My name is Michael Lopez. I am a Human rights lawyer from Rochester, New York working in Bogota, Colombia for Justicia y Paz. JyP is probably the leading Human Rights group in Colombia struggling to bring some sort of justice for the victims approximately 10 political murders that occur per day.
I am writing to offer activists and activist organizations and other informed groups a free subscription to the new Justicia y Paz Magazine we have started. This year has started out especially violent, even for Colombia, with already 5 massacres in the regions of Uraba and Choco. These being the border regions with Panama and the strategically important Darien Gap, it is no mistake that one of the largest paramilitary groups runs free there with often open support from the US backed military.
Impunity in Colombia reaches the 100% level. For example, the perpetrators of the Trujillo massacre still run free. In Trujillo, over 100 people were viciously tortured and murdered and chopped to pieces with a chain saw. The victims were not drug traffickers, or even guerrillas. They were merely local peasants of various ages, young and old.
The director of the massacre was not only trained in the US at Fort Benning, but was sent there AFTER his involvement in a previous massacre. This is how your tax dollars in the "drug war" are typically spent: to drive peasants of their long held land with fear. The war here is not against drugs. Major traffickers operate freely with their close ties with the army, police, and government (not to mention those bought and paid for in the US armed forces, CIA, and DEA).
A virtual political genocide has taken place here against what was the largest political opposition party, Union Patriotica or UP. To be a member of this party is a death sentence. In the last 10 years, over 3000 UP members, activists, elected officials, and candidates, including I believe 3 presidential candidates have been murdered.
Just recently, A UP city councilwoman here in Bogota, an outspoken advocate for street people, and a critic of the Colombian military, miraculously survived a bazooka attack on her car in the streets of Bogota. Impunity reigns in Colombia. In the case of the violence against UP, less than 10 people have received any form of criminal punishment. It is difficult to get much closer to 100% impunity.
What Can You Do To Help?
We know that you all have you hands full struggling in the States, but there are little things even busy activists can do. The first step, as always, is to make yourself aware of the reality of Colombia. We must rid ourselves of the stereotype imposed on us of a nation of drug traffickers or of the existence of a Narco-guerrilla. (While true that the guerrilla in Colombia very often make fairly large sums of money from narco-trafficking, it is usually in the form of taxes or use fees placed on the real traffickers in remote parts of Colombia. Nonetheless, these sums pale in comparison to the sums made by the military, police and "elected" officials who work for the real traffickers.)
To facilitate this first step, we at Justicia y Paz have finally started a new magazine about Human Rights issues in Colombia. This magazine is intended as an accompaniment to the "Anexo Informativo", a compilation of statistics on political violence put out every trimester by the Justicia y Paz Data Bank. Our first issue has an article about the debate to legalize the death penalty in Colombia by Javier Giraldo S.J., (believe it or not, there is no legal death penalty here) executive director of Justicia Paz entitled "El Gobierno quiere matar tambien 'legalmente'" (The government also wants to kill "legally")
The first edition also has important articles about the paramilitary strategy in Uraba, and the percentages of killings there ("Uraba has only 0.7% of the national population but yields 34% of the political murders") While this first version is available only in Spanish (accept for the Uraba articles,) future issues (4 per year) will be available in English and/or Spanish.
The English version will also include updates on actions by Colombia Human Rights activists in the States, as well as news updates from Colombia and form letters to send to Congress, the President, the State Department etc. For your free magazine, please send me your regular mailing address and indicate whether you would like the magazine in English or Spanish (or both).
Please recall that the purpose of the free offer for activists is to try to reach folks in the US who are more likely to send in the form letters to Congress and the President etc, inform members of their respective groups and ask them to write letters as well, or otherwise become active in Colombian Human Rights issues. Thus, if you do not think you will be able to do any of the above, please either pay for a subscription, make a donation to Justicia y Paz, or end your subscription. We are trying to achieve the maximum activist effect on what are severely limited funds.
*If you would like to make a smaller contribution, please do, smartly used dollars can go a long way here.
** Bulletin is only available in Spanish (but the numbers are in English :)
Michael Lopez
Justicia y Paz
A.A. 31861
Santafe de Bogota, Colombia
michael.lopez@lbbs.org
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