Workers Resistance

Category: colombia

  • Utah march against Monsanto

    Salt Lake City, UT – Over 200 activists and community members gathered at the state capitol, May 24, to join with cities across the country by rallying against the Monsanto Corporation. People assembled on the steps of the capitol despite the rain to listen to a number of speakers including Craig Bowden, Melanie Widerburg-Zucker, Justin Danneman, Lorena Apgar Hansen and Jonathan Hansen. People spoke of the effects that Monsanto has across the globe and locally on families and communities.

    The keynote speaker for the event was former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson. Anderson gave a fiery speech on the effects of corporate interests in the U.S. and nailed former Monsanto VP and lobbyist Michael Taylor who is now head of the FDA. Anderson stated, “We don’t need a government of the rich, we need a government of the people, by the people and for the people.” Musicians Michael Cundick and Josh Blakesley also performed for the crowd.

    Gregory Lucero of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization was passing out a Fight Back! commentary describing Monsanto’s role in the U.S. dirty war in Colombia. Lucero said, “The U.S. government has spent over $8 billion since the year 2000 on war in Colombia. Monsanto is the company contracted by the U.S. military to spray Roundup chemicals on Colombian peasants’ crops under the guise of a ‘war on drugs’, decimating the countryside. This contributes to hundreds of thousands of displaced people in Colombia. We need to support Colombian farmers and say, ‘No more Monsanto fumigations. No to U.S. war in Colombia!’ We’re out here to show our solidarity with the Colombian people.”

    The crowd then took to the streets in a militant manner, despite a police presence, marching from the capitol to the County Building. The large group raised their signs and banners as they walked through traffic chanting “Monsanto against the wall, no more GMO’s at all” and “Monsanto no more, we won’t fund your secret war!” Protest leaders ended the protest with calls for the people of Salt Lake City to continue organizing and fighting back.

  • Monsanto makes war in Colombia

    Grand Rapids, MI – Many are out marching and protesting Monsanto this spring, demanding food be healthy and safe, that Monsanto products be labeled as GMOs (genetically modified organisms) and insisting that one corporation should not control the entire seed supply or corner the market. Unions and immigrant rights groups are demanding protections and decent pay for farm workers who use Monsanto products in the fields.

    It is also important to know that Monsanto makes war in Colombia and it needs to stop. Monsanto is making the lives of poor peasant farmers in Colombia miserable, forcing hundreds of thousands to abandon their small plots of land by killing the crops on which they survive. Monsanto participates directly in the U.S. war on Colombia’s poor peasant farmers by providing the deadly “Ultra” versions of Roundup that is used to destroy their crops.

    The U.S. government is conducting a war in Colombia and has spent over $8 billion on it since year 2000. Started under Clinton and Gore, the U.S. Southern Command directs the war against left-wing rebel groups and is in charge of the Colombian Armed Forces. However the involvement of Monsanto is less well known. The U.S. counterinsurgency war includes chemical warfare, in the form of private military companies like DynCorp International flying over and spraying the crops and fields of poor peasant farmers in areas where the rebel insurgency is strongest. Farmers living in areas where the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia are well organized are way more likely to have their crops sprayed with Monsanto products than the areas under the control of large landowners, narco-traffickers, or multi-national mineral corporations.

    Monsanto is a war profiteer. Monsanto is the company contracted by the U.S. military for the glyphosate sprayed on Colombian peasants’ crops. It is the same chemical as Roundup in much, much stronger concentrations. Monsanto makes huge profits from these U.S. military contracts. It has been going on since at least 1978.

    The Roundup is sprayed from planes, often drifts wide of its target, kills all sorts of crops and pollutes the ponds, lakes and rivers of Colombia. The first plants to grow back are the hardy coca plants – the original excuse for spraying, but food crops and fruit trees are ruined and do not return so easily. Thousands of people suffer skin and respiratory problems, there are reports of asthmatic children dying and animals poisoned and killed. The lives of tens of thousands are ruined on a yearly basis.

