04462
October 15, 2004

Christian groups push Bush/Kerry campaigns on Colombia policy

Letter to the candidates calls for ‘reassessment’

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE — Twenty-five national religious leaders and over 600 Protestant and Catholic church-goers are urging President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry to take a new look at U.S. policy to Colombia.

       A letter outlining a new three-point strategy was sent yesterday to both presidential candidates in hopes of spurring the campaigns to “seriously reassess” current U.S. policy in Colombia.

       It warns the two leaders: “Colombia is one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a religious leader, promoter of peace, or human rights defender. That danger is consistently brought to light as astonishing numbers of religious and civil society leaders are assassinated, threatened and detained.

       “The suffering of the Colombian churches and their call to us for assistance and solidarity compel us to appeal to you to seriously consider recommendations for a new U.S. policy toward Colombia that are outlined below.”

       The letter calls for:

• A greater commitment to a negotiated, political path towards peace;
• Increased attention to social concerns as a preferred long-term strategy to sustainable peace;
• Humane drug policies that meet the needs of those most directly impacted, including an increase in drug treatment and prevention programs to curtail drug use in the United States.

       According to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, the United States has roughly 400 military personnel in Colombia.

       But the Bush Administration announced its intention in March to double the number of military personnel as part of its efforts to renew “Plan Colombia,” a massive anti-drug program in which the United States has already spent more than $3 billion, the vast majority of it in military aid.

       Colombia is the third largest recipient of U.S. aid, after Israel and Egypt.

       Plan Colombia was initiated by the Clinton Administration to stop the nearly $40 billion-a-year flow of cocaine to the United States, nearly 80 percent of which comes from Colombia. But its critics charge that the anti-drug dollars have been siphoned into a counterinsurgency campaign in a nation combating the oldest, best-established revolutionary force in the hemisphere.

       “The United States can make a significant contribution to the long-term sustainability of peace in Colombia by shifting the focus of its aid to that country toward a greater emphasis on effective social development,” said Lutheran World Relief President Katherine Wolford.

       Such developmental funding, she said, would acknowledge the work of churches, local governments and other civil institutions that are “working together for lasting alternatives to violence and the inequality and poverty that sustain it.”

       The letter puts that argument more concisely: “The conflict in Colombia and involvement of peasant farmers in coca production is deeply rooted in social and economic exclusion of many of its citizens. Many of the areas most in conflict have little or no social infrastructure or viable economic options.

       “Strategies that rely primarily on military aid or fumigation, and provide only limited social investment in local communities, will not create lasting change.”

       It goes on to urge the campaigns to escalate social development that would buttress local initiatives to alleviate inequalities and poverty by creating alternatives to the violence that has torn the country apart for the last 40 years. It also stresses the work of the international and local churches to address the needs of the more than 3 million Colombians who have been displaced by violence since 1985.

       “We are grateful,” the letter reads, “for the attention provided to refugees and internationally displaced persons through U.S. aid, and see this as a positive contribution of U.S. policy toward Colombia. Yet much more remains to be done.

       “We call for a greater proportion of U.S. aid to Colombia to be dedicated to investment in sustainable development, humanitarian aid and the defense of human rights.”

       The argument used by Christian lobbyists in Washington, D.C., is that increasing social development dollars (and curtailing military ones) will help create jobs and fight the poverty that causes the economic desperation that drives poor Colombians into cocaine cultivation. And this would cut back on the countless arsenals of weapons that fuel the warring parties in Colombia’s vicious war.

       That argument goes hand-in-glove with criticisms of U.S. Colombia policy that are leveled by the Rev. Milton Mejia, the executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Colombia (PCC) and a rising human rights activist in Barranquilla, a sprawling city on Colombia’s north coast. The PCC has long pushed U.S. churches to lobby for less military aid to Colombia and more development monies.

       Cutting back the military budget is a dangerous argument to make in Colombia, where factions of the military and right-wing paramilitaries have been linked by groups like Human Rights Watch to staggering abuses of human rights committed against real and suspected guerrilla sympathizers.

       While one church worker has been detained in a jail for more than 124 days without formal charges being filed, other human rights workers in Barranquilla are in hiding. Still others are working only in the company of professional bodyguards. Another activist was shot dead in the street last month, his bodyguard at his side. Men like Mejia receive clandestine telephone threats, and it has become apparent recently that his synod office is under video surveillance.

       The church works within legal channels and does not advocate violence.

       “What is happening here is so arbitrary,” Mejia told the Presbyterian News Service in a telephone interview yesterday, describing the arrest and detention of another activist who was released after 10 days in jail. “We don’t know what will happen next. Who they will detain or who they will accuse.

       “It is a mess.” He added that he wants U.S. accompaniers in place for the church immediately.

       Last month the Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly Council approved funding for a program of accompaniment in Colombia, but training is not yet in place to prepare volunteers to go.

       The letter to the presidential candidates has been signed by a diverse array of church leaders and Christian activists, including Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners Magazine; the Rev. James Winkler, general secretary of the General Board of Church and Society of the United Methodist Church; the Most. Rev. Frank T. Griswold, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, USA; the Rev. Kenneth Gavin, S.J., national director of the Jesuit Refugee Service, USA; Bruce Wilkinson, senior vice president of the International Programs Group of World Vision; and Marie Dennis, director of the Maryknoll Office of Global Concerns.

       Presbyterians on the list include Jim Atwood of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship; Gary L. Cozette, director of the Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America; the Rev. Elenora Giddings Ivory, director of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Washington Office; and the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, stated clerk of the General Assembly of the PC(USA).

       Kirkpatrick said he signed the letter because U.S. policy needs to respond to “peace-building” efforts. “All of the churches share this same deep sense of urgency about these issues,” he said, and he added that a humane approach to U.S. foreign aid is the “best way” to achieve peace.