Back in Bog...

A full 7 years after starting this blog, I am back in Bogotá. I wanted to reactivate this blog in order to be able to read about what I had done all those years ago...

Lowell Sun Article

Her 'moral imperative': Stand up for justice and rights in Colombia

By Bridget Scrimenti, bscrimenti@lowellsun.co

Article Last Updated: 01/14/2008 11:31:00 AM EST

They planned to harvest cocoa beans.

About eight men, women and children were going to work in the fields. Some even started a seven-hour hike into Colombia's countryside.

But their attempt to gather food came to a sudden and violent end.

The families were viciously attacked and killed by men yielding machetes.

"They killed eight people, three of whom were children, with machetes," said Janice Gallagher. "For me as a U.S. citizen -- if I could do anything to stop that from happening again, I felt a moral imperative to do so."

The murders prompted Gallagher, 30, to spend the past year as a human-rights activist in Colombia, working for the nonprofit and interfaith organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Click here to read the rest of the article

returned.

I landed almost two weeks ago in Boston, and am finally writing what I guess is my last official blog. I was prompted, finally, to do this because I wanted to let people know about the NPR program On-Point, which today discussed the drug war. I called in, and talked really briefly about Colombian human rights at the very end of the show - I am the last caller. The show is interesting, in that it takes as a given the failure of the drug war, and mulls over some interesting alternatives:

For a list of NPR stations that broadcast the program with the time that it will be re-broadcast (most stations will have it sometime this evening) go to:
http://www.wbur.org/syndication/?program=On-Point

To download the podcast, or listen to it on-line, go to: http://www.npr.org/templates/rss/podcast.php?id=510053 - Today's program is not uploaded yet, but should be soon!

Janice goes back to school...
Transition times are inherently tough: changes of job, friends, home and language can each be taxing, and all together it feels like I am ripping up some pretty delicate roots right now that I carefully laid this year in Colombia- though returning to the US feels like returning to some old growth forest support as well.

This transition has been particularly strange for me, as I landed and immediately had to throw myself into brushing up on my high school math and learning arcane vocabulary in preparation for the GRE: the graduate school entrance exams. I am applying to PhD programs for next fall in Political Science in order to continue to study NGOs, human rights, and particularly the Colombian road to peace, and to try and answer some of the many questions that I have generated this year.

Unlike my last blog, I will not try to make larger meaning of what my entire experience meant here - perhaps that will come later. But I did want to share some of the images and snapshots of my life from the past couple of months:

Return to Promisión:
After being away for an average of ten years, this September about 25 former residents of the small village of Promisión, located several hours drive and a five-hour walk from the city of Medellín, made their first ventures back to the land and homes they had left beinhd. They had been forced to leave when paramilitary violence claimed the lives of several members of their community. It was made clear to them that if they stayed on their land, they too would suffer the same fate. Most of the residents had fled to the outskirts of Medellín, where they encountered violence and poverty. Despite the fact that there is little left of their former houses, almost all of the families that were forced to leave now want to return to their land. One resident explained to me that she had already lost one son to the violence of the displacement slums outside of Medellín, and even if it was still dangerous in La Promisión, it was worth the risk to return.

The local and regional government officials have been cautiously supportive of the return: the land officially belongs to the families, and after much work on the part of the ACA (the Peasant Association of Antioquia) they now have the documentation to prove it. Local government officials have given money for the reconstruction of homes, and there is hope that they will have electricity by January. There have not been reports lately of paramilitary presence in the community, but the community is carefully waiting to see whether it is indeed safe to return. FOR accompanied this first "preparatory visit" to the land, where the residents concentrated on clearing paths to the community and planting some subsistence crops so that when they return, they will have something to eat. It has taken me a while to post these pictures partially because I got very ill after spending this week in houses with no running water, toilets, beds, or mosquito nets. That said, it was a privilege to be with people whose perseverance in finding a better life for their families brought them to this place.

Clothes hang outside one of the houses that the community hopes to return to live in.

A woman in the "city," a five-hour walk from the community, peers out her window at the campesinios walking with all their belongings on their backs to Promisión.

Below, a group of Medellín residents protest the lack of public services (electricity, drinking water, plumbing) available in Medellín's poorer neighborhoods where displaced personas are concentrated. This rally, which is conceptualized as a carnival in celebration of resistance, was organized by the "Red Juvenil," or Youth Network, of Medellín, one of the groups FOR accompanies.



Here, the ACA participates in an international tribunal on displacement. At the tribunal, held in Colombia's Senate, international judges condemned the Colombian government's role in causing people to have to leave their land, and asked for the Colombian government, multinational corporations, and the governments of developed nations to cease the actions which have caused displacement. Further, they asked the Colombian state to bring to justice those that have caused the displacement of about four million Colombians - nearly 10% of the population.

Walking for Human Rights
There is a common form of protest which feels distinctively, if not uniquely, Colombian called a caminata, or walk. This October I did my second caminata with the Peace Community of San José de Partadó: we walked from 8am until the late afternoon (about 18 miles) in order to commemorate the community leaders and the friends of the community that had been killed recently, mostly by paramilitary forces. Many residents of the community couldn't come because of the torrential downpours and subsequent rising of the river, but several hundred of us, including a large number of representatives from the neighboring indigenous community crossed the high rivers on horseback, and came together to walk to the small city of Apartadó. We convened at the bus terminal, where two of the four killings occurred: the killings were allegedly carried out in full daylight by paramilitaries while the police turned their back. The marchers then held a memorial service for the victims in the middle of the day in the center of this busy market and terminal, presumably in full view of the same police and paramilitary members that had caused the deaths of their friends.

The picture below is of a community leader attaching flowers to the fence of this bus terminal in memorium of a friend of the community who was killed at the terminal this past July.













On the left, the banner reads "No more killing by the paramilitaries. No more killing by the public forces (police, military). No more killings by the guerrilla." On the right, children from the community pile into one of the buses that accompanied the caminata to get out of the rain and rest their feet.

One of the boys from the Community looks out the window of the bus on the road from the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó on the way to the small city of Apartadó.