    The U.S. ‘war on drugs’ in Colombia is a lie. There is no change in drug production after decades. The aerial spraying is part of U.S. war strategy. Monsanto’s Roundup being sprayed targets and hurts the poor peasant farmers in rebellion. It harms the base of support of the rebels and gives Colombia the largest displaced person population in the world – more than in Iraq during most of the U.S. war and occupation. It also harms the ‘lungs of the world’ – the Amazon forests are being poisoned and forests are being cut down as farmers move to new land. Here at home, the phony war on drugs imprisons hundreds of thousands of African American, Chicano and working class youth, punishing instead of treating or rehabilitating, and making them second-class citizens for life.

    Monsanto delivers nothing but poverty, misery, and death to Colombian farmers, children and their animals. We need to oppose Monsanto selling Roundup to be sprayed on a mass scale in Colombia. Currently, the Colombian government wants to end the program, because it does not work. The U.S. government demands it continue. We need to support Colombian farmers and say: “No more Monsanto fumigations! No to U.S. war in Colombia!”

  • Protest against joint U.S./Colombia military exercise in Arizona

    Tucson, AZ – 20 anti-war protesters confronted the arrival of Colombian Air Force and Special Forces troops at a U.S- led military exercise near Tucson, May 4. The anti-war activists chanted, “Stop the U.S.-funded war in Colombia!” and “50 years of war is enough!”

    The Colombian military came to practice under U.S. and NATO forces at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Outside the base, on a busy street corner, speakers denounced U.S. military intervention, the more than $8 billion spent by the U.S. government in repressing democracy and human rights, and the significance of the ongoing peace process between the revolutionary FARC and the Colombian government. In recent years Colombian officers, trained at Fort Benning in Georgia, were caught murdering civilian day laborers and claiming they were revolutionary fighters of the FARC. At least 1800 young men died this way.

    Tucson anti-war activist Jim Byrne shared, “We are here to denounce the collaboration of the NATO militaries during their training – for maintaining war and violence. We oppose the disgusting trend of the militarization of state and local police, who more and more look like professional armies. These police-armies are used against Chicano, African-American, and other oppressed people here, so that Arizona feels like the Terrordome!”

    Ana Maria Vasquez from Colombia explained, “I am 48 years old and I’ve never known peace in my country. We are all here today in solidarity to ensure the end of the war so that Colombians can live without war, murder, repression and fear.”

    Protesters vowed to continue their international solidarity with the Colombian people. Jim Byrne said, “We in the U.S. must develop alliances with all those seeking peace and justice for the people of Colombia. Labor unions like the United Steel Workers, faith organizations and social justice groups must demand the U.S. government stop financing, arming and supporting the militarization of Latin America and the repression of its peoples.”

    Video of the protest is being shared with unions, human rights organizations and the Colombian democratic movement Marcha Patriotica. The Alliance for Global Justice organized the protest to build solidarity between the U.S. and Colombian working people in struggling for peace and democracy. Tucson Students for a Democratic Society, Occupy Tucson and local churches endorsed the rally.

  • Twin Cites Anti-War Committee exposes U.S. war on Colombia

    Minneapolis, MN – The Twin Cities-based Anti-War Committee (AWC) held a program called “The War Next Door: U.S. Role in Colombia’s Civil War,” March 22 here at May Day Bookstore. Speakers included Eden Yosief, of SEIU Healthcare, who recently traveled to Colombia, along with AWC organizers Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby-Keirstead.

    After explaining how the U.S. backs its puppet government in Colombia, Jess Sundin of the Anti-War Committee stated, “The U.S. government has also taken a very hands-on role by criminalizing Colombia’s insurgency, as well as leaders of its social movements, and those who work in solidarity with them here in the U.S.”

