Colombia Government complicit in crimes against humanity: Delegation

Here's a brief dispatch from Colombia Reports website, which tells us of a recent delegation of U.S. and U.K. lawmakers and trade unionists who were very critical of the human rights record of President Alvaro Uribe, calling on an end to military assistance and for a rejection of any free trade deal with Colombia. This week's high-profile delegation coincides with a simultaneous delegation from the U.S., led by Representative Steny Hoyer, who met with President Uribe in Cartagena, and gave the thumbs up for the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The contradictory nature of these two reports is startling, even within the Colombian context.

Below are the links to the reports in El Tiempo and Colombia Reports about the pro-FTA delegations. I share with you the other story, which curiously, was not reported in El Tiempo's website on Wednesday. Did they deliberately miss something? Or was it just a coincidence?

MAMA

Colombia Government complicit in crimes against humanity: Delegation

A delegation of twenty U.S. and British Congressmen and representatives of U.S. and Canadian unions that visited Colombia says "the Government of Álvaro Uribe and the security forces are complicit" in crimes against humanity.

In a statement, the delegation says to be in a "state of shock" and "given the evidence" has "no doubt" that "the Government of Álvaro Uribe and the security forces are complicit in these crimes against humanity."

The unionists and Congressmen heard testimonies of "fathers, mothers, brothers and sons being killed, of families displaced, of innocent peasants being murdered and dressed up as guerrillas, of threatened, intimidated and murdered labor rights workers".

The delegation is "convinced that the murderous activities of the paramilitary forces are endorsed and actively supported by the government and state forces."

Upon returning to the United Kingdom and North America, the members of the delegation will "call for an immediate end of military and political support for Colombia," the statement reads.

The delegation also warns that "there will be no free trade pact with Colombia whatsoever until human rights and union rights are respected in an internationally verifiable way."

Among the parliamentarians were former U.K. Minister of Defense Peter Kilfoyle (Labour) and U.S. congressman James McGovern (D-MA), an outspoken critic of the Uribe administration.

The visit ended on the same day a group of ten U.S. Congressmen met with Colombian President Álvaro Uribe in Cartagena and applauded "the progress that he [Uribe] has made in human rights."

OTHER STORIES:

http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/politica/apoyo-a-tlc-y-complacencia-por-avance-en-derechos-humanos-expreso-importante-lider-democrata-de-eu_4955421-1

http://colombiareports.com/colombian-news/news/3519-us-congressmen-meet-uribe-over-free-trade-pact.html

AAUP and Academic Freedom: A Look at Ayers, Churchill

The following essay, written by AAUP President Cary Nelson, appeared in Inside Higher Ed on April 2, 2009. I share it with all of you because it's an issue near and dear to me that too often, is misrepresented and distorted in the mainstream news media. And with the recent court victory for Native American scholar Ward Churchill, who was ordered re-instated to the University of Colorado last week, the timing of this piece is indeed opportune. Check it out!

MAMA

Monsters With Constituencies

By AAUP President Cary Nelson

Over 40 years ago, when I was still an undergraduate at Antioch College, the student government sent out a large number of letters to controversial or accomplished Americans and invited them to talk on campus. One who accepted was George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party. Rockwell asked if he could bring 20 of his storm troopers with him, but permission was refused. So he asked if he could hold a news conference on campus; that request was turned down as well. He would be picked up at the airport, driven to the Yellow Springs, Ohio, campus to give his talk, and returned.

Although Antioch may not be anyone's image of a disciplined campus, the 500 students and faculty in the auditorium that day in 1964 were well disciplined indeed. They sat in absolute silence throughout the talk. When the question period came, no one raised a hand. Instead, everyone rose and exited, again in silence. So Rockwell began to curse us all. Still no one reacted. Eventually he gave up and left.

There was, quite understandably, no anxiety before or afterward that these impressionable college students might be persuaded by the talk. It was a chance to see firsthand a monster with a constituency, albeit a relatively small one. College audiences have special reason to see such people in the flesh, so as to try to understand how they might draw people to their cause. Monsters, as it happens, also have a way of showing their true colors, as Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad did at Columbia University. His ludicrous assertion that there are no homosexuals in Iran did more to discredit him as a competent leader than almost anything one might say about him.

The notion of a monster with a constituency affords at least some opportunity to avoid emptying all prison systems and hospitals for the criminally insane in search of campus speakers. It suggests instead that students who want to understand their culture might benefit from exposure to both its angels and its devils, along with those not so readily classifiable. What one learns can be surprising. What I learned in 1964 was to value the power of silent, nonviolent witness; that, and the special experience of sharing a moral conviction with hundreds of other people.

Of course some whom the public come to consider monstrous may not be so. The media and political groups can combine forces to create monsters where none are to be found. Then it is best for students and faculty to find out for themselves. High on my list of current faux monsters would be Ward Churchill and William Ayers.

Many faculty and students across the country expect Churchill to be a relentless ideologue. If you spend time with him, as I have, you meet a rather low-key, affable fellow, who wears his trials surprisingly lightly. Ayers, billed as an unrepentant radical, is an accomplished education professor who talks about classrooms and books, not bombs. Yet talks by both have repeatedly been canceled, thereby denying our students the chance to form opinions based on direct experience.

The American Association of University Professors has repeatedly argued that an invitation is not an endorsement. So far as I remember, no one was silly enough to make the counter claim about the Rockwell invitation. Nor was it necessary for Columbia's president Bollinger to go to such embarrassing lengths to distance himself from Ahmadinejad. No one thought Columbia was promoting him for the Nobel Peace prize.

