What our US tax dollars are supporting in Colombia

CPTnet 14 May 2007 COLOMBIA: Mining leaders under military pressure by Joel Klassen On Saturday, 28 April at approximately 2:30 p.m., Sgt. Vargas of the Colombian Army's Nueva Granada Battalion stopped mining leaders Emiliano Garcia, Omar Nuñez, and Orlando Roa, as well as CPTers Joel Klassen and Doug Pritchard, as they were all walking to the miners' homes in the mountains of the south of Bolivar. Vargas recorded their names, home communities, and identification numbers in a fresh notebook containing no other names. The CPTers noted that Vargas stopped only the group of mining leaders, allowing other people to pass along the path unmolested. While Sgt. Vargas was detaining the group, mining leaders conversed with him, saying that in the past, the military has taken down people's names, and then passed them to armed paramilitaries, who subsequently killed people from the list in the nearby town of Santa Rosa. The army sergeant listened attentively, expressing his agreement that such acts were wrong, but claiming that his unit did not do this. CPT has heard from mining zone residents that soldiers of the Nueva Granada Battalion have been saying that the "Black Eagles" will come to the area after them. The Black Eagles are a paramilitary group re-formed out of the groups that recently demobilized, and are appearing in certain parts of Colombia. One resident told CPTers that he saw a Black Eagles armband hanging on a tree beside a path in the mining zone. Pritchard and Klassen spoke the next day with Captain Cruz, naming their concern regarding his order to his sergeant to record certain citizens' names. Cruz claimed that people who have nothing to hide should not worry about giving their names, and that taking down names formed part of "active military control" of the zone. CPT is very concerned that the Colombian army is conducting itself in a way that is creating an atmosphere of fear among the communities of the south of Bolivar, especially among the Federation of Agricultural Miners of the South of Bolivar. The incident at the checkpoint occurred as the Federation leaders were returning from a cancelled meeting with the national government related to human rights and mining. The very day of the meeting, Federation president Teofilo Acuna, a well-known community leader, was arrested on charges of rebellion. Numerous people approached CPTers during their time in the mining zone to express their concern for Acuna. Federation leaders have said to CPT that they are concerned the army is persecuting them because of their work to preserve and enhance their way of life, and their resistance the entry of the multinational AngloGold Ashanti into the zone. Members of the Nueva Granada Battalion killed leader Alejandro Uribe on 19 September 2006, claiming that he was a guerrilla. Hundreds of enraged miners immediately went to Santa Rosa for a forty-day-long action calling for an investigation into Uribe's killing. The government has yet to complete this investigation. _______________ Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of Christian denominations.