Fwd: PLAN COLOMbIA MEETING

[The Land Is Ours]

>X-Originating-IP: [212.158.103.150]
>From: "PERSON PERSON" <wca99 at hotmail.com>
>To: subs at vemify.i_way.co.uk
>Subject: PLAN COLOMbIA MEETING
>Date: Thu, 09 Nov 2000 14:08:35 GMT
>X-OriginalArrivalTime: 09 Nov 2000 14:08:36.0543 (UTC) 
>FILETIME=[8D58E4F0:01C04A56]
>
>
>PLAN COLOMBIA: DISTIBUTE WITH WILL
>
>STOP THE WAR IN COLUMBIA! STOP US MILITARY INTERVENTION! STOP BIOLOGICAL 
>WARFARE!
>
>MEETING TO LAUNCH LONGTERM CAMPAIGN: 10 am  5 pm, SATURDAY 11th NOVEMBER, 
>BRISTOL
>
>Hi folks. This rather lengthy e-mail gives a brief explanation of Plan 
>Colombia and the horrors that it will bring to Latin America. The meeting 
>in Bristol is to discuss how to build a global resistance movement to the 
>Plan. How to realise the struggle in our own terms and in our own 
>countries, and to discuss what practical steps can be taken to stop it. 
>This IS the Vietnam for our generation. So lets do something to stop it.
>
>If you dont have time to read it all, the beggining of section 3 gives a 
>brief overview, with the rest of it covering the issues in more detail. 
>This e-mail covers the following sections, to make quick reading simpler:
>1) Where the meeting is being held and contact info
>2) Basic structure for the day
>3) Overview of Plan Colombia
>4) Call for action from the Colombian Process of Black Communities
>
>1) MEETING PLACE
>
>The meeting is being held at the New Trinity Centre, Old Market, Bristol. 
>Its a big old church opposite the Police Station, so it will become 
>apparent when you get near it. Its on Trinity Road, where it meets West 
>Street and Clarence Road.
>Its 15 walk from Temple Meads train station. Come down the hill from the 
>station. Turn right, stay on the right-hand side of the road and follow it 
>down until you reach a big roundabout (with the dual carriage way going 
>under it) with the Evening Post building immediately on your right. Turn 
>right onto Old Market Street and walk for about 5  10 minutes and Trinity 
>is on the left at the junction of the three roads.
>
>If your coming from town head for the roundabout on West Street and Temple 
>Way and follow the above directions. If coming this direction by car, 
>follow the above directions and at the end of Old Market Street follow the 
>one way system around and take the right turn at the fork in the road. The 
>Trinity Centre is on the left hand side of the junction.
>
>If you get lost phone the Trinity Centre on 0117 9077119
>
>Or phone  if lost or for further information before the day  07931 268966
>
>2) MEETING STRUCTURE
>
>The following is a brief outline of the meetings structure.
>
>a) Political struggles/themes/groups that we can link to here in Europe, 
>so that the process develops in a 2-way solidarity process. To confront 
>the effects of global power dynamics here in UK/Europe and not just in 
>Colombia.
>b) Information sharing for distribution and networking (e.g. situation of 
>war in Colombia and the effects of drugs in Europe).
>c) Ideas for the upcoming tour by the Colombians (December/January). How 
>to set up a physical presence of human rights observers in Colombia, 
>similar to the situation with campementistas in Chiapas, Mexico. Increased 
>communications between communities in Colombia and us here.
>d) Planning immediate protests and actions. Existing campaigns are 
>planning something for December 10th, which is International Human Rights Day.
>
>This is only a provisional structure, input and ideas are welcomed. There 
>will be some talks from people involved in campaigns and groups relevant 
>to the issues surrounding Plan Colombia. E.g. drugs, environment, human 
>rights and so on.
>
>3) OVERVIEW OF PLAN COLOMBIA
>
>PRAGUE FEEDBACK
>At the S26 demonstrations against the IMF and World Bank in Prague, 
>community leaders from the Black Autonomous Communities of Colombia were 
>present, as were their companeros from Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and 
>Panama. Coming from some of the poorest areas in Latin America, they told 
>a tale of repression, ethnocide and ecocide. Of a war being waged against 
>them under the guise of the USAs "War on Drugs". Of community leaders 
>massacred by government-backed CIA trained paramilitaries. Of mass 
>displacements and disappearances. What happens after displacement? Time 
>for the good old US-based multinationals to move in. Sound familiar?