But then efforts to get an invited speaker disinvited are not necessarily really based on anger at giving the person a platform, especially since real monsters often acquit themselves poorly on stage. They are as much as anything else efforts to housebreak American higher education, to establish external forces and constituencies as campus powers. They are about establishing who is really in charge -- students and faculty, or politicians, talk show radio hosts, and donors. Get a university to cancel Churchill or Ayers and anyone on the political or cultural spectrum whose views you oppose can be your next target. Once Hamilton College canceled Churchill and the University of Nebraska canceled Ayers, the playing field was open to all comers. Then state legislators could pressure the University of Oklahoma to cancel a talk by biologist Richard Dawkins. Why? Because the man treats evolution as an established fact. Oklahoma stood its ground, perhaps realizing it would be shamed for generations had it canceled the talk.

The most unwelcome trigger may be a donor¹s threat to withdraw a gift. No administrator likes to knuckle under to extortion. But that is not the most efficient way to get a speech canceled in any case. The new weapon of choice is the anonymous threat of violence delivered by a phone call from a public booth. Then the president or his spokesperson can cancel a speech in a voice filled with regret, ceremoniously invoking "security" concerns, as Boston College did in canceling an Ayers talk. It is the ultimate heckler's veto. Place a call and you are in charge. Better yet, call the threat in to a talk show host and give his hate campaign a newspaper headline.

We either must stand firm against these efforts to undermine the integrity of our educational institutions or agree that academic freedom no longer obtains in America. Boston College tried lamely to say the decision was purely an internal matter, but press coverage appropriately turns each of these incidents into a national test of an institution's values and commitments. Each institution's decision about whether to show courage or cowardice helps set a pattern, strengthening or weakening academic freedom everywhere. Thus we all benefited when Pennsylvania's Millersville University resisted legislative pressure and held an Ayers lecture as planned.

And we are all diminished by Boston College's incoherent performance. Because the consequences of these decisions are considerable, the campus as a whole must bear the cost of assuring that invitations are not withdrawn. If a threat requires extra security, let the campus itself -- not the students or faculty who issued the invitation -- cover the cost. That is the price of retaining academic freedom for a free society.

© Copyright 2009 Inside Higher Ed.

Lessons for Afghanistan: From CIP

Hi folks,

Earlier I posted some brief notes about the recent talk in policy-making circles relating to Colombia and Afghanistan. I specifically pointed out some of the contradictions that were apparent in a piece written by reporter Scott Wilson of the Washington Post, which were clearly superficial in their scope and approach. Well, to add further fuel to the argument, I share with you a much more thorough assessment of Wilson's problematic piece, written by our friends at the Center for International Policy (CIP). Hope you enjoy, and circulate widely!

MAMA
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Lessons for Afghanistan (By CIP)

Scott Wilson is a first-rate journalist, fondly remembered for his time reporting from Colombia for the Washington Post (2000-2004). He frequently took to the field to cover Colombia’s conflict and human-rights issues in vivid detail. (A particularly stirring example was his 2001 investigation of a massacre by paramilitaries, while the security forces stood by, in the northern Colombian village of Chengue.) Wilson kept a consistently balanced eye on the delivery of U.S. aid and its effects.

He left Colombia in 2004, going on to cover the Middle East, but returned last fall for his first visit in four years. On page 1 of the “Outlook” section of Sunday’s Washington Post, Wilson published a lengthy piece about what he found.

Unfortunately, his analysis is surprisingly superficial. There is a growing genre of Colombia coverage in which a reporter who shows no evidence of having left Bogotá notes the prosperity of the capital (often including the great 5-star restaurants) and the ability to drive a car to Medellín in safety. The story will briefly note that “problems still exist” and that human rights defenders have complaints, then goes on full-throatedly to endorse U.S. policy and the Uribe government’s programs and behavior.

Wilson’s article engages heavily in that cheerleading, but goes further with a bold recommendation: the Obama administration should copy the Colombian model in Afghanistan.

If you want to roll back a homegrown insurgency inflamed by a pesky neighbor, millions in drug profits and a weak central government, Colombia offers a far better classroom for learning how to beat the Taliban.

Wilson then makes some recommendations that are actually very sound. In several cases, however, these recommendations bear little resemblance to what has been done in Colombia:

He recommends that strategists in Afghanistan put their focus on protecting people, not chasing insurgents all over the map. This is such common sense that it leaves one wondering why it was not the principal strategic goal from the very beginning. Wilson is correct that protecting the population has been a key objective of the Uribe government’s security policies, with their emphasis on expanding police presence in towns and getting the security forces deployed in population centers and along roads. Public security, however, has accounted for only a rather small fraction of U.S. assistance, which has focused mainly on counter-narcotics, oil pipeline protection, and supporting military offensives. Such “chase the guerrillas around the map” offensives, against which Wilson counsels, were a major element of what was attempted in Colombia over the past several years, particularly the U.S.-backed 2004-2006 “Plan Patriota” military campaign in southern Colombia.

Wilson recommends that the U.S. not internationalize the Afghan conflict by involving neighbors, particularly Pakistan, whose territory the insurgency uses as a safe haven. “Efforts to seal off border sanctuaries do not work and divert military resources from the central job of protecting civilians,” he writes. This may be sound advice, but the Colombian government has in fact sustained frequent arguments and occasional flare-ups with Venezuela and Ecuador about FARC presence in their territories - most notably, the March 1, 2008 attack that killed “Raúl Reyes” and the strong political disputes that followed evidence, recovered from Reyes’ computer, of contacts with neighboring governments. Colombia and the United States have, in fact, been quite interested in internationalizing the conflict. If anything, the Colombian experience proves Wilson’s point that a focus on border regions does not work.

Wilson recommends against forcibly eradicating poor farmers’ drug crops, whether opium in Afghanistan or coca in Colombia. He argues that “the administration should focus less on stopping the heroin trade and more on establishing functioning state institutions — from schools to health clinics.”

