Colombia

Surveillance of FOR Colombia Team Exposed;
Human Rights Groups Join FOR in Demanding Investigation

FOR and leading human rights organizations last week released letters to U.S. Ambassador William Brownfield and Colombian Attorney General Mario Iguarán condemning the electronic monitoring of humanitarian groups. Colombian media sources revealed this month that the Colombian government had secretly intercepted communications to and from more than 150 e-mail addresses used by human rights activists, journalists, academics, and labor organizers for the past two years. The letter was signed by leaders of FOR, Amnesty International, Latin America Working Group, Human Rights First, Washington Office on Latin America and ten other human rights organizations.

Surveillance of FOR Colombia Team Exposed;
Human Rights Groups Join FOR in Demanding Investigation

After watching this shocking story - just one of thousands - please take action today! Demand that Congress immediately end all funding to the abusive Colombian military. Click here to send a message to your member of Congress.

Happy Holidays from Colombia!  Since June I have been working as a human rights accompanier with the Fellowship of Reconciliation. in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, in Colombia's northwest banana - and more recently coca - growing region.

My Christmas this year will be quite a change from christmas-cookie-eating, presents-under-a-decorated-fir-tree Christmases to which I'm accustomed.  Instead, I'll be spending the holiday season eating natilla (a sweet corn pudding made with milk, cinnamon, cheese, and often coconut) and buñuelos (cheesy balls of fried dough), and dancing the nights away to vallenato (accordion-based Colombian pop music).

As much as I'm already enjoying the start of those festivities, my teammates and I remain on alert.  December tends to be one of the most violent months in this region: members of the legal and illegal armed groups are anxious and on edge because they'd rather be home with their families, and attention at human rights offices of the government and other such agencies is often elsewhere as folks head off on vacation for the holidays.

"Speak Truth to Power" takes on a new dimension when you realize you are under surveillance! That is exactly the position we at FOR find ourselves in once again. In 2005, we informed FOR supporters that more than 10,000 pages of FBI files had been released to us, documenting decades of surveillance of the organization. Now, we have just learned that for two full years - since December 2006 - our Latin America program has been targeted and monitored by state agents. Specifically, the e-mail messages intercepted include FOR communication in the US and with Colombia!

In the past few weeks, the Fellowship of Reconciliation has received a steady stream of concerning news from Colombia about the targeting of "peace communities," nongovernmental organizations, human rights workers, labor organizers, and other groups and individuals. Yesterday, Secretary of State nominee Hillary Clinton spoke with the conservative president of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe, to lay the groundwork for a dialogue during the new Obama administration. Given the fact that President-elect Obama spoke out against human rights abuses in Colombia during one of the presidential debates with Sen. McCain, we can hope that will lead to strong pressures on the Uribe government to crack down on these abuses.

Paula Andrea Galeano Bermúdez is a 28 year-old conscientious objector from Colombia. She is an activist with the Red Juvenil (Medellin Youth Network), an organization that was started in 1990 by young people who had lost loved ones to the armed conflict. The heart of the Network's mission is to encourage young people's belief in the value of all human life, to work together to overcome fear, and to become empowered to live and espouse these values. The group trains youth in nonviolence and cooperative play, supports young men who refuse to serve with the police, military or illegal armed groups, and promotes respect for human rights and young people's ideas in Colombian society.

Me (at left) facilitating the transformation of the war machine at Goshen College in Goshen, IN. At Goshen we had over 100 people gathered for both Paula's keynote lecture and Invicible's show, and we facilitated two Not Your Soldier workshops & one Art and Action workshop, all well attended. Go Goshen!

It’s the eleventh day of the tour and we’ve introduced a new word to both the Spanish and English languages – it is a cross between “tranquila” which means “relaxed” and is a pop cultural reference to Transylvania: the place in Romania where vampires originated and the planet where the dancing extra-terrestrial transvestites in Rocky Horror Picture Show come from.