US activists protest at US embassy in Bogota

US activists voice thier opposition to Plan Colombia in front of the US Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, on Mar. 22, 2001.

By Brendan Conley

Bogota, Colombia, Mar. 22— One hundred US citizens held a peaceful vigil in front of the US embassy here on Thursday, protesting US military aid and aerial fumigation in Colombia. Wearing blue t-shirts bearing the slogan “solidarity in action,” the activists carried paper doves and sang songs of peace; they brought offerings of fruit and flowers as symbols of their wishes for the people of Colombia.

“We beseech the US government to end the policy of aerial fumigation and instead devote resources to crop substitution, manual eradication efforts, and alternative development projects,” the activists said in a statement.

The Colombian government, with funding and training from the US, is carrying out aerial fumigation of coca crops with Monsanto’s Roundup Ultra. Farmers in affected areas have complained that the fumigation destroys food crops and harms the environment.

The activists, here on a human rights delegation with the organization Witness for Peace, said that the fumigation program is a destructive and ineffective method of combating the drug trade. The delegates spent ten days in Colombia learning about the human rights situation and the role of the US government.

The citizens also said that US military aid is intensifying Colombia’s civil war. “We have serious reservations about US military aid that seems to be escalating the conflict, creating vastly more human suffering, and undermining the peace process,” they said.

Colombia has been wracked by a decades-long civil war that has seen horrific human rights violations carried out by right-wing paramilitary forces, by the Colombian military, and by leftist guerrilla groups.

The peace activists apologized to the Colombian people for the role of their government. “We ask for forgiveness from the Colombian people for the destruction wrought by our government,” they said.

The protesters said they would return home to organize for change in US policies toward Colombia. “We have come to the conclusion that helicopters and guns will not solve the problems of poverty in the Andes, or drug addiction in the United States,” they said.

US funds fumigation in Colombia

By Brendan Conley

Puerto Asis, Colombia, Mar. 20— The US military aid and aerial fumigation of coca fields in southern Colombia is having disastrous effects on human health and the environment. Farmers and community leaders in the southern department of Putumayo said that the spraying is killing food crops, causing skin disease, and destroying the environment.

“We had plantains and bananas planted, and it has all been destroyed,” said Rigoberto Rosaro, a community leader in the town of La Concordia. “We think the land might not be suitable for planting anymore.”

In meetings with a human rights delegation from the United States, dozens of farmers and local officials reported the destruction of thousands of acres of food crops. “The fumigation was disastrous,” said Orlando Munoz, the mayor of La Dorada. “It was destructive to human and animal life, and to the biodiversity.”

The spraying is part of Plan Colombia, the Colombian government’s plan to fight drug production and rebel armies. The fumigation is funded by the United States, and carried out with Roundup Ultra, a formulation of the herbicide glyphosate that is produced by Monsanto. Monsanto is known for its production of Agent Orange, the carcinogenic chemical used by the US to defoliate Vietnam.

The destruction is easily observable here, with banana trees, grazing land, and food crops brown and withering. And the desperation is written clearly on the faces of the people. “People come into my office crying because they don’t have anything to eat,” said Munoz.

Campesinos here are also concerned about the environmental effects of the fumigation. “The animals we hunt and the fish in the streams have been destroyed,” said an indigenous man in the town of La Dorada.

People here question the wisdom of spraying herbicide on rainforest lands. “If this policy continues, the fumigation will extend to the Amazon, which is called the lungs of the world,” said Munoz.

Fumigation has affected human health in other ways as well. In the indigenous community of La Isla, small children are covered with sores, an affliction that the villagers say appeared suddenly on December 23, the day after fumigation began. The villagers said that a doctor told them the sickness was the result of the fumigation.

Officials of the Colombian military were skeptical. “I don’t believe it,” said Colonel Roberto Trujillo, commander of the Anti-Narcotics Special Forces Brigade in Putumayo. He said he had witnessed a government official drink a full glass of glyphosate, and the man was not harmed. “Glyphosate is not poisonous to the land,” he said.

