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GREEN LETTER No. 71 from COLOMBIA, 15th March 2005Email: atlantiscommune@hotmail.com "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum . That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time, the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate." - Noam Chomsky
We are devoting the whole of this issue of our Green Letter to the San Jose Peace community in Apartado, Uraba, Antioquia, Northern Colombia, as there has been a terrible massacre of men, women and children of this community by agents of the Colombian Army. Our own group (Atlantis) has been involved for some time with the people of San Jose and similar communities which are forming in Colombia (see recent Green Letters). Both the San Jose peace community and the concept of the 'peasant universities' which they organize around the country are unique and very brave grass root initiatives springing up from depths of the most inauspicious civil war-torn areas of Colombia and deserve the attention and support of caring people everywhere, as they are an attempt to form some kind of practical alternative to being caught up with either side of the war - guerrilla or government. Here is a translation from Spanish of the latest devastating news as we received it direct from San Jose: February 24, 2005
ARMY MASSACRES MEMBERS OF SAN JOSE PEACE COMMUNITYWe are paralyzed with grief and can only weep. The Colombian State has perpetrated yet another massacre that bathes our land in blood. The Army has massacred LUIS EDUARDO GUERRA, 35 years old, leader of our community, his new partner (his former wife was recently killed by a stray Army hand grenade - ed.) 17 year old BELLANIRA AREIZA GUZMAN, his 11 year old son DEINER ANDRES GUERRA, who was severely wounded on 11th August by a grenade left by the Army; ALFONSO BOLIVAR TUBERQUIA GRACIANO, 30 years old and leader of the Mulatos community, his partner SANDRA MILENA MUNOZ POZO, 24 years old, and their two children, SANTIAGO TUBERQUIA MUNOZ and NATALIA ANDREA TUBERQUIA MUNOZ, just two and six years old. Luis Eduardo Guerra left his house in San Jose on 19th February to travel to his farm in Mulatos (seven hours from San Jose) to harvest cocoa. His plan was to return on Monday 21st. But on that Monday around 11 a.m., they were stopped by members of the Eleventh Brigade of the Army by the River Mulatos. Luis Eduardo was leaving for San Jose with his partner Bellanira, his son Deiner and another youngster, a half-brother of Luis Eduardo. The army threatened them and said they were going to take them away and kill them. Upon hearing this, Luis's half brother managed to escape. But Luis Eduardo, Bellanira and Deiner were taken to the next hamlet, La Resbalosa. There they took them to the house of ALFONSO BOLIVAR. On Tuesday 22nd, Luis Eduardo's half brother, who had managed to flee, went to look for them at Alfonso Bolivar's house and found only blood. He followed the trail of blood which led to a ditch near the house which contained their bodies cut to pieces. This horrific find was made by the youngster with other people from the village present. These are the facts as far as we know them. LUIS EDUARDO, great friend and leader, defender of human rights, founder of our community, our delegate for 5 years in talks with the State, who travelled several times by invitation to Europe and the United States to share our experiences, your death fills us with unspeakable sadness and your murder, as well as the murders of the people massacred with you, fills us with rage and indignation. 300 people are going from our community to La Resbalosa, which is 9 hours from San Jose, to collect the bodies of our comrades. We ask for national and international solidarity to protest against this atrocity. We also ask that security be demanded from the Colombian state for the group of people travelling to recuperate the bodies left by this latest massacre. LUIS EDUARDO, your memory, your dedication, your clarity, your friendship give us strength in the midst of our grief. As always agreed, we will not take one step backwards in our principles, even though the State, through its paramilitaries, kill every one of us. If anyone reading these terrible facts feels moved to send a protest to the Colombian Embassy in their country, please do so. The Colombian Ministry of Defence has put out an official communiqué 'abhorring' the massacre, denying involvement - but at the same time accusing the San Jose Peace Community of 'harbouring guerrillas', which in Colombia amounts to a green light to the Army to continue its policy of harassment, intimidation and murder. In view of this protestation of government 'innocence' let us take a look at some of the incidents leading up to this massacre. First, regular Green Letter readers will recall an incident we previously reported where a stray Army hand grenade killed Luis Eduardo's wife and another woman, plus severely injuring his now-murdered son. Here is a brief anecdote sent by Anne Barr at the time from the hospital in Apartado where she visited the severely injured boy: Wednesday, October 13th 2004. "When Luis Eduardo arrived at the hospital in Apartado, just hours after the explosion, with the two women, one his wife, who died very soon afterwards, and his son, who was at that point at death's door, the Army told him that if he would turn in two other leaders of his community, then his family would be taken care of well. And if not, they would be left to die. Luckily at that point, people from the Peace Brigades International and from the Defensoria (a Colombian institution - a special office set up to protect ordinary people from official mistreatment! - ed.) turned up and had the victims flown to Medellin where the boy was saved, but the two women died." Then on October 19th 2004, the San Jose Peace Community sent out the following notice:
CARAVAN FOR LIFE AGAINST DEATH THREATS AND THE BLOCKADEIn the face of an economic blockade and death threats from the paramilitaries with the complicity of the Colombian Armed Forces, the San Jose Peace Community has resolved not to retreat. We believe that our principles of life, solidarity, and the construction of a peaceful society cannot be erased by the policies of death and destruction which are the guiding principles of the paramilitaries. The fear which their actions cause us will not immobilize us. On the contrary, we have decided to give even our lives in support of the principles of openness which we have built up. We believe in the truth of the people, in the memory which history provides and in the justice of humanity and therefore we will not retreat a single step in the face of the armed participants in this conflict and their attacks. Therefore we have decided to form a Caravan for Life, to take place on 22nd October. In this caravan of vehicles, the peasant members of this community will all go down together to Apartado to do our shopping communally and afterwards return to San Jose together. We have requested the accompaniment of international agencies, the Peace Brigades International, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and others, and also of the Government Office for the Defence of the People (Defensoria). They will be witnesses of this process, of our defence of life, and will join us in solidarity against the blockade and campaign of murder which the paramilitaries are using to attack our community. We will leave at 8 a.m. and return at 2.0 p.m. We know that the paramilitaries' programme of death and destruction, supported by the Armed Forces, is intended to besiege and destroy us, but we trust in the strength of solidarity with life. Therefore we ask for national and international solidarity to ensure the safety of this caravan, to lift the blockade and stop the assassinations of people involved with our community. We have asked the Government to take action to put a stop to the blockade, the death threats and spreading of terror by the paramilitaries, but we have not seen any real response to change this state of affairs. Therefore we will continue to carry out this kind of civil action, as not to do so would be to give up on the demand for respect for life, and that the civilian population not be involved in the war, it would be to renounce our right to a peaceful life.
Once again, we send our thanks for the solidarity and support shown to our project and for actions against the blockade such as this Caravan for Life. We ask again for help to demand of our government respect for the Caravan and that action be taken to stop the blockade, the threats and the assassinations.
On 27th November 2004, the Community sent out the following public announcement (translated from Spanish): DEATH THREATS AND ARMY AGGRESSION AGAINST SAN JOSE CONTINUEThe San Jose Peace Community wish to report further acts of aggression against our activities which are evidence of official intent to exterminate our community. The facts we wish to record for history so that one day they may be judged are the following: On 24th November at 4.30 p.m., the Army passed by the football pitch in San Jose. They took with them a man and his 9 year old son, then freed them 10 minutes from San Jose. Before letting them go, they told the man to tell our community that sooner or later, they were going to exterminate us, as we were a 'guerrilla community', that they were going to assassinate our leaders and only leave the children.. On 25th November around 5.0 p.m. in a place called Mangolo, at the exit of Apartado on the way to San Jose, three paramilitaries stopped the public bus and searched it, saying they were in charge of controlling the area. On 26th November at 9.20 a.m., a young woman called Luz Arledy Tuberquia was travelling in the San Jose public bus towards Apartado when a soldier at the Army checkpoint in the village of La Balsa approached her, identifying himself as Captain of the group. He asked her where she was taking her sack of cocoa to. She said she was going to sell it in Apartado. He then said that he had seen her going to the town several times and that if she continued to do so, they would make sure that the same happened to her as to Yorbeli Restrepo - who was assassinated on 2nd October by paramilitaries (see report further below). Then they let her go but told her not to forget the warning. The same day, 26th November, 10 minutes from San Jose, there was an armed confrontation between the guerrilla force and the Colombian Army between 6.00 p.m. and 6.40 p.m. At 7.05 p.m., the Army entered into San Jose. Noting this, and in accordance with our policy of neutrality in the conflict, the people of the community asked them to leave as they were putting everyone in danger, especially in view of the shooting which had just been heard. But when the people said to the Army that by being there, they were using the civilian population as human shields, the soldiers replied that that was precisely why they were there, so that the community would be shot at. Then they went to the shops, and when the shopkeepers refused to serve them, they beat one up and forced them to sell their products. Several soldiers said that the community was in support of the guerrilla and that they were going to destroy it. Accompanying the troops was Mr. Wilmar Durango, a well-known paramilitary who has carried out robberies and death threats (like to Yorbeli Restrepo). Mr. Durango began laughing at the people saying that he could do what he liked and that nothing would happen to him, and that they could be assured that they had no idea of all the damage that he was going to do to the 'bastard guerrilla community.' The Army left around 7.35 p.m. They took with them a youngster, Fernando Cardona Higuita, who had been detained by them around 2 p.m. in the hamlet of Cristalina when he was collecting cocoa. All these facts are proof of the deliberate terrorizing and death threats against our community on the part of the Army. We know without doubt that they are officially protected with total impunity to continue in this mode without sanction. The paramilitaries continue to operate freely and the farce of the 'peace talks' between them and the government which is presented to the world as demobilization and truce does not fool their victims, such as us. But in spite of all these acts of terror, we will not give up on our principles and we know that the impunity which reigns over the more than 144 murders of members of our community perpetrated by paramilitaries with the support of the Armed Forces cannot continue for ever when viewed by the international community and historical record. We are living through a siege of destruction and death - and this is what the Government call 'peace' with the paramilitaries and 'protection' from the Army. But we will not give up. No threats of terror will be sufficient to cloud our resolve to separate ourselves from both sides in this war, and to act with openness and solidarity, always maintaining our search for truth, justice and an end to impunity. We give thanks for national and international solidarity because it is this which gives us hope to carry on. Then on December 17th, we received the following from the Peace Brigades International, who have been constantly accompanying the people of San Jose in an attempt to ward off the aggression they are faced with by keeping an international spotlight on the atrocities occurring in this region. (This document is translated from the original Spanish): Greetings from the Peace Brigades International (PBI) in Colombia. With this communication we wish to inform everyone of our concern, based on first hand reports collected during our daily accompaniment of people, organizations and displaced communities who work in defence of human rights and who because of this are threatened physically and in the conduct of their work. Assassination of a resident of San Jose de Apartado and death threats in the renewed economic blockade of the Peace Community. On 2nd October, members of the PBI received news that a group of armed civilians (paramilitaries) had taken from a public bus a woman called Yorbeli Amparo Restrepo Florez, a resident of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado. The paramilitaries got into the public service vehicle at the exit of Apartado on the road to San Jose, and a few minutes later, ordered it to stop, and that all the passengers except Yorbeli Restrepo should get out. At some 200 metres from this spot, on a highly militarized road, the armed civilians forced the driver to get out and then continued on their way alone with Yorbeli Restrepo. At 6.0 p.m. that day, the corpse of a woman was found in the district of Chinita de Apartado; later it was confirmed that the body was that of Yorbeli Restrepo. The same day, a few hours after Yorbeli's kidnap, a young girl called Uberlina Del Socorro Delgado was detained at the military checkpoint of La Balsa, on the same Apartado-San Jose road. According to information received, members of the Army pressured her to confess to being a guerrilla girl and to join the government plan for 'reinsertion' of demobilized guerrilla fighters. When she refused to do this, the commander of the troop threatened her, telling her that if she did not collaborate with them, the same would happen to her as to Yorbeli Restrepo. This shows that members of the Army knew of what had happened to Yorbeli hours before her body was found. We are profoundly disturbed by these events, especially given the context in which they occurred. We have seen an increase in open threats, the object of which is to bring about an economic blockade of the Peace Community, and in the final analysis, to terrify the population into terminating their project of finding a way to live peacefully in the middle of the Colombian conflict. During July and August, paramilitaries threatened and killed several tradesmen in San Jose and the events of the present month must be seen as a sharpening of this strategy. Yorbeli Restrepo had a little shop in San Jose and during the weeks following her murder, threats have continued against other trades people and members of the community who take merchandise up to San Jose. The Freedom Legal Corporation (Corporacion Juridica Libertad), legal advisers to the community, have repeatedly denounced the death threats delivered by Mr. Wilmar Durango, a presumed paramilitary, who had threatened Yorbeli Restrepo with death before her assassination. Once again, let us recall that the Peace Community of San Jose has provisional measures granted by the International Court of Human Rights (ICHR) in November 2000. Moreover, ICHR Resolution of 18th June 2002 asks the Colombian State to fulfill its obligations regarding these measures; and lastly, we would mention Decree No. T-327 pronounced by the Constitutional Court of Colombia last April which orders the Seventeenth Brigade, in whose jurisdiction the Peace Community lies, to respect these measures. In the face of these facts, the State's obligation to ensure the safety of people using the main Apartado-San Jose highway, and in investigating and sanctioning those responsible for human rights violations appears more relevant than ever. Peace Brigades International wishes to draw attention to the visit paid by five embassies and the United Nations to the peace community last June as a clear sign of international interest in the welfare of this community. We also emphasize the promises made by the Vice Presidency of Colombia in a meeting with national and international NGOs in Apartado on August 13th last. At that meeting, the Vice President of Colombia maintained that the government is going to continue with its work of integration with NGOs in the region as well as with the community to ensure the protection of the civilian population. Just a few weeks after these promises, the peace community has once again suffered an increase in the attacks against it. We beg the international community to continue to give special attention to this peace initiative so that these terrible events cease.
Then on 22nd December 2004, the San Jose community sent the following notice (translation): PUBLIC COMMUNICATION:The San Jose Peace Community reports renewed attacks against the process of civil resistance which we have been engaged in for more than seven years. The facts we wish to reveal for your consideration and to leave for history to judge are the following: On December 12th, 2004, LUIS EDUARDO GUERRA, leader of our community, was detained at the military checkpoint stationed by the Seventeenth Brigade in a hamlet called La Balsa, situated on the road between Apartado and San Jose. He was interrogated by several soldiers who treated him badly and said he was under suspicion because they see him travel down to Apartado frequently. They also interrogated him regarding what he does in the community. Upon finding himself questioned in this manner, Luis Eduardo asked the soldiers to identify themselves, but they refused to do so. Finally, they allowed him to continue on his way. On December 18th, around 3.0 p.m., Diana Valderrama, another leader of the Peace Community, was detained at the same Army checkpoint, along with the rest of the passengers who were travelling in a public service vehicle on the San Jose-Apartado road. The soldiers also asked her what she does in the community, and asked her the names of the leaders of the peace community. They also said to her that it was very suspicious that she went down so often to Apartado. (This repeated accusation is an insinuation that provisions are being purchased to supply the guerrilla - ed.) On December 19th, at the same checkpoint, during a search of the public bus, the soldiers interrogated Blanca Torres, a member of the peace community. Blanca was intimidated by the questions and accusations of the soldiers who said that if she keeps on going down so often to Apartado, they will arrest her. Blanca was taking cocoa seed to San Jose; this they threw on the ground. December 20th, around 10. 0 a.m., members of the SIJIN (State Intelligence Agency) detained Mrs. Maria Eugenia Jaragua Correa in the bus terminal of Apartado. Mrs. Jaragua was accompanied by her small son and was about to get on a bus for San Jose. With no explanation, the detectives took the two of them away and kept them for two hours, after which they let them go. During that time, they told her they had detained her as they had received a telephone call saying she was suspicious and that was why they were investigating her. They also told her they were going to investigate her husband, Alirio Tuberquia. This series of events causes our community alarm as they show clearly a policy of intimidation towards members and leaders of our process. The interrogations which take place at the military checkpoints, far from offering security or protection for the civilian population, serve only as opportunities to accuse, threaten and intimidate people using this highway. It is also very relevant that all these facts have been made known to the Vice-President of Colombia, without there being any change in the attitude of the Army. We are also very worried about the obvious persecution of the Correa family as Mrs. Maria Eugenia is a relative of Sister Lisana Correa Ruiz, who was threatened and beaten up by paramilitaries in Apartado on 8th December last. Once again, we beg for national and international solidarity to terminate these acts of terror and that the decision of the population not to participate in any way in the conflict be respected. Likewise, we reiterate our determination to continue working for the construction of a different society, a struggle which we are waging in the midst of many difficulties, crimes, threats and intimidations such as those suffered at the military checkpoints of the 17th Brigade on the Apartado-San Jose highway.