    “In particular, we know that the U.S. has imprisoned two Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) members. The most well known is Ricardo Palmera, AKA ‘Simon Trinidad.’ He was one of the peace negotiators when I was in Colombia. In 2004, he was captured by the CIA while he was in Ecuador to meet with UN representatives. Palmera is held in solitary confinement in a high security federal prison, not allowed to receive letters or communicate freely with his lawyer,” said Sundin

    Sundin continued, “Another FARC member Anayibe Rojas Valderama, known as ‘Sonia’, was extradited to the U.S., then, in 2007, sentenced to nearly 17 years in federal prison here. And of course, there is our own case with the Anti-War Committee. The FBI investigation of us included ‘Daniela,’ an undercover agent who claimed to be of Colombian descent, and who took a special interest in our work in solidarity with Colombia. This work included organizing protests against U.S. military aid, hosting speakers from Colombian trade unionists and participating in solidarity delegations to witness firsthand the civil war fueled by our tax dollars. Though we only hosted speakers granted visas by the U.S. State Department, the government treats some of these union leaders as criminal terrorists, and we were investigated because our hosting them was seen as the crime of aiding terrorists.”

     

  • Twin Cites Anti-War Committee exposes U.S. war on Colombia

    Minneapolis, MN – The Twin Cities-based Anti-War Committee (AWC) held a program called “The War Next Door: U.S. Role in Colombia’s Civil War,” March 22 here at May Day Bookstore. Speakers included Eden Yosief, of SEIU Healthcare, who recently traveled to Colombia, along with AWC organizers Jess Sundin and Meredith Aby-Keirstead.

    After explaining how the U.S. backs its puppet government in Colombia, Jess Sundin of the Anti-War Committee stated, “The U.S. government has also taken a very hands-on role by criminalizing Colombia’s insurgency, as well as leaders of its social movements, and those who work in solidarity with them here in the U.S.”

    “In particular, we know that the U.S. has imprisoned two Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) members. The most well known is Ricardo Palmera, AKA ‘Simon Trinidad.’ He was one of the peace negotiators when I was in Colombia. In 2004, he was captured by the CIA while he was in Ecuador to meet with UN representatives. Palmera is held in solitary confinement in a high security federal prison, not allowed to receive letters or communicate freely with his lawyer,” said Sundin

    Sundin continued, “Another FARC member Anayibe Rojas Valderama, known as ‘Sonia’, was extradited to the U.S., then, in 2007, sentenced to nearly 17 years in federal prison here. And of course, there is our own case with the Anti-War Committee. The FBI investigation of us included ‘Daniela,’ an undercover agent who claimed to be of Colombian descent, and who took a special interest in our work in solidarity with Colombia. This work included organizing protests against U.S. military aid, hosting speakers from Colombian trade unionists and participating in solidarity delegations to witness firsthand the civil war fueled by our tax dollars. Though we only hosted speakers granted visas by the U.S. State Department, the government treats some of these union leaders as criminal terrorists, and we were investigated because our hosting them was seen as the crime of aiding terrorists.”

     

  • Documents for raids on anti-war activists unsealed

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.

    On Feb. 26, the application and affidavit used to obtain the search warrants for the 2010 raids on homes and offices of anti-war and international solidarity activists were unsealed, revealing lies and attacks on the constitutionally-protected rights to speak out and organize. The unsealing of these documents came as a result of legal action taken by the anti-war activists.

    The timeline in the documents show what we have always stated. Shortly before the huge protest at the Republican National Convention, an undercover police agent and professional liar, going by the name of Karen Sullivan (identified in the affidavit as UC1) joined the Anti-War Committee and became active in the efforts to build the demonstration. She later joined Freedom Road Socialist Organization.

    The documents demonstrate a callous disregard for free speech and the right to associate. They in effect criminalize those of us who oppose U.S. wars, and stand in solidarity with the oppressed. From Palestine to Colombia, people want to be free from the domination of Washington D.C. We have said this publicly on thousands of occasions and will continue to do so.