US Embassy officials concurred with this view, saying that glyphosate is less harmful than aspirin or salt. Furthermore, they said, small farmers are not targeted by fumigation. “Our policy is to try to focus on industrial production,” said David Becker, an embassy official.

Fumigation has failed in its stated goal of reducing coca production, according to Ricardo Vargas, of Accion Andina. During the past five years, fumigation has steadily increased, while coca production has also increased, said Vargas.

Coca production is ubiquitous in Putumayo, with fields lining major roads, and coca growing near churches and schools, and adjacent to legitimate farms. Though campesinos make only 1% of the profit of the international drug trade, coca is one of the few viable cash crops in this isolated region.

“The government has categorized us as drug dealers, but we barely have enough to get by,” said Luis Alberto, secretatry to the governor of an indigenous reserve in Putumayo.

People here expressed their desire to make a transition to legitimate crops. “We are ready and willing to change over to alternative crops, but we need the help of the government,” said Alberto. The problem is that alternative crops, intended to replace coca, have been destroyed by the fumigation, according to local farmers. Some farmers signed agreements with the government to manually eradicate their coca. This was supposed to delay fumigation of their lands for one year, but many farmers here report that their lands were fumigated anyway.

Luis Carlos, the mayor of La Isla, said that his community had begun manual eradication and crop substitution, but they were still fumigated. He indicated an empty chicken coop. “This was a place where coca was processed,” he said. “When we started the manual eradication program, we agreed to raise chickens here. The fumigation killed the chickens.”

Leaders here said that the social investment component of Plan Colombia had not reached the countryside. “Our government has received a lot of money, but the campesinos have not received any of it,” said Rigoberto Rosaro, a community leader in the town of La Concordia. The government normally offers benefits to people displaced by violence in Colombia, but leaders here said that people displaced by fumigation are not officially recognized as displaced. They are instead referred to as “mobilized,” and are not eligible for government help.

Putumayo is caught in the crossfire of Colombia’s decades-long civil war, and organizers here said that US military aid is intensifying the violence. “Plan Colombia is a plan for war,” said Sister Rosa Elena, of the Missionaries of Mary the Co-Redeemer, in La Hormiga. She said the town had been occupied by the FARC, but was taken over by right-wing paramilitary forces. The paramilitaries assassinated several civilians, she said.

Paramilitary groups are responsible for the majority of human rights violations in Colombia, and the people of Putumayo have been subjected to horrific violence. In 1999, 26 residents of the village of El Tigre were massacred by paramilitary forces. The victims were tortured, and their bodies were cut open with machetes and thrown into the river, according to Juana Ehachinoy, a survivor of the massacre.

These paramilitary or “self-defense” groups were originally organized by the Colombian government, but now they are officially defined as “illegal armed actors.” Still, a relationship persists between paramilitaries and the legal armed forces. La Santana military base, where Col. Trujillo’s batallion is headquartered, sits 700 meters away from a gated compound that local residents said is a paramilitary base. In the town of Parronquia del Placer, armed, uniformed agents of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), the largest paramilitary group, patrolled the town unmolested, a short distance from a major military presence, in the town of La Hormiga. The paramilitary forces receive much of their funding from the coca trade, as do the rebel groups. And they receive support from large landowners, as well as peasants who have been victims of human rights violations by the guerrilla groups.

The Colombian military itself has committed numerous human rights violations, including a massacre of school children in August of last year. In the town of La Dorada, Colombian soldiers had occupied the Technical and Commercial High School, a violation of international humanitarian law.

People here emphasized the need for help from US citizens to change the policies of their government toward Colombia. International help is needed, but of a different kind than what is being given, said local leaders. “Stop sending things for war,” said Carlos. “With bombs, grenades, and guns, there are no solutions. We want support from the United States, but we want education and health care and tools to work with.”

Mohawks open border for FTAA opponents

By Carlyn Zwarenstein

Mar. 20— Americans coming north to protest free trade talks in Quebec City next month will find the border open, if Shawn Brant has his way.

