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week
of 4/17/02
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Protest
to focus attention on U.S.’s Colombian policy SMN In recent years, the U.S. government has become increasingly involved in Colombia’s 30-year-old civil war. On April 19-22, The National Mobilization on Colombia in Washington, D.C., will seek to influence the nature of this involvement. On April 19 SOA Watch (a Georgia-based group seeking to close Ft. Benning’s School of the Americas) will hold a vigil and lobby outside of the U.S. Capitol building. On April 20 there will be teach-ins, workshops, and training in nonviolent protest in preparation for Monday’s march. On April 21 a Festival of Hope and Resistance will be held at the Washington Monument featuring speakers, musicians and planning for the following day’s march on the House of Representatives. The mobilization will culminate with the April 22’s nonviolent march in support of the people of Colombia and change in Washington’s Colombia policy. There are three military factions in the Colombian conflict: the Colombian military, the leftist FARC-EP rebels, and the right wing paramilitaries. The brunt of the conflict has been borne by the rural poor of the country. The fighting has made existence difficult and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Rural residents also face daily threats of coercive violence (selective assassinations as well as massacres) from the three parties. The U.S. government has nominally entered the Colombian civil war under the auspices of the war on drugs. Both the leftist guerrillas and the right wing paramilitaries finance themselves through the drug trade. U.S. aid presently equips the government military for its battles with the FARC-EP (under the logic that a military defeat of the rebels will end their drug production) and funds aerial spraying of cocoa and poppy crops. The National Mobilization on Colombia will call for an end to both of these practices. The organizers point out that the Colombian military does not use its funding to confront the paramilitaries, despite the fact that the paramilitaries produce more drugs and commit more human rights abuses than the rebels. The aerial spraying has not only failed to reduce drug production but has also negatively effected rural health. The spraying kills food crops and livestock as well as poisoning drinking water. The mobilization calls for a redirecting of U.S. funds to sustainable economic development for Colombia, monitoring of the Colombian military’s human rights record and collusion with the paramilitaries, and reduction of drug problems through demand-side intervention (education and treatment within the U.S.). (Please refer to the National Mobilization on Colombia’s website at http://www.colombiamobilization.org/ for more information, or contact Matthew Bradley at hrssbnd@yahoo.com or Anna at guapagirl@skybest.com.) Matthew T. Bradley Cullowhee |