February 4, 2009

• Security without Empire: National Organizing Conference on Foreign Military Bases
• Letter from the field: Between Colombia and Venezuela
• Obama's Colombia Policy: "Caution can't paralyze us"
• Body Count Mentalities: Colombia's false positives scandal, declassified
• San José Peace Community: Some justice, but lots of threats
• Yury Neira - Youth advocate and ally

Security without Empire: National Organizing Conference on Foreign Military Bases

American University, Washington, D.C.
February 27 - March 2, 2009

Many of us have a new sense of hope as we think about new possibilities in the Obama years. We also understand that if we and the world are to get the changes we need, we need to learn more and step up our organizing. This certainly applies to U.S. and international efforts to close the foreign military bases that make wars from Afghanistan and Iraq to Colombia and the Philippines possible, oppress "host" nations and communities, and divert our tax dollars from addressing essential human needs.

The Project on Military Bases, a coalition of fifteen national and community-based organizations, including FOR, has organized "Security With Empire: National Organizing Conference on Military Bases", which will be held at American University, February 27 - March 2. We will also be joined by leading anti-bases activists from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and Europe. The conference will provide a unique opportunity to learn about the dangers, "abuses and usurpations" that come with foreign military deployments, and to join in the process of organizing to win the closure and withdrawal of these bases. Together we will:

Speakers will include leading U.S. peace activists, scholar (including FOR's John Lindsay-Poland), and activist allies from the Czech Republic, Ecuador, Germany, Guam, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Okinawa, and South Africa. Twenty workshops will help participants to explore issues and campaigns more deeply and to develop new strategies.

Registration for the weekend is just $30. For detailed information and to register, click here. Please consider joining us.

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Letter from the Field:
Between Colombia and Venezuela, the Bare Life

By Kevin Coulombe, FOR Colombia team member

Borders tend to be inhospitable and sometimes dangerous places. In the case of Colombia, the conflict seems to get more acute at the country's edges, for several reasons: drugs leaving for the United States and Europe via neighboring countries, a black market in weapons and all kinds of goods, use of the neighboring country by illegal armed groups in order to hide from the military or to rest (remember the Colombian air force's attack on the FARC in Ecuadorean territory).

So, because of the strategic position of border towns, and in particular the case concerning us - North Santander and its capital, Cucutá - the armed groups fight for territorial control, constituting what some intellectuals call a "geography of terror," with its complex of consequences for the civilian population: forced displacement, selective killings, social control, massacres, threats.

Last month, with the aim of renewing my visa, I had to travel to the Colombian consulate in the Venezuelan city closest to the border. In an area where all kinds of characters crossed paths, I had to wait a week for the visa, allowing me to comprehend the living situation of citizens on both sides of the border.

In Cucutá, the tension was palpable. Several killings had occurred in the previous weeks in the area, attributed to criminal gangs called 'Aguilas Negras' (Black Eagles). The regional Ombudsman in Cucutá issued an early warning system alert, in the face of the gangs' deteriorating actions. The Ombudsman was reportedly alarmed by the presence of these gangs' members walking freely in broad daylight on downtown streets.

Arriving at the border crossing, you see all along the road hundreds of people camped on the roadside to sell black market goods. On the Colombian side, there are gasoline canisters because of the cheap price of Venezuelan gas subsidized by the revolutionary government. On the Venezuelan side, the vendors hawk vegetables, meat and other common consumer goods that are hard to find in the land of Chavez. This black market activity is made possible by the hundreds of maleteros - people carrying hidden goods - who illegally cross the border daily. It is not unusual to see two men crossing the river with a refrigerator or a washing machine on their backs from one side of the border to the other.

This informal trade is more or less tolerated, to a point; both sides take advantage of lower prices. Nevertheless, one Monday morning, a few short blocks from my hotel, Venezuelan police killed a maletero trying to cross the border with black market goods. A taxi driver told me this happens every month and that "sometimes the police wake up in a bad mood and shoot up the maleteros" indiscriminately. In response to this execution, all the maleteros occupied the bridge to call the Venezuelan police to account. They hurled flaming tires and explosive objects. The confrontations lasted all day and caused the border to be closed.

