1. U'WA UPDATE FROM THE GROUND
2. URGENT ACTION ALERT to STOP MILITARY AID AND FUMIGATION IN COLOMBIA!
3. COLOMBIA MOBILIZATION SEPT 27 & 28 IN WASHINGTON DC
4. RAND CORPORATION REPORT ON COLOMBIA
1.U'WA UPDATE
OXY's exploratory drilling at the Gibralter 1 test well on U?wa ancestral
territory continues to be riddled with problems and work slippages. According
to reports from the ground, the company?s diamond drill bit broke last
month, further delaying the project and it is still unknown whether commercially
viable levels of oil will be found. A critical juncture lies ahead in the
coming months as OXY will either move into the production phase at the
Gibralter site, or begin exploratory drilling anew in another area within
U'wa ancestral territory. The U'wa also report that there has been a significant
increase in military presence in the area. Estimates put the number of
armed soldiers in the Samore oil block and Auruca province at approximately
15,000.
2. Urgent Action: Call Your Representatives Today! Stop Military Aid and Fumigation in Colombia!
While OXY's project continues to be plagued by problems, the U'wa have identified another threat to their lives, land, and culture-one that not only threatens their people, but thousands of other indigenous, campesino, and Afro-Colombian communities throughout Colombia who are already suffering from rights abuses from a U.S. backed military (and their tacit support of the paramilitaries) and seeing their legitimate crops, livestock, water, rainforest ecosystems, and physical health decimated by the aerial spraying of the Monsanto produced 'S'uper-Roundup' to allegedly destroy coca crops.
In a February 7th interview with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Roberto Perez, President of the U'wa Traditional Authority, talked about the implications of Plan Colombia:
Plan Colombia is a plan for violence. The Colombian government says its purpose is to eradicate coca production, but that's not the case. It is directed against the guerrillas and against the people. The money the United States is spending in Plan Colombia will go to protecting the international companies by purchasing arms, more sophisticated equipment, and to constructing military bases in the richest zones. And when they say they will eradicate the coca crops by aerial fumigation, they are contaminating the environment, the rivers, and the [agricultural] cultivations for consumption. When you analyze the regions where they have chosen to apply those resources, their first priority is Putumayo, because it is rich in natural resources. Second is the Colombian Amazon; third, the northeastern forests where our territory is located; and fourth is the Pacific coast. Those are the strategic areas, and that is where they will construct military bases.
Resistance is the only alternative that we can continue to advance in the long run. When we attain more unity, I think we can do something for the world. So our message to people in the United States would be, first, to exert pressure from here to put a stop to Plan Colombia, and, two, to stop all U.S. military intervention in Colombian territory. Plan Colombia is a death sentence for us.
This week presents those of us who have been doing solidarity actions and organizing in support of the U'wa's uncompromising resistance to OXY's oil project with a key opportunity to affect the next Congressional military aid package to Colombia and to stand up for human rights, dignity, and social, environmental and economic justice not only for the U'wa, but for all Colombians.
The bill goes to the House floor around July 18th and there is likely to be amendments offered to the bill that would cut US military aid to Colombia and put a brake on fumigation. The Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittee will consider the foreign operations appropriations bill during the third week of July.
The best way for us to support the U?wa and peace and justice in Colombia this week is for us to call our representatives immediately (see subcommittee list below or go to www.house.gov/writerep and www.senate.gov) and urge them to vote YES on any amendment to cut Colombian military aid. Also tell them to vote YES on any amendment to halt fumigation. To reach any office in the house or senate, call the Congressional switchboard at (202) 224-3121. If you get an indication of how a member will vote, please e-mail lawg@lawg.org with a report.
Please read the below action alert from the Latin American Working Group for details on amendments related to military aid and fumigation, and background on the Andean Regional Initiative- Bush's request for aid to Colombia and the Andean region.