Fútbol and Beer:
I finally went to a Colombian soccer game. Colombia is turning heads by performing better than almost anyone expected in the preliminary round of the two-year long competition for a spot in the next World Cup. I saw the second half of the Colombia-Venezuela game, which Colombia won 1-0, and learned the only three expressions one needs to intelligently reflect on a Colombian soccer game, none of which I feel comfortable putting into print here. Here, a giant beer tarp is released on top of fans.


...and this is the Central Plaza in Bogotá at sunset.

What's Next?
My future plans are uncertain as of now - I will spend until the end of January based out of Boston, where the generosity of friends and family have given me a place to say and a warm welcome. I plan to finish applying to graduate school, and to do some organizing for the upcoming Colombian Conscientious Objectors' visit to the US, and the American Youth Delegation to Colombia - which hopes to bring American youth involved in Conscientious Objection or resistance to the war to Colombia. I will be sending emails out about these upcoming events.

I hope to be back in Bogotá in late January for a vacation, and to perhaps continue work I have begun in Colombia during April and May. I will be posting to this blog again in the near future. Thanks so much to all of you who have accompanied me on my journey this year. Please do be in touch: janicekgallagher@yahoo.com

Por fin!

Well, my recuperation and getting back to this blog has taken longer than I planned. The good news is that I am finally healthy, except for a constant sniffle brought on by the mold lurking in all of the corners of my current abode, FOR’s house in La Unión. The other exciting news is that today I played soccer as a member of La Union´s team, and it was really fun. It´s been years, and with my hiking shoes slipping and sliding all over the place, I proudly played boot ball with the ladies of La Union. We won: 3-1 against the indigenous team from down the road.

I have less than a month left in Colombia, and feel like it is time to make Big Insightful Realizations...so bear with me. I feel like I don´t know much about how I will view this experience in retrospect - What I do know is that I am looking forward to having time to process this experience. That I leave here in awe of most of the people I have met – from my tireless co-workers who somehow keep their energy and determination up in spite of sickness, robberies, scarce resources and trying circumstances, to the Colombian activists we work with who manage to get up every day and push for structural change, peace and justice in a country where the only certainty is that working for these things will endanger your and your family’s safety. I leave this year with a stronger faith in the human spirit - with a conviction that we can’t help but struggle for a better world for our children and our neighbors.

I also leave with a deeper understanding of how US foreign policy, drug consumption and lack of awareness about what is going on in Colombia make people’s daily lives here harder. I read a darkly-titled book recenty, “More Terrible than Death,” by Robin Kirk, a former Human Rights Watch employee who spent over ten years in Colombia. She encapsulated, for me, the impact of the drug trade in Colombia: the profits from cocaine are “astronomical - $53 billion annually, calculated on the basis of the average US street price of $175 per gram of cocaine. That was five times the amount of foreign aid spent on the entire African continent” (Kirk, 240). That money fuels and arms both sides of the conflict, and makes the price that innocent civilians pay here astronomically higher.

Some other ruminations…

Continuing struggle in the community
After community leader Francisco Puerta was killed in May, we accompanied community leaders in a series of high-level meetings. I was nervous about how we and the community leaders would respond, interested in what the embassy and government officials would say, and honestly a little bit excited about meeting with high-level diplomats because I hoped they could really help the situation. After about ten meetings, most of this excitement, anxiety and interest wore off. The meetings were almost scripted, with everyone expressing concern but not committing to any action. After FOR was robbed in June, and another community Humanitarian Zone leader, Dairo Torres, was killed in July, we did other rounds of high-level meetings, visiting embssadors and Colombiam government officials. This time, I was tired of making the multitude of phone calls and emails necessary to set up these meetings. They hadn’t prevented Dairo’s murder, and I didn’t see what good they would do without a different strategy, or some more political capital. And then we had the meetings, replayed remarkably similar scripts many times with the same people. and maybe it made some difference. And maybe it didn’t.

To me, this is a little bit of what I’ve learned about working for peace amidst war. It is a grind in the way almost any job can become. What seems like it could never become routine or rote – like the reaction to the killing of a community leader – becomes routine because of necessity. The meetings are a vital part of keeping the community alive when seen as a whole, and the community has been having them for ten years and will keep having them indefinitely. The ability and energy it takes to keep up this struggle – from the grueling work of farming, to mourning leaders while orchestrating a political reaction to them – are incredible, and I have so much respect for the leaders who do this year in and year out.

Che’s gone...yup. For 40 years.
We had gone to a meeting on the morning of October 9th, and we returned to our neighborhood restaurant for lunch. It is a small, cheap place about 3 blocks from the entrance of the Universidad Nacional. We heard papas (directly translated as potatoes but in this context small, homemade bombs that anarchist, hooded students and hooded other people like to throw at police) going off when we were several blocks away. We proceeded to the restaurant without thinking too much of it. While we were eating, we started to itch our eyes and tear up as the tear gas from the protest wafted into the restaurant. We finished up, walked home, and struggled to open our door as the tear gas flooded the first couple floors of the apartment.

So...that’s the story. We went upstairs, didn’t wash our burning eyes (water makes the effects of tear gas worse), and tried to work in our apartment/office and ignore the constant bombing sounds and tear gas remnants.

A couple notes, though: First, like the boy I photographed earlier this year eating a sandwich right next to where the police confronted student protesters with high-powered water hoses, we did not stop our lunch or consider leaving the area, nor did we run to interview students about why they were protesting. This has now become fairly common for me and my office-mates, and I was more annoyed by the inconvenience of the tear gas and interruptions of the bomb sounds than curious about the roots of the social dissent. Second, when we did ask what was going on, we were told that the students were commemorating the 40th anniversary of Che’s death. Hmmm. OK. Not to diminish the importance of Che or his death, but it’s hard to imagine 1) how throwing homemade bombs at police could possibly accomplish anything, and how it is an appropriate commemoration of Che’s death. 2) It is hard to imagine why, exactly, the police find it necessary to confront the students. What are they fighting over? The students aren’t going to storm the city, and if they were, they could just go out another exit of the university. Why have both the police and the students chosen to stand at the main entrance of the university and throw small bombs, tear gas and water at each other? A Colombian friend we were with responded that it was tradition. That that’s simply what is done.