    Not unlike countless “anti-terrorism” cases against Arabs and Muslims, the affidavit contains a collection of lies and out-of-context statements to try to isolate people from their communities and movements. In a McCarthyite return to the 1950s, the affidavit shows an obsession with Freedom Road Socialist Organization. After decades working in the anti-war movement, anyone who has worked with us knows we are proud to be fighters in the struggles against war, and for justice and economic equality. The documents imply that is something sinister, when really, it is commendable.

    Having just received these documents, we are in the process of consulting with attorneys and we will have more to say in coming days.

    We are glad we forced the government to unseal these documents and we demand that the U.S. Attorney makes a public statement that the investigation is closed and that there will be no indictments of anti-war and international solidarity activists. Moreover, we demand an end to repression and spying against the people’s movements.

  • FARC demands repatriation of Ricardo Palmera

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following Jan. 18 statement from the Peace Delegation Revolutionary Armed Forces on the imprisonment by the U.S. of Colombian revolutionary, Professor Ricardo Palmera. Known in Colombia as Simón Trinidad, Palmera was kidnapped, brought to the United States and is now serving what amounts to a life sentence.

    For more information from the FARC Peace Delegation: http://farc-epeace.org/
    For information from the National Committee to Free Ricardo Palmera: http://www.freericardopalmera.org/

    After 10 years behind bars, Simón Trinidad has to be repatriated

    “I don’t have guaranteed the right to defense; they don’t allow me to send documents to my lawyer and judges in Colombia, in which I can prove my innocence; this has to be shown by my compañeros to the government delegation in Havana. They won’t even let me talk to the ICRC”.

    This is the protest of Simón Trinidad, chained and shackled, from the dungeons of the maximum security prison in Florence, Colorado, United States, to the judge who is judging him from the city of Neiva, Colombia.

    This outstanding fighter of the FARC-EP has already been confined behind the bars of the empire for ten years, without bowing down, without breaking down, without any wavering in his conscience, despite the cruel and degrading treatment he has received by U.S. authorities.

    Simón was extradited due to the perfidy of former President Uribe, supreme commander of paramilitarism in Colombia. This sinister figure is Washington’s favorite, despite his involvement in international war crimes and crimes against humanity. And Simón was extradited in violation of the constitutional provision which prohibits the extradition of national citizens for political reasons.

    Since Álvaro Uribe Vélez couldn’t send him to the United States for the charge of rebellion, he fabricated a legal pretext -the false charge of drug-trafficking-, to achieve his repulsive purpose. It was an act of revenge and blackmail, in criminal association with military intelligence and the Attorney General, Camilo Osorio.

    Thus, Simón was extradited by the gangster government of Colombia. The country remembers his photo, at the moment he was led by the gringos to the airplane, when he raised his handcuffed fists and shouted: Long live Bolívar, long live Manuel Marulanda, long live the FARC!

    There, in the courtrooms of the North, accused in a foreign language, he defeated the lies of the deserters and the false witnesses brought from Colombia, with irrefutable arguments. With the assistance of his public defender, attorney Robert Tucker, Simón Trinidad was acquitted in the U.S. of drug trafficking charges, defeating the manipulation of wicked judges, such as Joyce Lamberth.

    But the United States, determined as they were to send a “strong signal” to the FARC, decided to condemn Simón for something he was never involved in: the capture of three gringo mercenaries working for the CIA, after the aircraft in which they were carrying out technical intelligence against the FARC, had been shot down in the Caquetá jungle. To be able to blame him, they falsely claimed that Simón Trinidad was a member of the FARC Central High Command. When the FBI realized that this argument was implausible, they withdrew the evidence of a video of the launching of the Bolivarian Movement for the New Colombia, in 2000. This video had previously been manipulated by them, to make Simón appear as a member of the Central High Command of the FARC.