URGENT ACTION ALERT FROM THE LATIN AMERICAN WORKING GROUP
Now is your chance to influence US aid to Colombia! The Bush Administration's aid request for Colombia and the Andean region, which this year is part of the annual foreign operations appropriations bill, will hit the House floor around July 18th. During the debate, representatives will have a chance to voice their opinions and vote on the aid package; it is especially important that we let our members of Congress know how we feel about aid to the Colombian military and fumigation.
Recent Events in the House: The Foreign Ops Appropriations bill started on June 27th in the House Foreign Operations Subcommittee, where the first draft of the bill was ?marked up? or debated and voted on. The debate during the markup showed that there is increasing support for cutting military aid to Colombia and putting a moratorium on fumigation. From there, the bill went to the full Appropriations Committee, where Rep. Pelosi (D-CA) introduced an amendment that would cut $100 million in military aid to Colombia. After a heated debate, in which several Democrats stood to voice support for the amendment, the amendment was defeated by a vote of 39-22.
Urgent Action! On the House floor, Rep. McGovern (D-MA) will offer a global health amendment which will significantly reduce military aid to Colombia and transfer the money into programs such as TB prevention, child survival, and maternal health, much like Pelosi's amendment in committee. There will most likely be other amendments offered on fumigation and domestic treatment and prevention. Contact your representative immediately to tell them to vote YES on McGovern's amendment and any amendment to cut Colombian military aid. Also tell them to vote YES on any amendment to halt fumigation. If you get an indication of how a member will vote, please e-mail lawg@lawg.org with a report.
If you are not sure who your representative is, please see http://www.house.gov/writerep.
Update and Urgent Action: Senate
The Senate Foreign Operations Subcommittee will consider their version of the foreign operations appropriations bill during the third week of July. Members of the subcommittee and the full appropriations committee should hear from constituents. Please contact both your senators, doing so before July 20 if they are on the appropriations committee, and tell them your opinion on US military aid to Colombia and the fumigation policy.
Senate Appropriations Committee Members
Democrats:
Robert Byrd (WV)
Daniel Inouye (HI)
Ernest Hollings (SC)
Patrick Leahy (VT)
Tom Harkin (IA)
Barbara Mikulski (MD)
Harry Reid (NV)
Herb Kohl (WI)
Patty Murray (WA)
Byron Dorgan (ND)
Dianne Feinstein (CA)
Richard Durbin (IL)
Tim Johnson (SD)
Mary Landrieu (LA)
Republicans:
Ted Stevens (AK)
Thad Cochran (MS)
Arlen Specter (PA)
Pete Domenici (NM)
Christopher Bond (MO)
Mitch McConnell (KY)
Conrad Burns (MT)
Richard Shelby (AL)
Judd Gregg (NH)
Robert Bennett (UT)
Ben Nighthorse Campbell (CO)
Larry Craig (ID)
Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX)
Jon Kyl (AZ)
It is crucial to voice our opinions on current US policy in Colombia and the Andean region at each stage in the process. Please spread the word and contact your senators and representatives as soon as possible!
Background. In late March, the Bush Administration announced its plans to continue a military counter-drug strategy in the Andes with its proposed "Andean Regional Initiative"(ARI). This initiative requests military and social and economic aid for Colombia and its neighbors: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, and Panama. Most of this aid will come through the regular foreign operations appropriations bill, but additional aid will come through the defense appropriations bill. Together, the aid totals about $1 billion in military and police assistance and economic and social aid to the Andean region for 2002 (this is on top of the $1.3 billion two-year package approved last year). The administration intends to send a massive $363.04 million in training, spare parts and equipment for Colombia's military and police forces.
The administration is selling the ARI package as "balanced," with 50%
of the money going to regional security forces and 50% for social and economic
development. However, the request for Colombia is still 71% military. The
package also includes sharp increases in military aid for all of Colombia's
neighbors. The one positive element, a result of all of the criticism last
year, is an increase in alternative development assistance (crop substitution
programs) to a number of countries in the region. For a full analysis of
the package by the Center for International Policy, please see
http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/2002request.htm.