For me, that goes a long way in explaining the Colombian armed conflict. It has become simply what is done. Although at first, as with commemoration of Che’s death, it may have been about Big Ideas and actual questions about the equality of the distribution of wealth and democratic representation, it is now a tradition of war. For 40 years, the two sides have been fighting. It doesn’t seem like either side really thinks they can win, neither side is really interested in negotiating, so they keep fighting. In the meantime, the average Colombian pays a high price for this tradition, and the US – with its military aid, and more than anything with the money that it pours into Colombia through its consumption of cocaine – ensures that both sides are armed to the teeth.

Here´s what Robin Kirk, author of ¨More Terrible than Death, had to say about the causes of Colombia’s ongoing conflict, p.212:
In my notebooks, I have written down dozens of possible motives I have heard for Colombia’s war, none completely convincing. One farmer once said to me that the war was rich people’s way of grabbing poor people’s land. For him, the terror waged by the paramilitaries was an immense and nefarious real estate swindle, meant to force people from their farms, drive prices down, and grab land for agribusinesses. He described guerrillas as his only hope, since with their weapons they could resist these efforts by threatening and killing land speculators...A police major in the Colombian Antinarcotics Police told me that the blame lay with the drug traffickers. They wanted to control Colombia, to convert it into a narco-state tailored to their business needs...A noted Colombian economist and politician, Miguel Antonio Caro, once wrote that in reality, Colombia has no authentic political life, only ‘inherited hates’... The point of Colombia’s war eludes me.”

217: Writer Antonio Caballero once write that despite a war that intensifies each year, nothing actually happens: Nada de nada. Because of that, things worsen day by day. ‘The country aflame, rampant misery, the putrefaction of the political class, the disintegration of our institutions, the complete lack of security for our lives and possessions, flooding rivers, the proliferation of criminal mafias, the extinction of our wildlife, all are inevitable consequences of our stubborn conviction that here, nothing happens. The country comes apart in our fingers, over our heads, under our feet, because of us, precisely because we want nothing to happen, and when it happens, we deny it, saying ‘It’s over, it’s finished, ya pasó.’”

Now to go back up the mountain…I expect to be in Bogota sometime in the next week, and will write more then.

Vivo!

Where to start? I have not given up on this blog...I have simply been on the roller coaster that is life in Colombia. After a month in the community, a blissful and busy couple weeks visiting friends and family in the US, a week in the CAMPO accompanying a group of campesinos returning to their land after almost 10 years away (and, consequently, returning to a place with no drinking water, mattresses, walls per se, mosquito nets...) and a full week in bed drenched in sweat and shaking with a combination of bacteria, parasites and amoebas pecking at my insides (during which I completed three decades of life and on my Big Day my body went into full rejection mode and made the Big Event of my Big Day crawling from bed to the living room, and falling asleep during Scrabble) I AM OK! Thanks everyone has sent me get-better wishes. They have been received and seem to be being heeded by the sickness Gods and Goddesses after much debate. I am behind on all work and play after vacationing, accompanying, and sickness, but will write again in the next couple days. with pictures. promise.

muddy

I am gifted with many strenghts, I suppose, but remarkable in just a few. I am a getting dirty superstar, as I was reminded yet again this week as I slipped and slid through the Urabá mud. I got to accompany in the campo this week - the thing most like what I imagined I would be doing in Colombia. This week I accompanied one of the weekly community work days, where about 50 community members transformed into human lawnmowers, machete-ing down about 25 acres of brush in an afternoon (so that grass could grown, and the community´s animals could graze). And despite my efforts to clean myself in the river, I came home with mud from feet to face. And I ran down the mountain from La Unión to La Holandita, trying to prove that all my hard-won Appalachian Trail-hiking skills hadn´t dissipated. With the help of an old mop transformed into hiking pole, I didn´t fall...but rather glided, squished and stomped my way through the high rivers and muddy downhills. I found mud inside my ear.

Obviously, I am enjoying my time in the campo. Next up: a group of embassies are visiting the community this week as a response to all of the recent attacks in order to raise the profile of the situation there with the Colombian government. I am heading home to visit friend Nikki Tim´s new baby, Charlotte Jane, in a little over a week!! Internet access is sporadic here, but I will try to post some pictures soon.

off again...

Well, what to say. It has been quite a change in...everything...since I last posted about my wonderful vacation. There was another policeman killed by the guerrilla in the area near the community this month, and three days later, on July 13th, another community Humanitarian Zone leader named Dairo Torres was taken off a public tranport vehicle and killed by paramilitaries. Since then there has been a high level of paramilitary activity reported in the area. There have also been police checkpoints right outside the community, and some hard interactions with the police around the rights of the community. In the meantime, the investigation into the robbery has stalled. I am headed out there now for a couple weeks, and then will return to the US for a quick visit to spend time with my childhood best friend's new baby and drop in on my family.

There continues to be interesting and stimulating work to do here in Bogotá, but I am ready to be back in the community for a while. City life everywhere is a grind, I think, and I am longing to be outside without so much pollution and to sleep and rise with the sun, rather than the beeping of cell phones and computer alerts.

I finally wrote up the piece I did about my accompaniment of the ACA, the Antioquia Peasants Association, which I will paste part of here. Hope you are all well - send some postive energy/prayers Colombia's way if you're so inclined...

Constructing a Peasant Movement: How to grow worms to make healthy soil
By Me, Janice Gallagher

How can small, rural farmers respond to the forces of global trade and climate change?
How is a campesino (peasant) movement built amidst war and threats of displacement?
What does economic solidarity look like in rural Colombia?

These were some of the many questions that led the Antioquia Peasant Association (ACA) to organize a week-long combination conference /tour /exchange in June with the Archdiocese of Santa Fe de Antioquia, a neighboring municipality. The ACA has worked for two years with farmers from seven different communities in Eastern Antioquia, an area that has been especially hard-hit by guerrilla and paramilitary violence, to figure out how to provide for themselves and their families in the midst of war. Part of the ACA’s strategy for assisting these farmers is to bring them face to face with other farmers who have faced similar circumstances to discuss how they have moved forward. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe de Antioquia has worked with farmers for 11 years in 26 communities and during this trip the two groups explored their answers to these big questions.