    Still, Simón Trinidad was convicted, after two flawed trials, to 60 years in an underground prison where he can’t see the sun, nor does he have the right to see the night. He’s in the maximum security prison in Florence, where the worst criminals are imprisoned, and as he is accused of terrorism, which in the United States is the worst of crimes, his rights as a human being are totally violated, every day.

    The shameful extradition treaty, by which Colombia transfers its legal sovereignty to a foreign power, reads you cannot condemn an extradited national citizen to life imprisonment. Well, Simon is 60 years old, which means that he would achieve freedom when he is 120. This is, in fact, a life sentence! However, no protest or request has been made by this submissive Colombian government.

    Simón is not only buried alive in Florence, Colorado. He’s in absolute solitary confinement, there’s no appropriate medical care, they took away his glasses and some cards he used to play Solitaire. He is always taken to the court with his hands and feet chained and shackled. he isn’t allowed to have any newspapers or books. These were the circumstances in which he received the sad news of the death of his compañera Lucero and their daughter Alix, in a bombing by the CIA in Putumayo. He isn’t allowed to access the files for his defense in Colombia, and the embassy in Bogota systematically denies his lawyer, jurist Ramiro Orjuela, a visa to visit him. Meanwhile, the schizophrenic Colombian justice, which opened 104 charges against him, base their accusations on the false assertion that this guerrilla fighter belongs to the Central High Command of the FARC. Neither the government nor the intelligence, nor the Prosecuting Attorney or anyone else has evidence of his participation in the acts alleged against him. There is no evidence, that’s why some judges have dropped the charges, declaring him innocent.

    From Havana, Cuba, the Peace Delegation of the FARC-EP urges the ICRC-Switserland, to carry out a humanitarian visit to Simón Trinidad at the U.S. prison where he is confined.

    We urge the Colombian government to enable Simón, as member of the Peace Delegation of the FARC, to dialogue with his compañeros in Havana.

    This is an SOS to all human rights organizations in the world, to jurists and experts in international humanitarian law, to political and social organizations of the five continents, the UN, UNASUR, CELAC, the Vatican, churches, Nobel Prizes of peace, well-intentioned people, to call for the immediate release of Simón Trinidad and, in the meanwhile, to demand the U.S. authorities improve his conditions.

    The Colombian government has done little or nothing for the release of Simón. It doesn’t make gestures of peace as its counterpart does in the peace talks. It doesn’t know what reciprocity is, and we encourage it to act decisively. The government should take the legal remedy of exequatur in its hands to have Simón’s sentence recognized in Colombia. He could serve his prison term in his homeland and once he arrives there, the judicial authorities could authorize him to go to Havana, to play a leading role in the construction of peace, as we have asked for.

    We send an embrace to all our friends in the world, and the message that the spiritual strength and ideological firmness of Simón Trinidad continue unscathed, untouched, above the arrogance of his gringo prison guards.

    Simón is the Nelson Mandela of Our America.

    Freedom for Simón!

    Peace Delegation of the FARC-EP

  • FARC responds to Washington Post report on U.S. killings in Colombia

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). To view this and other news form the FARC peace delegation in Havana, Cuba go here: http://farc-epeace.org/

    Public Statement on the report of the Washington Post

    On December 21, 2013, the Washington Post published a report about the latest covert action by the CIA, the NSA and the Pentagon, that is, of the United States of America, in Colombia’s internal armed conflict. This involves decisions and authorizations by at least the last three governments of that country.

    Interesting revelation, that shows many incredulous people that the interest of the US government is one of the main triggers of the long war Colombians are going through. More ambitious studies could easily show that the same thing has happened since the days of Operation Marquetalia in 1964, which was publicly recognized in Colombia. However, whenever the nature of the conflict is being studied, this fact is silenced with astonishing irresponsibility.

    According to the report, the covert action program has helped the Colombian Army to kill at least two dozen rebel leaders, according to interviews with more than 30 serving or retired officers in the United States and Colombia. At the same time, the National Security Agency was carrying out electronic eavesdropping and wiretaps. All these operations were financed with a secret budget of billions of dollars, additionally to the nine billion dollars aid from Plan Colombia.

    President Santos, according to the same report, tried to downplay the issue when he was interviewed by that North American newspaper. Minister Pinzón (Defense), on the contrary, had no qualms about openly recognizing it in the media and abate it as part of the traditional military agreements between the two countries. It is clear that neither of them feel the slightest appreciation for Colombian sovereignty, since gringo impositions on drugs and terrorism are more important to them than any consideration of national interest. Not to speak about Colombian General and Admirals; their knees are calloused.

    It is not that we didn’t know or didn’t have any idea about it, but some things do become clearer with the report of the US newspaper. For example, that the columnist Oscar Collazos is completely right when he suggests that the greatest contradiction that generates debate between former Colombian presidents, is about showing which of them is responsible for the major part of killings of their citizens. This debate is also reproduced with clear interest by the Colombian media, which are always so prone to publish and enhance the crimes of the guerrilla, as they are called by such nefarious individuals. We could now parody Senator Piedad Córdoba, when she said that Colombia was a huge mass grave. saying that with the consent of recent governments, Colombia is a victim of the most blatant and unpunished wiretapping on behalf of the intelligence services of a foreign power.

    Similarly, the cited report includes disclosures that give the shivers. The article states that according to President Santos “part of the experience and the efficiency of our operations and our special operations were the product of better training and knowledge we have acquired from many countries, including the United States”. This endorses what the report states about the transfer of the American experience in Afghanistan and the struggle against Al Qaeda to the Colombian conflict, ie intelligence procedures including bribery, illegal arrests, disappearances, torture and illegal pressure on people who are expected to give information.

    This makes clear that the ongoing degradation of the methods used by Colombian military, police and security forces originates in the instruction and advice given by the Americans. The government of Juan Manuel Santos is aware of the kidnappings, blackmail, death threats and attacks employed by the Colombian intelligence service to obtain, through the families of the guerrilla commanders and fighters, the location of these in order to kill them. Methods that have even been employed against the families of the FARC-EP members of the Peace Delegation in Havana. He also knows perfectly well, because of his time as defense minister under Álvaro Uribe, the true story of the military intelligence that led to the gruesome murder and mutilation of Comrade Iván Ríos.

    The analysis of the report also mentions the opportunistic and unilateral interpretations of international law by successive U.S. governments, submissively accepted by Colombian leaders. Mr. Reagan authorized military intervention on behalf of his country in any nation under the pretext of combating drug trafficking; Mr. Clinton authorized the interventions to secure his country’s control of strategic resources located anywhere in the world; Mr. Bush acted the same way, under the pretext of preventing what his government qualified as the terrorist threat. All this was enough for the notions of independence, sovereignty and self-determination of people to be put in the museum of history, next to the corpse of the fundamental rights of human beings.

    Only such a brazen reign of arbitrariness, born out of brute force, can explain, as corroborated by the report, the aggression of the Colombian military against the sovereignty of Ecuador on March 1, 2008, and the subsequent treacherous murders of Colombian guerrilla comandantes outside of combat, through the use of the cynically called “smart bombs” or the actions of the special forces. The report reveals the efforts of the CIA and the Pentagon to get the reprehensible legal interpretations, with which these crimes are perpetrated. It also exposes the wickedness of the American law schools in which all these new legal theories are cooked and which are responsible for legitimizing terror as a respectable method of political action.

    It is true that more brainy scholars may draw many more implications from this report, but in addition to what is already said, we should ask ourselves now, when the discussion on the issue of illicit crops is coming up: What is the true role this oligarchy of vendepatrias (nation-sellers) grants to the peace talks with the FARC-EP, or possible talks with the ELN, when the interests that produce an intensification of the conflict in our country are exposed on national and international level? This report leaves many doubts about the desire for peace by the Colombian state and its imperial boss. Which confirms our idea that a true peace in our country can only be achieved with the massive and decisive participation of the millions of Colombian victims of this regime, who have just suffered one more mockery with the ridicule increase of the minimum wage while the military budget grows geometrically to crush their dissatisfaction.

