While there is not currently a specific bill on Colombia currently in Congress, CRLN and our partners continue to educate Members of Congress about the issues facing the country. See below for some good resources that you too can use when talking to your representatives.
Recent Congressional Dear Colleague Letter on Colombia Policy
PC(USA) General Assembly Report on Human Rights in Colombia
United States Office on Colombia
Center for International Policy’s Colombia Program
Below you will find contact information for groups who can help you find family, friends or members of your congregations in detention.
The
Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (ICIRR) Family Support Hotline – 1-855-435-7693 or 855-HELP-MY-F(amily) — is a good place to start.
It connects families in crisis with reliable and immediate information, referrals to legal, ministry, and social services – while also providing a long-term connection to someone who can help them locally. Click
here
for the ICIRR website.
Contact the
Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants (ICDI)
–
1-773-779-6011 ext 3846 –
for information about detention centers, weekly vigils at detention centers, and how to get care packages to loved ones in detention. Click
here
for the ICDI website.
Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)
: For information on detainees housed at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, family members and attorneys should contact Chicago field office: 101 West Congress Parkway, Suite 4000, Chicago, Illinois 60605,
Phone:
(312) 347-2400
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
INFORMACION PARA ENCONTRAR ALGUIEN EN DETENCION
A continuación encontrará información de contacto de grupos que pueden ayudarle a encontrar a familiares, amigxs o miembros de sus congregaciones en detención.
La Coalición de Illinois para Inmigrantes y Refugiados
(ICIRR por sus siglas en ingles) tiene una línea de ayuda para familias – 1-855-435-7693 o 855-HELP-MY-F (amily) – este es un buen lugar para comenzar. ICIRR Conecta a las familias en crisis con información confiable e inmediata, proporciona referencias a servicios legales, ministeriales y sociales – al mismo tiempo que provee una conexión a largo plazo con alguien que pueda ayudarles localmente.
Haga clic aquí para ver el sitio web de ICIRR.
Comuníquese con el
Comité Interreligioso para Inmigrantes Detenidos
(ICDI) 1-773-779-6011, extensión 3846- para obtener información sobre centros de detención, vigilias semanales en los centros de detención y cómo mandar paquetes de atención a sus seres queridos en detención.
Haga clic aquí para ver el sitio web de ICDI.
También puede tratar de localizar a personas a través del
Sistema en línea de localización de detenidos de ICE
en
https://locator.ice.gov
, llamando a la línea de ayuda de ICE al 1-888-351-4024 o llamando al consulado del país de origen del detenido.
Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO)
: Familiares y abogados buscando información sobre personas detenidas con El Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas de Estados Unidos (Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE) pueden contactar la oficina central: 101 West Congress Parkway, Suite 4000, Chicago, Illinois 60605,
Teléfono:
(312) 347-2400
CRLN board member, Sidney Hollander, and program director, Gary Cozette, are currently in Honduras on human rights delegation with our partners,
La Voz de los de Abajo
a Chicago-based group. Yesterday, on the anniversary of the coup, the group attended the Resistance March in Tegucigalpa, in solidarity with the Resistance movement and in protest of the on-going human rights abuses committed under coup-successor, President “Pepe” Lobo. Below is a letter from Gary and pictures from the march.
Dear CRLN Members and Friends,
Yesterday, our Chicago delegation accompanied the lively, diverse Resistance March in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa. Sidney Hollander, the CRLN Board member on this delegation, calculates turn-out by about how many people can fill a baseball stadium, which he estimates at 40,000. His guess? A shade under 40,000. Others estimated as high as 100,000. We heard unconfirmed reports that some buses coming to the march were not allowed to enter Tegucigalpa. The reason the numbers were lower in Tegucigalpa than in previous major marches is in large part because the Frente has decided to decentralize them. Subsequently, major marches took place in all parts of the country yesterday. In Tegucigalpa, I was amazed by the great number of young people, ages 14-25, participating with great creativity. We hope to have pictures on our web site soon. In the mean time, you can see pictures from one of the web sites noted below in today’s
Hemispheric Brief
coverage of the coup anniversary.
On a negative note,
Berta Caceres,
a key leader of COPINH, the national indigenous organization of Honduras, was taken captive by military police in the town of La Esperanza. After the local population mobilized at the police station and an urgent action alert went out, Berta was released several hours after her capture. However, the police confiscated from Berta 400 signed affidavits seeking a national Constitutional assembly. The Resistance Front is organizing across Honduras to secure over 1 million signed affidavits to convene a national constituent assembly to draft a new Constitution to replace the current one drafted in 1982 amid the Cold War violence of the 1980s. Diverse sectors of Honduran civil society in the resistance movement tell us that the current Constitution is privileging the interests of the oligarchy, the elite and transnational corporations seeking to “loot” their national resources.
