femmes de Colombie

 

 

 

NATIONAL MOBILIZATION OF WOMEN AGAINST THE WAR

MAY 16, 2002 COLOMBIA, SOUTH AMERICA

The women who have signed below unite our voices and actions against the war because

The rupture of the peace process will make even more cruel and painful the situation of women whose human rights have been violated by the various armed actors before, during and after the breakdown of dialogues between the Government and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). Retaliation is often based on the way in which one has expressed her love, and women are murdered because they are sweethearts, girlfriends, mothers, sisters, lovers of guerrillas, police and soldiers, members of the AUC (United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia). Hanging and public scorn because of one’s manner of dress, loss of the right to circulate freely in the streets, neighborhoods and sidewalks; selective assassinations of women purported to be collaborators with one actor or another; women of all ages raped by the various actors confronting one another; internal and external displacements of people; seizure of homes by armed actors to convert them into centers of operation; prohibition against picking up, conducting a wake and burying their dead; closing of schools adding even more burden to the domestic duties of women all these are facts of daily life for millions of us in Colombia, A COUNTRY AT WAR.

The alternatives of political settlement to resolve the armed conflict are going through a grave crisis. The exclusionary model employed by the Government and the FARC, without participation of the people, negotiating in the midst of the armed confrontation and without an agreement regarding Human Rights and the DIH (International Humanitarian Law) to protect the people all contributed to an agonizing birth for this process. The process with the ELN (National Liberation Army) is not advancing. However, the Social Movement of Women, other social movements, and the Movement of Citizens for Peace persist in calling for a negotiated settlement. We view with terror the spectacle of war, which is nothing other than the continuation of a patriarchal conception that views war as the midwife of history and of humanity and which, unfortunately, today dictates the destinies of the world and of our country.

An even more brazen move has been the formation of a para-state, which is a de facto replacement for constitutional government and which imposes coercive measures on the civil population and totally destroys the model of democratic authority. The war economy results in more women living in poverty in Colombia, less possibility for participation, greater unemployment and cutting of all social programs that have been achievements of the women’s social movements that seek the rights we continue to demand.

We women do not give birth nor do we rear children for war. We urge the disarmament of both bodies and spirits. We want no more armed solutions. We demand answers to the social and armed conflict from the civil society. Militarization of life in the city and in the rural areas only leads to an expansion of the violence and attracts new actors to the war.

WE PROPOSE:

To build A NATIONAL MOVEMENT OF WOMEN AGAINST THE WAR, which willbe a PERMANENT PROCESS that will include actions and events starting on 16 MAY with THE GREAT NATIONAL MOBILIZATION OF WOMEN AGAINST THE WAR and the arrival of thousands of women to the Plaza de Bolivar in the city of Bogota.

WE CALL ON:

Women who are in favor of a civil, autonomous and democratic approach to a life with dignity to participate in the organization of the movement by mobilizing from all corners of the country:

• Against the war
• For political negotiation
• For the demilitarization of civil life and the recovery of citizens’ rights for all the men and women of Colombia
• For the direct and autonomous participation of women in the negotiations and the peace process.

REPRESENTATIVES AT THE CONFERENCE:

• ORGANIZACION FEMENINA POPULAR
• RUTA PACIFICA DE LAS MUJERES POR LA RESOLUCION NEGOCIADA DE LOS CONFLICTOS
• MESA NACIONAL DE CONCERTACION DE MUJERES (ANMUCIC, ANUC-UR, FEDEMUC, MOVIMIENTO NACIONAL DE MUJERES AUTORAS ACTORAS DE PAZ, MOVIMIENTO POPULAR DE MUJERES, DIALOGO MUJER, CENTRAL UNITARIA DETRABAJADORES-CUT,ASO DEMUC, PROYECTO PASOS, MUJERES DE INZA, CASA DE LA MUJER, ASAMBLEA DE LA SOCIEDAD CIVIL POR LA PAZ, RED DE MUJERES JOVENES FEMINISTAS POR LA PAZ, FUNDACION ABRIENDO CAMINOS A LA DIFERENCIA, RED DISTRITAL DE SALUD DE LA MUJER DEL SECTOR POPULAR)
• RED NACIONAL DE MUJERES
• INICIATIVA DE MUJERES COLOMBIANAS POR LA PAZ

ENDORSED BY:

• PAZ COLOMBIA.
• MUJERES UNIDAS POR UNA COLOMBIA MEJOR
• MUJERES ARTISTAS POR LA VIDA Y POR LA PAZ
• COLECTIVO DE JOVENES HUITACA
• FUNDACION PUERTAS DE ESPERANZA
• FUNDACION SEDES
• RED DE MUJERES COMUNITARIAS DE ALTOS DE CAZUCA
• ASOCIACION JUANA DE ARCO
• ASOCIACION DE MUJERES COMUNITARIAS DE PUENTEARANDA

Bogota, march 2002 Translate by Trisha J. NOVAK, USA.

Diffused by "Network Women in Black against War"

---

February 2002
The "International Women in Black network against war"

invite you to send these letters regarding the FEBRUARY 14th event in solidarity with "Women in Black from Colombia" (The Organizacion Feminina Popular and la Ruta Pacífica) to those political leaders you consider appropriate.

We will appreciate you sending also these letters as many people as possible.

Thank you in advance.
Women in Black against War

SEE

• letter to the politic leaders
• addresses (embassies and EU)
• 14th of February in Madrid

---

La Rage au coeur ("The Rage in My Heart"),

by Ingrid BETANCOURT

Source : DIGITAL FREEDOM NETWORK: North and Latin America

A breath of fresh air by Robert Lebowitz, Digital Freedom Network
(January 9, 2002) It's a beautiful land, but its people have "hollow eyes."

This is how Ingrid Betancourt describes Colombia in her book La Rage au coeur, ("The Rage in My Heart"), released this month in the United States under the title Until Death Do Us Part: My Struggle to Reclaim Colombia. As a young woman, Betancourt's desire to return to her native land brought her back there after a privileged childhood and adolescence in France. Soon after her return to Colombia, she got involved in the battle against the rampant corruption and war that she saw as destroying her people.

Betancourt's devotion to her cause resonated with Colombians, who elected her to both to the Senate and the House of Representatives. This success, as well as her disgust at the "betrayal" of current Colombian president Andres Pastrana, has led her to seek the office herself this May as the candidate for her self-created Oxygen party, so called for the "breath of fresh air" she hopes to breathe into Colombia's decaying political structure.

As she relates in her book, Betancourt's political successes have come at much personal sacrifice: her first marriage dissolved when her husband opposed her desire to live in Colombia; she has received numerous death threats; she has been forced to send her children to New Zealand to live with her ex-husband out of fear for their safety. However, as much as Betancourt relates her anguish over the political fallout on her family, she is undaunted in her struggle to bring Colombia into the "first rays of the dawn" which she sees.

Continual bloodshed

There is no question that Colombia is drowning in corruption and bloodshed. According to Human Rights Watch's report for 2001, there were 98 massacres-accounting for 568 victims-registered in the first six months of 2001, up from 84 massacres in 2000 over the same time period. Human rights defenders, journalists, and community leaders continue to account for most of the murdered. In June 2001, Alma Rosa Jaramillo Lafourie, a human rights defender, was kidnapped and later murdered by paramilitary groups. This past November, six mayors and their human rights adviser were abducted by paramilitaries. And most recently on this past New Year's Eve, a law student was shot dead as he led a group of villagers trying to defend their town against a rebel attack.

The violence, however, is not only directed towards the most vocal, but rather is visited upon all segments of society. Betancourt states that Colombia's casualty rate is 30,000 deaths a year. A sample examination of one month by Amnesty International demonstrates the regular atrocities that befall common people. In October 2001, ten fisherman attending a party in Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta were abducted and subsequently killed. Another massacre took place during the same time period in the communities of La Habana and Alaska, where members of a paramilitary group forced several families out of their homes. After separating the men from the women, the paramilitaries made them lie face-down on the ground and shot them dead. Eighteen people were killed during these incursions.

Last month, the United States government, which gives US $1.3 billion in aid to Colombia each year, delivered an ultimatum to the Pastrana government. It demanded that Colombian elected officials hold the paramilitary groups accountable for the violence and prosecute them in civilian courts. Additionally, the U.S. insisted that, in order to receive the American aid package, Colombia must sever the ties between its military and the paramilitary groups.

 

A long history of violence

Almost since its independence in 1819, Colombia has been rife with violence, springing primarily from the conflict between the Liberals, who favored distributing power from the central government to its constituents, and the Conservatives, who wanted power to be concentrated in the hands of the government. This ongoing struggle reached its climax in 1948, when 300,000 Colombians were killed in a civil war since dubbed La Violencia. After the smoke from this war cleared, Conservatives and Liberals agreed to share power in 1957 in a government called the National Front.

The National Front and a modified version of it lasted for the next 35 years, but not without resentment building among a large proportion of Colombians who desired more representation. During the Liberal-Conservative government, a number of guerilla groups sprang up with the intention of overthrowing the government. These included the National Liberation Army (ELN), the April 19 Movement (M19), and the main rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). At the same time, paramilitary groups emerged to protect the drug cartels in Medellín and Cali, which proved to be a great source of income for Colombians, bringing in an estimated US $5 billion a year. During this time, Colombia became divided among the competing interests of the ruling parties, and the guerilla and paramilitary groups.

A typical battle will involve the left-leaning FARC squaring off against a right-leaning paramilitary group such as the AUC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In one such five-day skirmish in Colombia's northern mountains three weeks ago, 30 FARC guerillas and 14 AUC paramilitaries were killed. Both sides were battling over control of a cocaine-producing area.

Rather than making efforts to disband paramilitary and guerilla groups, the Colombian government has many times actively assisted them.

Rather than making concerted efforts to disband these paramilitary and guerilla groups, the Colombian government has in many instances actively assisted them. Human Rights Watch presents much evidence of Colombian army brigades and police detachments working with the paramilitaries. Government and paramilitary units have shared fighters, vehicles and intelligence. Despite warnings of impending attacks on villages or prominent Colombians, security forces have allowed the paramilitary groups to wreak havoc on their targets with impunity.

This comes as no surprise to many Colombians, who have seen President Ernesto Samper (1994-1998) implicated in the Cali drug trade and current President Pastrana refuse to take effective action against human rights abuses. Although elected on a platform that had as its main objective the eradication of corruption, Pastrana has cut the budgets of government institutions investigating human rights cases, has failed to protect prosecutors, investigators, and witnesses to abuse, and has not prosecuted members of his security force who have abetted paramilitary violence.

As it stands now, whatever effort Pastrana has made in making peace with FARC stands at the brink of total collapse. His meeting on January 7 with FARC's supreme commander Manuel Marulanda began without Marulanda: the leader arrived late, thus embarrassing the president. According to an opinion poll released this week by the Colombian Caracol broadcasting company, fully 95 percent of Colombians believe the next round of peace talks will produce nothing.

 

Enter Betancourt

In her 1994 campaign, Betancourt passed out condoms for protection against corruption, the "AIDS of Colombia."

It is against this background of violence, corruption, and impasse that Ingrid Betancourt campaigns for reform. Her widely published accusations of corruption against President Samper (ironically an old friend of the Betancourt family) and her public condemnation of FARC have earned her support among many Colombians who long to renew their faith in democracy. Her past tactics have been bold and ostentatious: in her 1994 campaign for the House of Representatives, Betancourt went out on the street passing out condoms, symbolic of protection against corruption, "the AIDS of Colombia." In 1996, when an investigative commission comprised of representatives was convened to judge whether President Samper was guilty of corruption, Betancourt staged a hunger strike in order to get herself -as an independent, untainted by corruption -appointed on the commission. Betancourt passed out after two weeks without food and was fed intravenously in the hospital, and Samper was eventually exonerated of all charges, but her actions made her a prominent political force in the eyes of many Colombians.

Of course, not all Colombians support the outspoken candidate. She first tried to publish La Rage au coeur in Colombia, but she could not find a publisher. Eventually, the book was accepted by a publisher in France. (During this time, Samper sued Betancourt for libel and tried to block its publication. A court ruled against Samper, but mandated that an editor's note be placed in the book with Samper's side of the story. This was done, and the book became the number-one best-seller for 13 weeks.)

Additionally, Semana, Colombia's leading news magazine, has criticized her harshly, mocking her as a self-designated "Joan of Arc" and calling her writing "narcissistic and messianic." It quoted the Colombian ambassador to Paris as saying that Betancourt's book presents "serious inaccuracies" in its portrayals of the vast corruption inside Colombia.

The article in Semana condescendingly concluded by saying that Betancourt "was a joke in traditional political circles" but stated that she will certainly "give the upcoming presidential candidacy its necessary color." Betancourt, however, has experience playing the role of the underestimated underdog: in 1994, she was seen as having no chance of being elected to the House of Representatives and yet she won a surprising victory. And with the increasing frustrations with corruption in the traditional parties along with greater financial pressure from the U.S. to end the violence, Betancourt's "color" might be just what Colombians need right now.

Copyright (c) 2001 Digital Freedom Network (http://dfn.org). All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced or redistributed for online not-for-profit use without prior written consent as long as DFN is recognized with this credit. For information about DFN's permissions policy, see <http://dfn.org/about/permissions.htm>.

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