Two months later, seven more people of this brave community are dead. Please do anything you can to protest this state of affairs. These are relevant Colombian Government email addresses to which to address your concerns:
reygon@procuraduria.gov.co
The State Attorney's office:
denuncie@fiscalia.gov.co
or
contacto@fiscalia.gov.co
With best wishes to all our readers. As always, we welcome your letters of comment, enquiry and support.
~ end GREEN LETTER 71 ~
GREEN LETTER FROM COLOMBIA No. 72, April 23rd 2005".we are determined to continue resisting and defending our rights. We don't know for how long because what we have experienced throughout our history shows that though today we may be speaking, tomorrow we could be dead. Today we are in San Jose de Apartado, but tomorrow there could be a massacre and the majority of the people displaced.."
Words spoken by Luis Eduardo Guerra, Leader of San Jose Peace Community, 15th January 2005, 37 days before being assassinated and his friends and family massacred.
In view of the importance for the whole of Colombia of recent horrific events in San Jose Peace Community, Northern Colombia, we are once again putting aside local news and events from our own community (Atlantis), and devoting a second Green Letter entirely to the unfolding of this story, through press reports, direct communications from the people of San Jose, and from our colleague, Anne Barr, who works with these people. This Green Letter is the longest yet as we felt the subject matter demands it. It follows on directly from events reported in Issue No. 71. We always welcome correspondence, questions and comments (to the email address above or to our postal address in Belen). (All documents and articles have been translated from Spanish, except of course Anne's and John Pilger's.) COMMUNICATION FROM SAN JOSE PEACE COMMUNITY, APARTADO, February 27th 2005(Translation): Fact-finding mission following the massacre in San Jose of eight people, including three children.Dear Friends, This is the Epilogue to a very sad day. On Friday 25th February towards midday, we found evidence of the massacre: two burial pits containing the mutilated bodies of ALFONSO BOLIVAR TUBERQUIA, SANDRA MILENA MUNOZ and their children NATALIA ANDREA TUBERQUIA, 4 years old, and SANTIAGO TUBERQUIA MUNOZ, 18 months old. We also found the remains of ALEJANDRO PEREZ, 30 years old. This man was nothing to do with the peace process of the Peace Community. All of these people had been slaughtered by machete, their heads and limbs completely cut off, showing the brutality and incredible cruelty of the killers. According to a witness who survived, the Army came in shooting at the house of Mr. Alfonso Tuberquia and one of the shots injured his partner, Sandra Milenia. 40 metres from the house, Alejandro Perez and another campesino were approaching. Upon hearing the shots, both ran off, but Alejandro Perez fell wounded and no more was known of him until his body was found. Alfonso Tuberquia and a worker of his who was in the house at this time, managed to run off but Alfonso stopped upon hearing the screams of his wife begging the Army not to kill their children. Alfonso told his companion that he preferred to die with his family, that he couldn't abandon them and he returned to his house and was slaughtered. Recovery of the five corpses was carried out by the Fiscalia (Public Prosecutor's officials) who arrived by helicopter in the afternoon of 25th February. From the moment we arrived in Mulatos and Resbalosa (hamlets where these events took place) we were surrounded by the Army who, as we had previously denounced, ever since 17th February had maintained an operation in the whole area. And ever since this time, the Army has maintained a strong presence in all the villages of the San Jose area. We wish to clarify the Army-paramilitary strategy for emptying villages of people and taking control of their land: first, indiscriminate bombing and then operations which destroy everything in their path: animals, crops, houses, and, as these recent events show, whole families, little children of only 4 years, babies of only 18 months, all fall victim to an inhuman war, and worse still, at the hands of the forces of the Colombian State, whose constitutional function is supposed to be to protect its citizens. Sadly, there is no doubt that this strategy works: we have seen that in only two weeks, after these actions in Mulatos and Resbalosa only 10 families remained, and now 9 of them have fled to San Jose. We are worried that three families from the hamlet of Las Nieves are still missing. The terrible finds did not end with the common graves. With night already falling, we had to go out in search of the bodies of Luis Eduardo Guerra, leader of our community, and his family. We found them beside the River Mulatos, thrown at the side of a road. They had no bullet wounds but showed clearly that they had been fiercely beaten and slashed and finally had their throats cut. Luis Eduardo, Bellanira, 17, and Deiner, 11. Their bodies were still there on Saturday 26th at midday as the Fiscalia first transported the bodies that were in graves and promised to return at first light for the others. But they did not come. Part of our commission remained there waiting for them to keep their word so that we could bury our friends. Finally, today, 27th February, their bodies were removed. In the middle of all this tragedy, we see how the Army's strategy of spreading terror has not abated. The soldiers who are maintaining a strong presence in all the villages have said to several families that it is a shame that the killings were known of so soon, because if they hadn't been, there would have been more dead. And the troops who were surrounding us the whole time commented: "they smell of dead guerrillas", referring to the eight people massacred. And in spite of the fact that the commander of the troops promised not to take photos or videotape records of us, they did just that. The whole time, the military harassed our commission, accusing us of being guerrillas; they also called over and questioned several community leaders, calling them by names. The media have attempted to distort reality by reporting that the massacre was carried out by the guerrilla and other versions say it was paramilitaries. For us, it is clear that it is a direct operation of the Colombian army who cordoned off the zone before the massacre, ever since February 17th. The media also said that Luis Eduardo was involved with the explosion of a bomb last August. The truth is the opposite (as reported in a Green Letter at the time - ed.): Luis Eduardo's family and other people were victims of the explosion of a grenade left by the Army. Deiner himself, son of Luis Eduardo, now dead, was seriously injured and nearly lost one of his legs in the incident. ..We are faced with a fresh humanitarian crisis in our region, and the death of our friends and of Luis Eduardo, leader of our community, is a fierce blow to our project. We know that the whole strategy of terror and impunity will continue. The military have threatened various families in the villages and have warned them that if they don't leave, the same will happen to them. And the surviving witnesses to the massacre live in terror for their lives. We have now suffered 152 assassinations, without there being a single conviction for any of them. Hundreds of testimonies have been collected pointing to who is responsible, in spite of which the impunity continues and will be maintained as it is vital for the State to protect their assassins. Tomorrow, Monday 28th February, we hope to hold a collective burial in the cemetery of San Jose. But the words of Luis Eduardo, his ideas and philosophies, will remain with us and now with more strength than ever. He believed that the civilian population had the right to live in dignity and peace. We also believe this and will continue to defend this principle, even if it costs us our lives.
LUIS EDUARDO GUERRA, LEADER OF SAN JOSE PEACE COMMUNITY, GARROTTED TO DEATH- Report in El Tiempo, Colombia's leading newspaper, February 27th 2005It was 9.30 on the morning of 19th February when some peasants reported that men dressed in camouflage were out looking for them. The armed group had just killed a labourer in the hamlet of Las Nieves, Uraba. The peasants begged Guerra to flee, but witnesses report that he refused to run, saying that he had nothing to hide. The assassins took hold of him, his wife Bellanira Ariza, and his 11 year old son Deiner, and beat and chopped them to death by the side of a river. Their remains were eaten by vultures. This is what peasants told the priest Javier Giraldo who has accompanied the Peace Community in its objective of remaining neutral in the face of the armed conflict. The peasants also told the priest that at lunchtime of the same day, the group of assassins arrived at the home of Alfonso Tuberquia in the same area and beat him and his wife Sandra Milena Munoz and their children Natalia, 6 years, and Santiago, 18 months to death. All were mutilated. This weekend, the bodies of the family Tuberquia Munoz and that of Alejandro Perez were found by a commission of the Fiscalia in a common grave and those of Guerra and his family in the open air. Another version of the first murders, that of Guerra and his family, was given by the Corporacion Juridica Libertad (Freedom Group of Lawyers) and shows that the Guerra family left their house in San Jose that Saturday and went to their farm in the hamlet of Mulatos, 7 hours away, and that the crime occurred on Monday 21st February, after they were intercepted by armed men at the River Mulatos. For the Authorities of the region, neither version is necessarily correct. They are making investigations to determine, amongst other things, where the massacre occurred, as they were found in a common grave. Regarding the authors of the crimes, the Public Defender of the area, Wolmar Perez, said that there are various versions and none is confirmed. For now, he asked the paramilitaries to tell the country if those responsible for these crimes belong to them or not. He also asked Sergio Caramagna, head of the investigating commission of the Organization of American States, to investigate the matter. In press releases from non-governmental organizations, it is claimed that those responsible for the crimes are soldiers stationed at Carepa, in spite of the fact that many military commanders in the region, such as the Commander of the Army himself, Reinaldo Castellanos, deny any connection of their men with these events. "These are outrageous accusations", General Castellanos said last Friday. Luis Eduardo Guerra was the person who on 23rd March 1997 drew up the internal rules of the Peace Community, the very document which prohibited any kind of arms and any type of violent act and which declared the community neutral towards any of the participants in the armed conflict in Colombia. Because of his eloquence, Guerra was the negotiator for his Community with the national government and the international community, and he represented them in the Gathering of Peace Communities held in Italy in 2003, and on many occasions he denounced threats from all the armed groups, threats which took the life of his first wife, who died last year through the explosion of a grenade left at her home. Problems with the OAS?A special unit of the Fiscalia is at this moment in Uraba attempting to gather fresh proof. In a case of this nature, it is particularly delicate for the Colombian State, as the Community of San Jose de Apartado was protected by a provisional measure of the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights (ICHR) of the OAS which obliges the Colombian Government to give them special protection. Last May, the Constitutional Court of Colombia also ordered the State to give protection and special treatment to the community. The case may be the subject of special discussion in the weekly session of the ICHR which will take place in about two weeks' time. Padre Giraldo explained that from the moment of its formation on the initiative of the now assassinated Monsenor Isaias Duarte Cancino, this community has been persecuted by the various groups operating in the armed conflict. "The Community was formed one Palm Sunday and on Holy Thursday there began an attack on the population in which the Army itself participated. There were hideous crimes, whole families were cut into pieces, people's fingers were cut off and their entrails pulled out," Giraldo reports. According to the reports of the ex-Mayoress of Apartado, Gloria Cuartas, since 1997 there have been 154 men, women and children of the Peace Community murdered. The People's Defender also said that reports had arrived at his office of five families displaced from the area where Guerra's body was found, and that three other families from las Nieves had disappeared.
REPORT OF THE MASSACRE FROM ANNE BARR, February 28th 2005The eight coffins, three of them child-sized, are easy to handle as they contain hardly any flesh, only bones. The people whose remains are in them were killed just a week ago, but the vultures, pigs and the humid heat made quick work of the corpses. I knew two of them, Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, and his son Deiner Andres, 11. Luis Eduardo was for many years the target of non-stop death threats from the military/paramilitary forces of the region, a brilliant and eloquent campesino leader and founder of the Peace Community who spoke out unceasingly against the persecution of his community by the Colombian state and military. He was small and dark, and shone with the strength of his belief in his community. I met him just last June when I was invited to take part in the Campesino University of Pacifist Resistance that his community had created, to help in a compost and garden-making course. I was delighted to take part in a 'University' with no walls, no fees or salaries and no diplomas, whose only pass mark is that the practical methods of self-sufficiency in all the basic areas of life - food, health and education - be taught and put into practice in the communities and tribes of the participants, who are community leaders from all over Colombia. Eduardo and Eduar, another leader, were a rare patch of light in the dark confusion that is Colombia, a small group of campesinos who have decided they won't take up arms, won't ally themselves with any of the armed forces and won't leave their land, no matter what happens, and who don't accept money from any 'NGOs' who try to use charity to control their actions. They speak out strongly and honestly all the time, whether to army generals, vice-presidents, ambassadors or foreign parliaments. They know that while many at home and abroad admire them and support them, they are alone and essentially defenseless, a tiny island of peaceful cooperation in the middle of the huge and violent sea of paramilitary-run Northern Colombia. Often that sea overwhelms them as it did last week. Luis Eduardo, his girlfriend Bellanira and his son Deiner went to harvest cocoa from his farm and were on their way home when they saw an army patrol lying in wait further along the path. One of the group, whose life is now in danger, said, "Let's run!" "No," said Luis, "I've nothing to hide and anyway Deiner can't run well." (He had been seriously hurt when a grenade left by the army exploded last year almost destroying his right leg and genitals). They were surrounded by the army, taken a few hundred yards away and murdered. No bullets were used. They were strangled. The wire was left, bloody, beside Luis's corpse. They were also tortured and mutilated. Deiner's head was found 30 yards from his body, it had been detached by brute force, not even a machete was used. Luis Eduardo's scalp around the back of his head had been sliced through and then pulled forward so that it covered his face. The young man who escaped hid in the forest for a few hours and then went looking for them. He didn't find them but when he got to a nearby farm, he found traces of blood that led him to a shallow grave that only half-hid the remains of a second family the army had killed that morning. Around the house were signs of grenade explosions and inside were signs of torture with clumps of human hair everywhere. He sent word to San Jose. The Community notified the police and then 120 of them went to find the bodies. They had to guard against the Army dressing the corpses as guerrillas or otherwise manipulating the evidence to make the innocent look guilty. This is a very common practice. They finally found the bodies of Luis Eduardo, his son and girlfriend by following their noses. There was little to find, most of the flesh had been eaten by vultures and pigs. Finally, days later, the Fiscalia (Government Attorney's Office) arrived in helicopters and exhumed the five bodies in the shallow grave. The bodies of the 3 adults came out in bits, as the soldiers had chopped them up using the campesinos' own machetes. The blades were left nearby, chipped and broken from cutting through bones. One arm was chopped into four bits. The adults had been sliced open and their guts spilled. Only one man was killed by bullet as he tried to escape. The soldiers who massacred these people did not run, they felt secure enough to stay close by the scene of the crimes. And why wouldn't they? They've never had to face prosecution for any of their previous murders and massacres. Just over the mountains in Cordoba is the protected area of Santa Fe de Ralito, a paramilitary haven where the 'peace monologues' are taking place. That's the cynical name people give to the talks between Alvaro Uribe's government and his offspring, the paramilitaries. In reality, the 'talks' are an attempt to legalize the paramilitary armies and all that they have gained in territory and power by murdering tens of thousands of campesinos and displacing hundreds of thousands more. When confronted by local people about what they had just done, the soldiers didn't bother to deny it. One of them actually said that the locals should be grateful that they hadn't killed more people. It is also no 'accident' that they tortured and murdered Luis and his friends and family so cruelly: it is a clear message to the Peace Community that they must leave their lands or suffer more of the same. The paras are determined to have this beautiful jungle area at any cost for their 'agricultural reinsertion programmes', in other words their coca and palm-oil plantations. When two days after collection of the bodies, we finally managed to wrest the stinking, almost-empty coffins from the pointless, bureaucratic rituals of the local morgue officials in Apartado, we drove them up the dangerous, long, dark, bumpy road to San Jose. This was thanks to a brave local jeep driver who constantly put his life at risk by taking us up and down the road through the army and police checkpoints. I wish we could have chained the killers to the central post in the big, palm-roofed, open-sided central meeting place in San Jose during the night of mourning. Then they'd have been forced to see the pain they've caused. I wish they'd had to search for a way to comfort the young woman who clung to me for hours asking me over and over again why the soldiers killed her sister, her brother-in-law and her nieces. Her brother-in-law had managed to escape when the army attacked his family as they were eating lunch, but when he realized that his children and wife hadn't managed to get away, he went back to try and help them.. I wish the killers had to be present in the lush green graveyard when earth was being thrown on to the coffins. I wish they had to answer the sturdy 3 year old campesino boy I met running down the steep muddy jungle path with his family, helping to carry all their wordly possessions (mainly chickens, bedding and cooking pots) in a few sacks and baskets to the relative safety of San Jose. I was on horseback and he accepted a lift with me. Before falling asleep in the saddle, he asked me if it was true that the soldiers had cut the fingers and toes off the little children? Maybe seeing and hearing all this would have stirred some deeply buried memory of human feeling in them. And perhaps not. Twelve members of three nearby families are still missing. We fear the worst.
MESSAGE FROM JUSTICE FOR COLOMBIA This latest outrage is all the more disturbing for British people as the UK Govt. is continuing to train and fund parts of the Colombian military despite their constant murders of civilians. Please protest in the strongest possible terms to the Colombian authorities calling on them to arrest without delay the soldiers responsible and open an independent investigation into the killing. Please also contact the UK Govt. calling on them to immediately freeze UK military assistance to the Colombian Army.