We applaud this recommendation as well, which we have found to be a very tough sell given the very entrenched hard-line attitudes toward international drug policy prevalent in Washington. But we’re mystified that Wilson believes that forced eradication is on the decline in Colombia:

Too often the government was present only in the form of U.S.-backed aerial herbicide spraying of coca crops, designed to eliminate the guerrillas’ main funding source. But it just ended up impoverishing the peasant farmers who grew the coca, as well as killing the small plots of food crops they planted alongside the drug-producing ones. So Uribe, despite U.S. opposition, scaled back spraying, too.

The Uribe government has in fact been an enthusiastic backer of spraying and other forms of forced eradication. Aerial fumigation in 2008 totaled 133,496 hectares in 2008, the State Department’s International Narcotics Control Strategy Report tells us. That is a reduction from a high of 171,613 hectares in 2006, by far the most intense year of spraying on record. To some degree, this has resulted from reduced congressional funding for the program. But 133,496 hectares maintains levels that prevailed during 2002-2005, the first four years of Uribe’s government, showing the higher levels of spraying in 2006-2007 to have been the anomaly. The Colombian government has, meanwhile, dramatically increased forced manual eradication of coca, which is rarely coupled with development or even food-security assistance, to 95,732 hectares in 2008 from 42,111 in 2006 - thus “impoverishing the peasants who grow coca” in a different way.

Wilson finally recommends that more emphasis in Afghanistan be placed on robust demobilization programs to lure the guerrilla rank-and-file away with promises of leniency, job training and income support, and reunion with their families. This recommendation does reflect an effort that has succeeded in Colombia, starting with programs adopted in earnest starting around 2004-2005. Convincing young FARC recruits that they would be well-treated if they deserted - instead of tortured or disappeared as in the recent past - has reduced the FARC’s ranks, attracted people willing to give useful intelligence, and helped bring several thousand rural youth into a system where they could receive state services for the first time.

Wilson’s brisk analysis, though, leaves several questions unanswered.

Are human rights violations with impunity to be tolerated? Wilson’s article makes some outrageous claims about the Colombian military’s human rights record, including its past relationship with paramilitary groups.

I’d watched the paramilitary movement expand to the point where it controlled vast amounts of Colombian territory, had seized the guerrillas’ drug smuggling networks and had elected dozens of sympathetic local and national politicians. The Bush administration kept the money flowing to Colombia’s army despite evidence of its complicity in paramilitary massacres.

The argument at the time, always made privately, was that the paramilitaries provided the force that the army did not yet have. The group served as a placeholder for the more professional U.S.-trained force that would come along years later.

U.S. officials, Wilson asserts here, privately acknowledged that they knew the Colombian army was complicit in paramilitary massacres, despite loud public declarations - and required State Department human-rights certifications to Congress - asserting the exact opposite. Wilson claims that U.S. officials not only knew it, but somehow saw the paramilitaries as a necessary evil or a “placeholder.”

Wilson then offers this:

Although reports of his close association with the paramilitaries mar his human rights record, Uribe has largely succeeded in disbanding them and extraditing their leaders to the United States.

We are frequent critics of Álvaro Uribe, but we have no proof that he himself has been closely associated with paramilitaries. (Many of his close political associates, however, are widely accused of that.) Wilson here goes farther than most of the U.S. and Colombian human rights communities with an extremely serious accusation, then changes the subject.

These revelations, if true, are the stuff of front-page scandal, not insights to be casually tossed off deep within an analysis piece. And they certainly leave us wondering how human rights and international humanitarian law would fit, if at all, in Wilson’s vision for how the Obama administration and the new Afghan army should operate.

How demobilized are the paramilitaries? Wilson offers high praise for the 2003-2006 demobilization ceremonies that brought a formal end to the paramilitary blocs that made up the old United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

The change that proved most important in reducing violence and undermining the guerrillas was his [Uribe's] decision to disarm the paramilitaries.

There is heated debate about whether the paramilitary demobilizations have done anything to “undermine the guerrillas” or has caused them to relinquish the “drug smuggling networks” and ties to “dozens of sympathetic local and national politicians” described above. Paramilitary leaders have relinquished almost no stolen land and assets as required by law, and mid-level leaders are re-forming new groups at such a rate that some estimates of their combined strength now exceed 8,000 members. Wilson’s piece does not even acknowledge this very troubling phenomenon.

Who is profiting from drugs in Colombia? “Colombia still produces tons of coca,” Wilson points out. What he does not mention is that Colombia produces at least as many tons of cocaine as it did when Plan Colombia began. Note this graph, from page 90 the last (June 2008) UN Office on Drugs and Crime report on Andean coca production [PDF]. (The UNODC, in a print error, reverses 2006 and 2007.)

If cocaine production has been stable, and prices have not dropped, who is getting the illegal profits? Paramilitaries, insurgents, a new class of narcotraffickers corrupting the state, or all of the above? What will happen if the same thing happens in Afghanistan? In Colombia, success against big cartels pushed the center of gravity of the most lucrative part of the drug trade - transshipment - into Mexico. The result has been an alarming spike in violence in Mexico. What would happen if U.S. anti-drug efforts similarly pushed Afghanistan’s huge heroin profits into another area of volatile Central Asia? Does it make any sense at all to replicate an anti-drug policy that has had this poor result?

Are the Taliban as weak as the FARC? I recently had a conversation with one of Colombia’s top security analysts, who is a strong supporter of Álvaro Uribe’s “Democratic Security” policy. I asked him why President Uribe had such quick success in reducing the FARC’s ability to kidnap, or to stage attacks on small Colombian police and military posts. His answer: “We were surprised too. It turned out that the FARC was weaker than anybody had thought.”

If the Colombian model is brought to Afghanistan, and the Taliban prove to be less of a house of cards than the FARC, what then?

What about intelligence? Wilson gives no credit to the quick results that Colombia achieved when it shifted more resources into intelligence against top guerrilla leaders. The Colombian security forces now have at least a rough idea of where many top FARC members are at all times, have captured or killed more top leaders since 2007 than at any other time, and have had great success in cutting off communications between commanders. The combination of demobilization programs for the rank-and-file and intense intelligence efforts to locate top leaders has been quite successful.