Gary L. Cozette, Program Director
Hemispheric Brief – June 29, 2010 / Excerpts covering Honduras
In Honduras, more on the one year anniversary of the coup.
IPS has a good report
from Thelma Mejía who says “defacto” military veto power in the country continues to block any possible political or electoral reforms in the country. The story comes after the head of the Honduran Supreme Electoral Court (TSE) said the possibility of ending the military’s role as the transporter of ballot boxes during elections was being considered. Just days later, however, the TSE changed its tune entirely after a meeting with senior military officials. According to IPS, the TSE now it “will seek to ‘expand’ the functions of the military [in the electoral process], including the possibility of allowing members of the armed forces to vote. According to Leticia Salomón, an expert in military affairs, one of the most significant consequences of last year’s coup has been the growing role of the military in the public sphere. The country now has “highly politicized security forces, and in the case of the military, the leadership has become a decision-making body, says Salomón.
The pro-coup
El Heraldo
reports on FNRP protests yesterday, saying only about 2000 individuals showed up for marches in the capital commemorating last year’s coup. I haven’t seen figures from the FNRP itself yet but
Vos el Soberano
does have photos. Pro-coup
La Tribuna
, meanwhile, reports on FNRP marches in San Pedro Sula where some 3000 resistance members took a bridge for nearly three hours. Meanwhile, the FNRP announced it had collected
some 600,000 signatures
in favor of holding a constituent assembly. For his part, Mel Zelaya watched events from the Dominican Republic. In a letter released on the coup’s anniversary, Mr. Zelaya’s harshest words were saved for the United States, which, he now claims, was “behind the coup.” As the
AP
reports, Zelaya cited what he called the “public support the United States wound up giving to the coup.” And RAJ at
Honduras Culture and Politics
has a list of recommendations about what the Lobo government could do to start a process of real national dialogue. I recommend reading in-full.
Today a national and international campaign for the protection of Colombia’s human rights defenders will be launched in Bogotá. In Colombia, being a human rights defender is a dangerous, often deadly job and the situation is only getting worse. Those working on issues ranging from displacement to the rights of women, Afro-Colombians, the indigenous and other victims of the armed conflict are threatened, attacked, stigmatized, and put under illegal surveillance on a daily basis. In response to this situation over 200 organizations across the globe, including CRLN, have joined the United States Office on Colombia to help develop an international campaign for the Right to Defend Human Rights.
The Campaign will be launched today by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, in Bogotá. Click “Read More” for more details.
The Campaign has five policy goals it will be urging the Colombian government to enact over the next year. These are:
To read more about the Campaign, it’s declaration and recommendations please go to
http://www.usofficeoncolombia.com/
.
Thanks to all of you who have urged your members of Congress to support HRes 630, condemning the coup in Honduras. Today you have another opportunity to act on behalf of democracy. See below for the Action Alert from SOA Watch.
Earlier this week, the SOA graduate-backed Honduran military coup regime refused all diplomatic options to return democracy. The U.S. State Department responded by asserting that visas to Hondurans would no longer be granted under the coup. Late yesterday State Department officials made it clear that they are considering legally defining the situation as a “military coup.” This would create an automatic cut-off of all remaining aid to Honduras. The coup regime immediately responded by saying that they would allow the rightful President Zelaya to return with amnesty, but not as president. Clearly the coup leaders are caving to the pressure. For more background information, check out this article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/vcCandidateFeed1/idUSN27328207
. We need you to act now to return democracy to Honduras. Please make two very important phone calls! For information on how to respond, please read below or click the “read more” link.
1.) Call the State Department at 202-647-5171 or 1-800-877-8339 and ask for Secretary Clinton. Deliver the following message:
“My name is ________ and I live in ______ (city/state). I am calling to ask you to legally define the de facto regime in Honduras as a military coup and cut off all aid to Honduras until President Zelaya is unconditionally reinstated.”
2.) Call the White House at 202-456-1111 and repeat the same message
“My name is _______ and I live in __________ (city/state). I am calling to ask you to legally define the de facto regime in Honduras as a military coup and cut off all aid to Honduras until President Zelaya is unconditionally reinstated.”
by Alexandra Buck
Here in Menomonee Falls, it’s holiday season again: pumpkin pies, snowy days, and Christmas lights. But I can’t see any of this the way I used to, before I traveled to Colombia for two weeks in August. I went with a group from the Chicago Presbytery and the Chicago Religious Leadership Network. We met with church leaders who defend the human rights of people displaced by the armed conflict.