A Mohawk from the community of Tyendinaga and an organizer with the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (OCAP), Brant will take part in a plan to open the international border near Cornwall, Ont., on the weekend of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas talks in Quebec City (April 20-22).The border cuts through the Mohawk territory of Akwesasne, which overlaps Ontario, Quebec and the United States.

“My motivation is to assert and reinforce the sovereign integrity of Mohawk people within the Mohawk nation and to bring the organizing bodies together so we can stand and fight in preparation for the fall,” he says, referring to a series of actions with which OCAP and allied groups plan to confront the Ontario government. “We will engage in attacks against the provincial economy and the provincial infrastructure. We will shut down highways, roadways, and bridges until this government is brought to its knees.” As Brant describes it, people will assemble in Cornwall on April 19 and then move into Akwesasne, while supporters from the US will gather on the American side of the border. And then?

“The Mohawks of Akwesasne will have pre-secured the bridge,” says Brant, though he is reluctant to go into details. “That’s probably something that wouldn’t be best to publish, tactically,” he says. “We are preparing for every possible scenario. Certainly an aggressive stand by the state would not stop us from pursuing our objective — we’ll respond to force with force and to opposition with opposition.”

Meanwhile, OCAP is forming networks with Mohawk communities in the area. A recent OCAP tour raised interest among Oneida, Cayuga and Seneca communities south of the border.

The action has been endorsed by the Cornwall Labor Council (CLC), the Kingston-based People’s Community Union (PCU) and members of the Mohawk communities of Akwesasne and Kahnawake. The CLC has sent letters to the elected leadership in Akwesasne, requesting their support.

Brant maintains that although some members of the Akwesasne Mohawk community may oppose a potentially explosive action, none oppose opening the border. “The border is a barrier to community life in Akwesasne,” says Brant, who must submit to car searches and ID checks at Customs in order to visit relatives who live in the same Mohawk territory, but across the border. “It is the right of the Mohawk nation to determine who can cross the border,” he adds.

According to Darren Bonaparte, the Akwesasne author of A Line on a Map: A Mohawk Perspective on the International Border at Akwesasne, the Mohawks have had a love-hate relationship with the border over the years. During Prohibition it provided opportunity for illegal profit through alcohol trading.

The border action was news to Canada Customs spokesperson Collette Gentes-Hawn. “Have we been officially notified?” she asks. Still, she’s not surprised. “This wouldn’t be the first time there are demonstrations on this bridge,” she adds, noting that a court case relating to the border is outstanding. The case, launched by Grand Chief Mike Mitchell and the Mohawk Council, alleges that the feds knew about cigarette smuggling across the border, but used the Mohawks as scapegoats rather than acting against the tobacco industry.

According to Brant, the action is really about the free-trade-friendly policies of the Ontario government, which are of concern to poor people and First Nations alike: “[Free trade] does everything to help corporations, and absolutely shit to help people in poverty.”

“If they [police] are going to bring their plastic bullets and their tear gas and the billy clubs, I don’t think they are going to find a group of people who are prepared to run away from that level of police brutality,” Brad Waugh, a member of the People’s Community Union, a Kingston-based anti-poverty group, said.

Bush chooses Contra booster for Americas post

By Jim Lobe

Washington, DC, Mar. 23 (IPS)— George W. Bush has nominated Otto Reich, a Cuban exile who played a controversial role boosting the Nicaraguan contras, to the State Department’s top post for Latin America. This marks a major victory for hard-line anti-Castro and other right-wing forces in the new administration.

They lobbied hard for Reich’s appointment as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs as payback in part for the role played by Cuban-American exiles in delivering the critical state of Florida — and, with it, the election of Bush.

Indeed, the appointment came directly from the White House with only the most cursory input by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell had previously favored a career foreign service officer, Donna Hrinak, currently US ambassador to Venezuela, according to knowledgeable sources.

Although the betting now is that Reich will be confirmed by the Senate, some key lawmakers have indicated they are prepared to fight to defeat his nomination.