Would that work in Afghanistan? Can the intelligence capacity be developed to locate and isolate top Taliban leaders?

Shouldn’t there be a peace strategy? There is much debate in Colombia about whether the conflict with FARC can end with negotiations about anything other than surrender terms. Though negotiations of any sort may not happen in the next few years, the most likely end to the FARC conflict will be a negotiation that, in order to avoid prolonging a war of attrition for many years more, would include some political content, if only something along the lines of pledges for land reform.

Wilson, however, does not mention any role for dialogue or negotiations, either for or against. Whether talks make any sense in the Afghanistan context, then, is not clear.

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Two Distinct Readings of the Afghanistan-Colombia Comparisons

As the Obama Administration steps up its call for increased action in Afghanistan in order to deal with the country's growing Taliban insurgency, I've been watching with alarm how military planners and certain establishment media pundits are consistently pointing to Colombia as the "successful model" that should be followed in the trouble spot in Central Asia where the U.S. is currently sending in an additional 17,000 troops. By doing so, not only are people making false connections between two internal conflicts that have completely different historical origins and contemporary manifestations, but they are also deliberately misrepresenting the current security and political situation on the ground, particularly in Colombia.

Navy Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently suggested that Washington should apply the counterinsurgency and counternarcotics model currently being used in Colombia to Afghanistan, saying that the "world can learn from what has happened with respect to the very successful developments of Plan Colombia.”

Reporter Scott Wilson, who covered Colombia from 2000-2004 for the Washington Post, writes in Sunday's edition: "If you want to roll back a homegrown insurgency inflamed by a pesky neighbor, millions in drug profits and a weak central government, Colombia offers a far better classroom for learning how to beat the Taliban."

Wilson's analysis tends to rely too much on a faulty comparison that only on the surface can be sustained. It also perpetuates the myth created by the Bush Administration and promoted by the Colombian President that outsiders like Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez are fanning the flames of the internal conflict of his neighbor. This shortsighted reporting and "analysis" appears to be a reflection of the tendency of the typical U.S. correspondent in Colombia to accept the official story line provided at press junkets and military sight-seeing tours, at the expense of truly on-the-ground, independent reporting from the countryside, as one can see from these superficial insights:

"The conflicts in Colombia and Afghanistan share far more similarities with one another than either does with Iraq, which I covered in 2003 and 2004. The Taliban have caves and Colombian guerrillas their triple-canopy jungle and mountain hideouts -- terrain far more useful to insurgencies than Iraq's desert. Afghanistan's opium poppies fund the Taliban, just as coca fuels Colombia's guerrillas. As Pakistan does for the Taliban, Venezuela and Ecuador provide sanctuary to Colombia's insurgents."

Although Wilson makes some relevant observations relating to the increased state presence in the countryside, and the "professionalization" of the Colombian Armed Forces, factors that have created a limited sense of security for middle and upper class Colombians, he puts way too much weight on the success of the demobilization of the right-wing paramilitary groups that for years had terrorized the peasantry with the tacit complicity of the Army. While it is true that President Alvaro Uribe has dismantled the over-arching command structure of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, AUC, there are a number of reports from both Colombian and U.S. human rights groups that indicate that the threats, intimidation and violence of the extreme right continues, just in a more subtle form.

Furthermore, many critics of Uribe's human rights record point to the extradition of over 15 top paramilitary leaders to the U.S. as an example of the President's desire to cover up the truth behind the narco-paramilitary-government nexus. Uribe has been harshly criticized by prosecutors and human rights advocates as deliberately blocking any independent investigation into the paramilitary's crimes, some of which may have been committed with the support of Uribe's closest political allies.

These issues are not covered in Wilson's Washington Post analysis, making it difficult to accept as a potential remedy for the crisis facing Afghanistan. His glancing prognosis reminds me of a recent visit to my doctor, who spent a total of six minutes checking out my lower back before prescribing me some muscle relaxants to take care of my chronic pain. Wilson optimistically tells us:
"I left Colombia in April 2004 and didn't go back until last November. The capital was nothing like the one I remembered. Land values in Bogotá were skyrocketing, because the guerrillas were no longer there. Kidnapping was nearly non-existent. Club Nogal, a tony athletic club for Colombia's elite that the guerrillas had bombed in 2003, has reopened. Colombia is far from ideal, but a corner has been turned."

Thank goodness Club Nogal is back in business. But is this truly a prescription for the centuries of violence and intervention we've seen in Afghanistan?

For a much more nuanced account of the so-called successes of Plan Colombia, it is useful to read the report by independent war reporter Garry Leech, editor of the website Colombia Journal, and author, most recently, of Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia.

Plan Colombia has not been the roaring success that so many people have painted it out to be, and Leech reminds us with an ice-cold bucket of water, hopefully for people like Admiral Mullen and President Obama, who are taking steps in Afghanistan and Pakistan that most objective analysts argue will not work.

In his latest piece in Colombia Journal, Leech writes:
"Mullen’s suggestion that it be applied in Afghanistan may not only lead to increased security and reduced levels of violence in major population centers in that Central Asian country, it could also result in gross violations of human rights, a massive refugee crisis and record levels of opium poppy cultivation."

I suggest you read both these pieces, and share in the anguish that we may be once again, barking up the wrong tree!

MAMA

Emilio Basto: Siguen acechando nuestra palabra

04/05/2009

Autor: Tejido de Comunicación ACIN

"Insistimos en reclamar el derecho a seguir nombrando la palabra que caminamos y convocamos el apoyo solidario para que nuestra emisora vuelva al aire, para que Emilio vuelva a tener su Bloque de la Mañana, para que el rebusque no sea silenciado y para que no puedan manosear y aplastar nuestra dignidad. No somos delincuentes. Somos comunicadores de y desde nuestro proceso. Emilio, Hugo, Gustavo, Manuel y todo el equipo somos amenaza para quienes pretenden seguir encubriendo la verdad y sometiéndonos".