INHABITANTS OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO SEARCH FOR FIVE MISSING PERSONS -Excerpts from El Tiempo report by Nestor Lopez, February 28th 2005Yesterday, the Colombian Office of the High Commissioner of the United Nation for Human Rights condemned the massacre .. The two white coffins of the smallest member of the Tuberquia family headed the ceremony. they were followed by the grey coffins of the other six victims. ". what we know for certain is that all this week's crimes were directly the responsibility of the 17th Brigade," said Padre Giraldo emphatically.. Last night, the Minister of Defence, Jorge Alberto Uribe, discounted any responsibility of the Army. "We are united with all Colombians to reject all assassinations. The Public Forces have a clear conscience as none of them committed this crime." .. On 13th December last, at a meeting with Vice-President Francisco Santos, (reported in a Green Letter at the time - ed.) it was proposed to the inhabitants of San Jose that a group of policemen with training in human rights would invigilate the entrance to the area. However, until now no action has been taken in this respect, said Elkin Ramirez of the 'Freedom Lawyers' group (Corporacion Juridica Libertad) who represent the peasants..
Then followed a much fuller and surprisingly honest report in the Tiempo, generally considered a very rightwing newspaper: it was extremely long and very beautifully written. I have had to select the most important excerpts. FOUR DAYS SEARCHING FOR BODIES AFTER THE SAN JOSE PEACE COMMUNITY MASSACREwellknown photographer Jesus Abad Colorado accompanied the inhabitants of the locality, and this is his story:I can no longer keep silence. I spent four days with the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado. . I had received notice of the tragic occurrences. which blamed members of the Army for the killings and announced that a commission from the Community was leaving for La Resbalosa, nine hours from San Jose, to look for the bodies. I had known the people of San Jose since 1997 when they declared the setting up of the Peace Community. And I had seen their Memorial Monument grow. it is made of stones they bring from the river and on each one is written the name of a murdered person. There are already more than 150. .. I met Don Alberto (all names are fictitious to protect the people), a man with big strong hands. "The people murdered were like our own sons and daughters," he said. The long journey up the mountain was made shorter and less tense with his stories, some terrible, some happy, always showing the love the people have for this land. In spite of the pain and fear, these people were full of dignity and hope. "Look at these beautiful fertile mountains, now so abandoned. My father brought us up here. This is my life. I live here with my wife and children and we manage to survive by growing yucca and cocoa. I'm not considering leaving, we tried that and it is very hard. There have been eight or nine years of persecution and attacks. They're all furious with us, including the Government. All because we won't play the game of anyone who carries arms; they all want to use us.".. ..At 7.15 p.m., we heard the sound of helicopters and thought that the exhumation had taken place. But minutes later we met the commission of around 80 people from San Jose Community, on foot and horse, coming down from the farm of Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia, one of the assassinated leaders of the Peace Community, in whose cocoa plantation graves with the mutilated corpses had been found. An interminable procession of lights and hearts broken with grief was descending rapidly down the mountain. Several leaders told us that five bodies had been found, "There were bullet marks in the kitchen, some words written with charcoal and blood stains on the floor. They cut the adults to pieces, only the trunks remained. They cut an arm off the 6 year old girl and opened her stomach, and did the same to the 20 month old baby.." .Nearly 10.0 p.m. and we are at a tiny wooden house with a straw roof. Just one room and several families. One of the women of the community who was born in the region says, "Until a decade ago, there were 200 families here. There were communal shops, a school, a health centre and now there are only ruins. So many armed incursions and murder of campesinos have forced us to leave our lands. A year ago there were around 90 families but after another incursion of the Army and paramilitaries, there are only about 16. After this, who knows how many will stay." Other campesinos talk of Nueva Antioquia in Turbo: "It's from there that the paramilitaries organize their attacks and coordinate them with the Army..." Next day begins at 5 a.m..I go with a group of about 40 people and 40 minutes later, the vultures announce that we have arrived at the place. On the banks of the River Multos.we find what is left of the head of Luis Eduardo's son Deiner, 11 years old: the skull and a few vertebrae. 15 metres further up is the rest of the boy's body, and that of his father. Also that of Bellanira, 17 years old, Luis Eduardo's partner. Their bodies are intertwined, but little remains of them. There are no signs of bullet holes in their heads. The boy's body and that of his father still have their boots on, but not Bellanira. She is barefoot and her body is partly on top of Deiner's and the rest bent towards Luis Eduardo's. Her green trousers are rolled up to knee-level. Five or six metres from the boy's head is a machete thrown into the shrubbery which borders the river. 30 metres further down, in the middle of the river amongst the rocks, is a small black boot belonging to Bellanira and 15 metres further on, almost slit in two, is the other one. Very close by was another machete. The members of the Peace Community stand and look at the boy's head. Then they climb up to see the bodies. There are no tears. Their eyes stare and glaze over. There are no words. One of the leaders and a lawyer break the silence: "Nobody must touch anything in this area. The evidence must not be disturbed. It is important that the Fiscalia remove them for investigation." The group returns to the other side of the river. Only now the sobbing of a sister of Luis Eduardo, who remains at his side, cuts through the silence, echoing in the mountains. Tears now fall down many cheeks. Minutes and hours pass, and no helicopters or fiscal commissions...At 4.0 in the afternoon, the sound of helicopters announces the arrival of the Fiscalia. Or so everyone thinks. The group wave white flags where there is an open landing space, trying to get the attention of the pilots. One lands elsewhere, another observes us from the air, then flies off and drops troops in La Resbalosa. This operation they repeat four or five times.. The campesinos wave their shirts, light fires, make all kinds of signals, but the helicopters go off into the clouds every time. At 5.15 p.m., a group of soldiers and police arrive. They do not come up to us but ask for representatives of the Community and ask to speak alone with them. One of the leaders goes with a lawyer. Later, a police captain calls me and asks me who I work for and if I could photograph the bodies in case the Fiscalia doesn't come. Upon returning, the peasants tell me that a soldier picked up the machete that was near Bellanira's boots, cleaned it and sharpened it on the rocks. Upon seeing that he was observed, he turned his back. The lawyer and representative of the community were told about this and they went to speak to the captain and asked him to inform an official of the Army "because it is a manipulation of evidence". Upon returning to the group, they found the peasants in an even greater state of upset. "The soldier who took the machete passed close to us and without shame or pity for what we are going through, made signs and said that that machete was the one they'd slit their throats with." At 6.0 the next morning..our group is stopped on our way to the bodies by three soldiers. They ask the campesinos what they are doing in this place.They ask me who I am and why I am with this group. I explain to them about my work and about the search for several more families of this area who have not been seen or heard of for several days. A little further on, there are three wooden huts.on the first is a message written in charcoal: "Guerrilla out, signed: your worst nightmare, The Boss." In the others are two families who come out and greet us timidly. The oldest woman speaks in a very low voice, asking us how long we have been in the region and if we have come to rescue them. She says thank god that this nightmare can now end. "It began on Monday (it is now Sunday) when They arrived and they haven't let us move. They have X in custody and won't let him go home, his wife and children are alone on the other side of the mountain. They keep interrogating me and threatening me, saying I am the nurse of the guerrilla! With them was Melaza, who is a paramilitary. It's the third time that he has come to my house with the Army, he says he's going to finish off everyone in the Community because they are a bunch of bastard guerrillas and if he has to, he'll do away with the foreigners too (this refers to members of the International Peace Brigades and other foreign observers - ed.), as we are in a region that belongs to them. When my daughters go to the well for water, they threaten to cut their heads off." One of the members of the Community tells them we are here to collect the bodies of Luis Eduardo, Deiner and Bellanira. The old woman's eyes fill with tears. She takes our hands and speaks even more quietly: "So it's true that they killed them? Why did they do that? I told Luis Eduardo not to go that morning to his cocoa plantation. We knew the army were doing an operation. He didn't take any notice of me because he wasn't afraid, and he needed to harvest his crops to make money for his boy's medical bills. He went in the morning and said he was coming back, but he never did. These people came after midday and have only made us suffer. We spent all our time praying till you came just now. They would hardly let us pick a bit of maize. About Wednesday, they told us they had killed some guerrilleros by the river, that one of them was with a woman and a boy. I said to them "Wasn't it Luis Eduardo and his son you killed? They are relatives of mine, and Bellanira is his partner. Immediately they changed their story and said, 'the paramilitaries killed them." I went up to one of the soldiers and said a few words about the suffering of the peasants in Colombia and that this journey has shaken me because of all I have seen. He was visibly affected and said, "It's the peasants who always lose everything. Imagine, this family is going to have to leave even their pigs." At 10.30 a.m., the families are ready to leave. There is much sadness, but relief as well. The graffiti on the first house has been rubbed out by the soldiers. .. At 7.0 that evening, exhausted we return to San Jose. 'Where are the other members of the Press?' I ask the inhabitants. There is no answer. None had bothered to come. ..Next day at the mass funeral, I look into the eyes of the young people, men and women whom I accompanied in the search for their families, I look at the new orphans and the many widows. Too much pain. The people I saw striding bravely through the mountains and across streams are now crumpled up weeping in the cemetery of San Jose de Apartado. By Jesus Abad Colorado, Special report for El Tiempo.
Report from El Mundo newspaper, Colombia, March 1st 2005 (translated excerpts) EX MAYORESS GLORIA CUARTAS ACCUSES ARMY OF MULTIPLE CRIME IN LA RESBALOSA AND MULATOS(Gloria Cuartas is an extremely brave and wellknown woman who endlessly risks her life in this dangerous area by speaking out on behalf of the campesinos - ed.) A new commission of the San Jose Peace Community is leaving today for the villages of La Esperanza and Las Nieves to search for another five people who have disappeared and are feared murdered. The Fiscalia has ordered a legal investigation of the 17th Army Brigade to clarify the massacre of three children and five adults last week in the hamlets of La Resbalosa and Mulatos. The San Jose Peace Community, the NGO for human rights in Colombia, the ex-mayoress of Apartado, Gloria Cuartas and the priest, Javier Giraldo, amongst others, all accuse the Army of the multiple crime, but yesterday the Ministry of Defence and the Commander of the Armed Forces countered these accusations and denied any responsibility. A preliminary report from the commission of the Fiscalia sent to the region to investigate the motives and authors of the massacre gives three hypotheses: firstly, according to the Peace Community the massacre was carried out by the Army; secondly, according to the evidence of slogans found written by the paramilitaries, it could be that this group were those guilty; the third theory is that it was the guerrilla, to wreck the peace process. The report says that graffiti were found on one house signed by the AUC (paramilitaries) which said, "We killed them for being guerrilleros". The investigators also reported that the area was disturbed, that is, that objects and other evidence had been taken or tampered with. The ex-mayoress of Apartado, Gloria Cuartas, accused the 33rd Batallion of the 17th Brigade of the murders and said that there are now many witnesses, as the people who have been displaced are now daring to talk. "They were massacred as if it were an operation of King Herod, that is, that every child in the region has to be killed in case they become guerrillas," she said. She added that today another group is going out to look for more bodies in the hamlet of Las Nieves as there are rumours that there are more graves there...Padre Javier Giraldo said that patrols of the 17th Brigade entered into Las Nieves and captured and cut up a woman in the presence of her family, accusing her of being a member of the FARC militia.. The People's Defender of Uraba, Daniel Sastoque, affirmed that another five families had left their homes and taken refuge in San Jose and that another three families were missing, as well as a member of the Peace Community. Because of these violent events, the Governor of the region, Jorge Mejia, announced the installation of a police station in San Jose, in spite of the rejection by the Community of the presence of the public forces. He said that the absence of the public forces affected the community as they were 'unprotected and at the mercy of people of violence'. Meanwhile, General Ospina Ovalle said that just as some people accuse the Army, there were other versions that pointed to the FARC. He also said that at the time of the events, there were no Army patrols in the region.
JOHN PILGER NAMES THE REAL KILLERS IN COLOMBIA March 21st 2005(much shortened, with apologies to John)The UK government finds it convenient to blame Colombia's huge murder rate on the drugs trade. The reality is that most of the killings are being done by a regime it supports. Whilst apologists for Bush and Blair's murderous adventure in Iraq see a 'silver lining' in pseudo-events in the Middle East, real events in Colombia illuminate the universal nature of their 'mission.' The latest tells a horrific story that, had it qualified as news, probably would have been reported as a tragedy in which the 'price of cocaine was paid with blood.' That was how the Observer on 13 February represented the suffering of Colombia. .a Foreign Office minister assuring us the Colombia's woes could all be blamed on drugs and that the 'Oxford-educated' president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, was 'trying to rein in rogue elements of the Army.' Moreover, the British government was helping him in his noble cause. As for America's colossal military involvement in Colombia, known as 'Plan Colombia'.this was merely 'controversial' and 'aimed at eradicating the (drugs) trade.'.. On 21 February, according to witnesses, soldiers of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army entered the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in the north-west of the country. The community has no political alliance and is internationally renowned and "protected" by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. According to witness statements, the soldiers abducted and murdered eight civilians, including three young children and a teenage girl, all of whom were hacked to death with machetes.. The United Nations has called for an investigation; the United States has called for an investigation; and so has the Foreign Office. If the past is a guide, the latter two will be confident that this latest horror will blow over and Colombia's facade can be erected again. For just as Bush and Blair are soaked with blood in Iraq, so are they in Colombia. The Colombian military and police have the worst human rights record in the western hemisphere. That the government of 'Oxford-educated' Uribe is any better than his predecessors' and that drugs alone are the cause of more than 20,000 murders every year is a fiction promoted in Washington and London. No one doubts that the FARC, a peasant-based guerrilla group, has trafficked in cocaine, but the drugs trade and violence in Colombia are overwhelmingly the responsibility of the state, its military and paramilitaries, funded and trained, directly and indirectly by the American and British governments. .. The victims are the likes of Guerra and his family, and trade union activists, teachers, land-reformers and indigenous and peasant leaders who work to promote social and economic justice and human rights. In his study of British foreign policy 'Unpeople', the historian Mark Curtis wrote: The war in Colombia is essentially over the control of resources in a deeply unequal society. The basic role of the state is to marginalize the popular forces and ensure that Colombia's resources - notably oil - remain in the correct hands. US and UK strategy is to support this. The 'war on drugs' is a cover. Death squads linked to Colombian governments have been so successful in driving people off their farms that 76% of the land is now controlled by an elite of less than 3% of the population. Given the close links between the military and the paramilitaries. "US military aid is going directly to the major terrorist networks throughout Colombia, who traffic cocaine into US markets to fund their activities." The Blair government refuses to say exactly where most of British taxpayers' millions of pounds of 'drugs-related assistance' to Colombia ends up. "We do not give details of all the support," says Bill Rammell, "nor of specific units to whom we provide assistance, as to do so could reduce its effectiveness and potentially endanger the UK personnel involved." We get his drift. .. As for (Colombian President) Uribe, the Blair government's propaganda is that he has an "impressive" record of "containing crime and violence". They mean he has allowed the Colombian police, military and paramilitaries to "pacify" the cities and make sections of the middle class feel safer. No-one sees what they do outside the suburbs. In Uribe's first year as president, there were nearly 7,000 political killings and 'disappearances', worse than the average during the four years of (President) Pastrana. Busy Bill (Pilger's name for Bill Rammell of the British Foreign Office - ed.) has been promoting the Uribe regime.His omissions are many, such as the fact that the chemicals used in turning coca into cocaine all come from the US and Europe, and that significant British oil investments and human rights violations are two sides of the same coin - with BP protected by the Colombian military, and the pipeline company . investigated for its reported links with a notorious army brigade. Such is the state-sponsored menace in Colombia that British non-governmental organizations, together with their Colombian counterparts, are at constant risk. "We regularly urge the Colombian government," says Busy Bill, "to support and protect their work." The murderers of Luis Eduardo Guerra and the seven others must be quaking.
PUBLIC FORCES ATTEMPT TO RETURN TO SAN JOSE DE APARTADO A FAILURE(Colombian newspaper report, 1st April) (Excerpts)Police entered with clowns and sweets to break the ice, but the inhabitants received them with hostility. Some left. Some people who accompanied the police were filming and the already hostile community, which does not accept the Public Forces, replied by saying they would break dialogues with the Government. .Inhabitants of the Peace Community of San Jose spent the night in 5 communal huts covered in plastic which they built two weeks ago in their new settlement. Their displacement to the place they call 'Little San Jose', 15 minutes from the town centre of San Jose, was brought about by the arrival of a caravan of police trying to 'break the ice' with the inhabitants of the area. A bus laden with policemen, clowns, ice-cream and sweets, arrived at the sports place of the Peace Community on Wednesday at 11.30 in the morning, half an hour after the police priest had travelled round the settlement with a megaphone announcing the arrival of the police. According to the messages broadcast, they were coming to work hand in hand with the people, to accompany them and help them. But as they passed through the settlement, the doors of many houses closed and the people avoided going to the entertainments arranged by the police. According to members of the police, some parents told their children off if they tried to go to watch the activities. The police not only arrived against the will of the people, as they consider the Public Force an armed participant like the guerrilla or the paramilitaries, but they were accompanied by agents filming the people and this increased the mistrust of the already hostile Peace Community.. who say they will not continue their dialogue with the Government regarding the provisional measures of protection requested by the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, as they had done with the Vice-President of Colombia for the past two years.. And they added: "The government made war on a community that believes in peace and which lives in peace. Now we will not speak to any agents of the state."