>
>NOTE ON PCN
>
>PCN (Proceso de Comunidades Negras) are planning an improvised Tour 
>through Europe in December/January. The PCN is trying to internationalise 
>its struggle. PCN is at a stage of developing an international strategy 
>which it would like to develop in co-operation with 'us'. In Prague the 
>following aims and areas of work were identified:
>
>Creating international visibility and legitimacy:
>
>The armed conflict in Colombia has lead to an apparent polarisation 
>between guerrilla and State - as the only two actors in the conflict, 
>leaving several other sectors of society and social struggles invisible.
>
>informing as much as possible about the situation in Colombia, the true 
>impact of Plan Colombia on people and nature and the true motivations 
>behind this war - the cruellest form of capitalism,.
>
>Their ancestors have taught them a saying " I am because we are" (soy 
>porque somos) meaning that an individual can only be free if the people 
>around are free too. This was a fundamental principle in the struggle 
>against slavery which built their movements. Now in this age of globalised 
>capitalism they said their struggle for freedom can only be successful if 
>other struggles for freedom succeed to. They would like to develop new forms of
>International solidarity based on that principle.
>
>PLAN COLUMBIA
>
>In 1999, Colombia became the leading recipient of U.S. military and police
>assistance. Clinton's recently approved Colombia Plan escalates this
>situation, with a $1.6 billion "emergency aid" package  mostly in the form 
>of military aid. The EU is also participating in the Columbia Plan.
>
>Columbia has had an ongoing civil war for over three decades. Quite
>predictably, the announcement of the Colombia Plan led to counter measures
>by the guerrillas. This will lead to military escalation, rather than peace.
>
>The Colombia Plan is officially justified in terms of the "drug war". 
>However, the targets of the Colombia Plan are the guerrilla forces based 
>and the peasantry and indigenous people who are calling for internal 
>social change. This would interfere with how the States want Colombia 
>integrated into its neoliberal plans for world domination and corporate 
>expropriation of Colombia's valuable resources, including oil.
>
>Its the same old story with the usual suspects. Multinationals, backed by 
>Western governments and the World Bank and IMF are rubbing their greedy 
>hands over their plans for Colombia. With privatisation of national 
>industries, water and power utilities and the opportunity to steal lots of 
>land off the locals  they have a lot of money to make. The people who 
>oppose this become the real targets of US-backed oppression. The reports 
>coming out tell the horrors of CIA trained paramilitaries who seem to have 
>graduated with flying colours from the School Of Americas. Chopping up 
>people in massacres, cutting unborn children from their still-living 
>mothers wombs, violent scenes of torture and death. The message to the 
>communities is clear: "Mess with us, and this is what youll get."
>
>When scrutinising Plan Colombia, we should ask a few questions. If the US 
>wants to give alternatives, other from the drug industry, to the Colombian 
>people, then why does the Plan include only token funding for alternative 
>crops? If Clinton is serious about attacking the drug lords (narcos), why 
>do the counterinsurgency battalions target and attack the weakest and most 
>socially fragile link of the drug chain: the production by peasants, 
>settlers and indigenous people? Why is more not done back home to stamp 
>out drugs in the States, oh, and why is Uncle Sam not too bothered about 
>stopping the money from the drug trade ending up in US coffers  90 per 
>cent of "laundered" narcodollars stay in America? Maybe, theres another 
>agenda being served.
>
>
>FUMIGATION AND THE GENTICALLY MODIFIED FUTURE
>
>The Clinton administration also insists that any peace agreement must 
>permit crop destruction measures and other U.S. counternarcotics 
>operations in Colombia. The same is true of the chemical and biological 
>weapons that Washington employs. These measures multiply the dangers to 
>the civilian population, the environment, and legal agriculture. They 
>destroy legal food crops like yucca and bananas, water sources, pastures, 
>livestock and all the crops included in coca crop substitution programs. 
>There are also uncertain but potentially severe effects on the fragile 
>tropical rainforest environment, which contains significant parts of the 
>planet's biodiversity.