Siguen acechando nuestra palabra para silenciar al Tejido de Comunicación de la ACIN. Esta vez interrogaron, intimidaron y reseñaron a nuestro compañero Emilio Basto Quitumbo ayer sábado en Santander de Quilichao. Su día de trabajo como comunicador comunitario indígena termina con más de dos horas de un interrogatorio plasmado en su relato que habla por sí mismo.

Emilio ha dirigido desde hace años la Radio Revista Musical “El Rebusque” en el bloque de la mañana (7 a 11:30am de lunes a viernes en la 101.0 de Radio Pa´Yumat, “la voz del pueblo Nasa”). Su programa, ahora fuera del aire desde el 14 de diciembre pasado por la acción de sabotaje que destruyó los equipos de transmisión de nuestra emisora, ha sido el más escuchado por las comunidades. Esta revista informativa en castellano y nasa-yuwe, tiene secciones para niños, rescate de la lengua, condimentos y palabras, boletines informativos cada hora y servicios sociales. Los diálogos de Emilio con la gente en los campos y montañas, son testimonios conmovedores de la sabiduría y riqueza integral de una cultura viva. Emilio es Nasa y ha hecho de la radio un medio apropiado por su pueblo. Nos duele lo que ha tenido que enfrentar ayer en la Unidad de Reacción Inmediata de la Fiscalía de Santander de Quilichao. No solo lo detuvieron de manera ilegal e injustificada, sino que lo maltrataron verbalmente y no le permitieron siquiera buscar respaldo legal. Emilio ha sido reseñado sin cargos. Pero, al leer su testimonio, queda a la vista su enorme dignidad y la consciencia y dignidad de su pueblo que lo ayudó a defenderse.

La detención e interrogatorio a Emilio, acusado de promover e instigar protestas por mostrar documentales en video foros, “para que la gente conozca la realidad”, es el último de los hechos de amenaza y agresión que se vienen haciendo contra el Tejido de Comunicación y Relaciones Externas de la ACIN. Entre estos hechos, recordamos los siguientes:

- 11 de Agosto de 2008. Carta de amenaza al proceso firmada por “Campesinos Embejucados” con énfasis directo contra el Tejido de Comunicación.
- 12 y 13 de Octubre de 2008. Bloqueo a la página electrónica de la ACIN (www.nasaacin.org) durante la agresión armada de la Fuerza Pública a la Minga Social y Comunitaria.
- 14 de diciembre de 2008. Sabotaje y destrucción de los equipos de transmisión de Radio Pa´Yumat. La emisora no sale al aire desde ese entonces.

-16 de Diciembre de 2008. Intento de difamación Pública al compañero Manuel Rozental mientras informaba del asesinato de Edwin Legarda en entrevista con Julio Sánchez Cristo de la W, quien entrevistó simultáneamente al Comandante de la Tercera División del Ejército y lo señaló falsamente de ser colaborador de las FARC.
- 7 de Febrero de 2009. Dos sicarios armados entraron a la vivienda de Gustavo Ulcué webmaster y miembro del Tejido de Comunicación, con intenciones de asesinarlo. Al no encontrarlo se llevaron su computador, amenazaron al hermano y permanecen en los alrededores de su vivienda.
- 4 de Marzo de 2009. La Revista Cambio, en un reportaje contra el periodista Hollman Morris hace un señalamiento directo contra el compañero Manuel Rozental, acusándolo falsamente de ser colaborador del ELN.
- 14 de Marzo de 2009. Por segundo día consecutivo, Hugo Hernán Dagua, miembro del Tejido, editor y técnico radial y conductor de espacios radiales, logra evadir a sicarios que lo persiguen en motocicleta. Desde entonces, su familia y él se encuentran bajo protección de la comunidad.
- 22 de Marzo de 2009. Dos sicarios entran a la finca Loma Linda de propiedad del Cabildo de Jambaló, ubicada en Santander de Quilichao, buscando a comunicadores de la radio. 24 horas después de que todo el equipo del Tejido de Comunicación estuviera reunido en ese mismo lugar. Tras una denuncia ciudadana, la Policía Nacional hizo presencia en el lugar de los hechos, y se llevó detenidos a los dos sospechosos quienes se desplazaban en una motocicleta sin la debida documentación. Al día siguiente las autoridades indígenas se presentaron a las oficinas de la Policía Nacional en Santander de Quilichao para las diligencias pertinentes y se encontraron con que no había ningún registro de estos hechos. Los sospechosos y la motocicleta indocumentada se habían desvanecido de manos de la Policía.
- 4 de Abril de 2009. Emilio Basto Quitumbo es detenido de manera irregular y arbitraria por la Policía Nacional, por el delito de realizar videoforos en las comunidades.

Los documentales que Emilio y el Tejido presentamos a las comunidades y que Emilio tenía en su poder incluyen: La Revolución no será transmitida (Venezuela), Un poquito de tanta verdad (Oaxaca, México), La guerra del agua (Bolivia), El Precio de la Tierra (Chocó, Colombia) y País de los Pueblos sin dueños (ACIN, Colombia). Materiales públicos de amplia difusión y conocimiento.

En primer lugar, expresamos nuestra solidaridad a Emilio y le reiteramos nuestro afecto y apoyo. Publicamos y difundimos su propio testimonio para que quienes lo lean compartan su palabra y cualidades arraigadas en su compromiso con su pueblo y nuestra libertad. Insistimos en reclamar el derecho a seguir nombrando la palabra que caminamos y convocamos el apoyo solidario para que nuestra emisora vuelva al aire, para que Emilio vuelva a tener su Bloque de la Mañana, para que el rebusque no sea silenciado y para que no puedan manosear y aplastar nuestra dignidad. No somos delincuentes. Somos comunicadores de y desde nuestro proceso. Emilio, Hugo, Gustavo, Manuel y todo el equipo somos amenaza para quienes pretenden seguir encubriendo la verdad y sometiéndonos.