For more information, please visit www.lawg.org or call 202/546-7010.
3. NATIONAL MOBILIZATION ON COLOMBIA
September 27-28, 2001
Washington, DC
This event marks the start of a large, national mobilization against US militarization of the Andean Region. It is sponsored by organizations including: human rights groups, labor groups, environmental groups, peace groups, religious groups, Latin America solidarity groups, indigenous rights groups, and groups interested in populations of the African Diaspora-among others! Please send this to your lists and come join the action in DC:
Thursday:
Hear Personal Testimony at Workshops and Panels!
Meet with Key Policy Makers and Experts!
Lobby Your Congresspersons!
Reunion of Witness For Peace Returned Colombia-Delegates!
Friday:
More Workshops!
Nonviolent Demonstration/Vigil on the Capitol Steps!
Strategy Sessions To Build a Local and National Movement!
Fiesta to Celebrate Colombia!
Thursday and Friday morning WORKSHOPS:
· The "War on Drugs"
· Displacement and Refugee Issues
· The Situation of Human Rights Defenders
· Labor in Colombia
· Immigration/TPS
· Quagmires: Is Colombia another Vietnam?
· Aerial Eradication: Environmt & Health Impacts
· Impacts on Indigenous peoples
· The hidden face: Afro-Colombians
· Globalization: The Role of Oil, Trade, TNCs, & IFIs
· And more!
The Colombia Mobilization is a national coalition of organizations and individuals working to transform U.S. policy toward Colombia and the Andean region. We share the following principles.
1. We call for an end to U.S. military aid to Colombia and the Andean region. Current U.S. military aid to Colombia, including military training and private contracting, is a failed policy. As part of the "War on Drugs," U.S. military assistance is inflaming a violent conflict and contributing to increased human rights abuses, including massive displacement. Afro-Colombians, indigenous groups, trade unionists, the rural poor, human rights defenders, social organizations, and others working for peace and justice in Colombia are suffering disproportionately from these human rights violations.
2. We call for an end to U.S. funding of counter-narcotic aerial eradication in Colombia and the Andean region. We recognize that U.S.-funded aerial eradication, or fumigation, of coca and poppy crops is destroying critical biodiversity throughout the Amazon region and is creating health and food-security crises among the local populations. Aerial eradication is a destructive tool that largely fails to achieve U.S. policy goals, without addressing the real development needs that drive people to cultivate coca leaf and poppy.
3. We call for dramatic expansion of drug treatment and prevention in the United States. Any sincere effort to curb illegal drug use in the United States must seriously address the issue of demand, and must de-emphasize the destructive and ineffective supply-side policies, including punitive and racist mandatory minimum drug sentencing.
4. We call for the United States to support comprehensive sustainable economic development alternatives throughout the Andean region, as well as efforts for peace that include the full participation of civil society. U.S.-supported international financial institutions, such as the World Bank and IMF, have promoted development and trade policies in the Andean region that have failed to address the region's growing poverty and need for long-term social investment. Proposed U.S.-led free trade agreements will further contribute to economic injustice if they favor large corporations over the needs of the general population. For the United States to make a positive contribution in Colombia, the development and human rights needs of Colombian people and an emphasis on the peace process must be incorporated into the policy-making process.
5. We call for the United States to help alleviate the conditions of refugees and those people internally displaced because of the conflict. With over 300,000 Colombians internally displaced in 2000, and thousands of refugees spilling into neighboring countries, US policy is aggravating a staggering humanitarian crisis that is militarizing borders and threatening regional stability. The United States should increase humanitarian assistance, prevent further displacement by safeguarding communities' human rights, and provide temporary protected status (TPS) to Colombians living in the United States whose lives are in danger because of the conflict.
6. We are committed to nonviolence in our own actions as well as supporting exclusively nonviolent, negotiated political solutions to the conflict in Colombia. We do not support or endorse any armed actor in the Colombian conflict.
