Two takes
(1)
Brutal Repression of National Strike in Colombia-Santos Declares Militarization of Bogota
By James Jordan
Alliance for Global Justice
August 30, 2013
Colombian Armed Forces have brutally attacked members of the “Paro Agrario” National Farmers and Popular Strike, with at least four to five persons dead and reports of hundreds wounded. Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos, dismissing strikers as vandals, has ordered the militarization of the capital city of Bogota and places throughout the country, vowing to deploy 50,000 soldiers. Santos accused the popular peace movement, the Marcha Patriotica (Patriotic March) of fomenting the violence, saying, “We know the Marcha Patriotica seeks nothing but a situation without exit to impose its own agenda. The interests of the peasants don’t mean anything to them, nor do regional accords: the only thing that matters is their political agenda.” What Santos does not seem to understand is that the Marcha Patriotica is largely made up of peasant groups, including Colombia’s largest agricultural union, FENSUAGRO. The fact that Marcha Patriotica leaders have been chosen to represent strikers, and the widespread participation in the strike itself, both expose the lie of Santos’ declaration.
The national strike was called following attacks against peaceful protesters in the Catatumbo region, which set off a national movement. Demands include popular participation in the peace process, an end to Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) that threaten the livelihoods of family farmers and workers, and government fulfillment of unkept promises for infrastructure development and Peasant Reserve Zones in rural areas.
Starting around mid-afternoon on Thursday, August 29, 2013, violent crack downs on protesters were carried out by ESMAD, the Colombian riot police, in Bogota. Eyewitnesses told us ESMAD attacked demonstrators with bricks and tear gas. Telesur reports 89 wounded in the city and in a more recent report by Ecuador’s El Comercio, the number was raised to 200. Similar events were unfolding in cities and departments throughout Colombia, including Tolima, Meta, Guaviare, Antioquia and elsewhere. Radio Caracol lists five persons killed, including two in Bogotá, one in Soacha (a Bogota suburb), one in Coyaima, Tolima, and one in Rionegro, Antioquia. FENSUAGRO reports two farmers killed and four wounded in Tolima. El Espectador also published photos documenting police attacks against journalists covering the strike in Medellin, and FENSUAGRO has informed us of attacks in Bogota against reporters for Contagio radio.
The Alliance for Global Justice (AfGJ) is especially distressed to hear about the arrests in Tolima of Jailer Gonzalezand Maribel Oviedo, with whom we visited in both our last delegations to Colombia. Jailer is the President of ASTRACATOL, the Tolima affiliate of FENSUAGRO, and Maribel is the Educational Secretary. In 2011 the Colombian Armed Forces illegally apprehended Jailer. He was released only after a campaign of national and international pressure. In March of this year, Maribel was threatened with execution by members of the Colombian military who held her hostage in a farm house for two days. Before her cell phone was confiscated, she was able to alert community members about her situation. When we visited Maribel in April, she also credited national and international intervention for her safe release. Jailer and Maribel are husband and wife, with two daughters, one an infant. We are very concerned for the entire family during this difficult time.
I spoke to July Henriquez, a lawyer for the Lazos de Dignidad (Links of Dignity) organization who provide support for Colombian political prisoners, and for ASTRACATOL. I wanted to ask for more information about Jailer and Maribel. However, at the moment I contacted her, she was in the streets of Bogota and told me that national strike supporters were under attack. She reported that, “At this moment we are in a critical situation in Bogota. Since 2pm, the police have been committing abuses against the protesters from the National Farmers Strike and damaging the property of downtown residents.”
An international labor activist living in the area, who asked to remain anonymous, described “…a scene of utter chaos. I was observing in the march all day. ESMAD was extremely aggressive. A lot of people were arrested. This is particularly worrying because most of the human rights organizations and lawyers are in the field in verification missions and so on….I witnessed ESMAD throwing bricks into a crowd of mostly nonviolent protestors, with representatives of the mayor’s administration and the ombudsman’s office dodging them. I also saw quite a few crowds of totally peaceful protestors getting gassed by mobile police units on motorcycles.”
These attacks are the latest in a series of harsh actions taken by the state against growing protests around the nation. Peasant farmers are demanding the government honor agreements to protect their farms by establishing Peasant Reserve Zones and building basic infrastructure for rural areas, such as good schools, roads to get crops to market, support for crop substitution to replace coca cultivation, and basic health facilities.
We at AfGJ are especially concerned because of the targeting of FENSUAGRO, the Marcha Patriotica, and the strikers’ chosen representatives in negotiations with the government. The arrest of Hubert Ballesteros was a major blow to the entire process for peace.[Click here to send an email demanding his release.] He is Vice President of FENSUAGRO and a member of the Executive Committee of the United Workers Center (CUT), Colombia’s largest labor federation (which includes FENSUAGRO). Hubert is one of ten primary negotiators for the national strike. More than that, he is an adamant supporter of just peace through negotiations. I first met Hubert in 2009 when he helped organized one of AfGJ’s delegations. In several discussions Hubert repeatedly told us two things that Colombians were asking of us in the United States: to end support for war and repression in Colombia; and to advocate for a peace process based on dialogue including not only the armed actors, but all the people. Hubert was arrested on August 26th and charged with “Aggravated Rebellion”.
The crackdown has been difficult for the embattled ASTRACATOL union in Tolima. In May, Guillermo Cano was arrested and charged with “Rebellion”. He is the Human Rights Coordinator for ASTRACATOL, and a member of the FENSUAGRO Executive Committee. He was arrested, along with eight other activists from ASTRACATOL and the Tolima Marcha Patriótica, just days after attending a United Nations forum on popular participation in the peace process. By removing ASTRACATOL’s President, Human Rights Coordinator and Educational Secretary, the representation of Tolima’s peasant farmers and agricultural workers is seriously compromised.
For Fensuagro nationally, it is the same situation. Since the 2011 installation of the Marcha Patriotica, there has been a spike in arrests and assaults of Fensuagro and other Marcha leaders. Likewise, aggressions against rural human rights defenders are at a ten year high, and forced displacement has risen by 83%. It is clear that the Santos Administration is trying to break Fensuagro, the Marcha Patriotica, the national strike and the entire agrarian movement.
The United States is continuing policies that encourage state violence and violations of basic human, labor and civil rights, having spent more than $8 billion on Plan Colombia, the US sponsored war plan. The US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and active support for Colombia’s integration into NATO show that the White House is less interested in peace than in rewarding displacement and brutality when it advances corporate interests. By jailing farmers, workers and peace and justice activists, the Colombian government is systematically removing those who stand in the way of further acquisitions of resources and profits for big landowners and transnational corporations.
This coming Wednesday, September 4th, 2013, is the first anniversary of the Colombian government accord with the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) that began the current peace process. It is interesting that at the same time that Santos was ordering attacks on protests around the country, that the FARC released a statement calling for a bilateral cease fire for the upcoming 2014 elections.
What you can do:
September 4th is SOLIDARITY WITH COLOMBIAN FARMER/LABOR DAY! It is also the first anniversary of the beginning of the peace process between the Colombian government and guerrillas. We are asking people to jam the Colombian Embassy and Consulates with calls demanding an end to repression of the national strike and for the immediate liberty of the unionists and peasant leaders Hubert Ballesteros, Jailer Gonzales and Maribel Oviedo. We are further urging people to contact their Representatives and ask them to act to suspend the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement and to end all aid to Colombia until these three are freed and the repression has ended.
Call The Colombian Embassy: 202-387-8338 Fax: 202-232 8643
Click Here To Contact The Colombian Consulate Nearest You
Click Here To Contact Your Representative http://www.house.gov
Christian Peacemakers Teams has started a campaign we at the AfGJ like a lot, asking people to post pictures on Facebook and Twitter of themselves holding up a sign saying “Apoyo el Paro Agrario” (I Support the Farmers Strike).
Please click here to send an email calling for the immediate release of Hubert Ballesteros.
(2)
Nationwide Protests Rage against Colombia’s Economic Policies
By Constanza Vieira and Helda Martínez
Inter Press Service
August 30, 2013
http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/08/nationwide-protests-rage-against-colombias-economic-policies/
The protests in Colombia have spread to the cities, fuelled by images of police brutality against rural families. Credit: Helda Martínez/IPS
BOGOTA
A strike declared nearly two weeks ago in Colombia by farmers and joined later by truck drivers, health workers, miners and students spread to include protests in the cities before mushrooming into a general strike Thursday, demanding changes in the government’s economic policies.
The protests ballooned after clashes with the ESMAD anti-riot police left at least two rural protesters dead and over 250 under arrest.
Also fuelling the unrest, say analysts, was the attempt by President Juan Manuel Santos to minimise the strikers’ actions. He said on Sunday Aug. 25 that “the so-called national agrarian strike does not exist.”
The authorities, meanwhile, allege that the nationwide roadblocks and protests have been connected to the country’s left-wing guerrillas.
The head of the Fensuagro agricultural trade union, Huber Ballesteros, was arrested Sunday, accused of financing the rebels. He is one of the 10 spokespersons selected by the Mesa de Interlocucion Agropecuaria Nacional (MIA) to negotiate with the government.
MIA, a national umbrella movement, emerged from over two months of protests by campesinos or small farmers in Catatumbo, an impoverished area in northeast Colombia, where they are calling for government measures that would make it possible for them to stop producing coca – their main livelihood in the isolated, roadless area — and switch to alternative crops.
Since the campesinos began to protest in Catatumbo in June, the problems facing small farmers around the country have become more visible.