Sen. Christopher Dodd, the Democrats’ unofficial spokesman on Latin America issues since the contra war during the Ronald Reagan era, has warned that Reich’s policy preferences and past performance could make it very difficult to forge a bipartisan policy toward the region.

Some business interests whose top priority over the next four years is negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement for the Americas (FTAA) have also expressed fears that Reich’s hard-line views toward Cuba and his penchant for belligerence and pressure tactics could make him a convenient and high-profile target for forces which oppose such an accord.

Reich, who emigrated from Cuba to the United States in 1960 at the age of 15, has worked most recently as a highly successful lobbyist.

In the mid-1990s, he helped draft the Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the 41-year-old trade embargo against Cuba by threatening lawsuits against foreign firms which acquire an interest in expropriated property there.

As a lobbyist, Reich’s clients included British American Tobacco (BAT), Lockheed-Martin, Mobil Oil, and Bacardi-Martini, which was a major beneficiary of Helms-Burton and has paid him over half a million dollars over the past several years, according to the New York Times.

He is chiefly known for his controversial role in the mid-1980s as the head of the State Department’s Office of Latin American Public Diplomacy, which was set up and run by the White House primarily as a mechanism for boosting the cause of the Nicaraguan contras in the United States.

The office’s operations were described by the General Accounting Office (GAO) during the Iran-Contra scandal as “prohibited, covert propaganda activities’’, which included writing and disseminating columns and other material in the name of contra leaders for publication in US newspapers.

A 1988 staff report by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives also found “extensive involvement of intelligence community personnel’’ by Reich’s office “to establish, maintain and manage private domestic entities engaged in fundraising, lobbying, propaganda and manipulation of the media in contravention of US laws and regulations.’’

At one point, five intelligence experts from the Army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group at Ft. Bragg, as well as veteran Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers, were working with Reich on propaganda and related activities — all of which was banned under US law.

As the Office’s director, Reich also became notorious in press circles for his angry calls to editors of media to complain vehemently about reporting which reflected negatively on the contras. At one point, he accused National Public Radio (NPR) of acting like “Radio Havana on the Potomac.’’

For his efforts, Reich was rewarded with a plum diplomatic post — ambassador to Venezuela — just as the Iran-Contra investigation was gaining momentum.

Declassified State Department cables also show an abiding interest by Reich in the release from Venezuelan prison of Cuban- American exile, Orlando Bosch, who was charged with masterminding the bombing of a Cuban airliner over Barbados which killed all 73 people aboard.

Upon Bosch’s release and deportation to the United States in 1990, then-President George Bush pardoned him for terrorist acts of which he was convicted in a US court in the late 1960s.

Reich’s advocates, led by some of the most zealous anti-Castro lawmakers in the US Congress, insist that he is a seasoned diplomat who will not permit his strong anti-Communist feelings to divert him from other US interests in the hemisphere, particularly in expanding trade and investment and in prosecuting the drug war in Colombia and the Andean region.

They point to his service before joining the Reagan administration as director from 1976-1981 of the Washington office of the Council of the Americas, a trade group of major US companies with interests in Latin America.

In addition to his ties to the hard-line Cuban exile community, Reich, who began his political life as a Democrat, also has friends among neo-conservatives who are claiming an increasing number of slots at the second and third tiers in the national-security bureaucracies of the administration.

He serves on the board of directors of several organizations, such as New York-based Freedom House, which receive government funding to carry out “democracy-promotion’’ programs in developing countries and Eastern Europe.

Reich himself headed the Latin America division of the US Agency for International Development during the first two years of the Reagan administration.

Reich also is not the only senior appointee whose ties to the contra war are controversial. Bush’s pick for UN Ambassador, John Negroponte, served as ambassador to Honduras when the CIA helped establish contra bases there and trained special Honduran forces which became notorious for death-squad operations.

While Negroponte himself was never implicated directly in those activities, he often insisted that there was no evidence of the existence of death squads.