One especially difficult afternoon our delegation visited Afro-Colombian women heads of households who had been forcibly displaced from their villages around Colombia. Many of their husbands had been murdered, disappeared, or recruited by either paramilitaries or guerrillas, two groups in the armed conflict.
Felicidad, whose name means happiness, recounted the years before when she was forced to leave her village by an armed group and, with a small child holding her hand and pregnant with another, found shelter in the slums outside Bogota. Rosa told us about her three children whom she cannot afford to send to school and about the threats she has received to leave the corner of a warehouse she currently calls home. Juana shared the pain of having her 5 year-old son’s arm severed when hit by a truck in the road while she was searching for work to feed her family.
None of the women in the room receive sufficient reparation for their displacement to sustain their families. Worst of all, in many cases their status of displacement has been denied, thereby excluding them from compensation promised under government law.
After Juana spoke, we had snacks and conversation in fellowship, despite language differences and extreme divergences in our lived experiences.
Now, our delegation is fundraising money for a Day Care Center for these women’s children. The least we can do, after they shared their hurt lives and the little they have, is share some of our great wealth to fulfill one aspect of their need. With a Day Care center, the children will be secure, fed, and educated so that their mothers can work to support the family.
Experiencing the incredible faith of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and all of its partners gave me a deeper sense of faith than I have ever had. I am convinced that being faithful to our God means taking risks that challenge our comfortable involvement in political and economic systems that oppress our sisters and brothers all around the world. Following Christ means demanding that the ignored are heard, that the vulnerable are cared for, and that our selfish, worldly desires are de-prioritized in seeking a more equitable distribution of power and wealth. This is not politics; this is faith.
I feel urgently that it is time we as a Christian community stand up like our Colombian sisters and brothers to work for a more just, peaceful world as we are meant to do through the example of Jesus Christ. Jesus fought against the powers that oppressed. He challenged empires and governments. To call ourselves Christians in his name, we need to do the same. And Colombia is a perfect place to begin.
If you feel called to be in solidarity with our Colombian sisters and brothers, consider being an
Accompanier
. This is a program of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship. PCUSA is also in solidarity through policy and advocacy efforts, such as the
General Assembly Resolution 11-18
.
Instead of Christmas presents this year, I have asked my family and friends to donate the money they would have spent on my gifts to the Day Care project. I have all I need; others should receive from the abundance of this world. We are still raising funds, so if you can contribute, please contact me as soon as possible.
Honorable Members of the United States Congress, Washington D.C.
Dear Members of Congress:
We, the undersigned, are U.S. and Colombian people of faith, convinced that God calls us to be on the side of the weak, the victims and the poor. For this reason, as representatives of numerous faith communities and churches, we come to you because we understand that soon you will consider two pieces of legislation that would have a significant impact on Colombia and the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. We write in the hope that your decisions may build the foundation for dignified life for all and promote the justice and peace that we so desire.
For more than 50 years Colombia has suffered through armed conflict, violence, inequalities and injustices. The civilian population is most affected by the armed conflict. More than four million people have been displaced from their lands. This conflict kills more than 3,000 people annually and tens of thousands of paramilitary and guerrilla victims today call for truth, justice and reparations. Meanwhile, the United Nations indicates that more than 45 percent of the Colombian population lives in poverty.
We have closely followed the congressional debates regarding human rights in Colombia and the balance between U.S. military and social aid for Colombia. We applauded Congress’ achievement last year when you cut $142 million in military aid and added $97 million in social aid to the aid package. We know that this year President George Bush has once again called on Congress to pass an aid package with approximately 75 percent in military aid. We, who work with the victims of the conflict or accompany them from the United States, hope that congress prioritizes work for peace and socio-economic assistance rather than military aid.
At the same time, we know that Congress may soon consider the ratification of the Free Trade Agreement negotiated between Colombia and the United States. Being faithful to our principles, we must view any public policy from the point of view of the poor and the victims.
Therefore, in Colombia we must consider how the trade agreement would affect what the United Nations estimates are the close to nine million Colombians living in rural areas – the family farmer, the indigenous and the Afro-Colombians – 80 percent of whom live in poverty, according to USAID.
According to the United Nations, 21 percent of employed Colombians work in Agriculture, the vast majority in rural areas. Research on the impact of free trade agreements between underdeveloped countries, such as Colombia, and countries with large economies, such as he United States, show that underdeveloped countries lose a significant number of agricultural jobs. For example, independent studies indicate that in Mexico at least 1.3 million family farmers have been displaced from their agricultural production due to subsidized imports from the United States.
