[News] US Is Aiding & Abetting Afro-Colombian Genocide

[Anti-Imperialist News]

*http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/us-is-aiding--abetting-af_b_8431992.html* 



  U.S. Is Aiding & Abetting Afro-Colombian Genocide

Dan Kovalik
10/30/2015

I just returned from Colombia with a delegation of the Coalition of 
Black Trade Unionists (CBTU). We travelled to Cali, Quibdó (in the Choco 
Department) and Bogota to hear from numerous representatives of the 
Afro-Colombian community about the grave civil, human and labor rights 
situation confronting them, and their demand to have a say in the 
ongoing peace talks in Havana, Cuba in order to find redress for their 
concerns. A copy of our full delegation Report can be found HERE 
<http://www.usw.org/news/media-center/articles/2015/report-on-the-cbtu-afro-colombian-accompaniment-mission-to-colombia>. 


As our delegation observed, Colombia is at least fifty to seventy-five 
years behind the U.S. in terms of race relations. Incredibly, there are 
no laws which protect Afro-Colombians from racial discrimination in 
employment or services. As a consequence, Afro-descendants, who 
officially make up 10% of the Colombian population, though in reality up 
to 25%, have no presence in high-level positions in the State, or in the 
private sector, media, industry or financial market. In addition, 78.5 
percent of Afro-Colombians live under the poverty line, over 30 percent 
have no water and sanitation services, their infant mortality rate is 
over three times the national average at 76 per 100,000, and their life 
expectancy is also well below the national average at around 65 years.

Yet, these statistics do not begin to capture the depths of the crisis 
confronting the Afro-Colombian people. While 6 million people in 
Colombia are internally displaced 
<http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/news-item/15-facts-about-colombia-s-land-restitution-process>(the 
second highest figure on earth), one-third of these, or 2 million, are 
Afro-descendant. And, as many of us who opposed the U.S.-Colombia Free 
Trade Agreement (FTA) had predicted, such displacement has only 
accelerated after the 2011 passage of the FTA which has allowed, and 
indeed encouraged, the penetration of the prized Afro-Colombian land on 
the Pacific coast by mining and agricultural companies which often 
utilize armed groups to forcibly remove Afro-Colombians from territorial 
lands - lands which are supposed to be protected by Colombia's Law 70.

Moreover, as Amnesty International has recently reported 
<http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/news-item/15-facts-about-colombia-s-land-restitution-process>, 
"[m]ost forced displacement has been carried out by paramilitaries and 
the security forces, either acting alone or in collusion with each 
other,"and, as witnesses we talked to confirmed, these forced 
displacements are often-times accompanied by grisly crimes 
<http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e492ad6.html>such as "the forced 
recruitment of children and youth, sexual and gender-based violence 
(SGBV), threats, disappearances and murders . . . ."

As eloquently explained by one Afro-Colombian leader - a young, brave 
attorney who herself has been displaced for a second time and who would 
rather her name not be mentioned -- the Colombian government has itself 
recognized that their rights to the territory have been violated. 
Indeed, they have won a number of court decisions under Law 70 which was 
passed to protect their territorial land, but none of these court 
decisions have been enforced. She said that "a slave-like system, a 
system of murder is instead being reinforced." She explained that they 
are being targeted by a number of armed groups, especially right-wing 
paramilitaries, but also by FARC who recently assassinated one of their 
leaders. Helicopters have bombed their homes, land mines have been laid 
around their communities and the water that they depend on is being 
contaminated by mercury from illegal mining operations. But, she 
exclaimed, with righteous indignation, "who cares, we're black?!" She 
asked how one can talk about a peace process when there are "chop 
houses" operating in Colombia (most famously in the port town of 
Buenaventura 
<https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/03/20/crisis-buenaventura/disappearances-dismemberment-and-displacement-colombias-main>) 
where paramilitaries terrorize the community by dismembering social 
leaders while they are still alive. /She related that 60% of the 
Afro-Colombian territory is being destroyed by mining operations. She 
emphasized that the U.S. has financed this war in Colombia and that the 
U.S. has a duty to construct the peace. She concluded by saying, "We 
Afro-Colombians gave birth to humanity, we must give birth to the peace/."

For its part, the Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 
recently reported <http://www.unhcr.org/pages/49e492ad6.html> on the 
continuing problem with paramilitaries forcing thousands 
(disproportionately Afro-Colombians and indigenous) off their land. As 
the report explains,

    Areas such as Córdoba reported high levels of pressure by armed
    groups, especially post-demobilization armed groups [i.e.,
    paramilitaries], in actions affecting land occupation and land
    restitution processes. Conflict continues in strategically important
    areas of Colombia, particularly in the coastal and border
    departments of Arauca, Chocó, Nariño, Norte de Santander, and
    Putumayo. The Pacific region of the country continues to generate
    most large-group displacements affecting four departments, with the
    highest concentration in Cauca followed by Valle del Cauca.

Our trip was organized by Marino Cordoba, the founder of AFRODES, a 
group which advocates for the rights of displaced Afro-Colombians. Mr. 
Cordoba himself has been forcibly displaced on several occasions, 
beginning in 1997 when his town of Riosucio, in the Choco Department, 
was famously invaded by a paramilitary group known as the Self-Defense 
Forces of Cordoba and Uraba (ACCU) with the active support of the 
U.S.-backed Colombian military. Quite frighteningly, similar operations 
are now being carried out in the same area by a paramilitary group known 
as the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia Gaitanistas' (AGC). As Semana 
Magazine explains 
<http://www.semana.com/opinion/articulo/autodefensas-gaitanistas-de-colombia-farc-eln-recrudecen-guerra-en-choco/446990-3>, 
"[o]ne of the similar aspects of this raid with that of the ACCU in 1997 
is that the arrival of the AGC to the basins of the Lower Atrato had no 
restriction by the security forces. State reports outlined the presence 
of speed boats of the Navy that crossed the Atrato River from the town 
of Riosucio, as well as soldiers from Front 54. For this reason, 
communities feel a deep mistrust because there is no explanation as to 
how this illegal armed group reached Truandó without an effective 
reaction" by the state security forces. Moreover, some of the 
paramilitaries entering the area are wearing official "uniforms with 
insignia of the Marine Corps, but identified as 'Self-Defense Forces of 
Colombia Gaitanistas,'" again showing the continuing links between the 
paramilitaries and the U.S.-backed Colombian military.

Not surprisingly, both the U.S. and Colombian governments are vigorously 
denying the very existence of the paramilitary forces. U.S. Ambassador 
Kevin Whitaker indeed engaged in such denials in our meeting with him at 
the U.S. Embassy in Bogota on October 5. The denial of the existence of 
the paramilitaries serves quite well the purposes of the U.S. in 
creating them back in the early 1960's 
<http://www.hrw.org/reports/1996/killer2.htm> - that is, in order to 
give plausible deniability to the U.S. and its Colombian military 
surrogates for their war against those who would challenge the unjust 
social order which continues to reign in that country.

It is critical for those of us concerned with human rights to shine a 
light on the Colombian military/paramilitary alliance which continues to 
plague the Afro-Colombian people with particular intensity, and which is 
leading to what Afro-Colombians are terming, "ethnocide"; others would 
call it "genocide."

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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