July 7th, 1998



General Jose Manuel Bonnett Locarno
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Armed Forces of Colombia
Centro Administrativo Nacional
Santa Fe de Bogota
Colombia

Dear General Bonett:

I wish to express my appreciation to you for meeting with our Colombia 
Support Network delegation on May 21, 1998 at your office in Bogota.  Our 
meeting with you helped us understand the background to positions taken by 
the Army.  I particularly appreciate your personal guarantee, made to Mr. 
Shin Furuya of our delegation, of the safety of the residents of Cantagallo 
from paramilitary attacks.

I request that you provide us with a copy of the order to search the premises 
of Justicia y Paz in Bogota and the report of the investigation that led to the 
search being ordered, as you told us you would when we met with you in 
Bogot‡.  Do I understand correctly the search was ordered by General Rito 
Alejo del Rio?  

Since returning from the delegation's visit to Colombia we have received 
some disquieting news.  Before our meeting with you several of us visited 
Uraba.  As I believe we told you, Dane County, Wisconsin, has had an official 
sister community relationship with Apartado for several years.  We visited 
the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, talked with Apartado Mayor 
Teodoro Diaz, met with Colonel Rubio and two other officers at Carepa, and 
went to Turbo to meet with refugees from the Choco there, among other 
things.  In San Jose we spoke to a courageous young man named Eduar who 
works with Justicia y Paz in the Peace Community.  We were shocked to learn 
that troops under the command of General Carreno, commander of the base 
at Carepa, who was in Bogota when we visited the base, made comments that 
Eduar should be killed and his body cut up like a slaughtered cow.  What an 
outrage!  We believe that these soldiers comments were intended to signal 
the paramilitaries to take Eduar's life.  We are thus calling upon you to 
disassociate yourself and your command from these remarks and to sanction 
those responsible for them.  We ask that General Carreno or you take 
appropriate measures to provide for the safety of Eduar and other members of 
the Peace Community of San Jose and end all collaboration with paramilitary 
killers.

This letter is being placed on the internet and sent to our membership 
worldwide and to members of the human rights delegation from Europe 
which was in Bogota during our visit there.  We are also advising Colombian 
government officials with whom we met and the United Nations and our 
Congressional representatives.  


							Sincerely,
							
							Colombia Support Network
							John I. Laun
							President