Tejido de Comunicación y Relaciones Externas
para la Verdad y la Vida. ACIN
Santander de Quilichao, Abril 5 de 2009

Nos callan la radio y persiguen a los comunicadores

Here is a missive written by Emilio Basto Quitombo, the host of Radio Payumat's morning show (when it is on the air - as you may recall, since mid-December, the community radio station has been off the air due to cowardly acts of sabotage against its transmitter), which was posted today on the website of ACIN. It is in Spanish, but we will try to translate it in the coming days.

MAMA

04/05/2009

Fuente: Tejido de Comunicación ACIN

Autor: Emilio Basto Quitumbo

"Me miró bien a la cara y me dijo: venga guardo esta arma para que no te azares. Con una sonrisa les dije que “uno cuando es de morir se cae de un caballo o en algún accidente; allí se queda. Mientras con un arma uno no siente ni el dolor”. El otro decía eso es verdad y el del arma decía: no creas. Yo apenas sonreí." Testimonio de Emilio Basto Quitumbo, miembro del Tejido de Comunicación, después de ser interrogado y reseñado en la URI de Santander de Quilichao, por hacer videoforos en el norte del Cauca.

Como siempre me acostumbro en horas de la mañana, despertar a primera hora y monitorear a los medios masivos, especialmente Caracol radio, en la mañana de hoy se me olvidó escuchar la noticia, me quedé dormido. Cuando me desperté eran más de las 6 de mañana. Me levanté, fui a pegar una buena duchada y salí para el potrero a revisar el ganado. Luego pasé al desayuno y me alisté para salir a trabajar.

Eran las 8 de la mañana cuando entré en la emisora (Radio Pa´yumat en Santander de Quilichao). Estuve hasta las 8: 45 am porque tenía que grabar un programa de nasa yuwe con un profesor, pero el maestro no se hizo presente, y como el Tejido (de Comunicación de la ACIN) se comprometió a acompañar al cabildo de Tacueyó en la socialización del plan de trabajo periodo 2009, entonces, yo asumí mi responsabilidad.

Hoy sábado 4 de abril me tocó a mí este acompañamiento a la comunidad de la vereda El Trapiche resguardo de Tacueyó. Una comunidad muy atenta y contenta por tener a un comunicador por primera vez en su vereda.

Se hizo el trabajo como en todas las veredas anteriores. Cada programa del cabildo expuso su plan de trabajo, luego el Tejido de Comunicación finalizando la primera parte presentó el documental “País de los pueblos sin dueños” que relata la movilización indígena y popular de octubre y noviembre de 2008.

Después de los documentales, sigue el trabajo en comisiones. Yo salí antes de terminar porque me cogía la tarde, pero nunca pensé que me iba coger la noche.

Cuando llegué al parque principal de Santander de Quilichao había un reten de la policía. Me pararon y me pidieron los documentos, que estaban en regla. Me dijeron que abriera la maleta en la que cargaba unos documentales. El patrullero revisó los títulos de los documentales junto con mis documentos. Luego se los llevó al otro patrullero diciendo que eran videos revolucionarios. Este otro patrullero me preguntó que para qué eran esos documentales. Les expliqué y me detuvieron como 15 minutos. El hombre le ordenó a uno de los patrulleros que me llevara hasta la URI (Unidad de Reacción Inmediata de la Fiscalía General de la Nación).

Cuando llegué allá, lo primero que me preguntó fue mi nombre, a pesar de que tenía mi cédula en sus manos. Después me preguntó qué hacía. Respondí: soy comunicador, trabajo en el Tejido de Comunicación de la ACIN en el área de radio y les expliqué qué es el Tejido; las áreas y todo lo que hacemos. Me exigió que explicara sobre los videos. Lo hice. Me dijo que si sabía bien de las imágenes que tenía el video que tenía en sus manos (País de los pueblos: sin dueños). Le respondí que sí, que en la primera parte está el atropello de la Fuerza Pública en La María Piendamó, luego el debate programado con el Presidente Uribe en el CAM (Centro Administrativo Municipal de Cali), al que no se hizo presente el Presidente sino en horas de la tarde cuando ya no estaba la gente, luego se muestra el debate público en La María Piendamó y cierra con la llegada a Bogotá de la movilización en su recorrido desde el Cauca.

Les dije que eran materiales que servían para mostrar la realidad que otros medios no muestran. Mostrar la verdad para que las comunidades vean, analicen y reflexionen de cómo nos matan. Son materiales pedagógicos que se utilizan en las escuelas con los jóvenes y adultos.

Escuchando mi respuesta me dijo que entonces yo era el que motivaba a la gente para salir a tirar piedras y a protestar. Les respondí: por ejemplo, está la masacre de El Nilo cometida en el año 91 (20 indígenas son asesinados por la fuerza pública con paramilitares) donde el gobierno se comprometió a entregar 15.650 hectáreas y reparar a las familias afectadas 18 años después, no acaba de hacerlo. Haga la cuenta usted: ¿cuántos años han pasado y el gobierno no ha cumplido? En casos como este yo no tengo la necesidad de decir que salgan a protestar, más bien a exigir nuestros derechos.

Me preguntó: ¿cuando me dices que están matando a qué te refieres? Le respondí: matar no es únicamente a través de las armas. Hay constantes enfrentamientos dentro de nuestros territorios, y para poder salvar sus vidas la gente deja su tierra y salen a las ciudades. Eso quiere decir que hay desplazamiento que trae hambre en la familia, porque los desplazados no tienen qué comer mientras en su tierra, así no tengan plata, tienen comida. ¿Eso no es matar?