A day later, faced with the inquisitorial finger of the consular officer, I had the impression that my political life in Colombia depended on bureaucratic processes from which I could emerge unscathed or on society's margins, with no legal status either in Colombia or Venezuela: the "bare life." In this border territory, where a 'state of siege' seems to be the norm, the area residents' lives are in their highest state of danger. In a netherworld where emergencies or the war suspend the laws or make impunity reign, one's life is stripped of its political, cultural and social qualities - the Bare Life. In short, in an interstice where someone can be annihilated, with that killing never being punishable.

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Obama's Colombia Policy: "Caution can't paralyze us"

Less than two weeks into the new presidency, it isn't clear where President Obama and his team will steer U.S. policy in Colombia. But analysts are reading the early signs.

During the campaign, President Obama's highest profile statement on Colombia came in the last debate, when he cited human rights problems as his basis for opposing the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia. "Labor leaders have been targeted for assassination on a fairly consistent basis, and there have not been prosecutions. We have to stand for human rights, and we have to make sure that violence isn't being perpetrated against workers who are just trying to organize for their rights."

In a joint letter to Bush officials in 2006, Obama called the human rights situation "far from satisfactory" and said "there is no reliable evidence that the price and purity of cocaine on America's streets have changed significantly over the past six years."

But during his campaign, Obama chose a speech to the right-wing Cuban-American National Foundation to lay out his proposed Latin America policies. There, he endorsed the Andean drug policy, as well as Colombia's March 2008 cross-border raid into Ecuador, and promised to continue supporting Colombia's counterinsurgency war.

Hillary Clinton is usually linked to the policies of her husband, who after all started Plan Colombia. But in her confirmation she responded to Sen. John Kerry in measured terms, promising to "learn from the successes and failures of the past," "disrupt the southbound flow of money and weapons," and "work together with countries throughout the region" - most of whom are not keen on U.S. military approaches to narcotics.

Washington-based groups talking with candidates for Obama Administration political posts found agreement that the drug war is not working and an interest in new initiatives to deal with drug trafficking, but also heard conflict over the Free Trade Agreement, with many believing that an FTA will be re-submitted to Congress, that it is only a matter of when.

But our caution about the Obama team's centrist and military instincts should not paralyze us, Colombian groups say in a letter to be released in the coming days. A wide range of Colombian organizations are calling for changes in drug policy and trade, support for a political solution to the armed conflict, human rights and support for justice for victims of the conflict. They point out that 100% of Colombian army units should be ineligible for U.S. assistance, because the Army's practice of "false positive" killings of civilians is "systematic and widespread" (in the words of Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights).

Proponents of Plan Colombia proclaim its positive results. But the policy has been a disaster for millions of Colombians forced by the conflict to flee their homes. 2008 was even worse for forced displacement of Colombians than 2007, when more than 300,000 Colombians were forced to flee their homes, according to Jorge Rojas of CODHES.

The new policy will also depend on regional relations. To the extent that the U.S. normalizes relations with Venezuela and Bolivia, Colombia's President Uribe becomes less necessary to Washington.

The economic crisis can play a role as well, as there may be pressure to do away with wasteful programs (like the drug war's fumigation of crops) to pay for the economic stimulus needed in the United States.

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"Body Count Mentalities"

Colombia's "False Positives" Scandal, Declassified

We reproduce here part of a report by Michael Evans of the National Security Archives, a research organization in Washington, on the history of U.S. knowledge of Colombian army extrajudicial killings.

The CIA and senior U.S. diplomats in 1994 reported a "body count syndrome" and the use of "death squad tactics" by Colombian security forces, according to declassified documents published on the Web by the National Security Archive. These records shed light on a policy - recently examined in a still-undisclosed Colombian Army report - that influenced the behavior of Colombian military officers for years, leading to extrajudicial executions and collaboration with paramilitary drug traffickers. The secret report has led to the dismissal of 30 Army officers and the resignation of Gen. Mario Montoya Uribe, the Colombian Army Commander who had long promoted the idea of using body counts to measure progress against guerrillas.

These documents and the recent scandal over the still-secret Colombian Army report raise important questions about the historical and legal responsibilities the Army has to come clean about what appears to be a longstanding, institutional incentive to commit murder.