    SECRETARIAT OF THE CENTRAL HIGH COMMAND OF THE FARC-EP
    Colombian jungle, January 2014, year of the 50th anniversary of our uprising

     

  • NSA, CIA role in murder of FARC leaders exposed

    Washington, DC – The Washington Post, in a major Dec. 21 article entitled “Covert Action in Colombia” confirmed the role of U.S. intelligence agencies in the systematic murder of at least 24 leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as well as a smaller rebel group. The FARC, Latin America’s largest and oldest insurgent movement, is fighting for social justice and to free the country from foreign domination.

    Observers have known for many years that covert ‘signals intelligence’ gleaned by U.S. spy agencies plays an important part in keeping Colombia’s death squad government in power.

    The Post article states, “The secret assistance, which also includes substantial eavesdropping help from the National Security Agency, is funded through a multibillion-dollar black budget. It is not a part of the public $9 billion package of mostly U.S. military aid called Plan Colombia, which began in 2000.”

    The article says of the targeted killings, “The covert program in Colombia provides two essential services to the nation’s battle against the FARC and a smaller insurgent group, the National Liberation Army (ELN): Real-time intelligence that allows Colombian forces to hunt down individual FARC leaders and, beginning in 2006, one particularly effective tool with which to kill them. That weapon is a $30,000 GPS guidance kit that transforms a less-than-accurate 500-pound gravity bomb into a highly accurate smart bomb.”

    The article states that the outstanding Colombia revolutionary, Raul Reyes, was targeted in these attacks.

    In the face of harsh repression by U.S. government and its Colombian puppets, the FARC has continued to hold its own, forcing the Colombian government to join a new round of peace talks in Havana.

     

  • FARC welcomes the National Forum on the problem of illicit drugs

    Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from the Peace Delegation of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). The statement is addressed to a conference on the problem of illicit drugs which is taking place Bogotá, Colombia.

    The peace negotiations between the FARC and the Colombian government are taking place in Havana, Cuba.

    FARC-EP welcomes the National Forum on the problem of illicit drugs

    Havana, Cuba, site of the peace talks, September 25, 2013

    The peace delegation of the FARC-EP welcomes the participants of the National Forum “Solution to the problem of illicit drugs”, wishing you success, in the idea that its conclusions should provide important tools for discussion on this subject within the framework of the General Agreement of Havana, signed between the national government and our insurgent organization to advance in the dialogues towards a stable and lasting peace for Colombia

    Our intention, in incorporating this point in the Agenda, parts of an overall vision on the crisis of the Colombian capitalist model and its political regime, which have created the conditions for the so-called drug-trafficking to be a socioeconomic reality, in which vast sectors of the population participate by necessity. Different segments of transnational and oligarchic power adopt attitudes and make policies that have stimulated deformations in our economy with its subsequent negative impact on the poorest part of society.

    Our point of departure is to condemn drug trafficking and we participate in the active political battle aimed at unmasking the fallacies and contents of the so-called War on Drugs, as it’s called by the current U.S. policy, country that invented this media matrix aimed at giving its interventionist and imperialist strategies a new look.

    According to our point of view, it is the development of the same old script according to which, in the past, the problem was the so-called war against communism, or the defense of the interests of United States’ citizens, as paltry excuses to unleash wars of subjugation against weaker nations. Today, the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism from that part of the country that most consumes narcotic and uses terror as a weapon of domination, are excuses for the development of an imperialist, expansionist strategy, to achieve economic and military domination over the world.