A JUNGLE UNIVERSITYIn spite of the terrible treatment meted out to San Jose Peace Community, the Peasant Universities in various parts of Colombia's huge territory, begun on their initiative, continue. Our colleague Anne Barr has recently returned from the latest in the series, which lasted a month, in the hot disputed lands of Caqueta in southern Colombia, at the other end of the country from the shocking events described above. Whilst the North of Colombia is generally dominated by paramilitaries, the South has generally been under FARC (guerrilla) influence. Here is Anne's report, dated 4th April: "Remolinos del Caguan is a long way from anywhere in flat, hot, sticky Caqueta. It has possibly the worst reputation of the many notorious regions in this country of ill-repute. Most city people nearly fainted when I said I was going to spend a month there (being a foreigner and therefore definitely kidnap material for the guerrilla according to the city-based view of things, a view formed by the lies of the very right-wing TV channels and newspapers). To get to Remolinos, you have to go to the river port of Cartagena del Chaira, famous as a guerrilla and coca-trade town. I expected chaos and tension. Instead, I found a pretty, green, ordered, calm town with a very developed civic structure. But there was no shortage of tension as the army and police have checkpoints all along the roads to Cartagena del Chaira and are on every street corner of the town. Local people say they feel as though either they have been invaded by a foreign force or that they are not considered Colombians. This is the epicenter of Plan Patriota, a US-financed anti-'terrorist' campaign, so though the soldiers are Colombian, their orders come from the US. The Plan is to displace the civilian population because the region is rich in oil, nickel and uranium, not to mention coca plantations and processing plants. This takeover plan is disguised as an anti-drug and anti-guerrilla campaign but you only have to take a trip down the river to realize that's not the truth. First, our boat had to dock at an army checkpoint, whilst being pointed at by several ridiculously over-armed gunboats. After many pointless questions about why we were going down the river - the local organizers had already told the army that we were going to hold the second course of the campesino university in Remolinos - we carried on for another five minutes and were waved ashore by the FARC guerrilla checkpoint, which consisted of a few young men and women, casual, curious and friendly. Then we went another 10 minutes down the river to be ordered ashore by another army checkpoint, with a very rude and unfriendly commander. When I mentioned the oddness of this sequence of checkpoints, a local friend said, "See? It's all a theatre - the army bother us by stealing our shopping and money and arresting innocent people but they almost never seek out the guerrilla." After a whole day on the Caguan river, we got to Remolinos in the evening. It's one of the quietest, friendliest places I have been in Colombia. No cars, no loud music, no rubbish. But the prices are quite extraordinary, about twice as high as the most expensive parts of Bogota. This is partly because transport costs are enormous as the army won't allow anyone to bring in petrol (with the excuse that it's for the guerrilla or for drug processing) or reasonable quantities of basic foods like rice and oil (for the same excuses). The first two days of the month-long course were spent in introductions. The participants were from 12 different indigenous and campesino communities and many had travelled three days to get here. Some I knew from the first course we did in Uraba in the North of Colombia. One of the leaders and founders, Luis Eduardo Guerra, was no longer with us..An Indian from the Wiwa tribe was a day late as he'd had to claim from the morgue the bodies of two cousins who'd been killed by the army because they had refused to sign over tribal lands for a hydro-electric dam. Two newcomers were from the Kogui Indian tribe of the Sierra Nevada in the North of Colombia. They didn't take part much, but listened a lot. When you sit near them, you get a feeling of space and light, they were a happy couple, very in love. They never wear western clothes, only their own handspun white robes. They don't allow anyone to sell white rice or cooking oil on their lands as they say eating so much white rice makes you stupid! They are mainly self-sufficient in food. Their lands are also a famous national park, Parque Tayrona, but they have managed to chase the Ministry of the Environment away as the government tried to take over their ancient, sacred sites and give rights to the multinationals to invade. They rarely have problems with army or guerrilla as they exude such an air of authority and dignity that comes from their strict adherence to their own culture and traditions. All the other participants felt honoured that they were with us and we were all intrigued by the fact that they talked non-stop with great intensity in their own language. No-one dared to ask what they talk about. A young woman from a campesino community in para-controlled northern Colombia gave us a dark picture of how the coca trade kills all it meets. Her community has been taken over by the paramilitaries who have moved in to grow coca leaf. They pay the young men about 100 dollars a month (a good wage here) plus clothes and food, to guard the crops. Bodies appear daily in the river and no-one dares to ask who killed them or why. The army, to satisfy 'quotas', arrest anyone they find near the crops. She has two cousins in prison, ordinary poor campesinos accused of being narco-paramilitaries. Two of the courses in the campesino university were taught by university professionals. Interestingly, these were the courses that the peasants criticized most, very courteously but strongly, saying that the language used was not their language and that some of the instructors definitely learnt more from them than they were capable of teaching them. One of the professional courses was taught by some biologists who brought gruesome looking traps and nets to trap jungle animals 'to count them', and upon closer questioning, it turned out that besides torturing them, they were also going to eat some of them. I tried my best to argue that this was not ecology and got nowhere, so I resorted to guerrilla tactics: I borrowed some very highly perfumed deodorant 'to use as mosquito repellent' and quietly rubbed it all over the cages, then impregnated scraps of tissue paper with it and scattered them where they set the traps. I don't know whether this had any effect, but no animals were caught that night. I think it was more likely that 30 noisy Colombians tramping through the jungle scared them all away. Directly after this 'course', we had some real education from an Indian from the Putumayo, a beautiful 60 year old man, who had spent 25 years studying the forest at night, using the ritual hallucinogenic creeper called yahe, to see deeper into the plants. In each square metre of jungle, he showed us several medicinal plants. We took them home, made ointments and extracts and tried them out on ourselves with good effect. Everyone was properly impressed with him and his classes were a model of silent attention. As most campesinos see the forest as 'just weeds', his classes made a notable difference to these attitudes. In the midst of all this, we were ordered by the guerrilla to go and see them, partly because they heard there was a 'gringa' (me) in the group. So a boat collected us and took us to another well-organized riverside village. We were directed up the hill to the church to be met by a black commander and several elegant young guerrilla men and women, whose welcoming words were "Don't worry, this is not a kidnap." Whilst army helicopters flew around back and forth overhead, we introduced ourselves and then the commander gave a long and interesting speech about the FARC's political plans, mixing this up with well-explained world history and songs of his own composition. But in spite of his charm and intelligence, this situation brought out the complicated human biodiversity of Colombia. The commander invited questions and comments. As no-one spoke up, I told him of our experience of the FARC, of the several excellently-organized FARC-controlled zones we have lived in, yet were displaced from by the FARC themselves, and about the murder of our two boys by out-of-control FARC militia and how the FARC higher commands did not punish their men for this crime so we had to resort to the inefficient methods of the State to have two of the murderers put in prison. I said that one appreciates the areas they have maintained and protected, like here in the Caguan where one can walk around at any hour of the day or night, sleep with the doors or windows open, and where the army/paramilitaries don't feel quite so confident as they do in the North to abuse and massacre the civil population. (At the University course in the Peace Community of San Jose, a small area besieged by extensive paramilitary-run areas, we couldn't travel alone and had to have international accompaniment from NGOs all the time.) The only unusual thing about my story is that it is about foreigners, as any campesino or Indian could a similar or worse story and there is much mistrust of the guerrilla amongst civilians because they have allowed many of their Fronts to get out of control and become little dictatorships, subject to the whims of local commanders with little political ideology. Then others began to speak up, saying the same things, that the FARC would have to prove that they really are an army that protects the people, as through their frequent maltreatment of campesinos and Indians, they have lost stature in the eyes of most civilians. I think this commander had not realized that he had drawn unto himself a group of strong leaders from communities that have been forced to try and find unarmed ways of living in the midst of the many warring factions. Each community has suffered in different ways, to differing degrees from the various armed forces, for this war has as many faces as the immense variety of Colombian landscapes, climates and cultures. The communities who have to cohabit their areas with the guerrilla are the most tolerant of them, though they are also deeply critical. The Indian groups consider them arrogant upstarts who have as little right to stick their noses in their affairs as the government or the army have and the Paez tribe have amazing success in protecting their areas with large well-trained groups of young men armed only with sacred talking sticks and radios. The San Jose group protect themselves by being outspoken and making a hell of a fuss via international channels every time the army or the paras try to move in. It works up to a point, but doesn't stop massacres like that of Luis Eduardo and his friends and family. It has to be admitted that where the guerrilla are least present, there is more death and destruction, like in the mineral-rich north and east where the multinationals and their paramilitary protectors are strongest."
Report from San Jose Community, April 14th 2005
NEW ACTS OF TERROR ON THE INCREASE AGAINST OUR COMMUNITYThe San Jose Peace Community wishes to inform of fresh aggressions against our project, namely the following: On Saturday, 9th April 2005 at 4.0 p.m., Mr. BERNARDO CEBALLOS was detained at one of the police checkpoints situated at the exit of the town of Apartado on the road to San Jose. Mr. Ceballos was taken to the police station in Apartado and was presented in front of two young men - 'reinserted guerrilleros' according to the police. There the police accused him of being a guerrillero but he denied this completely, saying he had four children and spent his time working. The police told him to give himself up and begin working with them, that they would give him money, land and they would help to get his family out, and all he had to do was accuse certain people in the Peace Community. Mr. Ceballos said there was no reason to 'reinsert' himself and that he certainly would not accuse anyone, least of all people in the community who worked very seriously. For a while, they continued pressing him with the same offers and he insisted on his civil status and on refusing to work with them. Finally he was let free around 9.00 a.m. the following day, Sunday. On Sunday 10th April, around 7.30 a.m., the army arrived shooting at the house of NUBIA CARDONA situated in the hamlet of La Cristalina. With her were her son, her daughter-in-law and two children. Hearing shots, all of them ran out and fortunately no-one was hurt. But in spite of this, a helicopter arrived around 9.0 a.m. and begun to bomb the house and its surrounds. The army took away her food and various animals. The same day around 8.0 p.m., the army bombed La Cristalina once again, and several families have had to leave because of the indiscriminate bombing. On Sunday 10th April around 10.0 a.m.: a young man, JUAN CORREA, was detained at the police station on the way out of Apartado on the road to San Jose. They told him that they were arresting him as the community had denounced him as a guerrilla. He told them that the community would do no such thing and that he belonged to no armed group nor was he a guerrilla. Later the police let him go, but they told him to be wary of the community; he answered by saying that that was not how it was at all, that the people we have to guard against are the armed groups. According to several comments made between 10th and 12th April by the police in San Jose, and according to reports of some functionaries of the local administration, the mobilization of some 50 families in Apartado is being prepared to invade the homes of families of the Peace Community. Likewise, according to the police, they are going to set up a supermarket in the installations of the communal food store belonging to our project. On Thursday 14th April, at 7.0 a.m., Mrs. DALIDA RODRIGUEZ was travelling with her 12-year-old daughter, bringing a load of avocados and coconuts to sell in San Josesito (where the Community is presently taking refuge). When they passed the army who were in the hamlet of La Linda, the soldiers shot into the air, and Dalida fled with her daughter. But when she realized the shots were into the air, she returned for her merchandise, only to find that the army were eating her coconuts and the avocados had been damaged. When she complained about this, the soldiers told her to make herself scarce or they would cut her head off. We beg for national and international solidarity to stop the indiscriminate bombing and acts of terror against the civilian population and to respect the Humanitarian Zones, especially La Cristalina and that the persecution, detentions and false accusations against us should stop. We continue firm and clear in our principles and from San Josesito, a place of dignity, we continue in our endeavours to build an area of civil resistance in the middle of the war, by being neutral and not taking sides with any armed participants.
THEY ARE TRYING TO TAKE AWAY OUR HOMESA further communiqué from San Jose Peace Community, April 18th 2005 The San Jose Peace Community wishes to report further aggressions planned against us and the lies behind them. These are the facts for your consideration: On Saturday 16th April around 9.0 a.m. a large number of vehicles and buses began to go up from Apartado to San Jose. More than 12 of them, full of people, with chickens, machetes and boots to give away. According to the media of the region, the Mayor was there in the middle of a 'civic military event'. There were no members of the San Jose Peace Community in San Jose, and yet the media thanked us for our participation and boasted of having given us all the items they brought with them. But the most worrying aspect was that some of the media said that the Community was being given 15 days to return to San Jose to collaborate with the police and if we did not go, people from Apartado would be brought to live in our houses. This declaration is a total cheek and shows how the public forces have only acted as agents of aggression and destruction of our community. Now they are publicly inciting the theft of our homes. We ask: what right has the State to steal our homes? It is undeniable that they are attempting to consolidate the paramilitary strategy to destroy us and in order to do this, the forces of the state join together with the municipal authorities. They seek to take from us the little that we have: they massacre our people, they force us to flee, then they want to take our houses; next it will be the confiscation of our lands. We urgently ask for national and international solidarity to prevent these criminal acts against our community, to demand of the Colombian State respect for the life and property of the members of the Peace Community, and that the plans to rob and destroy our community cease. ~ end GREEN LETTER 72 ~
GREEN LETTER FROM COLOMBIA No. 74, 9th July 2005Edited and compiled by Jenny James, atlantiscommune@hotmail.com , Postal address: Atlantis Ecological Community, Belen, Huila, Colombia "It is dangerous to oppose our governments. It is dangerous to acknowledge our deep responsibility to people living in disaster. It is dangerous to risk our liberty and our lives in opposition to violence. It's also dangerous not to, and if it weren't so dangerous, it wouldn't be so necessary." Ramzi Kysia, 'Voices in the Wilderness', quoted in Lepoco Newsletter, PA, USA Today, 9th July 2005 is the fifth anniversary of the 'execution' of two 18 year old boys belonging to our Community, Atlantis. One was Irish, my grandson Tristan James Murray; the other was my Colombian son-in-law, Javier Nova. They were murdered by peasant FARC militia anxious to please their superiors, for the crime of visiting relatives and, in the case of Tristan, for having blue eyes.. Five years later, of the band who assassinated them, one is dead, shot by local people for so many killings, including the murder by poison of the relatives Tris and Javier were visiting. This elderly couple, who had been foster parents to Tris's half brother, had helped us to identify the boys' murderers and so they were killed too. Two more of the gang are in prison, one, Arnulfo Parra, was sentenced for 28 years, not for our boys' murder, but for one of many more crimes, the kidnap of some rich foreigners. Both still await trial for the assassination of Tris and Javier. On June 24th 2005, Anne, who has done the bulk of investigations into these murders (as the Colombian State would never bother) sent the following snippet of information: "I have just spent a few very fascinating hours at a national meeting of people who have lost family members to State violence. Each region reported their losses in the last year. In Arauca so far this year, over 300 people have been killed.. In the midst of very scary and interesting speeches about the paramilitary take-over of the country, the Director of the Committee for Solidarity with Political Prisoners approached me and said he had a message from Arnulfo Parra, accused of killing Tris and Javier, who is in the high security wing of Valledupar prison, that he would like to talk. A murder charge on top of being done for kidnap would keep him in jail for life. but what could he ever say to us?" However, Anne will go to see this man, along with my daughter Becky, mother of murdered Tris, to put human faces and feelings to these tragedies... "Anyone can give up, it's the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone else would understand if you fell apart, that's true strength." (Anon.)