“With the FTA [Free Trade Agreement between the U.S. and Colombia] everything will be harder, which makes our struggle for self-sufficiency all the more important.”

In an environment where it is already incredibly difficult for small farmers to make ends meet, the ACA and Archdiocese believe that the approval of the FTA currently before Congress would make the situation of these small farmers infinitely harder. Resisting the passage of the FTA has been central political work for both the ACA and the Archdiocese. Yet, as one of the 22 campesinos on this trip said, “We can spend millions of pesos and hours protesting the policies of the state, but we also need to focus on how to feed ourselves.”

So what does this mean for them? Rather than changing which crops are planted based on the whims of the international market, the organizations believe that campesinos should produce the food they need to feed their families. Basing what to produce on the price of the crop is dangerous because prices might be high one year for, say, coffee, and by the time the crop yields fruit, the price might be half of what it was – not even enough to cover the cost that it took to produce it. Instead, the campesinos from both organizations focus on how to produce the staple crops they need to feed their families from very small plots of land. With the space left over, they produce things to sell locally. One farm we saw had every other terrace filled with onions to sell at a local market, and the other terraces held rice, beans, cilantro, tomatoes, and a cabbage-like green.

This idea that farming should benefit the farmers may seem simple, but it is a revolution in the way most agriculture has been carried out in this country and others. An integral part of this idea is that farming needs to be done sustainably. In this part of Colombia, this means growing worms in vitamin-rich food scraps to aerate the soil, using pig feces inside of a giant long and skinny plastic bag with a pipe attached to produce energy for the stove in the house, and making organic fertilizer from things already on the farm, rather than using harsh, expensive imported chemicals.

[To read the rest of Janice’s letter from the field, click here.]

cardboard boxes, a door, and the luxury of toilet seats

I hadn't downloaded my photos for a while, and so after doing so I realized that the last month or so is appropriate for my second installment of "Janice's life in photos." Here goes...

Alternative sledding

I love this country! No snow? No sled?...well, make it work! In one of the central parks of Cali, a favorite past time is sledding down a closed-off road on top of cardboard boxes.

Pride in Colombia

This was the 11th anniversary of the Gay Pride celebration in Colombia, and my family was here to witness it. The struggle for gay rights in Colombia is in some ways much more advanced than I would have imagined: The 1991 Colombian constitution guarantees equality before the law for all Colombians regardless of their sexual orientation, and a bill that would have guaranteed same-sex couples some legal rights was nearly passed this year. Over 10,000 people participated in the Gay Pride parade this year, and many noted that for the first time, most people were not wearing masks to disguise their identity.

the banner says: Equality for same sex couples

Rebuilding

We continue to recover from the June 2nd robbery of the FOR house, and to take steps both politically and practically to make ourselves and other huiman rights organizations safer. There are now three of us human rights organizations that have been robbed in the past month: us, JustaPaz, a Mennonite peace organization, and Yira Castro, a group of lawyers that work to legally support victims of state-sponsored crimes).

We now have a door fit for a bank.

We also bought a new chair in hopes that we will soon have a new computer to use while we sit in the new chair. I carried the chair on my head for over 1o blocks and received surprisingly few strange looks.

Puente?

In Spanish, puente means bridge. It also means long weekend, of which there seems to be at least two per month. On this puente we headed to Suesca to go on my favorite walk on the way to my "country house" (a half-camping half-cabin place I co-rent outside Bogotá). Every time I have crossed the river to get to the house there has been a different manifestation of the bridge/puente: a log bridge, two cables strung across the river (one to hold, one to stand on), and a log and a cable (same idea). This time, we crossed on the most, ummm..., difficult "bridge" yet: one log, no cable. And then we braved barb wire. Anyway, it was fun.

Salty

On my parents' first day here we went to the salt mines. No rest for the weary. But these were special salt mines: 200 meters inside of a mountain made of rock salt, a team of architects, miners and engineers built a Catholic cathedral and 14 crosses which each illustrate a station of the cross entirely out of salt. Never mind that the Colombian government footed the over $20 million for this which could have, say, helped out the 10% of the population which has been forced off their land because of the violence - point is that this was really cool.

one of the stations of the cross - it was dark down there in the salt mines, hence the eerie lighting that my camera flash produced.

the cathedral. mass is held every sunday.

Providence.

After a blissful week with my sister and Allyson, my whole family headed to the islands of San Andres and Providencia which lie about 150 miles off the eastern coast of Nicaragua. Providencia has about 4500 people, and to quote Lonely Planet, it fulfills your every expectation of paradise. Water the color you imagine it should be, reggae clubs which are sometimes wet from the crashing surf, endless deserted white sand beaches, interrupted only by occasional piña colada and fresh seafood restaurants, and lovely, friendly people everywhere who mean it when they say slow down and enjoy life.

Providencia was initially settled by English Puritans around the year 1630 - who for some reason decided to move to a blissful tropical island rather than to join their compañeros in settling in Massachusetts. Because of this early encounter with Brits, English is still the native language of most islanders, though by now it has picked up a melodious mix of Caribbean, African and Spanish rhythms which made it hard for my dad to believe he could really understand what people said.

Our shared Puritan heritage, the island's proximity to my favorite country Nicaragua, and the fact that it still is Colombia which I also really love, made Providence the ideal cultural mix for me. To boot, there were enough tourist facilities that my whole family was comfortable, while at the same time the island seemed remote and not commercialized.

However, my father pointed out that the islands hadn't yet taken the tourist-friendly step of putting toilet seats on top of their toilets. I tried to get the hotel to transfer one of three toilet seats they had to my parents' room, but apparently the seat only made it as far as the front steps of the hotel.

layovers can be fun

On the way to Providencia, we had a couple hours of layover in San Andres, which we weren't looking forward to, since looking forward to a layover would be weird. This layover, however, broke the mold. A 5 minute walk from the terminal in San Andres was a beautiful beach. So we had a swim, mom did some yoga, we waded and a walked on the beach, and then hopped back on the plane.