>
>The genetically modified mycoherbicide used to destroy coca plantations
>part developed at the Long Ashton Research Institute in Bristol  will 
>financially benefit the corporations that will mass-produce it for the 
>Plan. The same will be said for the parasitic multinationals that will 
>move in to "develop" the areas devastated by the ecocide. At the end of 
>the day, the Fat Cats get fatter, while the population starves.
>
>Since the fumigation of coca crops began a couple of years ago, cocaine 
>production has rocketed, alongside the rapid increase in massacres (which 
>is almost doubling year on year).
>
>SIMILAR SITUATION THROUGHOUT THE REGION
>
>Much the same is true throughout the Andean region. For instance, there is 
>a similar situation developing in Bolivia, with "Plan Dignidad". This is 
>being met by widespread resistance. Additionally, anti drug spraying 
>programs are developing in Thailand and Afghanistan. The whole of Latin 
>America is under threat as the United States global police force readies 
>itself for war.
>
>GENERAL SITUATION IN COLUMBIA
>Through the 1990s, Colombia has been the leading recipient of U.S. 
>military aid in Latin America, and has also compiled the worst human 
>rights record.
>In Colombia, however, the military armed and trained by the United States 
>has not crushed domestic resistance, though it continues to produce its 
>regular annual toll of atrocities. Each year, some 300,000 new refugees 
>are driven from their homes, with a death toll of about 3,000 and many 
>horrible massacres. The great majority of atrocities are attributed to the 
>paramilitary forces. a UN study reported that the Colombian security 
>forces that are to be greatly strengthened by the Colombia Plan maintain 
>an intimate relationship with death-squads, organise paramilitary forces, 
>and either participate in their massacres directly or, by failing to take 
>action. The rate of killings had increased by almost 20 percent over the 
>preceding year, and that the proportion attributable to the paramilitaries
>had risen from 46 percent in 1995 to almost 80 percent in 1998, continuing 
>through 1999. 68 percent increase in massacres in the first half of 1999 
>as compared to the same period of 1998, reaching more than one a day, 
>overwhelmingly attributed to paramilitaries.
>prominent human rights activists continue to flee abroad under death 
>threats. several trade unionists are murdered every week, mostly by 
>paramilitaries supported by the government security forces. Forced 
>displacement in 1998 was 20 percent above 1997, and increased in 1999. 
>Colombia now has the largest displaced population in the world.
>
>Hailed as a leading democracy by Clinton and other U.S. leaders and 
>political commentators, Colombia did at last permit an independent party 
>to challenge the elite system of power-sharing. The fact that about 3,000 
>activists from this party were assassinated shows the outrageousness of 
>these claims. Meanwhile, shameful socio-economic conditions persist, 
>leaving much of the population in misery in a rich country with 
>concentration of wealth and land-ownership that is high even by Latin 
>American standards. The situation became worse in the 1990s as a result of 
>the neoliberal reforms". Approximately 55 percent of Colombia's population 
>lives below the poverty
>level.
>
>Ten years ago, as U.S.-backed state terror was increasing sharply, the 
>Minister of Defense called for "total war in the political, economic, and 
>social arenas," while another high military official explained that 
>guerrillas were of secondary importance: "the real danger" is "what the 
>insurgents have called the political and psychological are," the war "to
>control the popular elements" and "to manipulate the masses." The 
>"subversives" hope to influence unions, universities, media, and so on.
>
>POLITICS OF DRUGS IN COLUMBIA
>
>The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reports that "all branches 
>of government" in Colombia are involved in "drug-related corruption." 
>Other observers have also reported the heavy involvement of the military 
>in narcotrafficking, and the U.S. military has also been drawn in. The 
>paramilitaries openly proclaim their reliance on the drug business. 
>However, the U.S. and Latin American press report, "the US-financed attack 
>stays clear of the areas controlled by paramilitary forces," though "the 
>leader of the paramilitaries [Carlos Castano] acknowledged last week in a 
>television interview that the drug trade provided 70 percent of the 
>group's funding."
