Peace & Justice for Colombia

Senator Piedad Cordoba is in Spain seeking support for a negotiated end to the armed conflict in her country. Piedad Cordoba has been recently accused of having links to the FARC. The government of Colombia has stated that it has proof linking her to the FARC

Sunday July 5th, 4pm
at the Melbourne Unitarian Peace Memorial Church
110 Grey Street, East Melbourne

Judith Le Blanc, a member of the indigenous Caddo Tribe from Oklahoma, is the National Organising coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the largest US national Peace Coalition. She is also the vice-chair of the Communist Party of the USA and Chair of their Peace and Solidarity Commission. She will be touring Australia as a guest of the Communist Party and to participate in the actions against the US/Australian Talisman Sabre military exercises.

In this special evening we will be discussing current campaigns against US government´s policy of permanent warfare, militarisation and empire-building, and the need to build an alternative based on peace and justice for the continent. Judith will also talk about the solidarity movement in the US.

On June 21st, the union leader Rafael Antonio Sepúlveda was killed by a hit man near his home, as was reported by the National Association of Health Workers (Anthoc). Rafael was a member of this union, and lived in a very popular neighbourhood in the city of Cúcuta.

“Our comrade was killed near his home; he was a union leader, a representative of the public servants and an activist within our union Anthoc  in the North of Santander”, said Aricides Hernández, regional president of the union.

James J. Brittain
Monday 1 June 2009
It has been well publicized that on March 1, 2008 the Colombian government, with support from Washington, carried out a series of attacks on Ecuadorian soil which violated the sovereignty of a foreign nation (and international law) and resulted in the murder of Raúl Reyes and two dozen other members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People's Army (FARC-EP). Less attention, however, has been given to the five Mexican academics present in the FARC-EP encampment at the time of the attack conducting research on the insurgency movement. Of the five only Lucía Andrea Morett Alvarez survived while Soren Ulises Aviles Angeles [29], Fernando Franco Delgado [28], Veronica Velazquez Ramirez [30], and Juan Gonzalez del Castillo [29] were violently killed.

Colombian Activist, Victim of Arbitrary Detention, Seeks Annulment of Trumped-Charges

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

New York— A test case filed today with the Colombian Supreme Court could mark a turning point in Colombia’s efforts to end the criminalization of human rights defenders, according to Human Rights First (HRF), a New York-based international human rights organization.

Principe Gabriel Gonzalez Arango, a student activist and member of the Colombian Political Prisoners Solidarity Committee, has filed an appeal with the Colombian Supreme Court seeking an extraordinary remedy (casación) to quash his malicious terrorism conviction.

The United States is planning to establish a new military facility in Colombia that will give the U.S. increased capacity for military intervention throughout most of Latin America. Given the tense relations of Washington with Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, as well as the Colombian military’s atrocious human rights record, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) believes the plan should be subjected to vigorous debate.

“This base would feed a failed drug policy, support an abusive army, and reinforce a tragic history of U.S. military intervention in the region,” said John Lindsay-Poland, Latin America Program Co-director for FOR. “It’s wrong and wasteful, and Congress should scrap it.”

Dr. Miguel Ángel Beltrán Villegas has been a well respected academic at the universities of Cauca and Medellín in Colombia, currently a professor at the National University of Colombia. He was undertaking postgraduate studies in Mexico when detained.

About the Academic career of Miguel Ángel Beltrán

The Colombian health workers trade union ANTHOC yesterday announced that one of their regional leaders in the central region of Bolivar has been assassinated. Vilma Carcamo Blanco was killed at around midday on Saturday when men on motorcycles pulled alongside her car and shot her repeatedly as she was driving in the town of Magangue. She was the 19th trade unionist killed so far this year in Colombia and, as in the other cases, her killers have not been brought to justice.

According to Hector Alvis Gaviria, the President of ANTHOC in the region, at the time of her death Ms Carcamo Blanco was active in pay negotiations with the authorities and had been leading a campaign to ensure that health workers in Bolivar received back pay that was owed to them.

SATURDAY MAY 23 **notice the time change*** 1pm

Saturday, 23rd of May, 1:00pm @ Trades Hall (New Council Chambers, Crn Lygon and Victoria St, Carlton) Entry by donation

Documentary and discussion about para-politics and drug trafficking. Presentation on State terror and extrajudicial executions in Colombia.

Despite the claims of the Colombian government and those in the U.S., Canada and the EU eager to consummate "free trade" pacts with that regime, the human rights situation in that country is deteriorating fast. Indeed, by key measures — the killing of unionists, extra-judicial killings by the military, and the forced displacement of civilians — Colombia's human rights situation is amongst the worst in the world and getting worse. In the case of union killings, it remains the very worst.