Another new flying fave? The airport in Providencia. This is the "waiting room," or gate, where we waited for our 19-seat plane. The airport boasts an airy lobby (there are no windows, or walls really), caution tape separating those who have gone through security and those who haven't, and a convenient flight departure notification system whereby you know you should get ready to board when you see a plane land and people get off...because that's the only plane in the airport, so it better be taking you.

Familia

Of course, the best part of the past couple weeks has been having my family here. While life is already hectic back here in Bogota (partly because I need to catch up after a week away), I feel deeply rested and ready to do this work. Here are happy pictures of the family:
My parents dancing in the Botero museum. Botero is the most famoius Colombian contemporary artist who is known for paiting and sculpting very round humans, animals and fruit.

Off to San Andres!

Thanks to all of you who continue to hang in there with this blog! I am now going to part with my computer for a week and head to the coast for some down time. I am looking forward to reading, relaxing and being with family. I'll post beachy photos in a week!

Things, knock on wood, seem to be settling down here, though another NGO was robbed a little over a week ago called Yira Castro, which is a lawyers' collective that works with displaced people and victims of paramilitary and state violence. We continue to both pray (in our own way) for and advocate for the Colombian government to get to the bottom of what can now be called a rash of break-ins at NHOs who work with threatened people, but no measurable progress has been made in theinvestigations yet. Thanks again to all of you who sent letters to the Colombian government and US Embassy asking them to pay special attention to this case.

Big abrazos...

gracias! y progress?

The past few weeks have been unrelenting in pace but, at times, hopeful in content. We have had a whirlwind of Colombian Senate, press, Embassy, police and Attorney General meetings in response to the June 2nd robbery at our house/office. Since FOR is the first international NGO to have an apaparently politically-motivated break-in, and since the timing of the beak-in dovetailed with Uribe's visit to the US lobbying for the support of the Free Trade Agreement, national and international organizations have taken notice in a way that has surprised us, and which we hope will make us, other international NGOs and the people we accompany safer. Click here to read about my alter ego, Yanisse Galagher's, response to the robbery in Spanish)

After this intense response, we were hoping to get back to the work we would like to concentrate on - working with Colombian peace organizations, supporting the peace community, and trying to improve US foreign policy towards Colombia. Instead, there was another break-in at an organization we work closely with. The offices of JustaPaz, which are about a 20-minute walk from our offices, were robbed. Again computers were taken and other valuables were left in plain sight. This same building also houses Witness for Peace, where most of my good friends in Colombia work, and which brings US delegations to Colombia to learn about US foreign policy here.

The computers taken from JustaPaz
contained sensitive information on people and churches that are active in work for peace and human dignity, and on people from churches that are victims and witnesses to human rights violations...The perpetrators passed by 9 other computers, telephones, a safe, etc., and removed two specific computers located at the other end of the office. They also broke into the desk of the coordinator for a program for protection of persons at risk. (For JustaPaz's complete statement, go to their website)

That this happened 12 days after our break-in is troubling. We had brought our last delegation to JustaPaz and have had contact with them since coming beginning the program, so this felt like another indirect attack on our work here, and against the people we all work with. Because of this, the letters people wrote to the Colombian Vice President's office and to the US Embassy are all the more important!! And they do make a difference - this week, we got a meeting with both offices which are usually hard, if not impossible, to get (OK, the VP's office cancelled at the last minute because he is traveling, but we will reschedule!). For those of you who wrote to the Embassy, you probably got this response
Dear Mr./Ms.xxx,
Thank you for writing.
?? Yes. That was it. No signature - nada. But we are meeting with human rights officials within the US government that we haven't before, and that is a result of the pressure that has been brought regarding this case and others. So thank you to all who wrote.

Conscientious Objector Hip Hop
This past weekend, Camila (my co-worker and superstar roommate) and I took a needed break from all the craziness and happenings in Bogotá here, and we headed to Cali, the salsa and party capital of Colombia to visit/accompany a hip hop group called Suporte Klan that we met at the Conscienctious Objectors conference in Medellin. They live in an AfroColombian community Villa Rica, about an hour outside Cali, and they do innovative skits about resisting participation in the war, US imperialism, and the lingering effects of racism in Colombia. The rap, really well, about pacifism, and have gained immense popularity in Colombia. And, to boot, they are good guys.

Vacation!
My sister comes today with her partner, and my parents come next week, to visit me in Colombia. I am beyond excited, and am looking forward to a break after a long, intense stretch of work. We are heading to the island paradise of San Andrés, closer to Nicaragua than Colombia, for some blissful beach time.

US Policy Update: From teammate AJ's blog
I was gooing to write abouit this, but AJ already did! Here is what's up:
More news from the land of the free indicates that the Foreign Affairs subcommittee of the House (the very same subcommittee I bemoaned in this here web space back in April) has decided to shift money away from Plan Colombia military aid and towards humanitarian aid. The house bill now contains a 55%-45% military-humanitarian aid split. Once taking into account the extra $150 million that goes to Colombian military aid out of the Defense Budget appropriations, that scores: Military Aid 65%, Humanitarian Aid 35%. Last year, also taking into account both the Foreign Ops and Defense appropriations, the military percentage was up at 83% and this year the administration requested 81% military aid. This seems a good time to reference the title of my blog. This is, I guess, some form of justice, limping very, very, very slowly. I remain skeptical and hesitate to call this piddling offering any kind of victory for human rights in Colombia.

For those of you back in the states, keep your ear to the ground as this legislation under the Foreign Aid Bill is set to hit the floor as early as today. Call or email your Representative and urge them to keep the 55-45 split intact. Republican Representatives are already rumored to be preparing a counter-amendment to rectify the perceived “imbalance”. In fact, my old pal, Dan Burton (R-IN), ranking republican of the Foreign Affairs subcommittee is at the front of the line, probably planning on introducing just such an amendment.

robbed

In the midst of our team retreat in paradisical Santa Fe de Antioquia this weekend, we got a call early Sunday morning that jarred us out of whatever tranquility we had found in the charming colonial town: our compañera Sarah called us from Bogotá to let us know that she had arrived at the house, and that all was not well.