< An Angle on the Background to the Colombian ConflictIn October 2004, one of our commune members, Ned Addis, went to a 3-day gathering of peasant people organized by 'Fensuagro', the peasant trade union movement. Here is an extract from his report: "I listened to a talk called the History of the Campesinos' Struggle for Land in Colombia. The lecturer told us how the IMF, - or whatever the equivalent world-domineering organization of the day was called, - sent a Canadian 'adviser' to Colombia in the 1950s. "After spending some time in Colombia, this person advised the Government that their country was completely economically backward and that the only hope for it would be mass displacement of the campesinos to the cities, which could only happen, he said, through War or some such disaster. "Throughout the rest of the talk, the lecturer kept referring back to the words of this Canadian and showed that the displacement by War ever since of campesinos from their land has been a deliberate and planned policy of the government and in fact little to do originally with the guerrilla or paramilitaries." Amnesty International speaks out on the San Jose massacreThose of you who have read the last 3 Green Letters in which we gave details of the San Jose Peace Community massacre and its aftermath will be interested to read this (translated) item from the 9th May issue of Voz, the high quality Colombian Communist weekly newspaper: "Amnesty International, referring to the San Jose massacre, has said that "it is one of those unforgettable crimes that hundreds of soldiers and paramilitaries have been committing with impunity for many years..The Colombian government, instead of making a public apology and making amends, has threatened repeatedly to terminate these Peace Communities by announcing that army troops, who have been systematically aggressive and homicidal, are going to carry out the military occupation of the lands of these villagers." Not surprising then, that Anne reports: "I have attended a series of revolutionary meetings where about 900 indian, campesino and black leaders are planning how to mobilize to bring down Uribe's government just as the Indians in Bolivia and Ecuador have done. It is chaotic, but very good. The best are the women and the Indians. These meetings are a response to the passing of the ill-named 'Justice and Peace' law which recognizes the paramilitaries and their friends as the owners of Colombia." The Struggle to Live in Peace continues..At that same meeting, the delegation from San Jose invited Anne to go back with them to their new settlement to organize the rubbish and compost systems, and to accompany them through the Army checkpoints. Here is her report, written 5th July. "I have just spent a week in the new settlement of San Josecito, ('little San Jose') where the San Jose Peace Community moved to when the police and army invaded their village three months ago. They left their comfortable houses to build a new settlement from scratch because they refuse to accept as their 'protectors' the same armed forces whose most recent crime, in a long list of crimes, was the massacre of eight members of the Community, including a baby and two children. They also moved out because they knew that the presence of the police and army was bound to attract guerrilla attacks. And of course it did. "When I arrived there one morning, I just missed the last bursts of machine gun fire of a night-long battle between soldiers and guerrilla that left three soldiers injured and the people of the Peace Community shaken by a sleepless night of fireworks. The new settlement is less than a mile from San Jose where the army and police are barracked. "I greeted old friends and got to know the new village that they have managed to create from zero in less than three months. It's built on a bend in the river, surrounded on all sides by forest, an idyllic spot. They have built over 40 wooden houses, each with a space mapped out for a garden, and kept dry by miles of drainage trenches and stone and gravel paths. They dismantled the cool, breezy, straw-roofed round hut that was their community centre in San Jose and moved it to the new village green. The dozens of pigs, chickens and mules are happy as there's more mud and more grass here and the kids love the river which has excellent rapids and swimming holes. "After a day of finding my bearings, I figured the most useful thing I could do was sort out the rubbish problem as they are determined to recycle and make compost and had already dug two enormous pits for organic and inorganic rubbish. But many people hadn't understood the concept of refuse separation, so both were filled with smelly mixtures of plastic and rotting vegetable scraps, and one had flooded and turned into a malarial mosquito breeding ground. I don't know who invented this very bad idea of making compost pits, I suppose it would work in a desert where it never rains, but in a normal climate the pits just fill with water and make a horrid smell. "The next day, I went to each house to talk to each family about recycling and compost and we had a village meeting about it. The following day, I started working with the kids as it was obvious that the adults were all too busy. I was a bit nervous about how they would take to collecting and sorting out the community's rubbish as it's not everyone's cup of tea. But I figured the best way to teach them was to actually DO it, so we borrowed two wheel barrows, one for organic and one for inorganic waste, and went to each house to collect and sort their refuse. The kids took about 15 seconds to become enthusiastic recyclers and another 30 seconds to figure out an excellent working system: we tipped out each bag of rubbish in front of the householders and showed them how they should have separated it into categories. "After collecting half the village's rubbish, we began a new above-ground compost pile and collected lots of sawdust, horse manure and leaves and made a pretty, clean, odourless compost heap. I had thought I'd manage to get them to work for an hour or two at most, but they worked me into the ground until I suggested we finish the day with a swim in the river. "Over the next days, when the nearby shootings and bombings allowed us out, we repeated the process with the rest of the village, and two young men made a corral around the growing pile to keep the pigs and chickens from dismantling it. A huge group of adults and kids cleaned up the festering pits, keeping one open for plastic and tins. Then we held a rubbish-tip meeting showing everyone how to manage the compost, and the kids decided to organize themselves into a work group and ask each household to pay them a small fee (about 10 pence) each month for their collecting service and I made a big poster to show simply which rubbish goes where. We also dug and planted a vegetable garden, cooked lots of good vegetarian meals (including some very high class Italian cooking from one of the International Peace Brigade men) and swam a lot in the river. "Most nights were disturbed by the 'fireworks', so-called because the army bullets are accompanied by a little red light, something to do with differentiating between enemy and 'friendly' fire I think. For us, these lights showed how many bullets 'strayed' into the settlement. We sat around talking and drinking tea till the shooting died down. These people keep their sense of humour even in these situations and usually we ended up laughing at rude stories about who threw up/pissed/shat themselves during past bombardments. There is nowhere to run to in these situations as running into the forest would mean running into even more danger and being shot 'by mistake'. I asked them what plans they have for a direct hit. 'We'll dodge the bullets and catch the bombs and throw them back,' said one man laughingly, to show me how there is no solution. "Adults and kids talk openly and naturally about their terrible losses in the past and their fears in the present. In the river one day, a beautiful little girl told me that she was 7 when her mother was killed and 8 when her father was killed. I asked her name. She is the daughter of Luis Eduardo Guerra, the Community's leader, who was murdered alongside his eldest son, Deiner, in the February massacre. His wife had been killed by a stray grenade last July. The little girl lives with her baby brother, four cousins, a few stray babies and her aunt in a one-roomed house. They cry when we talk about Luis, but the rest of the time, the house is filled with love and laughter. In February when we were struggling to get back what little remained of Luis Eduardo's body from the morgue in Apartado, another aunt appeared and wanted to take this little girl to the city 'away from the danger'. But she made us all angry as she would not even take the one hour trip up the road to San Jose to see where the little girl lives as 'they're all guerrillas up there', and she wanted the girl ripped away from what was left of her nearest family at this traumatic time and delivered to her. She could never understand the kind of love and real community that this girl is growing up amongst. She could only see the poverty and danger, which are real of course, but in the end they are secondary factors. "This aunt's misguided attitude is common amongst people who don't know the community (or the countryside in general for that matter) well, as the powers-that-be in Colombia have deeply vested interests in making sure the guerrilla reputation sticks. This is because: 1) If it were to become commonly known that a small and utterly defenceless group of dirt-poor campesinos have managed to make an effective stand against the horrors committed daily by the state forces/paramilitaries (and by the guerrilla groups too, though less so), in spite of suffering terrible cruelties for doing so.. well, that would be really dangerous. As one man said, 'President Uribe says worse things about us than he does about the FARC'. This is true, because the peace communities represent a true ideological opposition to the armed, drug-mongering forces that rule Colombia more and more each day. 2) Calling them guerrillas ensures less public outrage when there is a massacre, as in 'ah well, who knows what those people were up to, they probably deserved what they got.' A woman here said this to my face and got rapidly educated for doing so. In the six days I was there, the tension and pressure mounted daily. The phoney 'Peace Process' with the paramilitaries is taking place just hours away and the 'reinserted' paras, i.e. legalized killers, are to be sent to 'help' the police and army in San Jose. One angry policeman threatened that 3,000 were coming, probably an exaggeration, but 30 would be enough to cause real terror and death. Every day I felt terrified for the people I was working with for unless the open paramilitarization of Colombia is stopped, they have no future. They are all deeply committed to staying on their land, even if it means death. The only 'protection' they have are the voices and actions of support from Europe and the US. The men and women of the International Peace Brigades and the Fellowship of Reconciliation accompany the community as much as they can, but their lack of resources combined with the restricting rules and regulations imposed upon them, don't allow them to do as much as they would like to. So I would like to end this report with a call for help: Anyone of any age who would like to come out here to help, work with and accompany these brave people would be welcomed. The company of foreigners gives great moral support and is a real buffer between them and the war. But you'd have to be aware of the following factors: 1.. that it is a war situation and therefore dangerous, 2.. that the climate, being hot and humid, is not easy for people from temperate zones, 3.. that the conditions of bed and board are extremely basic and as people are extremely poor, you would have to contribute towards your own living costs, 4.. that life here is tough and physical and the daily agricultural work is hard but gratifying, 5.. that psychologically you'd have to be patient, calm and willing to listen, learn and observe without imposing your own views, 6.. that you'd need to have a fair grasp of Spanish. On the other hand, the gains of working with a brave and interesting community of true pioneers are enormous. Anne then added a personal PS to her friends, not originally intended for publication: "There are loads of things you'd like and a few I don't think you would stand, like the constant noise of the generator, much worse for the soul than bombs and bullets! I begged to have it turned off but they need it to be able to recharge the cell-phones that are a real life-line at times. The one night we did have it off, for my last night, we sang and had a much nicer, deeper time. The other thing is the lack of toilets. I am extremely bugged by this whole subject and on my next trip will have to deal with it properly. Oxfam are financing two toilet shower blocks with septic tanks which are being built by local labour according to architectural plans, which of course no-one understands how to read, so they built the foundations to the wrong measurements and had to start again. In the meantime, the forest is the toilet. People do bury their waste well, and anything unburied gets eaten by pigs and dogs. So far I have gone under to negative reactions of disgust when I suggested simple earth closets, the waste to be used later as compost, but next time I will simply get a few hands to help me build one and start a toilet compost pile and use it myself if no-one else does! I think my credibility is now good enough to get people started on this. The other hassle is the hot humidity, though after being in Remolinos in Caqueta everywhere else seems cool. Surprisingly, food is not an issue because all the Peace Brigade people are into decent food and there is very little meat available here; also the neurotic but likeable little nun in her late 60s who runs the visitors' shack is into healthy food too. The other bugbear at first was the disrespectful little boys whose parents don't organize them and so they would listen to nobody, until they met the first fierce foreigner of their lives.. No-one could believe I got them working and obeying me so easily, and now I only have to glare at them to make them shut up and go away when they are intruding. Regarding ideology, I admire very much the 'pacifist' stance taken by the Community but I am also very clear that if it were my family and community members who were being cut to pieces by the army/paras., I could not respond like the campesinos and Indians do, though their position is completely logical because if they were to respond by taking up arms, more of them would be killed or imprisoned, and the army would have the perfect excuse to invade their lands and displace them all to the cities where their lives would be hell. So their 100% anti-weapons position is pragmatic and it's what gives them a moral edge over the violent and corrupt State. Within the Colombian resistance movement there are many shades of 'pacifism' and only meeting the people and working with them gives an understanding of the enormous variety of positions and philosophies. This is an enormous subject as the label 'pacifist' is so easily misunderstood as sometimes it is used to mean apathy or fence-sitting or, worst of all, within many left-wing first-world movements, it is used to make it 'illegal' to express anger and rage, i.e. it's an energy-killer. But here, to take a pacifist stand means literally risking your life and that of your family and friends." To add insult to injury, President Uribe is now trying to blackmail the UN and all media into never using the words 'armed conflict' to describe the Colombian civil war. Here is a translation of the response of UNHCR (the United Nations High Commission for Refugees) to this move: UNHCR considers leaving Colombia if the government bans the expression 'Armed Conflict' - Robert Meier, UNHCR delegate to Colombia, said that no government can instruct other governments regarding the terminology they are allowed to use. He added that if the Colombian government makes a formal ruling on this, then UNHCR will have to consider leaving the country. He was responding to a Colombian Government circular sent out from the email address of Luis Alfonso Hoyos, presidential adviser for Social Action, to all foreign ambassadors, representatives of international organizations and aid agencies. Specifically, it stated that not only must the expression 'armed conflict' not be used, but also the following: 'non-government fighters', 'civilian protection', 'peace community', 'peace territory', 'humanitarian region or camp' and 'observatory of the humanitarian situation', amongst others. According to the Government, these expressions lend legitimacy to the illegal armed groups. In some diplomatic circles, this government memorandum was interpreted as a preamble to the exit of other international agencies such as the Office of Human Rights, refugee organizations and the office for Humanitarian Affairs, whose mandate is based on the protection of civilians in the midst of the armed conflict. Colombian Govt. Schizophrenia:Sitting recently in the waiting room of the Colombian Embassy in Tulcan, Ecuador, on visa business, I was astonished to see two large colourful posters, clearly explained with cartoons for rapid popular understanding, being pinned up by the male receptionist. They were produced by UNHCR, the UN refugee organization, and gave exact details of how Colombians under threat and in danger as a result of the civil war, could apply for asylum in Ecuador (quite a simple process). Repeat, this was the Colombian Embassy! On the opposite wall was a photo of a lady I recognized - she was the very nice Vice-Consul official I was currently dealing with. She was sitting holding a man's hand. The man was President Uribe, the 'Paramilitary President', wearing as usual a smirk somewhere between that of President Bush's cynical grimace and Blair's hypocritical grin. Even after nearly two decades of practice, I find it hard to get my head round this one. Bogota Promotes Hunger. Moving now from the beleaguered Colombian countryside to the awful city of Bogota, Lucho Garzon's leftwing administration of this city is proving disappointing in some important aspects. Anne reports here on the much-flaunted 'Bogota Without Hunger' programme, which the campesino agricultural union Fensuagro call 'Bogota With Hunger'. Anne works with Juan, the Secretary of this union: "Juan lives on the run, though as far as I know, the most radical thing he does is organize farmers' markets - but it seems this is enough to get you killed here. Juan's Fensuagro union and their farmers' markets are a direct response to the hateful, un-radical programme that 'Bogota Without Hunger' really is: the official plan is to close all the city market places as they are 'dirty' and replace them with supermarkets owned by the big chains - their idea of food for the poor is date-stamped little packages of garbage from Carulla (the biggest chain store), which of course destroys any decent dietary habits that poor people, especially poor kids, still have, like drinking fresh fruit juice. So Fensuagro bring in campesinos from areas near Bogota with their 100% organic products, their musicians and their cane-sugar juice and they set up great cheap markets that are social events as well. I was with Juan at the last one about two weeks ago when he had to run off because he got a call that his work-mate Hernan Hernandez had just been arrested and he had to get lawyers on the case. "I was invited by two of the more revolutionary women from Bogota's city council office to a meeting with a Spanish NGO to do with agriculture, and I met Eduardo Diaz who is head of 'Bogota Without Hunger'. The two women immediately started telling him about their plans to start a healthy urban-garden-supplied vegetarian communal kitchen as they privately rage about the official food-for-the-poor policies. Diaz went totally negative saying that price-wise this kind of communal kitchen would be impossible. The two women both just went 'hmmm' and smiled nicely at him and didn't answer as they have had so many confrontations with him. He got all awkward and left. Then they both turned to me and expleted and then asked would I take on the running of a vegetarian communal dining-room? I felt horrified at the thought as I prefer the garden type of work, but I said I would certainly help if they get the place and the equipment together. "While on the subject of food, today our lawyer-friend Miriam (who originally dealt with our boys' murder case - ed.) said that she had talked to the US embassy official in charge of funds for reinserting illegal armed groups and had told him what I once said to her, that I would like to work with a small committed group of these people on gardening, to change their way of eating, and to hold therapy groups with them, and that he was really 'enthusiastic'. I cannot imagine working for the US embassy or working with paramilitaries, which is what most of the 'reinserted' are, but I can't help being interested. However, of more immediate practical interest was that she gave me 100,000 pesos (less than 40 dollars) to buy wire for one of the Moon Gardens (see previous Green Letters) as the local pigs finally broke through the laughable plastic fence around one of them the other day and ate the potato crop. "And while on the subject of Bogota, the whole of the centre of the city now evidently closes down around 8 p.m. for fear of the roving gangs of 'reinserted' paras. that are being lodged there and who roam the streets attacking and robbing and buying drugs. Great peace process." A Law to Ban Malicious GossipFor the first 11 years of our lives in Colombia, before suffering our first enforced displacement by the guerrilla, we lived in the Municipio de Icononzo, which was where our lads were eventually killed. Icononzo has been much in the news lately as the Mayor of the little town has taken it upon himself to introduce a new law for his municipality against often life-endangering gossip about people - in fact this kind of rumour-mongering may have been a large factor in the murder of our boys: a loose word, conjecture, supposition or ill-feeling about someone, usually with deliberate malicious intent given the situation in Colombia, can lead to people being put into prison or murdered by either Army, guerrilla or paramilitaries, most especially now that this Government actively encourages people to 'tell on' their neighbours, offering large sums of money for 'information' leading to arrest for alleged guerrilla-collaboration. Needless to say, in a poverty-stricken country this is a licence to kill with one's tongue. Here is a translation of an article in El Tiempo about Icononzo, headed: 'Prison for Rumour-Mongers'."The Mayor of Icononzo has established economic sanctions and even prison for anyone who, through their malicious gossip, casts aspersions on a person's honour. From this week onwards, anyone caught telling lies about or speaking badly of another person