While in Mexico many of these family farmers have attempted to survive by migrating into the United States, in Colombia there would be a risk of increasing the number of internally displaced persons, a population that is already the second largest in the world. We are deeply concerned that the livelihood of the rural population – individuals who have already suffered greatly from the consequences of the armed conflict – would be further put at risk by this trade agreement. This population would then face decisions that have historically reproduced violence and poverty in Colombia; migration to urban settings, forced internal displacement, illicit crop production, recruitment by illegal armed groups, among other ill-fated consequences.
We are also concerned that the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement would put Colombians’ food security at risk, as the country would, in large part, be dependent on U.S. imports for basic grains and other key foods for daily consumption. Furthermore, this trade agreement does not have sufficient protection for workers nor the environment. Such labor protections are particularly important in Colombia, the country with the highest number of murdered trade unionists. And without necessary environmental protections in the agreement, we would be jeopardizing Colombia’s environment, considered the second most bio-diverse in the world.
For that reason, we ask you, honorable members of Congress, to take into account the following requests before considering the proposed aid to Colombia or the ratification of the free trade agreement.
Chile, 1985:
Women soaked by water cannon during a demonstration against Pinochet on International Women’s Day in Santiago. Photograph: Julio Etchart/Julio Etchart
This week, CRLN joins millions of people around the world commemorating the 40th anniversary of Chile’s U.S.-backed military coup, which led to 17 years of dictatorship and tens of thousands of opposition activists murdered, disappeared, tortured, exiled, and imprisoned. Time has healed some, but also brought profound determination for truth and justice.
Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist Ariel Dorfman writes in the New York Times about how he survived the bombing of the presidential palace just by trading a shift with a colleague and friend. He also writes about the durable impacts of the coup that have spread throughout the globe:
“The most lasting legacy of Chile’s Sept. 11 were the economic policies implemented by Pinochet. My country became, in effect, a laboratory for a neoliberal experiment, a land of unrestrained greed where extreme denationalization of public resources and suppression of workers’ rights were imposed on an unwilling populace. Many of these merciless policies were later deployed by leaders across the globe”.
Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman interviews Joan Jara, the widow of Chilean singer Víctor Jara,
“who has just filed a civil lawsuit in U.S. court against the former military officer who allegedly killed Jara 40 years ago. Jara’s accused killer, Pedro Barrientos, has lived in the United States for roughly two decades and is now a U.S. citizen.”
Jara’s family is suing him under federal laws that allow U.S. courts to hear about human rights abuses committed abroad.”
TAKE ACTION! and join SOAWatch in calling for accountability for Victor Jara’s murder by Pedro Barrientos : “Jara was first held and tortured in the infamous Estadio Chile (since renamed Estadio Victor Jara), which was turned into a nightmarish detention and torture center after the coup. Survivors and other witnesses claim that military officers broke Jara’s hands with the butts of their rifles before mockingly asking him to play his famous songs. Defiantly, Jara sang part of ‘Venceremos’ (We Will Win). His body was later dumped in the street, found riddled with 44 bullets and signs of extensive torture.”
Read a recounting by Hugh O’Shaughnessy, a prize-winning journalist who has written on Latin America for over 40 years, of the days immediately before and following the coup in Chile, where he was working as a journalist:
“As had already been the case after the military coups in Brazil in 1964 and then in Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina, and as was to be the case latterly in modern Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, the military and police torturers were ready with their electrodes, thumbscrews and waterboarding equipment to defend ‘western Christian civilisation’.”
Many had been brought to a peak of perfection in their
trade in the US itself or in its bases in the Panama canal zone by US instructors.”
ACTION ALERT!
CRLN and our partner La Voz de Los de Abajo are sending just shy of 30
people to observe the Honduran elections on November 24th.
The current political climate of Honduras has led to the deaths of 18 candidates
from the opposition party as well as dozens of journalists, lawyers and human
rights defenders, of which only a handful of cases have been solved.
As impunity reigns in Honduras and citizens lose faith in their
governmental istitutions,
Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia is
circulating a letter to Secretary of State Kerry
demanding that the U.S.
– which has tremendous influence in Honduras –
press the Government of
Honduras to ensure the right of all its citizens to peacefully assemble,
campaign and vote.
Click here to tell your Senator that you want him or her to sign Senator
Kaine’s letter!
Support the Honduran people’s right to a democratic process!
Support the international monitoring efforts!
Click here to make your voice
heard!
You can also call Senator Durbin’s office at 202-224-2152 and ask that
Senator Durbin sign on Tim Kaine’s letter on the Honduran elections. Be sure to
tell them that your friends at CRLN and La Voz de Los de Abajo are going to
Honduras and that you’re looking to your elected officials to support the work
you’ll be doing down there to monitor the November 24th elections.