Sign-ons to date:
Amazon Watch
Carolina Interfaith Taskforce on Centra America (CITCA)
Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America
Church of the Brethren, Washington Office
Colombia Human Rights Committee
Colombia Support Network
Common Sense Drug Policy
Disarm Education Fund
Ecumenical Program on Central America and the Caribbean (EPICA)
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Global Exchange
Guatemala Human Rights Commission/USA
Drug Policy Project & The Peace and Security Program
Institute for Policy Studies
International Labor Rights Fund
International Rivers Network
Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns
Nicaragua Network
Peace Action
Rainforest Action Network
Rights Action
School of the Americas Watch
Global Ministries/Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
United Church of Christ
Public Life and Social Policy Office
United Church of Christ, Justice and Witness Ministries
United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE)
U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project (USLEAP)
Witness for Peace
For more information www.ColombiaMobilization.org
5.THE RAND CORPORATION REPORT ON COLOMBIA
'THE COLOMBIAN LABYRINTH: THE SYNERGY OF DRUGS AND INSURGENCY AND
ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR REGIONAL STABILITY'
The Santa Monica-based Rand Corporation, a right-wing conservative think
tank whose reports and recommendations often find their way into U.S. foreign
policy, recently released a report entitled 'The Colombian Labyrinth: The
Synergy of Drugs and Insurgency and its Implications for Regional Stability.'
The report, while admitting that more must be done to combat drug use in
the U.S. and that fumigation has largely been a failure, explains that
'drugs and insurgency are intertwined in complicated and changing ways,
but the former cannot be addressed without dealing with the latter,' and
hence advocates for 'improving Colombia?s capabilities, especially in the
military sphere." The report exposes many of the underlying policy strategies
now being pursued under Plan Colombia and Bush's new Andean Initiative
but have yet to be disclosed to the U.S. public: that Plan Colombia is
not only a phony 'war on drugs,' but rather about solidifying U.S. hegemony
in a growingly unstable region of strategic importance to the U.S. and
Colombia's four decade long civil war is a threat to U.S. national security
for various reasons, one of which the report cites as access to the country's
immense oil reserves. The report recommends abandoning the current U.S.-Colombia
'counter-narcotics' strategy and move towards an all out 'counter-insurgency'
strategy.
Below are two more revealing excerpts and the web link where the entire report can be downloaded for free.
"Drug trafficking and political disintegration in Colombia could confront the United States, if present trends continue, with the most serious foreign and security policy crisis in the Western Hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980s. The first question is why Colombia matters. U.S. policy toward Colombia has been driven to a large extent by counter-narcotics considerations, but the situation in that South American country is a national security as much as a drug policy problem. Colombia is a strategically important country. It is South America?s fourth largest country in area and the second largest in population. It is the only South American country with coastlines on both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and it is contiguous to the Caribbean basin, Central America, Venezuela and its oil fields, and Panama and the Canal. Colombia also has some of the largest untapped petroleum reserves in the Western Hemisphere. Colombia?s trajectory will also influence the direction of broader trends in the unstable Andean region and beyond."
"The United States is the only realistic source of military assistance to the Colombian government on the scale needed to redress the currently unfavorable balance of power. Further assistance will be needed, beyond the $862.3 million (out of a $1.3 billion package) approved for Colombia by the U.S. Congress in 2000. The U.S. program of military assistance to El Salvador during the Reagan administration could be a relevant model. Although U.S. military assistance to El Salvador was a matter of considerable political controversy, there is no question that it succeeded in transforming the unprepossessing Salvadoran military into a force capable of turning back a formidable guerrilla threat."
"In conclusion, understanding the Colombian labyrinth drives home the realization that drugs and insurgency are intertwined in complicated and changing ways, but the former cannot be addressed without dealing with the latter. This argues for improving Colombia?s capabilities, especially in the military sphere."