in the streets of this town may have to pay for it with up to 4 years imprisonment, in proportion to the type of gossip. "This measure, strange as it may seem, is an attempt to reduce the risk of murders and unjust detentions of peasants who, as the result of pure rumour, end up being accused of being collaborators of armed groups...The new measure establishes that anyone who feels affected by 'bad talk' can go to a police station where an account of their complaint will be recorded. The Mayor, Ignacio Jimenez said, "At this moment in Ibague Prison, there are at least eight campesinos who are being investigated by the authorities after being accused of being guerrilla collaborators, all because of malicious gossip." He announced that this controversial decree will be read out in churches and community action groups, and notices about it will be pinned up in bars and shops so that no-one is caught speaking badly of anyone else. He ended by saying, "I am more frightened of malicious gossip than of the guerrilla or the paramilitaries." What it's Like to be Arrested in ColombiaA case in point occurred in our own house in Popayan, where some of the young people of our community live, study and work. Someone somewhere put the police on to us and one night around 10.0 p.m. half a dozen armed plain clothes police came to the door. Here is the report, translated from Spanish, of Rafael Loaiza, a Colombian boy who has lived in our community for about 9 years, who was arrested that night: "When they came to the door, they said they had to investigate as they had received information that 'many boxes and other strange objects' were being brought to the house (vegetables from the farm?! - ed). They pushed the door open on Alice who was shocked and shouted for all of us as she thought they were thieves. They came in by force and began to treat us heavily; they pulled me away from the computer and wouldn't let me use it, the girls were very scared. Javier asked for identification from them; I was amazed at the way they intimidated us without giving any concrete reason, and I tried to tell them not to treat us like that, that what they were doing was an abuse. They got very annoyed and threatened Javier and me with arrest because we didn't want to shut up, and they tried to put handcuffs on Javier, but couldn't as he is so tall! But they got hold of me (Rafael is a short, dark-skinned Colombian, Javier tall and white - ed.) immediately and handcuffed me in a very violent manner, hurting my hands. They called a police patrol and they came for me, they changed my handcuffs, tightening them still more and took me to prison. They kept me there for 13 hours in a very small dirty room with four other men. They gave me no time to take a jumper or anything to cover myself with. When I arrived at the police station, they pulled my handcuffed wrists apart, causing a strong pain as if my skin was being pulled off me, they did it deliberately so that I would shout louder with the intense pain. Then they made me take all my clothes off, shining a torch on all parts of my body to see if they would find some sign or scar that would show if I was a guerrilla, and they said to me, 'Are you a FARC guerrilla or from the I.R.A.?' (This because he lives with Irish people!) Then they said to me, 'we have been informed that where you live they have found two grenades.' Then they put me in a dark cell that smelt dreadful and some hours later they brought in four more men and a tramp. Then it was more interesting as they all had a sense of humour and we could entertain ourselves the whole time telling jokes and imitating the actors in films, which was an idea of mine. Three of the men said they had been arrested for hitting their wives, the tramp was one of them. And so we spent the rest of the night until 6.0 a.m. Then they let three of them go and they left me 3 more hours with the beggar in the cell without being able to sleep for one minute. At around 9.0 a.m., they told the homeless man that a relative of his had died, and he started crying bitterly, so they let him go, and I was the last. "During the night, Javier brought me a blanket but they wouldn't let me have it; afterwards, he took off his jacket and sent it in to me with two policemen. In the morning, he brought me some herb tea which I shared with the street man so that he would stop his bitter crying. It really worked, he stopped crying for a good while. "When I got home, the girls told me that the police had turned everything upside down and were very arrogant with everyone, especially the female police officer. That is my sad story of what I had to go through because of the corruption of Colombian 'justice'. This was the first time anything like this had happened to me, so it was a very heavy frightening experience for me." What it's like being a Prison VisitorHere is Anne's account of one of her many prison visits: "I have been to Combita prison today and feel very down. This is because Gerardo and Jose told me about the murders that happened here a few weeks ago. Two men were killed, very horribly, by the FARC who are the main power in that patio. One of the murdered men was evidently truly bad and was supposed to have killed people in La Picota (another prison), but the other was innocent. Five FARC men went into the cell of the two men, supposedly to tell them to leave the patio, for good reasons as the bad one was a drug dealer and was always pushing to be allowed to sell in the patio. Jose, the ELN leader in this prison ( i.e. from the other, smaller guerrilla force) was supposed to go with them to deliver this news, but the FARC men said 'don't bother'. They had weapons made of iron bars that they dig out of the concrete walls and then put sharp points on. They killed the men with these, just before morning lock-out and the guards didn't find the bodies till night. "My prisoner friends didn't tell me too many details as they were so freaked out. The guards, by searching for blood stains, got two of the killers, but three are still there. I just listened and asked questions and had fits about the FARC and told them of the title you suggested for a talk on the FARC 'How Not to Run a Revolution'. Jose, being very political, was deeply unhappy about the fact that the reputation and respect they had built up as a political patio who resolve their own fights, keep out drugs and keep the peace without violence, has been destroyed. Edwin, another guerrilla prisoner who always sits with us on visits, got ill and was in solitary confinement from the stress. I met his woman outside later and she told me the nightmare details of the mutilated corpses, as she lives in the same house as the woman of one of the murdered men (not the drug-dealer), and she had had to go and collect the body. "I asked what was being done, but they said they cannot say anything publicly as they are in danger day and night. I will try to do something through the left-wing lawyers' collective. All the better FARC people have been taken out of Combita to other prisons because they organize too many strikes but even so, Jose and Gerardo have managed to send messages to them to complain and ask for justice and control of these bad elements from the FARC themselves. It was a hard visit." And What it's like being a Prisoner.This is a translation of a piece of writing by 28 year old Gerardo, mentioned above, who is coming to the end of an 86 month long sentence for 'subversion'. His brother, with whom he was arrested, is a self-confessed member of the FARC guerrilla force and was sentenced to 76 months. But Gerardo, believing in justice, told the truth, that is, that he has never been part of an armed group. So he got 86 months for 'not confessing.' "We are about 250 prisoners in the 5th block in Combita High Security prison, a mixture of political prisoners (from the guerrilla groups FARC; ELN and JEG and from the paramilitaries) and social prisoners (those condemned for drug-trafficking, money-laundering, fraud, rape and murder). Although I have been placed in the first group, made up of people directly involved in our country's conflict, my case is different. Outside these bars, I was never involved in any of the groups who participate in the armed struggle. Nonetheless, the socio-political conflict of our country can trap you at any moment. This is true of the social prisoners too, for although they've never been in the ranks of the armed political groups, they are also part of the war that degrades our society day by day. We have become as used to violent death as we are to our daily breakfast. It doesn't shock us to hear on the news that someone killed someone else just to steal their shoes or a few pesos, or maybe just to watch them die - that's what I've heard from some of the prisoners with whom I have had the opportunity to talk in my efforts to understand a way of thinking that I believe can be changed. Not only the social prisoners say this kind of thing but you can hear it from the political prisoners too. "Obviously, they don't just talk about death and violence, but it is the most common theme. Our society insists on seeing us only as 'violent criminals' and because of that it shoves us aside and expects no improvement or change in our ways of thinking and acting, yet the spontaneous acts of some prisoners cast doubts on this prejudice: A thing that intrigues me is watching some of these people, for whom life has no value, each evening gather beetles and flies which they store in a jar or a bag so that the next morning, as soon as the guards unlock the cell doors, they can throw the insects to a small bird called a 'sirili' in these parts (a swallow). As the days have gone by, it has become trusting, knowing that there is always food for it here. So it perches on the edge of the roof waiting for the beetle bombardment which it catches as it dives. However, sometimes when it flies low enough, some of the prisoners try to catch it with blankets, but it escapes thanks to its speed, just like some people manage to escape the violence. In spite of this, it's there every morning waiting for its food. "This kind of thing doesn't happen only with birds. One time when the guards took us out to the football pitch, the prisoners caught a little mouse which got through the guards' search hidden in a prisoner's testicles. Once inside the block, they kept it on a leash, fed it bread and water and enjoyed its company for 4 or 5 hours before letting it go free (anyone see the moving film 'The Green Mile' about Death Row - and a mouse - in the US?!) The case of the snake was different. They found it on the football field and kept it in a cell in a big plastic bottle with earth and air-holes until it was found by the guards on one of their searches and 'liberated'. "In the search operations, the guards take away things that have no importance, but hardly ever find the extremely sharp stakes which prisoners make from iron bars that they manage to extract from the concrete walls. These can be used to kill people as happened to two prisoners who were stabbed to death on 6th January this year. "The guards play hide-and-seek with us. We hide, they seek. Most of the time, we win and they almost always lose as these operations take place every 2 weeks and last 2 or 3 hours, so we have more time to hide things than they have to seek them. Of course they don't always go away empty-handed as they occasionally find a stake or other objects that are prohibited, like needles or money. But the game continues as the days pass by. Likewise, our lives pass by within these cold walls as we occupy ourselves doing one thing or another, reading, writing, playing draughts, chess and poker or some kind of cultural activity which never gets beyond a few jokes, poems and songs due to the restrictions that limit the entry of any materials that might help us engage in deeper and more educational activities. This lack of meaningful activity makes people feel so useless that some prisoners, both social and political, whose release date is coming up can be heard talking about how they'll look for 'easy money' when they get out usually by kidnapping someone. "In my opinion, re-socialization should mean that prisoners are taught some kind of skill that will help them earn a living outside these bars and let them feelthat they are useful within society. Here the 're-socialization programmes' are a farce, as there are no professional teachers who could guide prisoners towards real re-socialization so that they can reintegrate and help build a better society." What it's like to be KidnappedThe 'committed'-song singing of the young girls in our commune leads them into contact with all kinds of people. Here is Louise's report on two people kidnapped by the Guerrilla for six months. "My sister Katie and I were asked to sing for a family in Popayan who had had two of their members kidnapped for 6 months. The kidnapped mother and 27-year-old son had been released and had returned safely home. We were asked to perform for free at their house and we were more than willing to do so. "When we arrived, everyone sat around in the living room listening to all the stories the mother and son had to tell about their experience. Their experience was horrific at times, but mainly they felt it was just a very long boring wait, and the worst thing about it was they did not know when they would be released, if ever. "The mother said that when they were first kidnapped, they were taken into the mountains and forced to walk for days on end through the forest on muddy steep paths and sometimes no paths at all. Her husband was then asked for a huge sum of money if he wanted them back alive. The family is among the richest of Popayan, but that does not mean very rich, as Popayan is generally not a very well-off place and they could no way pay what they were being asked for. "The mother, in her late 50s, said she was so exhausted from walking so much, that one day she simply refused to continue and sat down and said to the guerrilla soldiers who were escorting them that they could kill her if they wanted to, but she would not move another inch. She said, 'I have lived my life: go on, kill me!' The young soldiers, some of them just 14, didn't know how to handle her. So they all stopped and set up a camp and sent a message to their superiors asking them what to do. The orders came back the next day to build a place to lock the prisoners in until they could move again. "The young guerrilla soldiers were aggressive, especially the girls, she said. They had all obviously had terrible upbringings, quite likely with a lot of physical violence. "The mother and son were locked up and only allowed out to go to the toilet but always under escort. Their beds were on the floor and the room was always dark. They had nothing to read. They just had each other to talk to and endless time to think and worry. In order not to get depressed, they did loads of exercise in their small room. Then one day the soldiers announced that they were going to be separated, and the son would have to continue walking with them. The mother once again said they would have to kill her first, so they eventually allowed them to stay together. "The guerrilla tried to force them to record a fake message for their family to say that the mother was seriously ill and dying. As usual, she refused and instead sent a message saying she was OK and not to worry about them and she said hello to each and every member of the family and sent her love. The guerrilla said, that's fine, we will send this, but we won't ever be letting you go. "The son said the soldiers were constantly verbally abusive, especially getting at him for being rich and spoilt. The mother said she felt sorry for them, 'they are only children' she said, and she spent the six months lecturing them and assuring them they would never get the money they were asking for and telling them they were wasting their time and next time they should kidnap someone truly rich. She told them they would become the biggest joke in the Department of Cauca, trying to get money from a family like theirs who didn't really have anything. "We were not told how, but in the end they were released. They had to walk a long way without escorts until they found their way out of the forest. They looked very happy to be home. The husband would hardly let go of his wife's hand as if she could be taken away again at any moment. We sang many meaningful songs about peace and Colombia and we made some friends for life." "War is a cowardly escape from the challenges of Peace." Thomas Mann "Even Serving Drink at 5.30 a.m. is never dull"a letter from Becky, mother of assassinated Tristan, in Ireland "Two nights ago, I was working as a night porter in the local hotel. Part of this work was to have to serve drink to a load of Americans who had come over to see their cousins. I listened to a conversation amongst them arguing with English relatives over the war in Iraq. I was busting after three hours of listening to a lot of US crap - the English family were quite good and said they hated what the US was doing all over the world. Just before they all went to bed, I said, 'I am so sorry, but it is hard for me not to say just a few words before you go..' "I mentioned Tris and Javier being killed as a result of the war in Colombia which is supported by the US. I said it is such a shame the governments of this world are dragging us all into bloodshed and war. I talked quite gently to try and say what I wanted, by bringing it back to the killings in South America and the fact that it is nearly always the poor and the country people that get killed worldwide. "But oh dear, these guys were totally brain washed. They could not answer anything I said, but just repeated things like, BUT THE TWIN TOWERS WAS REAL! and: 'THE ONLY REASON THE WORLD HATES THE USA IS BECAUSE WE HAVE THE MOST SUPERIOR ECONOMY IN THE WORLD AND 'THEY' ARE JUST JEALOUS OF US.' One of them ran out of the bar as he said this to make sure he did not have to listen to anything else said. "So relax everyone, the USA has to defend itself you understand, and so it is OK for them to carry on killing off the rest of the world. Oh yes, and one of them said to me very menacingly: 'And you guys are the next on the list to be got,' meaning the English as we are hated too. This is a very shortened version of a very charged evening, but scary to see the Americans and how they just love themselves.." THE WAR MOVEMENT by Zoe Fairbairns, 1983"If you have never heard of the War Movement, that is because it does not call itself that. Its specialist books need no specialist bookstore, they're at your station newsagents: War Machines: The World's Most Comprehensive Encyclopaedia of Military Weapons of the 20th Century; The Winds of War; Action Adventure for the Death Dealing British Superjet; The Screaming Eagles, 101st Airborne. Kill or Die! Its films are at your local Odeon; its donations are our income taxes; its news is mainstream national news. "Sometimes the war movement says to the peace movement: not only are you dangerously naïve, but you are self-righteously unjust too. Don't you know that we ALL hate war? To which we can only reply: 'You could have fooled us'. If the War Movement hated war, there would be no war.. or at least no CELEBRATION of war. Successful soldiers would not march in triumph down the street any more than successful hangmen would.. Military Tattoos, Beating the Retreat, The Royal Tournament, Trooping the Colour and open days at military bases would have all the appeal of day-trips around a morgue or sewage works. Remembrance Day, supposedly a day for grief over the pain and wastage of war, would be just that, and the politicians would lay their wreaths last, not first, behind the war-disabled, widowed, orphaned, not ahead of them, recognizing as politicians that war is their failure and nobody's triumph." (With thanks to Chris Murray for sending this piece) The Soldiers at My Front Door - by John Dear SJ, written late 2003, taken from Lepoco Magazine, Pennsylvania, USA I live in a tiny, remote, impoverished three-block-long town in the desert of NE New Mexico. Everyone in town, and the whole state, knows that I am against the occupation of Iraq and that I have been preaching against the bombing of Baghdad. Last week, it was announced that the local National Guard unit, based in the nearby Armory, was being deployed to Iraq early next year . I was surprised the following morning to hear 75 soldiers singing, shouting and screaming as they jogged down Main Street, back and forth around town for an hour. It was 6 a.m. and they woke me up with their war slogans, chants like.."Swing your guns from left to right, we can kill those guys all night." . Suddenly at 7 a.m., the shouting got dramatically louder. I looked out the front window of the house where I live, next door to the church, and there they were - all 75 of them, standing yards away from my front door, .. shouting and screaming at the top of their lungs, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Their commanders had planted them there and were egging them on. they had deliberately decided to do their exercises in front of my house because of my outspoken opposition to the war. They wanted to put me in my place.. Over the years, I have been arrested some 75 times in demonstrations, been imprisoned for a 'Ploughshares' disarmament action, been bugged, tapped, and harassed, searched at airports, and monitored by police. But this time, the soldiers who will soon march through Baghdad and attack desert homes in Iraq, practiced on me. I put on my winter coat and walked out the front door right into the middle of the street. They stopped shouting and looked at me, so I said loudly, publicly for all to hear, "I order all of you to stop this nonsense, and not to go to Iraq. I want all of you to quit the military, disobey your orders to kill, and not to kill anyone. I do not want you to get killed.." Their jaws dropped, their eyeballs popped and they stood in shock and silence, looking steadily at me. Then they burst out laughing. Finally, the commander dismissed them, and they left. Later, military officials spread lies around town that I had disrupted their military exercises.. Others appealed to the archbishop to have me kicked out of New Mexico for denouncing their war-making. I have spoken out extensively against the US war on Iraq and been denounced by people, including church people, across the state. I receive hate mail, negative phone calls and at least one death threat for daring to criticize our country. ..New Mexico is the poorest state in the US. It is the most militarized, the most in need of disarmament, the most in need of non-violence. It is the first place the Pentagon goes to recruit poor youth into the empire's army... In the end, this episode for me was an experience of Hope. We must be making a difference if the soldiers have to march at our front doors... Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation, 1870Arise then, all women who have hearts! I will end this Green Letter by recommending some books and magazines that I have found to be very moving, informative and useful:
Private Peaceful by Michael Morpup, publ. Collins 2003.