She found the door to the apartment carefully splintered around the now-broken lock, and upon entering the apartment realized immediately that the two office computers had been taken, while curiously my passport and credit card had been laid carefully on my bed, almost as if on display. The television, the computer monitor, the fax and printer and other valuables were left, and at first we thought no valuables were taken...until we realized, curiously, that most of Camila's clothes and some US dollars were also stolen. All suitcases and smelly dirty clothes had been emptied throughout the house, and things were generally chaotic. Sarah related the scene to us, and we left our retreat immediately and headed home (we flew!).

This is scary for many reasons, primary of which is that it doesn't seem like just a normal robbery - they found and displayed valuables on my bed instead of taking them, they stole the things (computers) which clearly had the most information about FOR and our work, and they took a lot of care to steal very little of value - they disconnected the doorbell, took out the light bulbs from the hallway, and came at a time when almost no one was around the building...all presumably to lessen the possibility that they would be interrupted.

Because it appears that this was politically motivated, this has to have a political reaction. We, as FOR, need to respond in a way which shows whoever did this that there are large political costs to attacking an international human rights organization in this way.

So...what now? The theory behind our work here is that there is a large political cost to harming internationals, and specifically harming international human rights workers. Now is the time, then, to demonstrate that. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe arrives to the US tomorrow, and we want him to hear about this case during his visits with Congress people. We also want him to hear from US citizens that this type of attack on international human rights organizations is unacceptable.


So please, if you have a minute, send an email to Colombian Vice President and the US Embassy expressing
- your concern for the attack on FOR and for the security of the Colombian groups FOR accompanies;
- your desire for the authorities to carry out a prompt and complete investigation of the violation and to punish those responsible;
- the necessity of having the Colombian government publicly support the work of national and international human rights organizations in Colombia by issuing a presidential directive on human rights organizations (which would update an older, similar directive: Directive 7 of 2001 issued by President Andrés Pastrana.)

Their email addresses are:
Francisco Santos, Vice President of Colombia: fsantos@presidencia.gov.co
Milton Drucker, Chargé d' Affaires at the US Embassy in Colombia: AmbassadorB@state.gov

If you are a cut-and-paster, below are sample emails to each of them. These are two of the key contacts for FOR here in Colombia and therefore for improving ours and others' security, and receiving emails from everyone who reads this blog would really make a huge difference to our work here.

Thank you for your support...
Janice

To US Embassy:
Dear Milton Drucker,
I am writing to express my grave concern for the US-based Human Rights Organization FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which works to support human rights in Colombia. This past Saturday, June 2nd, their house/office was robbed in Bogotá. Although all burglaries are troubling, this one is particularly so because computers with sensitive information were taken, specifically about the work FOR does to support the peace community of San Jose de Apartado.

As a concerned US citizen and support of human rights, I would ask you to to urge the Colombian government to:
1) Do whatever possible to ensure the safety and respect for the work of FOR, their partner
organizations and the other national and international groups in Colombia who are working for human rights.
2) Carry out a thorough investigation into the FOR robbery.
3) Publicly support the work of national and international human rights organizations in Colombia by issuing a presidential directive on human rights organizations (which would update an older, similar directive: Directive 7 of 2001 issued by President Andrés Pastrana.)

Thank you for your attention in this matter,


To Francisco Santos:
Dear Vice President Santos,
I am writing to express my grave concern for the international Human Rights Organization FOR, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which works to support human rights in Colombia. This past Saturday, June 2nd, their house/office was robbed in Bogotá. Although all burglaries are troubling, this one is particularly so because computers with sensitive information were taken, specifically about the work FOR does to support the peace community of San Jose de Apartado.

As a concerned US citizen and support of human rights,
I would ask you to:
1) Do whatever possible to ensure the safety and respect for the work of FOR, their partner
organizations and the other national and international groups in Colombia who are working for human rights.
2) To carry out a thorough investigation into the FOR robbery.
3) To publicly support the work of national and international human rights organizations in Colombia by issuing a presidential directive on human rights organizations (which would update an older, similar directive: Directive 7 of 2001 issued by President Andrés Pastrana.)

Thank you for your attention in this matter,


Here is FOR's statement:

Action Alert:
International Human Rights Group Records Stolen in Colombia

The Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) denounces what appears to have been a politically motivated attack on its offices on June 2 in Bogotá, Colombia.

According to people who live in the same building as FOR, unknown persons forcibly entered the FOR house/office in Bogotá between 6 pm and 7 pm on June 2, breaking the lock and part of the door. The individuals stole the FOR’s two central computers that contain the organization’s records, including information on the accompaniment of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó. This community has been the target of attacks by the all the armed groups and is covered by protective measures issued by the Inter-American Court for Human Rights.

Recently, FOR has worked on delicate issues such as the murder of a member and ex-leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, Francisco Puerta; the use of demobilized combatants in army operations; and the presence of and threats by paramilitaries in the San José de Apartadó district. Additionally, given the documented collaboration between Colombian military and civilian officials at the highest levels and paramilitaries, FOR has led efforts to end United States military aid to the Colombian Army, and has been active in opposing the Free Trade Agreement between the United States and Colombia.

The individuals destroyed electronic equipment, including part of a satellite phone, stole clothing and cash but took out and did not steal a credit card and the passport of an FOR team members; as well as a television and other items of value that were in plain sight. In the days before the break-in, individuals had been observed watching the house on several occasions.

This incident constitutes a serious violation against an international human rights organization that gives protective unarmed accompaniment to threatened Colombians. The violation occurs in the context of threats against other human rights organizations working in Colombia, such as the Corporation for Juridical Liberty, which resulted in an urgent action alert issued by Amnesty International. Such a climate of intolerance is reflected in statements issued by Vice-President Francisco Santos at the Council of the Americas during his recent visit to Washington. According to the daily newspaper El Tiempo (May 25, 2007), the vice-president accused human rights organizations of being motivated by purely economic interests. The organizations refuse to recognize the Uribe administration’s efforts “perhaps because if they do the donor will withdraw large amounts of money. This is a business too and they would be without a job,” Santos said.