Highlights from the posting include:

• A 1994 report from U.S. Ambassador Myles Frechette decrying "body count mentalities" among Colombian Army officers seeking to advance through the ranks. "Field officers who cannot show track records of aggressive anti-guerrilla activity (wherein the majority of the military's human rights abuses occur) disadvantage themselves at promotion time."
• A CIA intelligence report from 1994 finding that the Colombian security forces "employ death squad tactics in their counterinsurgency campaign" and had "a history of assassinating left wing civilians in guerrilla areas, cooperating with narcotics-related paramilitary groups in attacks against suspected guerrilla sympathizers, and killing captured combatants."
• A Colombian Army colonel's comments in 1997 that there was a "body count syndrome" in the Colombian Army that "tends to fuel human rights abuses by well-meaning soldiers trying to get their quota to impress superiors" and a "cavalier, or at least passive, approach when it comes to allowing the paramilitaries to serve as proxies … for the COLAR in contributing to the guerrilla body count."
• The same colonel's assertion that military collaboration with illegal paramilitary groups "had gotten much worse" under Gen. Rito Alejo Del Río Rojas, who is now under investigation for a murder that occurred during that same era.
• A declassified U.S. Embassy cable describing a February 2000 false positives operation in which both the ACCU paramilitaries and the Colombian Army almost simultaneously claimed credit for having killed two long-demobilized guerrillas near Medellín. Ambassador Curtis Kamman called it "a clear case of Army-paramilitary complicity," adding that it was "difficult to conclude anything other than that the paramilitary and Army members simply failed to get their stories straight in advance."

After Michael Evans' report appeared on January 7, the Colombian news weekly Semana published an account of the secret Army report on civilian killings. The report detailed a killing of a 67-year-old peasant farmer killed last July by the Army's Calibio Battalion in Yondo, Antioquia. Battalion officers then made up a story about a machine gun and a demobilized guerrilla. The Calibio Battalion was 'vetted' and assisted by the United States at least from 2000 to 2008.

In another Semana report, government investigators disclosed dozens of taped conversations between an Army officer operating in oil-rich Arauca (where Washington has focused much assistance) with an ELN guerrilla commander. The two formed an alliance against FARC guerrillas in the area and even collaborated on a massacre of several suspected FARC militia members.

"The most serious aspect of this episode," Semana writes, "is that the soldiers involved seem to be repeating the history that Colombia has repeated so many times and whose results are always so disastrous. Police officers thought to ally themselves with criminals to take down Pablo Escobar, and ended up trapped in the mafia world. Many soldiers and police believed that allying themselves with the paramilitaries to combat the FARC was a lesser evil. History showed them that the remedy was worse than the illness."

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San José Peace Community: Some Justice, But Lots of Threats

By Mayra Moreno, FOR team member

The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó denounced new attacks by the Colombian state on community members last week. The history of impunity that has marked the last twelve years in the experience of Peace Community members and allies continues to be a constant reality, and the justice system is far from taking action in most of the more than 600 violations committed against them.

Threats and assassinations are not the only kind of attacks the community faces. "Once again the Colombian Government has announced through the 17th Brigade that they seek to exterminate the [community]. For the past 12 years, it has repeated many times that there are two ways to destroy it: by subjecting the leaders and members to judicial frame-ups and take away their freedom by imprisoning them, or by using paramilitary groups to execute killings and keep the population under constant threat."

The most emblematic example of how Colombian forces have carried out acts of violence against civil society was the 2005 massacre in San José, in which eight individuals were killed, including three children. Almost four years later, and through continuous pressure placed by Colombian human rights workers and the international community, the investigation into this massacre has seen some progress. Ten Army men face charges for being co-authors of homicide and aggravated crimes, the Prosecutor General's office announced on January 28, and 80 more are still under investigation. The men were part of the 17^th Brigade's Velez Infantry Battalion when they carried out Operation Fenix, in which the two families were murdered. Last year, Army Captain Armando Gordillo admitted his participation and confessed that 50 paramilitaries acted together with two Army battalions in the operation.

