RALEIGH -- Early next year, in January and again in March, I will lead delegations of U.S. citizens to Colombia. We will meet with Colombian human rights workers, church leaders, community leaders and ordinary people. We will travel into war zones to see firsthand the impact of U.S. military aid on the Colombian people. We will learn what our tax dollars are doing in Colombia.
Last summer, Congress approved more than $1 billion in aid for Plan Colombia, President Andres Pastrana's policy to solve Colombia's problems by mostly military means. The bulk of the U.S. aid (at least 65 percent) is military support and weaponry. Before the aid could be distributed, however, Colombia was to come into compliance with basic human rights standards.
Recently, President Clinton horrified human rights organizations by waiving the requirement for compliance, and thus the aid is beginning to pour into Colombia. U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., summed it up by saying " ...although Plan Colombia was originally intended ...to be a multinational aid package, it has now (become) a U.S. military operation ... the United States is about to implement a plan to spray chemicals on Colombian subsistance farmers and attack them with helicopter gunships while the Colombian government allows paramilitary groups to massacre them."
Just what is the U.S. getting involved in?
We know that almost 30,000 Colombians are killed intentionally every year -- 80 people each day. More than 300,000 Colombians have died in the violence over the past 15 years. Nearly 2 million people have been displaced from their homes due to violence.
Ricardo Esquivia, a Mennonite human rights and peace advocate, reminds us, "Just as lighter fluid among flames produces more fire, more arms produce war."
Clinton has waived the human rights conditions that would have tempered the new military aid. I and the Witness for Peace community are compelled by conscience to go to Colombia to document and protest the human rights violations and the deaths of innocent people that will ensue from it.
I will answer the call from Witness for Peace to stand with the Colombian people and lead others in doing so. Going to Colombia is the next step for me of a witness for peace that has led me to Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti and Cuba. Since my early 20s, I have heard the call of my Latin American brothers and sisters. I have heard their cry for justice.
We will go in the tradition of nonviolent protest. We will expose the human cost of a deadly U.S. policy guided by economic interests. We will return to inform people of the tragic reality that confronts the Colombian people, made so much worse by U.S. military aid.
I ask that people pray for the countless brave Colombians who are struggling to remain nonviolent and build a just peace in their country.
Gail S. Phares is with Witness for Peace, Southeast Region.
© Copyright 2000, The News & Observer
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