FOR continues its work of accompaniment of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, the Antioquia Peasant Association, the Youth Network of Medellín, and other Colombian groups that work for justice and peace using nonviolent means.

Click here for more info on who to contact, or here to see this in Spanish

CO article

Struggling to have the Freedom of Conscience respected amidst civil war:
The Colombian Conscientious Objectors’ movement

By Janice Gallagher

Carlos Andres Hincapie, 18, had gone out to the store to buy eggs for his family’s breakfast when he ran into the military, who asked for his military identification card, certifying he had completed his military service. He told them he didn’t have one, and didn’t agree with military service. Without returning to his house, he was loaded onto the back of a military truck, and taken to the military barracks. He could not call his parents, and the next day was whisked off for “training” several hours away. Within two weeks, he was engaged in active duty military service. He signed a statement two months later certifying that he was a Conscientious Objector, and in return received harsh physical treatment at the hands of the military.

That was in August of 2006. Today, Carlos Andres remains in the military, where he has been forced to perform his military service despite his moral objections to the use of violence.

His case and hundreds of like his have inspired a youth movement in Colombia which is challenging the State’s right to force them to participate in Colombia’s bloody civil war. This May over 70 youth from all corners of Colombia, along with international supporters from 7 different countries, came together for a week-long conference in which they debated, danced, organized and educated others about the prospect of resisting military service based on a personal commitment to non-violence.

Sandra Grisales, an organizer with the Red Juvenil, or Youth Network, of Medellín explained “We are here as a group of young people imagining that a different world is possible...because we think the same way, and because we are celebrating our right to think freely. For me, injustice doesn’t help me at all, and I will not be part of continuing it.”

The reality for youth in Colombia today
In Colombia, forcibly recruiting youth to be involved in the over 40-year civil war has been regarded as just another tragic effect of the armed conflict. Over the past several years, however, an organized youth movement has emerged to challenge this aspect of the war. The movement’s premises are simple: they want the right to say no to participating in Colombia’s cycles of violence. Or, as Katedrá, a dancer with the Villarica Conscientious Objector hip hop group Soporte Klan explained “for me, liberty is the most important thing. I am awakened to do something in spite of all the difficulties we will face because today we are not free.”

Forced recruitment, or obligatory service, is carried out by every armed group within the Colombian civil war – the paramilitaries, the guerillas, and the “official” state army. While resisting recruitment by the “illegal armed actors” (the paramilitaries and guerrillas) is difficult, since by definition the groups and all of their activities are already illegal, the Conscientious Objectors have begun to seriously challenge the Colombian government’s right to obligate men over 18 to serve in the military.

Currently, all men over 18 must serve in the military unless they are displaced, indigenous, high school students, physically incapable of serving, heads of family themselves or the only child of their parents. Despite regulations guaranteeing youth the right to prove they are exempt from service, the most common form of military recruitment entails rounding up boys at places where they are likely to meet: at schools, parks, or dance and billiard halls, and whisking them off for their service without the opportunity (or, most likely, the information) to file for an exemption form service. Youth may “buy” their way out of military service for about $200, but this is not an option for many poor youth, and accordingly, poor youth make up the bulk of those that actually serve in the military.

Those who don’t succeed in obtaining the coveted libreta militar, or military service card, are denied opportunities for education and employment. Without the libreta, one cannot graduate from University or get a job with any private or public company, leaving only informal or illegal sector employment open to them.

As is true with many things in Colombia, there are written norms, regulations and laws, and then there is the way things really work. Often, youth never have a chance to prove that they are exempt. Often officials can be bribed into giving over the coveted libreta militar. And sometimes, officials decide to make an example of one person: In one case, a youth was displaced, the primary breadwinner in the family, a declared Conscientious Objector, and he was recruited illegally. He was recruited in November, and remains in the military despite numerous legal challenges on clearly valid grounds. After linking up with a local CO group to push his case, his mother has since asked that it be left alone, for fear of further repercussions against her son and her family.

Conscientious Objection in Colombia: A legal right?
There are two contradictory provisions in the 1991 Colombian Constitution: Article 18 in the section on fundamental rights guarantees that “nobody will be obligated to act against their conscience.” Article 216, in the section on the state forces, states “All Colombians are obligated to take up arms when the public interest necessitates in order to defend national independence and public institutions.” The Colombian Constitutional Court has ruled that there is no right to Conscientious Objection under Colombian law, citing Article 216. While this has obviously closed doors in the Colombian legal system, it has led the Colombian COs to look towards international law.

The UN’s Commission and Committee on Human Rights have long recognized the right of conscientious objection to military service “as part of the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion enshrined in Article 18 of both the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. ” In January of 2007, however, the UN Human Rights Committee, the legal body that rules on UN human rights, more strongly affirmed this right than ever before: they decided that South Korea had violated Article 18 by not providing for conscientious objection to military service for two Jehovah’s Witnesses (in the case of Mr. Yeo-Bum Yoon and Mr. Myung-Jin Choi v Republic of Korea),

Why should Colombia listen to the UN? Well, Colombia is a “party to both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ratified 29 October 1969),” it recognizes in its constitution the legitimacy of international law over domestic law when they contradict, and it also signed something called the “First Optional Protocol” with the UN, which means individuals can bring cases directly to the UN when they feel Colombian law is contradicting international law.
Since the Colombian Constitutional Court clearly demonstrated that there are no more legal remedies in Colombia, the door is open at the Committee on Human rights to consider the Colombian case. In 2004, they already indicated what they thought about Colombia’s view of COs stating “The Committee notes with concern that the legislation of the State [Colombia] party does not allow conscientious objection to military service.
The State party should guarantee that conscientious objectors are able to opt for alternative service whose duration would not have punitive effects. ”

At this CO conference, participants discussed possible test cases to bring to the UN Human Rights Committee. In one case, a declared Conscientious Objector has been denied his diploma despite finishing his university coursework because he has not completed his military service. According to another recognized UN statute, this is discrimination based on CO status, which is illegal. The hope is that with a ruling against the Colombian CO position, Colombia would be pressured to change its legal ruling.