While there have been advances in prosecuting the 2005 massacre, other actions demonstrate that the justice system itself can be used as a tool to attack the peace process and integrity of the members of the Peace Community. The community said that a recently demobilized guerrilla commander is being used to make declarations against the members with the objective of destroying their process: "Samir, at one time a commander of the FARC's Fifth Front, which operates in the area around San Jose de Apartadó, and the 17th Brigade in unity with the Public Prosecutor's office, are seeking to make false accusations on a large scale against the leaders of the Peace Community and its allies, such as Father Javier Giraldo and the ex-mayor of Apartadó, Gloria Cuartas."

On January 17, a man identifying himself as a colonel in the 17^th Brigade called a community member and former leader on his cell phone and offered him money to help destroy the community, the community said.

It is no surprise that the Peace Community has little or no faith in the Colombian legal system when they feel that not even the government branch responsible for justice is immune to manipulation to attack a process that continues to stand against violations perpetrated against civil society.

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Yury Neira, Youth Advocate and Ally

By Liza Smith

Yury Neira, activist, coordinator of Salmón Cultural center, member of the Victims Movement Against State Crimes and protected by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights is first and foremost a father. His struggle for justice is a frustrated one, but it continues: he seeks justice for the murder of his 15-year-old son, Nicolás Neira, who was killed at the hands of Bogota riot police on May Day in 2005.

I first met Yury during a human rights class I took while living in Colombia. I found his testimony so powerful that, once I was back in the U.S. and working for FOR, I asked him if he would meet up with our Youth Arts and Action delegation to Colombia in March 2008. The delegation provided an opportunity for youth activists from Colombia and the U.S. to talk to each other about their shared stories, strategies, experiences and ideas on conscientious objection, counter-recruitment and antimilitarism. We explored ways that youth are impacted by militarism in both places. Yury's story of his son Nicolás and the brutal way in which he was killed, fit in exactly.

Our delegation met Yury at Casa Salmón, admired the graffiti and painted walls, listened to music and heard about what had happened to Nicolás, a young man who dressed like an anarchist, marched in the streets, and was killed by the police.

During the May Day march, riot police beat Nicolás and he died two days later in the hospital. The doctors said his head suffered a number of fractures, including one that was 26 centimeters long, revealing the savagery with which he was beaten. A foreign reporter covering the march captured the moment on film, but the evidence has not been not used. Instead the reporter was threatened and had to leave the country. Although initially the police declared that Nicolás died because he was stampeded by protestors, the Inspector General's office has since recognized that Nicolás was killed at the hands of state agents. And yet, his case remains in impunity.

Since the day his son was killed three and a half years ago, and because Yury has never tired in his commitment to hold the culprits of this state-sponsored crime accountable, he has been the victim of two attempts against his life, four arbitrary arrests, continuous harassment, threats, stigmatization, police abuse and raids.

And now, the list grows longer: on January 16, the DAS (Department of Administrative Security) raided Casa Salmon, a well known space where youth get together for alternative cultural activities including cinema, dance workshops, painting, private concerts, academic activities and meetings for analysis and political studies. On the following day two men attempted to kill Yury at Casa Salmon.

The raid was carried out with a number of irregularities, according to the Victims Movement Against State Crimes. DAS Officials arrived with 25 heavily armed officials and eight vehicles, including an anti-explosive car. They broke down the doors and began the raid without the presence of the human rights Ombudsman's office and lacked the official papers to authorize the search. After six hours, they left without any conclusive evidence against Yury or the cultural center. Yury told reporters immediately following their departure that DAS officials "already knew they weren't going to find anything, but this government regards critical thought as synonymous with being subversive and dangerous." A video on the Victims Movement web site details the events that transpired.

The following day, at 8:30 pm, two men came to the door of the Casa Salmon cultural center. One of them asked for Mrs. Yury Neira. Yury responded that "she" wasn't there and the other man said, "that's him, do it, do it." The first man took his arm while the other said "do it, do it." Fortunately a few people arrived at that moment and were able to close the door leaving the men outside, who tried to force their way in. Five minutes later they left.

Yury's struggle for youth and their rights, his struggle to hold those responsible for the murder of his son, is one that should be protected by Colombian governmental authorities.

Please take action to demand that the Colombian Attorney General's office and other state officials investigate the events of January 17, sanction those responsible for the assassination attempt and ensure Yury's physical, legal and moral protection.

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