March 2000
American Friends Service Committee Peacework Magazine Patrica Watson, Editor Sara Burke, Assistant Editor Pat Farren, Founding Editor
2161 Massachusetts Ave.
Telephone number:
Fax number: pwork@igc.org Peacework has been published monthly since 1972, intended to serve as a source of dependable information to those who strive for peace and justice and are committed to furthering the nonviolent social change necessary to achieve them. Rooted in Quaker values and informed by AFSC experience and initiatives, Peacework offers a forum for organizers, fostering coalition-building and teaching the methods and strategies that work in the global and local community. Peacework seeks to serve as an incubator for social transformation, introducing a younger generation to a deeper analysis of problems and issues, reminding and re-inspiring long-term activists, encouraging the generations to listen to each other, and creating space for the voices of the disenfranchised. Views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of the AFSC. |
Defending Colombia "The U'wa territory is sacred. Cultures with principles are not for sale. We, the U'was, defend the life of humanity and planet earth. We will not renounce our rights." "We are claiming our ancestral and constitutional rights to life and to our traditional territory. We demand that the Colombian government and Oxy leave us in peace and that once and for all they cancel the oil project in this area. We U'wa people are willing to give our lives to defend Mother Earth from this project which will annihilate our culture, destroy nature, and upset the world's equilibrium. Caring for the Earth and the welfare of our children and of future generations is not only the responsibility of the U'wa people but of the entire national and international society.....We are seeking an explanation for this 'progress' that goes against life. We are demanding that this kind of progress stop, that oil exploitation in the heart of the Earth is halted, that the deliberate bleeding of the Earth stop."
--Statements of the U'wa people AFSC Statement on Colombia Colombians captured international attention last October when 10 million people marched for peace. Talks between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla forces have resumed. Yet, rather than support these significant opportunities to end the longest and bloodiest civil war in Latin America, the US and Colombian governments are pursuing an escalation of military aid which will undermine peace efforts and is likely to draw the US deeper into what Amnesty International says could be the "worst human rights catastrophe of the hemisphere." Although policy makers state that the two-year $1.3 billion dollar military aid package proposed by President Clinton on January 11 will be dedicated to the war on drugs, Colombia's civil war and the drug war are inseparable. As Barry McCaffrey, drug policy advisor for the Clinton Administration, stated in 1999, "It is silly at this point to try to differentiate between antidrug efforts and the war against insurgent groups." Colombia is the largest recipient of US counter-drug assistance, yet in the last decade, coca production has more than tripled and extended deeper into the Amazon basin, according to the International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. In March of 1999, President Clinton apologized for the US role in Guatemala's internal conflict in which "acts of genocide" were committed according to a UN truth commission report. President Clinton stated that "support for military forces or intelligence units which engaged in violent and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake." The proposed military aid package for Colombia will repeat that mistake by intervening in a counterinsurgency war, making it more deadly, and undermining the peace process. Colombia is already the world's third largest recipient of US military assistance despite overwhelming evidence collected by independent human rights groups and Colombian judicial authorities demonstrating active state collusion with paramilitary groups which are responsible for massacres, atrocities, and widespread human rights abuses against the civilian population. Massacres and displacement are used as military tactics and civilian non-combatants account for at least two-thirds of casualties. The violence has produced 1.6 million internal refugees, which exceeds the forced exodus that the world recently witnessed with horror in both Kosovo and East Timor. The proposed aid package will draw the US deeper into Colombia's conflict, intensify the war, and make the US complicit in a wide scale violation of human rights. Rather than fueling the flames of Colombia's civil war, the US should: support the peace process, programs for the protection of human rights, alternative development programs for coca and poppy producers, and drug treatment and prevention programs to reduce the demand of drugs at home.
----February 11, 2000, Don Reeves, AFSC
General Secretary Background on Colombia Despite President Clinton's claims that "...we're going into this with our eyes wide open," the Administration's $1.3 billion aid package to Colombia is a disastrous approach to stemming the drug trade and ending the South American nation's brutal armed conflict. This new aid, combined with funds already directed toward Colombia, will amount to $1.6 billion over the next two years. About 80% of this package is assistance to the Colombian army, widely-recognized as the most abusive military in the Western hemisphere. Even though at least 250 US military personnel and advisors counsel, train, and share intelligence with Colombia's security forces everyday, the Clinton Administration aims to expand this relationship by:
Only a small part of Clinton's package calls for non-military aid, including only: $145 million over the next two years for economic alternatives for Colombian farmers who now grow coca and poppy plants and $93 million to cover judicial reform, anti-corruption, human rights protection, rule of law, and the peace process. Your call to encourage policy makers to increase these positive alternatives and oppose military assistance may tip the balance between war and peace in Colombia. Talking Points
Action Call your representative and Senators and ask them to oppose military aid to Colombia and to support positive alternatives for peace in that country. US Capitol switchboard 202-224-3121. (House of Representatives website, to determine who your state rep is <http://www.house.gov/writerep/>) Addresses for letters
|
|
|