>
>In standard U.S. terminology, the FARC forces are "narco-guerrillas," a 
>useful concept as a cover for counterinsurgency, but one that has been 
>sharply criticised on factual grounds. It is agreed-and FARC leaders 
>say-that they rely for funding on coca production, which they tax, as they 
>tax other businesses. But "'The guerrillas are something different from 
>the traffickers,' says Klaus Nyholm, who runs the UN Drug Control 
>Program," which has agents throughout the drug producing regions. He 
>describes the local FARC fronts as "quite autonomous." In some areas "they 
>are not involved at all" in coca production and in others "they actively 
>tell the farmers not to grow [coca]."
>
>WHY DRUGS IN COLUMBIA?
>Why do peasants in Colombia grow cocaine, not other crops? The reasons are 
>well known. Peasants grow coca because of the crisis in the agricultural 
>sector of Latin American countries, escalated by the general economic 
>crisis in the region. There ard other factors that operate to increase 
>coca production. Colombia was once a major wheat producer. However, due to 
>developments in free trade and the globalised economy, wheat production 
>has been undermined.  A year before President Bush announced the "drug 
>war" with great fanfare (once again), the international coffee agreement 
>was suspended
>under U.S. pressure, on grounds of "fair trade violations." The result was 
>a fall of prices of more than 40 percent within two months for Colombia's 
>leading legal export.
>
>GLOBAL POLITICS  OF DRUGS
>In the 1960s, many third world governments (acting through UNCTAD-United 
>Nations Commission on Trade and Development)  proposed a "new 
>international economic order" in which the needs of the large majority of 
>people of the world would be a prominent concern. One proposal was a 
>program for stabilising commodity prices for third world
>products (e.g. coffee, sugar, bananas etc)- a practice that is standard 
>within the industrial countries by means of one or another form of 
>subsidy. However, this was successfully resisted by agribusiness and now 
>free trade has ensured that those with market power in the food chain 
>(from energy corporations to retailers) are enjoying great profits while 
>the agricultural crisis, which is real, is concentrated in the middle of 
>the chain, among
>smaller farmers, who produce the food farmers are therefore compelled to 
>turn to crops for which there is a stable market. The result is that drug 
>entrepreneurs can easily find farmers eager
>to grow coca, cannabis or opium for which there is always a ready market 
>in the rich societies. Furthermore, IMF-World Bank programs demand that 
>countries open their
>borders to a flood of (heavily subsidised) agricultural products from the 
>rich countries, with the obvious effect of undermining local production. 
>Those displaced are either driven to urban slums (thus lowering wage rates 
>for foreign investors) or instructed to become "rational peasants," 
>producing for the export market and seeking the highest prices-which
>translates as "coca, cannabis, opium." Having learned their lessons 
>properly, they are rewarded by attack by military gunships while their 
>fields are destroyed by chemical and biological warfare, courtesy of 
>Washington and European governments.
>
>
>DRUGS, TOBACCO, AND HYPOCRISY
>
>The US Supreme Court recently concluded that it has been "amply 
>demonstrated" that tobacco use is "perhaps the single most significant 
>threat to public health in the United States," responsible for more than 
>400,000 deaths a year, more than AIDS, car accidents, alcohol, homicides, 
>illegal drugs, suicides, and fires combined." As use of this lethal 
>substance has declined in the U.S. companies have shifted to markets 
>abroad, such as Columbia. In comparison to the 400,000 deaths caused by 
>tobacco every year in the United States, "drug"-related deaths reached a 
>record 16,000 in 1997. Tobacco products are not only forced on countries, 
>but also advertising for them, under threat of trade sanctions. The 
>Colombian cartels, in contrast, are not permitted to run huge advertising 
>campaigns in which a Joe Camel-counterpart extols the wonders of cocaine.
>
>DRUGS AND POVERY AT HOME
>
>Furthermore, only 4 out of 10 "drug" addicts who needed treatment received 
>it, according to a White House report. The seriousness of concern over use 
>of drugs was illustrated when a House Committee was considering the 
>Clinton Colombia Plan. It rejected an amendment calling for funding of 
>drug demand reduction services. It is well known that these are far more 
>effective than forceful measures. But the inexpensive and effective path 
>will not be followed. Rather, the drug war targets alike poor peasants in 
>southern countries and poor people in northern countries. While Clinton's 
>Colombia Plan was being formulated, senior administration officials 
>discussed a proposal by the Office of Budget and Management to take $100 
>million from the $1.3 billion then planned for Colombia, to be used for 
>treatment of U.S. addicts. There was near-unanimous opposition, 
>particularly from the US "drug czar".  Since 1980 "the war on drugs" has 
>shifted to punishing offenders, border surveillance, and fighting 
>production at the source countries. One consequence, both in Europe and 
>North America, is the enormous increase in drug-related (often victimless) 
>crimes and an explosion in the prison population, with no detectable 
>effect on availability or price of drugs.