Me dijo que contara realmente el objetivo de mostrar el video. Es mostrar la realidad de la situación que estamos viviendo, le expliqué, por ejemplo está el TLC que el gobierno está tratando de meter por todos los lados diciendo a la gente que eso está para el desarrollo del pueblo. Cómo va a ser cierto si los países desarrollados traen todo de sus industrias y de su producción en masa, mientras nosotros con nuestros tejidos, ¿cómo vamos poder competir?
¿Por qué dices que el gobierno está azotándolos? Yo creo que usted mismo se da cuenta. En los otros Departamentos hay cultivos de la palma aceitera o de caucho dentro de los territorios pobres. Engañan a los propietarios. A unos les pagan unos cuantos pesitos, los ponen a trabajar a ellos mismos por unos cuantos pesitos y los esclavizan. ¿Eso no es azote?

Después me preguntó que si estaba vendiendo los videos. Por ley venderlos es un delito que lleva cárcel cuando no se pagan impuestos. El otro señor que estaba al frente nombró a SAYCO y ACINPRO (entidades que defienden derechos de autor de músicos y compositores) y habló de leyes. Les dije que en realidad no era igual a vender ya que el material se distribuye a los cabildos que aportan plata como donación al Tejido para la formación del proceso. El otro patrullero me decía si es así, ¿por qué tienes tantas copias? Respondí: si en la zona norte son 18 cabildos serían esa cantidad de copias. Si me tocara distribuir para la regional serían 180 copias, porque son 180 cabildos. Yo no veo ningún delito en esta distribución. Me insistió que sí era delito porque no tenía ni la autorización del cabildo, lo cual es falso. Alguien puede comprar y reproducir para la venta, insistió. Eso es un delito grave.

Me dijo que nosotros (los de comunicación) éramos los que promocionábamos la revolución, los que dábamos las instrucciones con los documentales. Le dije que en ocasiones eran los mismos cabildos que le explicaban a la gente de qué se tratan los documentales y además se muestran distintos videos según el tema que se trate, de interés para las comunidades, puede ser sobre TLC, código de minas u otros, depende del tema. Además se discute lo que decida la comunidad por que los cabildos son representantes pero la comunidad es la que decide. Por eso cuando me dice que somos los que promovemos las protestas, no es cierto, no somos nosotros, no es ni siquiera el cabildo como autoridad. Es la comunidad la que decide por cuenta propia.

En la oficina de la URI, había 5 personas. Tres de civil y dos uniformados que también metían su cucharada. El que más me preguntó fue el que estaba de civil. Había un revólver sobre su escritorio. Me miró bien a la cara y me dijo: venga guardo esta arma para que no te azares. Con una sonrisa les dije que “uno cuando es de morir se cae de un caballo o en algún accidente; allí se queda. Mientras con un arma uno no siente ni el dolor”. El otro decía eso es verdad y el del arma decía: no creas. Yo apenas sonreí.

Después de tantas preguntas tras preguntas me pidieron la dirección de mi residencia, el nombre de mi mamá e insistentemente el nombre de mi papá. Mi papa partió hace muchos años de este mundo, cosa que nunca en mi vida he nombrado, porque toda vez que me acuerdo de mi padre se me vienen las lagrimas. Pero que estos HP me lo hicieron nombrar y quedó escrito en el sistema como si estuviera vivo para ir a declarar la culpa de su hijo. Esto me dolió mucho.

Esta mañana sentí la seña en mi vista derecha e izquierda y sobre la galleta de la rodilla derecha. Creo que era parte de lo que sucedió. Digo parte, porque no sé qué más me irá a pasar después de que metieran al sistema todos los datos: cogieron mis huellas y las cantidades de fotografías tomadas a mi cedulada. No sé el camarógrafo que más fotografías tomaría dentro de su oficina y no sé cual será el fin con las fotos que tomó. Lo único que sé es que no es por los documentales que me interrogaron, retuvieron y reseñaron. Porque ahí no hay nada que involucre a la organización. Al contrario, muestran la verdad para construir un nuevo país. País que queremos construir a través de los 5 puntos que camina la Minga Social Comunitaria. Por eso es una persecución contra el Tejido (de Comunicación y relaciones externas para la verdad y la vida) y contra el proceso (indígena), como siempre lo han hecho.

Finalmente se quedaron con 5 documentales y me despacharon a las 7:00 de la noche. El otro agente, después de todo muy amable, me dio hasta la mano para despedirse y me dijo que colaborara con información. Me miró en mi cara y habló de casos como violación sexual y puso el ejemplo del Cabildo Nasa Kiwe Teksxaw donde el Cabildo castigó a unos ladrones pero, según él, siguen cometiendo delitos. (En la zona Norte del Cauca, al igual que en el resto del país, se viene desarrollando un proceso de “limpieza social” que consiste en el asesinato impune de delincuentes, drogadictos, indigentes y líderes sociales. Hace poco tiempo, en Santander de Quilichao fueron asesinadas más de30 personas en el lapso de dos semanas).

Emilio Basto Quitumbo
Santander de Quilichao, Cauca, Colombia
Tejido de Comunicación y Relaciones Externas
para la Verdad y la Vida
Asociación de Cabildos Indígenas del Norte del Cauca.
Abril 4 de 2009, al salir de la URI de la Fiscalía.

More Attacks and Defamation Against ACIN's Communication Network

Dear Friends,

The following is a communique I just received from our friends in Cauca, from the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca, ACIN, and specifically, their communication team, which has been at the forefront of getting the word out about the struggles of Colombia's indigenous and popular movement.

Please circulate it widely as we try to build and strengthen the solidarity with ACIN and the dozens of communities they represent.

MAMA

"We want to help build a new country by sharing the truth and showing realities";

Emilio Basto, Indigenous Communicator at Police Headquarters in Santander de Quilichao, April 4th 2008.