    With these old concerns, the policy of the U.S. military and its local subsidiaries is unfolded, and its development is complemented by the guidelines outlined in the strategy map of the Southern Command. And it is within this strategy that the Yankee Military Bases on our national territory have been created and now strengthened; it’s within this determination that the Southern Command laid its eyes on the military base of Palanquero, reinforcing it, arguing that they are developing an “old security and cooperation agreement with Colombia”. It is within this strategy that the bases of Larandia and Tres Esquinas have been deployed, which are now conceived as Yankee bases, together with military points like Barrancón (Guaviare), Bahía Málaga, the Cartagena naval station, the Malambo air base or bases like Tolemaida and Apiay, among others.

    We recall these data, considering that under the signature of a peace agreement, we must incorporate the issue of resolving the problem of illicit drugs inevitably linking it to integral agrarian reform, but mostly and mainly, to the issue of respect for national sovereignty.

    The whole history of our concern to solve a social problem that has its roots in the endemic misery imposed by the regime, forces us to emphatically reject the perverse intention of some media to reduce the issue that is being discussed today, to the idea that this is a matter in which the responsibility of its creation and continuation corresponds to the guerrillas, creating the misconception that it is in our hands to solve such a complex phenomenon whose causes, as we have stated before, are to be found in poverty, inequality and exclusion imposed by the ruling classes to the majorities.

    To discharge the main force of the combat on the weakest link, located in the poorest regions of underdeveloped countries, and against peasants who have had to resort to such crops by physical absence of economic alternatives, is not only a mistake and injustice of the size of the Mariannes Abyss in the Pacific, but a true act of cynicism and hypocrisy of countries, states, institutions and individuals who profit directly or indirectly from trafficking, but who, in an embarrassing way, try to show results attacking those who have the least responsibility in this business, generating true false positives.

    The equitable distribution of land, equipped with road infrastructure, storage facilities, hospitals, schools, colleges and universities as well as an economic policy aimed at ensuring supportive prices, subsidies and grants, comprehensive and universal social security, technical and mechanical assistance are all measures, feasible and probable, that with the participation of the affected communities allow creating the necessary conditions for a solution that addresses the real causes.

    Determining the origin and essence of the phenomenon that brings us together here is very important, if there really exists willpower to resolve it thoroughly. Let’s look at two central aspects of the problem:

    First, drug-trafficking is a capitalist business as a whole, which produces more than 600 billion dollars a year in profit. Virtually all of this money is laundered through the global financial system and organically linked to economic circuits, knowing its origin. More than 95% of these earnings are for the imperialist financial centers, mainly in the United States, and the remaining 5% is basically appropriated by business, banking and investment companies, created by drug-traffickers in partnership with entrepreneurs and traditional politicians that serve as proxies.

    Second, the drug-trafficking, based on transformation of natural plants into psychoactive drugs is a business that works in stages or levels, ranging from the cultivation of raw materials, through processing and transport to marketing and distribution in the consumption centers of the developed countries, which is also where, in economic terms, the goods are made, and it is with this capital that the process starts again.This is the drug-trafficking that is being fought against, and not the mega-industry of synthetic drugs.

    Why don’t we observe the peculiar and relevant fact that the elite, coming from the highest levels of financial capital, when they are making their policies of national security organizations, they also connect them with international drug cartels, which extract annually 8,000 tons of opium in U.S. war zones, and wash 500 billion dollars using transnational banks, half of which are located in the U.S.? Only with common sense we could find the best solution to this problem. Let’s hope that such quality can still be found even in those stratospheric circles of society, to which the Colombian elites serve.

    On behalf of the FARC-EP, we ratify our clear willingness to move forward in the peace talks, on the route of changes, reforms to the economic and political structures that are the roots of the Colombian conflict. This is a principle that is signed by the parties in the preamble of the General Agreement, which guides the discussions and clearly calls for the participation of all Colombians without distinction in building what may become a true Peace Treaty for our country.

    PEACE DELEGATION FARC-EP