Israel, the Hijack State, SWP (Socialist Workers' Party) pamphlet by John Rose. Brilliant historical analysis, including a stunning expose of Britain's bloody role in the destruction of the Palestinian people, clearly shows the roots of today's centre of the holocaust to come.
Web of Deceit: Britain's Role in the World by Mark Curtis, Vintage Books 2003, 7.99 English pounds. And for those in America: Vegetarian Voice a very readable quarterly magazine, Box 72 Dolgeville, NY 13329 "I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men." Leonardo da Vinci, 1452-1519 Looks like we haven't started to catch up with him yet. ~ end GREEN LETTER 74 ~
GREEN LETTER FROM COLOMBIA, No. 75, 25th August 2005Atlantis Ecological Community, Belen, Huila, Colombia Every seed that swings a green shoot skyward,My daughter Rebecca, mother of Tristan who was murdered five years ago, is with us in Colombia at present. She has just returned from a long tour of various endangered peasant and Indian communities, and she also attended the huge ‘Youth Festival’ in Venezuela. Here is her report: “On the night of 1st August, three busloads of delegates from many countries, including Spain, the US, UK and New Zealand, with the main body of people made up of Colombians, took off from the Bogota headquarters of ‘SINALTRAINAL’, the Union of Colombian food and drink industry workers. We were headed for Saravena, in the Department of Arauca, for a three-day conference on social issues, and then on to a nearby village where three local leaders had been killed a year ago by the military for questioning the activities of the petroleum multinational Oxy. “At the conference, there were days of speeches from people from all over Colombia, telling of the many violations committed by the army and paramilitaries. One of the things that struck me was that the more oppressed people are, the braver they seem, and the more willing they are to push ahead, to live, to breathe, to find ways to keep their gardens and their lives going. I have also noticed that since rightwing President Uribe came into power in Colombia, more and more groups are getting together, and there are more meetings and more communication going on between groups. People power as a very real and strong way to resist the tidal wave of oppression coming from the greedy superpowers of this world is very much in evidence in Colombia. Life and Death in a Paramilitary Zone “On our way to Saravena, we were stopped at an Army and DAS (security police) checkpoint. They knew where we were going and were very keen to obstruct us as much as possible, mainly because when there are internationals present, they know that a lot of us are going to report on what we see and hear, and they would far prefer to oppress and kill off their own people in private. There is a curfew in Saravena at 6 p.m. till 6.0 a.m. We were running a little late and arrived at the checkpoint at 5.30 p.m., so they said they could not let us go through because ‘the Guerrilla had made a road block by putting a car and bus across the road.’ We didn’t believe them as we knew that the main reason was to try and delay us. But we were sent back to the previous village to stay the night, which we were not too happy about as there was a strong paramilitary presence there. “Eventually we were given a sports stadium to stay in. It had a roof but there was torrential rain that night and a lot of it got in. Our comfort for the night was concrete floors, cold showers and completely dirty and uncared-for toilets. There were about 120 of us in the group at this stage, and the many different groups made a lot of phone calls to try and secure our safety. In the middle of the night, there was for a while an eery feeling that we were prisoners and that if the army or paras so chose, they could kill us all. Memories of news of past massacres came flooding into my head. But one lovely thing that happened was that we had a band with us called ‘Pajaros del Monte’ – the Mountain Birds - and they played very loud drum and flute music before we all went to sleep, in protest at our temporary imprisonment. “Next day, we were let through the police checkpoint and there was a high feeling amongst us all - we were a team together against the crap that the locals have to put up with several times a day throughout their lives." “On arrival in Saravena, we stayed at a campesino education centre where we were registered, fed and given beds and a great welcome from the local people who were organizing the conference. The oppression in Saravena is felt more at night, as you’re not allowed out of the village after 6 p.m. The army go up and down the streets, you hear no music and kids don’t play outside. My impression was that along with the US stealing ALL THE OIL (yes, 100% of the oil goes to the USA), they also try to kill the people’s spirit and if that fails, they just kill the people. Oil = Death everywhere in the world it seems. Yet in the middle of this strangely quiet town, during the conference, one of the lovely local dance groups did a dance for us called the Joropo. It was very noisy and energetic, the children full of spirit and very professional. I just thought to myself, wow, life really has a way of fighting back when all else around is trying its best to kill it off." “On August 5th, early in the morning, hundreds and hundreds of people gathered from all the towns and villages around to go to the memorial ceremony for three union men murdered exactly one year ago for exposing the dirty goings-on of Oxy, who work closely with Shell, in that whole area. On the journey there, we had to cross a big river in long boats. Then another bus into thick forest. The roads were very bumpy, and to my amazement at the point it was most green and foresty, we had to drive between two TANKS, fully armed, both the machinery and the men. They swung the guns round to point straight at us and swivelled them as we passed by to keep them trained on us. One tank had on its deck a large DOG. With a pair of sunglasses on. The soldiers evidently feel so at home, knowing there is no-one that can get them, that they even bring their homely dog with them…." “Some of the wives, daughters and sons of the dead men were on our bus. One woman, holding a bunch of flowers, had tears pouring from her eyes the whole time. She did not flinch at the presence of the tanks, but one young local man standing next to me kept telling me how he wasn’t scared, from which I took it that he was." “I could feel from their point of view that having internationals on the bus did help to make them feel that bit safer for a while. The army so obviously wanted us to feel intimidated so that no internationals would come to these parts again. But I really don’t think that the internationals will be put off, as more and more people are willing to give their time to share with these people who need so much support. After all, it is from the US and Europe that the oppression is coming, so it is our responsibility to give something back to these people, in the form of solidarity." Keeping the Dead Alive in our Hearts On arrival at the village of the three men, Leonel Goyeneche, Alirio Martinez, and Jorge Eduardo Prieto, who were killed for their opposition to the oil companies, we saw hundreds of buses, jeeps, cattle trucks, taxis, every type of vehicle, bringing about a thousand people. There was a central stage where local priests and families of the dead men made speeches. The strongest moment for me was when boxes and boxes of candles were handed around and everyone lit them as an Indian woman spoke of the dead men and how they are still with us in some form. The stage had been set up just beside the house the men had been dragged from before being shot dead. A large monument had been built on the spot where the men died. Everyone with their lighted candles slowly walked up to the monument and placed their candles there. Many people had tears pouring down their faces. I found myself very aware that we were never able to have a funeral for my son and his friend and that it was good to be with all these people like this. It did not matter that you did not speak to each other or necessarily know each others’ language, the feeling of the moment said it all. The next day, there were lots of goodbyes and groups going different ways. I myself traveled on the one bus that was going to the frontier with Venezuela. We had a brief meeting before leaving for the border, as we were about to pass through a very grim area, heavily armed to protect the petroleum pipes and companies. A local man traveled with us from Saravena to the border. He had worked for many years keeping up to date with the activities of the petroleum companies, and he gave us a talk on the bus as we drove along, pointing out all the ‘landmarks’ – heavily-guarded pipelines, contaminated water, abandoned villages… The Rule is you go along this very long straight road and you do not stop as you may get shot dead. The pipeline we were passing is one of the most attacked pipelines in the world, as its contents go direct to the US. All of this land is completely flat and very fertile, but no-one lives there as it has been totally taken over by Oxy and Shell. All the locals are displaced or dead. The land was originally a massive nature reserve with water beds, lakes and wonderful wildlife and plants. But now the water is almost 100% contaminated due to it being used to cool the millions of tons of oil taken from the earth. Not so long ago, a young boy was murdered because he and two other boys were chasing a wild animal for fun, as they are rarely seen any more, and the Army shot him dead. Children are a danger to the multinationals… At one point, we passed a military airport in the middle of nowhere. The beginning of the runway was just next to the road, just where we were being asked yet again to get off the bus at yet another checkpoint (they do this at every checkpoint, and there are lots of them). As we were standing there, a very large military warplane was about to take off. No markings, no writing, just khaki-green camouflage paint. The backlash of wind from the plane blew the chickens from a local farmhouse into the air…. My blood boiled at this point as the whole feeling of this area is of just one massive take-over and who gets killed? The locals and their kids. People’s lives destroyed and flattened to feed our greedy lifestyles that kill us all in the end. This oil is being stolen, just as the US wants to do in Venezuela, Iraq and any other place they can get their hands on…
“For every two who creep terrified into the darkness, there is one who says ‘NO MORE’…”
Taking to the Trees - A Surprise for BP oil -
BP’s lack of social responsibility is reflected in the massive profits they make and the bloody hands they grease. The company announced profits of 5.5 billion pounds for three months work earlier this year. Investing less than 1% of its capital in renewable energy, BP prefer to prop up thug rule whenever required. Most recently, BP Colombia financed the Colombian military to ‘protect’ its investments, with all the predictable gory consequences. And like vultures, they insisted on getting at Iraq’s oil once the troops had done their bit. .. Sam Sutherland, one of the tree-bound protesters, commented, “We’re taking this action to draw attention to what is missing from these profit margins: spiraling climate chaos, systematic human rights abuses and untold ecological carnage. With profits of well over $2 million every HOUR, BP is not making a living – it’s making a killing.” Watch Out for our Water! This has been a busy time of meetings and encounters with many different groups and communities. Here is a report from Louise, 24, on a conference she went to regarding multinational interference with Colombia’s nature reserves, specifically the vital water-supplying area known as the ‘Macizo’ in Southern Colombia where we live. “Nearly a day’s journey away from our farm, there is a small town called Inza, perched up in the mountains of Cauca. Inza is on a steep slope and at the end of the slope is a cliff down into a valley; it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings. This place was chosen for a national conference about the natural water resources in the Macizo Colombiano, which supplies most of Colombia and also parts of Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and Venezuela. “It was a three-day conference with speakers from all the major environmental organizations in the country and the Indian communities. The main subject was the ‘paramos’, the high cold treeless plains of the Andes, and how incredibly important they are, and the fact that the US and Europe want to have power over these areas. Hundreds of people attended including campesinos and indigenous groups who live in and around these paramos. They were being strongly warned about the true intentions of the Americans and Europeans who are willing to give plenty of money for what they say is the ‘preservation’ of these water resources. People spoke against Colombian President Uribe’s policies in letting foreigners interfere with Colombia’s National Parks and natural resources. There were also speakers from the main universities of the country and individual campesinos. If I had to put the whole event into one sentence, I would say: they were educating the people and urgently bringing their attention to the fact that the paramos are worth more than all the money that America and Europe could ever offer and not to be fooled, we don’t need their help, we can preserve them on our own. I felt extremely proud of all the people present, as they showed that money was not their main interest, which is very unusual in this country which suffers a lot from poverty. Instead, they showed dignity and pride in being the people who live in such crucial areas to both the environment and the population. They said they were well aware that the rich countries’ main desire is to privatize and basically to own the paramos, but that they would fight to make sure they maintain these resources for the common good, for all people now and in all generations to come. Water was the central issue in the conference, but they also spoke about the plants and animals of these regions, and how once again America and Europe want to get their hands on them. They had extremely detailed, sophisticated information on exactly what benefits, especially in the scientific world, including genetic modification, the richer countries would gain through access to these areas. They named the main multi-national companies (for example Johnson and Johnson) who are willing to give huge sums of money and who push for such scientific investigations to go ahead. They advised people not to buy from these companies. Personally, after hearing what they said, I will never go near a Johnson and Johnson product again in my life! The conference ended with promises from all to follow up on what was talked about by organizing huge protests against the way Uribe has opened so many doors to foreign countries to do what they like with Colombia’s natural resources. They all left with plans as to how to start serious preservation projects with no foreign aid, but at local level in the paramos. The language used during the conference was often very technical and specialized in each area, so I missed a lot of what was said, but the one thing that was crystal clear was that all these ecological groups – some Government-funded! – are extremely opposed to the present government and willing to make a fuss about it. My personal contribution to this big meeting was to sing environmental songs at the beginning or end of the discussions and speeches, and also over the microphone I invited any individuals or groups to visit our farm, to learn and share and see the ecological work we do and the way we live. I had made a file of large photos of our garden, animals and our farm in general and I showed this to many people who were very impressed and many promised to visit one day. I sold a few of our CDs at a special reduced price for fellow ecologists. On the way home, I got the driver of the public transport van to play the CD for the passengers and they all loved it and asked questions. But not such a nice experience was the next lift I got in a private car on the last part of my journey home. We were stopped by the army who pointed their machine guns at us. They calmed down after a minute and explained that they were chasing a car just like ours. They let us go but only to be stopped 10 minutes later in the same way, with all these guns pointed at us and army men frantically waving us down again. This happened FOUR TIMES! We were never told why they were chasing a car like ours, but as we are in Colombia, it was probably a kidnap. Louise doesn’t mention that she is seven months pregnant and has temporarily had to give up her dancing and theatrical career, though she still manages to be very active on our farm, composing more songs, and going to meetings such as that above!