>
>4) CALL FROM THE PROCESS OF BLACK COMMUNITIES
>
>The war in Columbia, killing and displacement of the black population 
>Columbia is a country of 37 million inhabitants, of which 30% (that is to 
>say 9,210,000) are black people descended from slaves. Through a process 
>of struggle and resistance lasting more than 3 centuries we have achieved 
>our liberty, fleeing towards mountains, valleys and coasts which the 
>European conquerors had not yet reached. During  the process of adaptation 
>and survival in an unknown world, which has lasted hundreds of years, the 
>free blacks  were able to create their own world and culture.
>
>After this period of liberation, exclusion and racism are what have marked 
>the relation of Colombians towards the black population. The draining of 
>resources from our territories by large multinationals, the alienation of 
>our culture, the oppressing conditions of absolute poverty and the denial 
>of all social, economic, political and cultural rights are just some of 
>the ways that this exclusion expresses itself.
>
>Today, in the internal war which Columbia has been going through for 
>several decades,  black people have been condemned to a silent 
>extermination. This has been imposed by the state and economic groups, at 
>the same time as the population are denied of their individual and 
>collective rights. This situation has evolved from the uprooting, 
>enchaining, exporting and selling of black people like animals in 
>America,  so as to consolidate the conquests which made the northern 
>countries powerful. At the beginning of this new millennium the black 
>people of Colombia are facing ETHNOCIDE; this is being perpetuated by the 
>different actors in the war.
>
>The areas where violent expulsion of the population is occurring 
>correspond to the strategic zones of the war. A million black people have 
>been displaced from their lands (up till 1st October 2000), which are 
>being occupied by outsiders who accept the authority of the armed groups 
>and the state and are apostles of an economic and political model based in 
>exclusion and which generates destruction and death for the bearers of 
>cultures which are thousands of years old.
>
>The historic project of the black people has its cultural, territorial, 
>environmental and social basis. Its  struggle consists in the defense of 
>these areas in which we have lived since ancestral times; created and 
>recreated our culture throughout our history in Colombia and America. We, 
>Black people are demanding the government gives collective community 
>titles; we are struggling  for the strengthening of our identity and 
>autonomy which demands the ability to freely decide our own ways of  life 
>in accordance with our aspirations and our identity as a people.  The 
>capitalist State of Colombia has turned the organised black communities - 
>who are struggling for the defense of territory as a way of life and their 
>cultural principles such as identity - into victims of racism, poverty, 
>marginalisation and military targets of armed groups who defend the 
>interest of  politicians, large land owners, drug traffickers and 
>businessmen. These look for the irrational exploitation of mineral 
>resources, the destruction of biodiversity, the implementation of tourist 
>projects, ports, canals, agroindustrial projects, industrial logging, 
>energy infrastructure....
>
>After slavery, displacement is the most criminal aggression against the 
>black population of Columbia and America. Displacement is a result of 
>intimidation and massacres; it results in invisibility; the loss of 
>territories,   the loss of access to natural resources, the tearing apart 
>of families, solidarity, self esteem, and the right to live in peace in 
>accordance with our traditions, customs and cultural aspirations.
>
>We demand the different actors in the war in Columbia to stop the armed 
>conflict, respect their autonomy, their fundamental rights and not to 
>fight in their territories. We call on the international community to 
>accompany us, to show solidarity and to struggle with us to consolidate, 
>in this capitalist world; the territories of the black population in 
>accordance with the teaching of their ancestors: the territory is the 
>space where you can be and remain; where your ideals and your own history 
>remains, where life, happiness hope and freedom will reign.
>
>Process of Black Communities
>Prague, September 26th 2000
>
>PCNKolombia at hotmail.com
>_________________________________________________________________________
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The TLIO Networking Office



The Land Is Ours
... A Landrights movement for All

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