The difficulties they face are especially exacerbated in the central provinces of Boyacá and Cundinamarca and in Narino in the southwest, where smallholder production of potatoes, onions, maize, fresh produce, fruit and dairy products is the main economic activity of much of the population.
Since Monday Aug. 19, small farmers around the country have been on strike to protest that they cannot compete with low-price food products imported under free trade agreements with the United States (in effect since May 2012) and the European Union (in effect since Aug. 1). They are also complaining about rising fuel, transport and production costs.
Another target of the farmers’ protests is “Resolution 970”, passage of which was required by the U.S.-Colombia FTA, which protects genetically modified seeds under intellectual property rights, making the replanting of them a crime.
In addition, they are protesting large-scale mining projects that have been given the green light in agricultural regions, without consulting local communities as required by law.
It all boils down to the lack of real policies for the countryside, says MIA, which presented a lists of demands before the farmers’ strike began.
The list calls for solutions to the crisis affecting farmers; access to land titles proving ownership; recognition of protected campesino territories; participation in decisions involving mining industry activity; guarantees for exercising political rights; and social spending and investment in infrastructure like roads in rural areas.
On Sunday Aug. 25, the protests spread to the cities, after farmers posted photos and videos on social networking sites of the ESMAD riot police’s brutal crackdown on campesino families, including children and the elderly.
A mission of human rights defenders reported that the riot police had fired live ammunition into crowds of protesters, and that injured demonstrators had wounds indicating that they had been beaten and even stabbed or shot by ESMAD. The mission also documented reports of sexual abuse and rape threats against the wives and daughters of campesinos taking part in the protests.
One woman who reported that the police threw a tear gas canister directly at her inside her home told the human rights defenders: “I was cooking for my kids when I saw an ESMAD agent in the window who, without saying anything, broke the glass and just threw [the canister] inside. I ran out to protect my kids.”
In response to the images and reports of police brutality, people in the cities began to protest, with “cacerolazos” – where demonstrators bang on kitchen pots and pans – which are common in some Latin American countries but are unusual in Colombia.
President Santos apologised and launched a dialogue, in an attempt to negotiate by region or by sector. But his strategy failed and the unrest continued to spread.
Santos said on Wednesday Aug. 28 that his instructions to the security forces to clear the roadblocks, “as they have been doing,” were still standing.
On Thursday, he unexpectedly cancelled his participation in Friday’s Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) summit in Suriname.
Thousands of indigenous people in the southwestern province of Cauca reported Wednesday that they had begun rituals to join the protests.
“The national agricultural strike is the result of problems and demands that have built up over many years,” economist Hector Leon Moncayo, a university professor who is a co-founder of the Colombian Alliance against Free Trade (RECALCA), told IPS. “The only solution now is to bring about a major transformation.”
“A true agrarian reform process has never been carried out in Colombia. Every attempt has failed,” he said. The civil war, which has dragged on for nearly 50 years, “was a pretext for building up military power, and in parallel, paramilitary power,” he argued.
“The far-right paramilitaries stepped up the violence against the campesino population, fuelling massive displacement,” he said.
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According to the figures of the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), a leading Colombian human rights group, 5.5 million people were displaced from their homes between 1985 and 2012.
From behind the scenes, “the drug lords increased the concentration of land ownership, and today there are very few regions with a small-scale campesino economy. Clear examples are the latifundios (large landed estates) where sugarcane and African oil palm are grown,” Moncayo said.
According to January statistics from the National Agrofuels Federation, 150,000 hectares of land are dedicated to sugarcane and oil palm, of the country’s total of five million hectares of farmland.
The government of Cesar Gaviria (1990–1994) introduced free-market reforms to open up the economy. And more recently, free trade agreements have further undermined the competitiveness of small farmers.
Moncayo said campesinos have lost the ability to make a living by selling their products, thanks also to dumping – the export of products by Colombia’s partners at prices below production costs.
“It would be very hard to get the free trade agreements revoked, but it is possible – and urgently necessary – to design sustainable policies for rural development for campesinos,” he said.
According to the United Nations Development Programme, 32 percent of Colombia’s population of 47 million lives in rural areas, and between nine and 11 million people depend on farming for a living.
“We need to make the transition from traditional agriculture to agroecology, to revive the Colombian countryside,” Adriana Chaparro, a professor at Uniminuto, a private college that offers degrees in agroecology, told IPS.
“Agroecology is a big challenge that would make it possible to obtain the best results from farming, without deterioration of the land,” she said. “It would also prevent what many are calling for: subsidies for agriculture, which would require increasingly large investments, which are difficult to finance.
“These protests, which include fair demands, are also an opportunity to take a close, critical look at our agricultural practices, without falling into the government’s way of thinking,” Chaparro said.
Agroecology student Tatiana Vargas said these practices “should become a way of life, which would help us go back to our essence.”
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