Stand by Colombia's Victims of Violence

In 2005, I visited the community of San José de Apartadó, Colombia. A group of poor farmers who had been repeatedly displaced from their homes by violence, they had decided to call themselves a “peace community” and reject violence from all sides—paramilitaries, guerrillas and the army.  Yet the community was subjected to ever more harassment and violence, including by the local 17th army brigade.  Some 170 members of the peace community have been assassinated since 1997. My visit came soon after seven members of the peace community, including three children, and a local farmer had been massacred and dismembered.  The community members had left their army-occupied town to construct a bare-bones, dirt-floor village down the road.

Colombia's Constitutional Court issued an important decision last week which sent Colombia's new administration back to the drawing board to secure approval for a U.S.-Colombian military base agreement.  The decision effectively struck down the contentious agreement, chastising the Colombian executive for having failed to get approval from Colombia's Congress, and requiring them now to seek congressional endorsement before moving forward. 

For a lot of people, the day after Labor Day is the time to get down to business. For us, it's just September 7th. Why? Because when you're going for change as big as we are on U.S.-Colombia policy, you never stop working hard.

On August 13th, a car bomb was detonated near the Caracol Radio headquarters, one of the largest networks in Colombia. LAWGEF and its partners issued the following statement in response: