generals that have allowed such a charade of justice to happen, and the dismissal of General Mario Montoya from his post as Ambassador to the Dominican Republic. All those calls have been rejected and the army and Defense Minister have closed ranks to keep the detention center at Tolemaida.
This scandal is a reminder of the importance of keeping pressure on the Colombian state to ensure that top military officers are held accountable for their role in crimes committed against so many innocent civilians. The investigations against Generals Fandiño and Montoya for their role in the 2005 San José de Apartadó massacre continue to collect dust at the Attorney's General office. It is time for those investigations to move forward, to show us that we can still hope for justice.
Take action: Send an email to the Attorney's General office urging it to make substantial progress in investigating the role of Generals Hector Jaime Fandiño and Mario Montoya in the February 2005 massacre in San José de Apartadó. Write to; direccion.asuntosinternacionales@fiscalia.gov.co |