“Foreign aid is the money poor people in rich countries send to rich people in poor countries.” Life in a Guerrilla Village Now follows a report from Anne Barr who went to give a talk at a gathering in the Department of Meta: This is an area of Colombia on the eastern side of the eastern Cordillera where the mountains descend into the endless plains that stretch to Brazil. The road through the almost tree-less countryside was very bumpy and dotted with constant army check- points. After 12 hours in a crowded jeep driven by a man who deserves a medal for navigating us safely through so many deep mud troughs, we got to a point where the road enters a wide shallow river and disappears into thick forest on the other side. After crossing in a canoe, we entered a world I didn’t know could still exist in Colombia - a village of simple brightly-painted wooden shacks, lovely flower gardens, lots of nascent vegetable gardens and relaxed, happy people. Plus fully-armed and uniformed guerrilla soldiers casually sitting around. I was taken to the house we were to stay in, full of jolly peasant women all busy getting ready for their first seed swap with women from neighbouring villages. That night we cleaned out and painted a huge deserted government-built meeting shack and next morning I joined in making all the little identity cards for the guests. Then on the day of the ‘conference’, we trooped out along the long winding green path through the jungle to the meeting place. I cringed when they brought out the sound equipment, but for a change the music was lovely, mainly protest ballads. I gave them the girls’ CD which got played over and over again. A crowd of school-kids and their two ecology teachers arrived and wanted me to help them set up a recycling business when I come back in September. Also all the ladies want to come to our farm – they got duly warned about hard work, no meat, cigarettes or alcohol, but they still want to come! The place suddenly filled up with about 200 women, a few men, lots of kids and a little tribe of Embero Katio Indians, and they called me out to speak. I stammered and stuttered at first but soon got into the flow. I talked about our community, why we’re in Colombia, our attitudes to conventional education and meat-eating, the need for therapy and real talking in any group, about self-sufficient food production being the number one most important thing in any rural resistance movement, and all about Tristan and Javier and that their killers were from the FARC. I could see several FARC militiamen in the audience and figured the best policy was total openness as they are always so suspicious anyway. I was not accusatory about our tragedy, just calmly explanatory. However, when I told several women beforehand that this is our history and that I intended to mention it all in the talk, although some were a bit scared the guerrilla would take offence, most were simply shocked and could not believe that the guerrilla would do such a thing, and they asked me quite logical questions like ‘had we not communicated with them properly about who we are? “This is logical from their point of view as they live in an extremely well-run area where justice rules, the young guerrillas are all obviously happy, committed and relaxed and I have never seen people in Colombia in such peak physical condition as they were. They said that any militia man who killed people like that would be immediately executed. The commander I met the next day was totally open, 100% into ecology and gardens, intelligent and thirsty for new outside influences. I had hours of conversation with him that felt like spring water to the soul after all that has happened to us.” “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.” Che Guevara Attempting to Describe the Colombian Conflict: a Guide for the Puzzled Northerner by Anne Barr For any readers baffled by the seemingly endless complications of the Colombian conflict, there are important differences – as well as far too many tragic similarities – between the army/paramilitary forces, and the guerrilla groups. The leftwing guerrilla groups frequently commit – and often admit to – dreadful killings and cruelties, often ‘by mistake’, as we know to our cost having had two young men killed by ignorant militiamen who decided that because one of them was Irish, fair and blue-eyed, he had to be a Gringo (North American) and therefore an enemy. They also displaced us from two farms, and later apologized… too late for Tris and Javier. However, in spite of the chaos and corruption within their ranks caused by the easy availability of lots of money from drug crops and kidnap ransoms in recent years, plus the sudden influx of loads of politically-untrained youngsters into the guerrilla forces as a result of the intensification of the war, they are basically peasant defence armies, who came into being in the late 1940s in response to the constant slaughters, massacres and displacements suffered by poor country people at the hands of a rich, very corrupt, US-supported ruling class. The guerrilla groups are not the cause of the war here, whatever line the government tries to ‘sell’, they are a symptom of the deep, ongoing repression and injustice of the country. Without their existence, Colombia would be more de-forested (take a look at the desert that guerrilla-free Ecuador is becoming for proof of this – Ed.) and less democratic than it is. Peasant people do fear the guerrilla, for the latter are often arbitrary, petty and unjust in meting out ‘justice’, and have killed thousands of innocent people over the years of the struggle. But the country people in the better guerrilla areas appreciate the presence of the guerrilla, as it is glaringly obvious that there is much less criminal violence and more social equality in their areas of influence. How well an area is run depends very much on what the local commander is like: many are excellent, well-educated and socially-aware leaders, but some are violent brutish despots, - like the one who ordered Tris and Javier’s ‘execution’ – who only understand arms. In this immense and still wildly beautiful country, each area has its own stamp of individuality, i.e. biodiversity rules on all levels, including the human. But the army/paramilitary death squads are mercenaries, created, armed and paid for by big business, national and international, to terrorize peasants, indigenous and black peoples so that they leave their lands which are rich in minerals, wood and water. They drive black communities off land which is then turned into enormous plantations for African palm oil, a future petrol substitute. And they are the backbone of any rightwing government, being especially successful under the present administration with its cynical ‘Peace Process’, which is destined to bring only more fear and bloodshed, led as it is by President Uribe who first began to give the paramilitaries legal status when he was Governor of the Department of Antioquia many years ago. Where there are no natural riches to exploit, there are no paramilitaries – that’s a Colombian rule that’s as dependable as the US rule that they only impose their special brand of blood-soaked ‘democracy’ in countries where there is oil. “..governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those we do not recognize and support fall.” US. State Dept. memo from 1927. Happily, Fidel and Chavez, amongst others, have broken this arrogant rule… 700 Paramilitary Victims Form a National Resistance Movement In response to the cynically-named ‘Law of Justice and Peace’ which legalizes the paramilitary forces, about 20 non-governmental organizations have decided to take the matter to the International Criminal Court to seek compensation. Spokesman for the new organization, Ivan Cepeda Castro, son of the communist senator, Manuel Cepeda, who was assassinated in 1994, said the victims of paramilitary action would have recourse to ‘public demonstrations, actions taken in national and international courts, and civil disobedience.’ Present at the inaugural meeting was Michael Frühling, director of the UN High Commission on Human Rights in Colombia, and Adrianus Koetsenruijter, delegate from the European Commission. Said Frühling: “Without truth, justice and compensation, the establishment of peace and national reconciliation is impossible”. Cepeda said that this law “does not recognize the victims and their basic rights; at no point does it mention the State’s responsibility or those who have benefited from paramilitary action, nor does it guarantee the effective dismantlement of paramilitary groups. Our voices will be raised against the process of impunity and paramilitarization that is taking over the country.” So extremely cynical is the new law that even voices in the US congress are protesting. Here is a report from something called ‘ISN Security Watch’, 2nd August 2005: “Here you have a law that couldn’t be better designed to give the criminals a way out,” Myles Frechette, a former US ambassador to Colombia told the New York Times this week. “It’s a complete get-out-of-jail card – unbelievable.” Those that have disarmed in the last few months as part of the AUC (paramilitary)-government peace talks are not monitored afterward to ensure that they do not return to the battlefield or to crime after handing in their weapons, according to a Human Rights Watch report, which also said that only 25 men out of thousands of demobilized paramilitaries had been taken into custody or been charged. Several US lawmakers in the Congress have spoken out against the programme, alleging it provides immunity for murderers whose word about disarmament cannot be trusted. And in the New York Times, Carlos Villalon writes: “Pictures of victims of paramilitary groups in Bolivar Square in Bogota protest a law that ties disarmament to an amnesty…in exchange for disarming up to 20,000 fighters, paramilitary commanders are shielded from serious punishment or extradition on drug charges to the US. ‘This is a law that brings no justice, no peace,’ said Colombian Senator Jimmy Chamorro. ‘It should be called what it really is, a law of impunity and immunity.’ … ‘This gives benefits to people who have committed the worst crimes, and we get nothing in return’ said Gina Parody, a leading congresswoman and ally of President Uribe who nevertheless proposed much tougher legislation. ‘The message we are sending to Colombian society is that crime does pay.’ “The law highlights the contradictory nature of US policy in Colombia, which has received more than $3 billion in mostly military aid since 2000 to destroy drug crops and weaken guerrillas. …The Bush administration and its representative in Colombia, Ambassador William Wood, have strongly supported the law….but some influential members of the United States Congress have raised dire warnings: We want to see the armed groups demobilize, but this law rewards some of Colombia’s worst terrorists and drug traffickers without any assurance that their criminal organizations will be dismantled,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat who is the ranking member on the foreign operations subcommittee and works on Colombia policy. The law contrasts sharply with how other South American nations are now dealing with rights violators in the aftermath of civil conflicts. In Argentina, the Supreme Court last week ruled that 19-year-old laws granting amnesty to military officers who committed atrocities during that country’s ‘dirty war’ are unconstitutional. In Chile, hundreds of former military officers have been charged with crimes committed during General Augusto Pinochet’s rule. And in Colombia’s ‘El Tiempo’ newspaper, the following comments were made under the heading: US Congress freezes $100 million in aid to Colombia for not complying with Human Rights requirements. “High tensions have been caused between the two countries as human rights certification requires proof that members of the Armed Forces who have committed crimes be suspended from active service …and the Colombian State has not been able to show sufficient progress in this area. There are dozens of cases involving military who in spite of being implicated in crimes, continue in their posts… Many letters have been written to President Uribe by legislators in the US demanding changes in the law of ‘Justice and Peace’ which has already been approved by the Colombian Congress …and 22 prestigious senators, including John Kerry, ex-presidential candidate, and Edward Kennedy, have called on Condoleezza Rice not to ‘certify’ Colombia. Never before has such a large group of legislators addressed the State Dept. in an attempt to block aid to Colombia. It signals the most critical moment in relations between the two countries.” The letter from US senators gives a long list of paramilitary massacres in Colombia, including that in San Jose on 21st February this year, and the assassination of the three union leaders in Arauca on 5th August 2004 mentioned earlier in this Green Letter. Peasants and Indians Seeking New Forms of Resistance Between 14th and 18th August, Becky attended a meeting of Indian and peasant groups in the village of Caloto, near the town of Santander de Quilichao, Department of Cauca. She reports: “I stayed for four days with the Nasa Indians in a big round building they use to teach law – a simple airy place with no walls which is used for speeches and conferences. This was a preparatory meeting for the next ‘Peasant University’, a month-long course which intends to create an alternative ‘people’s law’ independent of the Government, which treats ordinary people so badly, that it has come to a crisis point where alternative ways of dealing with legal matters have to be found within the Indian tribes, peasant communities and small villages that feel isolated. I was with a group of about 10 people including two from the Peace Brigades International, a Spanish lady, the radical priest Javier Giraldo, two people from San Jose Peace Community and a representative from a village called Dabeiba in the same region as San Jose where the people are suffering terrible violence from the paramilitaries and army: there have been over 1000 people killed there over the last 8 years alone (for more on Dabeiba, see below). All these people gave talks on the situations in their communities and talked of ways they have found to resist. Many leaders of the local tribes also spoke. The Nasa Indians are the clearest people I have heard speak of resistance. They have pride in themselves as their history goes back 30,000 years. They made friendly jokes to the Catholic priest Javier Giraldo regarding the fact that Christianity has only been around for 2,000 years! All the Nasa people are healthy-looking, short, earthy characters. They talk with feeling and come right up to you when they speak to you, looking directly into your eyes with deep meaningful caring expressions as if they are talking to your soul. I have to say I was very impressed as previously I have only really met the Guambiano Indians that live near us in Belen, who are a rather reticent tribe. The vast difference is that the Nasa Indians want contact, they want to tell their stories and experiences and they see the massive importance of solidarity both internationally to get the news out, and also to join with other tribes and peasant groups to unite against the steamroller of ‘mono-culture’ and multinationals, plus the ‘International Trade Agreement’ (initials in Spanish: TLC!) which in fact practically everyone DISagrees with. The Nasa Indians are an intelligent, well-informed, deep people. They have a system where they have over 100 armed guards who take turns to be on duty at meetings and events such as the one I was at, with about 5 guards on duty an any given moment. Some of the guards are women and all of them are volunteers, as some Indians prefer not to do this job. Now these guards do not have guns – they each have a stick about a metre long with very colourful ribbons or braid at one end! They say this gives them a feeling of strength and a ‘right to be’. I spoke to one female guard who has three teenage children who stay at home when she is on duty. She talked of times when they have to protect themselves from the Guerrilla or Army and that sometimes they stand with their batons right up to the face of an armed soldier and say that they feel they have more power and strength with their traditional baton than the soldier has with his gun. I guess they mean in energy terms, that they are not just fighting to kill but are protectors of a whole way of life and they feel proud to be who they are. The soldiers evidently often back right down when confronted with the Nasa guards, though this is not to say they have not had their share of losses and massacres. There is an agreement that if anyone is in need of help in the Nasa tribe, the guards and all able-bodied members drop what they are doing and mobilize instantly to help. For instance, I watched one incredible video of a demonstration they held recently when they walked the 70 km. from Santander de Quilichao to the city of Cali because someone in their group had been killed. 65,000 Indians did this walk with very little notice, taking their music, food and sleeping gear with them. Then, when they got to Cali, they received news that one of their men had been thrown into prison in Bogota – so 10 buses carrying 500 people went immediately to Bogota where they demonstrated outside the prison and got their man back! (He was being falsely accused of being in the Guerrilla) The energy and determination of these people is impressive. Just below where we were having these days of talks, they had a beautiful old house (reclaimed from a rich family of land owners) which is used as a school of Medicine. They hold two-year courses and with this qualification, the Indians are often asked to help in other peasant areas. Since the Uribe government has been in power, the level of deaths and oppression has become stifling, so the Nasa are working harder than ever to educate themselves on world political issues. They are very up to date on the invasions of the multinationals, including Carton Colombia (a wood-dealing firm based in Ireland), the petroleum industries and mono-culture agribusiness. On the way to this area of Cauca, I saw 1000s of hectares of sugar cane – you could not see one single house or farm or other crop. So where do all the people go? They end up in small shacks in the cities with no land and no means to keep themselves. The Nasa people are very determined to keep hold of their land and crops. In Santander de Quilichao, the Indians have a radio station where they transmit news once a week which evidently can reach as far as New York. But when they don’t want anyone to understand what they are saying to each other, they broadcast in their own language (this was told to me with a smile on their faces!). This radio is used to communicate with each other in times of emergency and danger. My main feeling after being with these people is that I would love to work with them and I am considering studying medicine with them if they will have me. They know that they need help to survive. I would also like to encourage people and groups to visit and invite these people to Europe to do talks. A few of them have English – these are people not of their blood but their hearts are with them and they have worked and lived with them for many years. We have an email address for the main international communicator for the Nasa Tribe if anyone is interested. They are open and willing to share their experiences. They know they don’t have all the answers and are willing to learn more. One issue that came up during one of the talks was that they are interested in accounts of other tribes or peoples who have experienced losing their land or simply having it stolen from them as in the case of the Irish to the Brits, or the Chagossians (of Diego Garcia) to the Brits., and they would like simple straight-forward accounts of these happenings. This group really stresses the importance of keeping in touch with the past and they have a saying that the past is in front of us, not behind us! They never panic and they look after every detail of life, including having developed ways of sorting out internal conflicts, such as those cropping up in marriage. They believe that everything is linked and that if one thread is broken or damaged, all other structures will fall apart. To illustrate this, they held up the woven bags they all crochet and said how if one stitch is dropped or one thread broken, the whole thing falls apart.” Becky brought home so much information on this tribe, that we have to leave the rest for the next Green Letter. Breaking the Rules of Colombian ‘Justice’ It may seem odd that a whole month-long peasant course could be in preparation on the one subject of ‘law and order.’ Here is Anne’s initial understanding of the issues involved: “The people of the San Jose Peace Community have decided on a policy of total non-cooperation with the Colombian legal system, which they call ‘Ruptura con la Justicia’. I hardly know how to explain the importance of this new step, partly because it is such a NEW step that its effects and ramifications are often surprising, unexpected and powerful in small but very important ways. In purely legal terms, it means not giving testimonies to the Attorney General’s officers, not helping with investigations, not using the legal system if arrested and basically not joining in with the collective pretence that the present system has any interest in Justice whatsoever! Upon reading this, you may logically come to the conclusion that this is a position that will lead nowhere for it seems like a series of negatives and refusals. Yet there is some kind of magic at work here that none of us understand fully yet, although we can see its effects. A concrete example: after the nightmare massacre in February by the army of eight members of the San Jose community, I had a brief run-in with the local State Attorney in the morgue. The community had already made it clear that they would not collaborate with the perverted Colombian legal system as in the past they have given clear and damning evidence in many cases of murders and massacres by the army/paras and not once have any of the people implicated ever been arrested – on the contrary, the witnesses have been threatened and even killed for speaking out. You might rationally conclude that those within the legal system who don’t like initiatives like that of the Peace Community would think ‘Great stuff! We can shelve this case immediately because these people aren’t pushing it by giving evidence.’ But this is not what happens. Instead, I saw the Fiscal (attorney) and many other government people since then, nearly have kittens at the mere notion that anyone even considered opting out of the farcical and cruel game known as Justice here. It’s like a bully who always beats up a cowed smaller kid until one day the little one goes ‘no sorry, I’m not playing that stupid game any more’ and walks away. The bully is left waving his fists around but with no-one to thump, an image that exactly fits the anger and outrage I have seen in lawyers, attorneys and state officials as a result of this stance. I cannot say that I really understand why they always react like this, but the fact that they do shows that a long-established imbalance of power is being disturbed here. For many years, the San Joseans, with the help of excellent lawyers, tried to get justice via the normal legal paths until finally they saw that you can’t get justice from an unjust system and decided to say NO and see where that road would lead. At the very least, they would not be wasting time and money on lawyers, attorneys and endless piles of paper, all of which had led them nowhere except towards more threats and murders. Their refusal to take part in these empty rituals means that the other party, the state legal institutions, must eventually and reluctantly recognize that their system is all form and no content. Not that they will ever do this willingly or peacefully. In more simplistic terms, for me the sign that this policy works is that the campesinos genuinely feel happy about their decision and the State Attorney’s Office hate it and really want the peasants to go back to playing the game that the army and the state always win. Recently, this position has given very concrete results: about 73 million dollars of US Plan Colombia military ‘aid’ was held back because US senators, congressmen and the hundreds of thousands of people they represent, protested loudly about the impunity enjoyed by the army/paras in many massacres (see report above), special mention being made of the recent massacre in San Jose. The Colombian Foreign Office is now almost begging the Community to please testify. This would allow the State to pretend to investigate and thus allow the US State Dept. to sign some fat cheques to invest in arms for a conflict that, according to President Uribe’s latest edicts, we are not allowed to mention. What alternatives to this dysfunctional justice system do the Communities in Resistance propose? In the case of the San Jose massacres, many people from many different perspectives have spoken out so strongly and consistently that the lies of the murderers have not managed to black out the truth quite so completely as usual. This of course has made the State even more determined to silence the Peace Community with violence. But that the truth be widely known rather than twisted and squashed as it usually is, helps the people affected combat feelings of frustration and helplessness, even though it won’t put the guilty parties in jail. But the present non-system doesn’t punish them either, so the victims are not exactly losing out and neither are they wasting time and energy by walking up blind alleys and banging their heads on brick walls.” The tragic case of Dabeiba We will end this Green Letter by recording a few details regarding the village of Dabeiba, a community in great danger mentioned by Becky in one of her reports above. Here is what Anne knows so far of what is happening there: “….people are being killed there daily by the paras and thrown into the river. And – how sweet – there is a priest who says no-one can come in to help unless they go through the Church. No-one seems to know the names of the victims yet. The paramilitary blockade of the village is so intense that they killed two peasants for breaking the rules, which are that you are only allowed 30,000 pesos worth (about 13 euros) of groceries a week, and no agricultural tools or SEEDS because if you are growing or buying food, it must be for the guerrilla, i.e. they want to clear the area of its peasant owners by starving them out, so that the ‘reinserted’ ‘legalized’ paras. can take over. Another article that is forbidden is horseshoes, as all horse and mule journeys ‘must be for the guerrilla’. “To get there by road, you have to go further north from San Jose along the coastal banana plains and then go up into the hills; no roads direct from San Jose go there, only dangerous paths – danger from the army that is, as it is in the general direction of where Luis Eduardo and the others were massacred. They have the beginning of community organization, but not anything like San Jose. San Jose is trying to help as much as they can, mainly by helping them come to meetings by paying their fares and encouraging them to organize.”
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” Paolo Friere, quoted in Smallholder Magazine, Canada.
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