Amnesty Internationl Southwark Group

Of the broad range of campaigns that Amnesty International are currently running we as the Southwark local group have chosen to focus on Control Arms and Stop Violence Against Women. We are also campaigning to highlight some of the issues facing Colombia and Palestine.

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Colombia Notes: Tim Thomas 24.11.06

The Colombian government have instigated a plan to uncover the bitter secrets of “the disappeared” in the country. It is estimated that anything between 6,000 and 20,000 bodies lie in unmarked graves, the victims of the vicious internecine war that has scarred the nation for decades. People who have knowledge of these burial places (often the perpetrators) are being encouraged to pin-point the locations so that relatives and friends can give the bodies a proper burial. It is hoped that a kind of national healing might result from this along South African lines.

Meanwhile the bloodletting continues with a confusing array of forces fighting each other. The recent re-election of President Uribe has given hope to some but despair to others. Gun amnesties and the disarming of some militias has helped but the structural problems in the country remain to give rise to further conflict. There is a huge gulf between rich and poor and special interest groups whether they be industrial, racial, military or political habitually use force to guard their power. “Silenced by the gun” as they say in Colombia. Journalists, teachers, women’s rights activists and trades unionists are regularly targeted.

I will keep the membership informed about particular cases as Amnesty spotlights them.

Two friends of mine have been Colombia recently and their impressions encapsulate a country that is bewildering and contradictory. Both were captivated by the beauty of the place and by the grace and friendliness of many of the people. Bernice was gratified to learn that one third of the country is now a national park and refuge for indigenous people and also that huge efforts are being made to conserve the rainforest. She met Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon who she says is a charismatic and committed crusader for a better Colombia. He has personally suffered at the hands of FARC the left wing guerrillas. She was based in Cartagena, a beautiful Hispanic city at the northern gateway of the country. However, although it sees itself as separate from Bogota and the drug cartel cities of Medellen and Cali it cannot escape the endemic violence. She was forbidden to leave her apartment without an armed guard who walked two paces behind her everywhere she went. He had an automatic rifle. Every hotel, shop and public building has its own heavily armed protectors. Kidnap and robbery are commonplace. When Bernice suggested a trip to the market all her minders visibly blanched and said it was impossible. In the end she went but said that the fear and threat that surrounded her was palpable.

My other friend Jo also fell in love with the country. She had taken a Colombian asylum seeker under her wing in London and helped him to gain residency here. If he had been forced to return he would have been killed. She went out there to discover more about the country. She visited an orphanage for children of “the disappeared” run by nuns up in the mountains. It broke her heart to think of the families who had been caught up and torn apart by the indiscriminate violence.

Colombia is dogged by its violent colonial history and by centuries of racism in a highly stratified society. In recent times this alarming cocktail of social ills has been given a more lethal potency by cocaine. The vast riches generated by the narcotics trade has warped everything. No social, political, economic or military question is untouched by it. During the time that Bernice was in Cartagena two top US anti-drugs agents based in Colombia were arrested at Miami airport. They were attempting to smuggle huge amounts of cocaine into America in ‘the diplomatic bag’. So much money can be made from trafficking that anyone can be bribed. No price is beyond the big players’ pockets to buy off whoever they choose to.

The arms carried by all the warring factions – right-wing death squads, left-wing guerrillas, militias, rogue elements of the police or army – are all paid for by drug trafficking. Guns are everywhere. In the poorer areas of the big cities criminals as young as 10 or 11 carry pistols and neighbourhood is pitched against neighbourhood for control of drugs. A documentary recently shown on BBC 4 depicted the dismal cycle of death and revenge in which quite often the innocent are killed in the cross-fire. Girls seem to be attracted most to the boys with the guns and motorbikes. They have kids very young. So while still teenagers they can be widows with two or three children who grow up with seemingly just one possibility, to join a gang.
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COLOMBIA: BRIEF NOTES FROM TIM THOMAS

Colombia has a population of 42 million and covers 450,000 square miles (over four times the area of the UK). Most of the population live in the mountainous part of the country which includes the northern limits of the Andes. The main cities including Bogota (the capital) Medellin and Cali are here. To the south east the country drops away through grasslands to the Amazon rainforest. It has considerable natural resources including oil, metals, timber and emeralds. It exports cut flowers and, of course, cocaine.

This land of extremes has suffered over 40 years of violence and its inheritance since the earliest days of colonisation has been of conflict, extreme inequalities between rich and poor and racial division. The gulf between the predominantly white, Spanish elite and the impoverished, predominantly native groups is huge. Colombia’s natural riches have been plundered over the centuries and the status quo has been maintained by powerful interest groups often backed by the United States. It is one of the most dangerous countries on earth.

Today there are over two million displaced persons within the country 800,000 of whom are children. Among the warring factions 12,000 of the combatants are children. The main groups involved in the fighting are FARC, a left-wing movement whose original aim was the redistribution of land to help a desperate peasantry. They were funded during the cold war by Communist countries. Now, like with their main adversaries, much of their money comes from cocaine. Against them are the paramilitaries, an assortment of armies which defend particular interest groups. The Colombian army and police are principal players in this war but corruption is common and the battle-lines are confused. It is hard to know on whose behalf the fighting takes place. Often it appears to be no more than large-scale criminality.

The central government does not control the whole country. At times it only holds sway over about one third of Colombia. There is evidence that the army and the police are also not under government control and human rights abuses are common against a variety of groups including journalists, trades unionists, women’s rights campaigners, indigenous peoples and street children.

President URIBE has just been re-elected for a second term as the president of this troubled nation. He is a right-leaning politician educated at Yale and Oxford Universities and his re-election bucks a trend in South America for more left wing and nationalistic leaders as exemplified by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. In many ways Colombia is a political anomaly in that it is a functioning democracy with regular elections yet it continues to be a deeply dysfunctional nation.

President Uribe supports Plan Colombia, a strategy drawn up with the US. Huge amounts of money have been made to available to fight FARC and the cocaine trade and in the last four years some progress has been made. However, all the old divisions remain and the US is accused of always supporting war and never peace. The UK has large interests in Colombia and BP is a major player. Many claim that the US and UK are only interested in sustaining the status quo which is good for corporate business. Plan Colombia does not address land reform, poverty, education and is aimed at keeping Colombia a good place for foreign investment. The middle classes feel safer but FARC is still a formidable foe and the war on cocaine is very much a conflict of smoke and mirrors since all the power groups benefit from it. Cocaine still floods into the US.

These notes are based on material from the BBC, Human Rights Watch, the US Department of Labour and articles by John Pilger.