On October 31, a delegation of U.S., European and Latin American citizens traveled to Colombia as part of an Ethical Commission, invited by the Movement of Victims of State Crimes in Colombia. As part of their visit, the delegation traveled to Palanquero Air Base in Puerto Salgar (Cundinamarca) to protest a military agreement signed the previous day between the governments of Colombia and the United States. In the midst of soldiers and military intelligence agents from the base, commission members called for an end to the presence of all U.S. military personnel-both soldiers and contractors-on Colombian territory.
The protesters carried out a symbolic action in front of the base, reminding the public that helicopters implicated in the December 13, 1998 massacre in Santo Domingo, Arauca had come from the Palanquero base. Seventeen peasant farmers (including six minors) were killed and some 25 others were injured (nine of them children) in that massacre perpetrated by combat units of the Colombian Air Force (FAC) deployed in support of Counterinsurgency Battalion No. 36 in an operation called “Rayo 2″ in Arauca. A U.S. company called Air Scan, hired by the multinational Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Oxy) and ECOPETROL, also participated in the “Rayo 2″ operation, allegedly to protect the Caño Limón Coveñas oil pipeline. At the time of the massacre, Air Scan pilots were showing the Colombian Air Force where they could detonate the cluster bombs that ended up taking the lives of the peasant farmers.
Serious concerns have been raised that the new military agreement [between the Colombian government and the U.S. government] is not aimed primarily at fighting drug traffickers or guerrillas, but is rather a part of ensuring the geostrategic interests of the United States, which would like to exert more control in the hemisphere, have quicker access to U.S. military bases in Africa (and therefore to those in the Middle East), and gain control over and access to energy resources, given its current energy crisis.
The agreement is also related to the desire to maintain a U.S. military presence in the hemisphere for the training and instructing of Latin American troops. This is part of an effort to give continuity to the School of the Americas, a U.S. military training center that teaches military doctrine to Latin American militaries. Graduates of the School of the Americas have been responsible for subjecting thousands of innocent victims to torture, forced disappearances, and murders.
Past experiences in Colombia and in other countries also show that the presence of U.S. military troops brings with it increased prostitution, local tensions, and crimes committed by U.S. citizens, including crimes of sexual violence and drug trafficking. As experience in Colombia shows, these crimes are usually committed with total impunity.
This agreement between the United States and Colombia not only sends the wrong message to the government of Colombia and its public security forces that they will receive support in spite of the serious human rights violations they commit, but also-within the logic of militarization and war-increases military spending at a time when people have an urgent need for investment in health, education, justice, and democratization etc. in order to combat poverty and injustice.
Given what we have seen, experienced, and heard, we conclude the following:
- 1. We are opposed to the military agreement between Colombia and the United States because it follows the logic of militarization both in Colombia and in the United States, giving legitimacy and financial support to the public security forces of Colombia that are involved in serious human rights violations, most have which have remained in impunity. These violations include, among others, more than 1,000 extrajudicial executions in the last several years.
- 2. This kind of militarization is leading to increased military spending at a time when our people require investments in health, education etc.
- 3. Neither the Colombian people, nor the people of the United States have been sufficiently informed, much less consulted about their opinion regarding this military agreement.
- 4. The experience of other countries and of Colombia itself shows that the crimes committed by military personnel or by employees of private U.S. security companies in other countries are not brought to justice.
- 5. This visit to the Palanquero Base is just the beginning of the opposition to the agreement. Protest will continue on November 22 in a multitude of activities calling for the closure of the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia in the United States.