CO movement in Colombia:
What everyone at the conference recognized, and what officials said the next week when faced with the clear legal case for the recognition of Conscientious Objection in Colombia, was that without a strong Colombian and international lobbying effort for this right, there would not be sufficient political will to push this change. It was with this knowledge that last week’s conference participants shared their individual organizing strategies, developed ways for expanding their movement, and took to the streets on the final day to spread their message.

Conference participants told of how they were creatively spreading the idea of conscientious objection in their home communities: In Sincelejo, the CO group has succeeded in using a government education department provision requiring that students be educated about alternatives to war to attain a permanent presence in four high schools. They give weekly classes educating students about their rights in the face of recruitment, and ask them to think critically about whether to serve in the military. In Villarica, a group of young COs have come together in a hip hop group where they sing, rap and dance about their commitment to non-violence and non-participation in the armed conflict. In Barranca, I heard about their efforts to assist youth who have been recruited illegally or against their will, and their legal and political fight to have them freed from service. In Medellín they told of courageous young men who have gone to the local army Brigade, presented their declaration as Conscientious Objectors, and are putting themselves on the line in order to build a legal case and precedence for the legalization of CO status.

As a group, the COs choreographed and performed compelling street theatre on some of the busiest corners in Medellin: they first walked around freely, and then silently paired off. They joined hands with their partner and pulled opposite ways, both desperately trying to go their own way, to symbolize forced military recruitment against their will. . They then let go of each other’s hands, both falling to the floor, demonstrating that after this recruitment against their will, everyone falls, everyone loses, and suffers. After a rapped mantra narrating the injustice of forced recruitment and the right to conscientious objection, the 70 corpses of the participants were simultaneously resuscitated, and they broke into song and dance, celebrating the life-giving power of the freedom of thought and the right to follow their conscience. They danced and sang their way down the streets of Medellin to the next metro stop, where they repeated their performance, and then publicly read their mission statement.

The Conscientious Objector Movement was born in 1988 in Colombia, and has started to build steam in the past several years, hosting four national conferences, and hosting their first international conference in June 2006. They have met since to arrive at their legal strategy and to bring together the thinking of the diverse group that makes up the COs.

Their hopes as a group are diverse, but nearly all of them recognize that it will be a long struggle. Freed Molina, a declared Conscientious Objector from Sincelejo said “I knoiw the struggle will be long, but I would like for Conscientious Objection to turn into a way of life...I hope that the demilitarization we are advocating for isn’t only legal, but that it extends to all acts and creates a pacifist revolution in a person’s being.”

They have realized as a group how vital international support is to their movement, and are arranging for international trips for many of their members. The idea is to find groups of people who will support their struggle for the recognition of CO status from outside the country by applying political pressure when a youth is recruited. If you are interested, please send an email to FOR Bogota at presenciaparalapaz@yahoo.com. We are currently gathering signatures to try and get Carlos Andres Hinacapie released from his unwilling military service.

colombian anti-privatization, buddhist poem, and COs

As has started to be the trend, the last couple weeks have been more intense than any to date. The Buddhists left, and that same day I flew up to Medellin and attended a weeklong Consciencious Objector conference (thanks to the generous sponsorship of one of the Buddhists who is also a Veteran for Peace and supporter of Consciencious Objectors). Consciencious Objection is not a recognized right in Colombia, though under the Constitution it should be. I am working on a long article about their efforts which I hope to have done in a couple days.

In the meantime, I returned to Bogotá, had lots of meetings with Embassies and Colombian officials concerning the safety of the community, particularly the humanitarian zones, and our concern about ongoing paramilitary-military cooperation. I droppped in on a HUGE national protest against privatization (specifically of the educational system and the TLC) and then Sunday I go to Medellín, where I will be doing a week-long accompaniment of the Campesino Association here.









This is a compilation of a series of poems the Buddhist delegation wrote. Have I mentioned that you should come on the August delegation?? Email me for more info.

Colombia is searching for a way of peace
Roosters make themselves known all day and night.
I was expecting rain but not this! Not this crash-bang-flash-smash-gush-rush or a flood-storm!
And after, it’s that horse sweat-river water-human-mud smell again
Slimy mango dribbles down my chin and I’d let it stay there forever
These fingers and eyes so open, softer than the rain
Still feeling the heat of the sun on my face, rain falls once more
I won’t forget that I speak this language, this world, with my whole heart
“I won’t forget you,” I said, “I swear”—and I don’t know her name or remember her story but it was not a lie.
Crumbling brick, shiny new high-rises
I learned that nothing is black and white.

Sign online Petition against Colombian Free Trade Agreement! Please

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/no_way_us-colombia_fta/index.html

found photos

Symptom of how hectic this month has been: My camera ran out of batteries two weeks ago, and today I had time to buy and put new batteries in, and discovered I had some pretty good pictures of things I had almost forgotten I had seen. For example, I saw crabs for sale on a rope while in Apartadó. So, gracias to my camera, here are some more memories from April...and a little of May.

Villavicencio: About 3 hours South East of Bogotá, gateway to the plains, home to my friend Toni, and famous for carne janera, a special tender kind of slow-roasted meat.


Mireille and I eating raw cacao, the seed you make chocolate out of. You actually just suck on the white fuzzy stuff on the outside of the seed, and then spit out the seed, because it is really bitter until it is roasted, ground, and then combined with sugar.
The Peace Community makes amazing cacao, and if anyone is, by any chance looking to import tons (literally) of cacao which is awaiting organic certification, or knows anyone who is, let me know. seriously.

A river crossing in Suesca, the paradise about an hour north of Bogotá where I try to go on the weekends.

A really really big ant in the Peace Community. There were lots of them, and they were as big as quarters. I don't think they bite, though I didn't test this theory.

A cross overlooking La Unión in the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, where I have spent a total of about two months.

As promised, crabs on ropes waiting to be sold in "downtown" Apartadó. The crabs are caught in the very dirty river that runs through town. I don't know if they are good...I have somehow restrained myself from trying them yet.

Cute puppies at Toni's house.