Accused of a Crime: Showing documentaries to a community.

This is the framework within which our Tejido de Comunicacion is under attack:

http://vimeo.com/3988570 and http://vimeo.com/3964962.

Yesterday, Emilio Basto, a Nasa native who usually runs el rebusque, a morning show in Nasa and Spanish on Radio Payumat, where he listens and exchanges with indigenous peoples from the fields, explains the process and the contexts, opens a debate on critical issues, does interviews so that everyone in their homes understands the project of aggression and continues to think and resist, was arrested by the police in Santander de Quilichao.

Emilio was coming back from Tacueyo, in the mountains of Cauca, where he was showing documentaries at one of the video fora, which are part of an agenda planned to "sweep" the entire territory to engage people in debating diverse issues. He carried with him a number of videos, including "The revolution will not be televised," "Water, our life, our hope," and "Spakapa is not for sale". He also had two documentaries done in Colombia, "The cost of Land" from the Paciufic Coast focusing on displacement for Palm Oil industries, and ACIN's own "Country of the people without owners," the latest documentary produced by our team that tells the story of last year's Minga, the National mobilization against the FTA and the economic model being imposed.

Emilio was accused of carrying subversive material and inciting to violence. He was interrogated for 2 hours without access to lawyers, phone calls or protection. His finger prints were registered as well as all information regarding his activities. There was talk about weapons, which he could not understand. He explained what he does and what we do. He demanded respect for his obligations as a journalist, for the freedom of expression, for the indigenous process and rights. Finally, they let him go, but we do not know whether there are charges against him or whether they will use this event in a judicial process against the communication network or in a physical attack against his life and the lives of all of the other members of our communication team in ACIN.

This is the rule, the pattern and what we must expect, as you will be able to see on the videos attached below on Mario Murillo's note on the presentation at the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights.

The attack against Emilio was the latest in a series of attacks against ACIN's communication Tejido:

1. October 2008, during our coverage of the indigenous mobilization and while the armed forces of Colombia were shooting against unarmed natives, our website and listserve was blocked.

2. December 14th, 2008, an act of sabotage against the transmission equipment of Radio Pa'Yumat, leading to the silencing of this radio station until now. Two days later, Edwin Legarda, the husband of indigenous leader Aida Quilcue, was murdered by the Colombian Army in an attempted magnicide against her.

3. December 16th, 2008. Live radio interview on La W, a National radio station with a massive audience. We had called in to break the news in Colombia and the world of the assasination of Edwin Legarda, with direct information from the ground. The anchor, Fernando Sanchez Cristo, called us back for the interview an hour after we gave him the facts and put us on during a section of recognition to the armed forces of Colombia in their war on terror. The Commander of the Third Brigade gave his version of the facts first: The vehicle refused to stop at a police post and was suspected to be FARC. Manuel Rozental, on the line from Cauca, explained that the car had received 16 shots from automatic weapons, 14 of these in the front, a fact that contradicted the army commanders version. They shot him intentionally from the front. There was no police post. The general went off the air and Rozental was engaged in a live exchange with Sanchez Cristo on these lines:

JSC: You are the same Dr Rozental, a surgeon that works in Canada?
MR: Yes that's me
JSC: You are a close friend of the sons of the international representative of FARC there and you write for the Journal resistencia
MR: I know them well, as any Colombian engaged in solidarity efforts does. I have never written for Resistencia and what you are attempting to discredit a witness in the air in order to cover up a crime. I am not FARC, have never been and my life has been committed to a peaceful effort for social justice. I am part of an indigenous process committed to social justice, freedom and change through peaceful means. I hope we have not reached a stage where every journalist in commercial media serves a regime to silence the voices and rights of people
JSC: So do I Dr Rozental. You are right
MR: Who provided you with this false information against me?
JSC: A listener sent it on email, but don't worry about it.
Strangely, this interview was never posted on their webpage (all others are) and our request to obtain the copy of the interview and of the listener's message was never answered. All this points at Military Intelligence providing distorted information to discredit and threaten the witness on air.

4. February 7th, 09. Gustavo Ulcue. Nasa, member of the ACIN Communication network and webmaster, had just left his home in Santander de Quilichao, when two armed men arrived in a motorcycle, forced his brother to let them into their house at gun point and looked for Gustavo inside. They took away his laptop and told his brother Gustavo was lucky not to have been found as they came to kill him. Gustavo had to go into hiding. The armed men have been seen near his house since then. No police action was taken.

5. March 4th, 2009. Cambio (the equivalent of Time or Newsweek in Colombia) publishes a report against Hollman Morris, where it states falsely that Rozental and Morris are helping ELN (National Liberation Army) in their territorial struggle against FARC for the indigenous territory of Northern Cauca; These lies have been followed in the past by the assassination of those named. Rozental had to flee Cauca.

6. March 14th, 2009. For the second successive night, Hugo Dagua, arrives late at his modest ranch in Santander de Quilichao on his motorcycle. He had been conducting a video forum at an indigenous peoples encounter with participants from Ecuador and Colombia, where the video "Country of the People without owners" was launched. He noticed a motorcycle with two people following him and managed to escape. He is the main technician of the radio station and runs his own radio program. Hugo is under community protection measures and his wife and his year old son had to be moved out of town into their community in the mountains for safety.

Other threats and attacks against the communication process have been occurring. Now Emilio has been attacked. ACIN's communication network has been awarded the recognition as the best alternative media in Colombia in October 2007 and has become the strongest voice for a peaceful alternative in Colombia and an awareness raising and debate space for the base.

This is a crime in Colombia. As the policemen told Emilio yesterday: you are inciting violence with those documentaries. We will keep walking our word. Please see the following note and video.

April 5th 2009
Manuel Rozental
Santander de Quilichao Cauca