Urgent Action: Protest Massive Aid/Intervention in Colombia

Situation

In the 1960s in Viet Nam it was "communism." Today in Colombia it is "drugs." The excuses change but the effect of United States military aid in Colombia today is every bit as devastating as it was in Southeast Asia over a generation ago.

The Colombia Support Network opposes the Clinton Administration's proposed $1.6 billion military aid program for Colombia. This planned aid will provide funds to a military which has collaborated with illegal paramilitary forces engaged in killing innocent Colombian citizens and forcing them from their homes.

Just six weeks ago, a clear example of the collaboration occurred in the Middle Magdalena region of Colombia where eyewitnesses reliably reported that the 45th Battalion of the Fifth Brigade of the Colombian Army assisted paramilitary forces in the capture of two peasant leaders, Edgar Quiroga and Gildardo Fuentes, whom the paramilitaries "disappeared" and whose killing has been rumored. Edgar Quiroga has been a notable human rights defender and the Colombian military's apparent involvement in his capture and "disappearance" indicates, as have many other previous actions of military leaders, that the Colombian military has little use for or commitment to protection of human rights.

Assistance provided by the Colombian military to units of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia paramilitaries in facilitating a massacre at the town of Mapiripan in Meta department is another clear example of this pernicious collaboration.

This United States aid package will simply enhance the Colombian military's capacity for carrying out "dirty work" against Colombia citizens, including human right workers, school teachers, union leaders, journalists, university professors, and any one else who dares to criticize Colombia's facade democracy with its long tradition of impunity for those military officers who commit or facilitate the committing of atrocities.

The fact that hundreds of millions of dollars already spend by the United States government on the Colombian military and police in past years supposedly to fight a "war on drugs" have neither slowed the entry of drug from Colombia into the United States nor curbed human rights abuses by the Colombian military suggests it is folly to expect this latest $1.6 billion package to have any other result than more innocent Colombians killed, more military abuses of human rights, and greater paramilitary involvement in massacres and displacement of peasants and townspeople from their lands. And since many of these paramilitaries are reliably reported to be engaged in drug trafficking, we can expect a likely increase in drug trafficking from Colombia to the United States.

The Colombia Support Network calls all people of conscience to contact President Clinton in protest of the proposed military aid to Colombia. We urge you to encourage your Representatives and Senators oppose the escalation of the war against the people of Colombia.

What you should do

We request that you write or call the individuals named to the right with the following requests:

1. Do not give aid to the corrupt Colombian military, which according to all credible human rights groups, works in close concert with paramilitary death squads, which are responsible for over 70% of the political murders in Colombia.

2. Stop funding the failed drug war, which despite hundreds of millions of dollars of US aid, has not slowed drug production at all.

Direct your faxes or calls to