Call for a North American Coalition for Peace in Colombia

 
 

On Sunday, August 18, at 10AM Pacific Time, 11AM Mountain, Noon Central, and 1pm Eastern Time, there will be an online meeting, also accessible by phone, with the goal of forming a new North American Coalition for Peace in Colombia. We invite all those who are interested to participate.

If you would like more information, please send an email to JAMES@AFGJ.ORG with your name and affiliation, and we will send you information on how you can attend.

We are most powerful when we are united together. Today, in Colombia, our friends and comrades need the power of an international solidarity movement that is united with them against the humanitarian crisis they are facing. Because of U.S. policies, social leaders are being killed on an almost daily basis. Corporate media ignores the crisis. Instead, Colombia is presented as a model of democracy even while the country is converted into the Latin American center for threats against Venezuela and popular movements and governments throughout the region.

Therefore, we say that “Peace for Colombia is peace for the world!” We know that a just, peaceful, and sovereign Colombia would have a positive and liberating impact far beyond its borders.

In preparation for this meeting, activists from grass roots organizations across the U.S. and Canada have formulated the following Points of Unity for the proposed coalition:

North American Coalition for Peace in Colombia

Points of Unity

WE CALL FOR AN END TO THESE CONDITIONS IN COLOMBIA:

  1. The Colombian government of Ivan Duque is sabotaging the Peace Accord and its agreements signed between the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army) and the Colombian government in 2016.
  2. Human rights defenders, social movement leaders (especially among afro and indigenous communities), and former FARC-EP combatants are being assassinated daily by military, police and government backed paramilitary groups with impunity.
  3. Political prisoners and prisoners of war are still in jail under despicable conditions even though the peace accord agreed to their release.
  4. President Duque and his mentor, Alvaro Uribe make every legal and illegal effort to break and make dysfunctional the new peace court (the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, JEP).
  5. The Duque government, along with the U.S., has supported the extradition of the Peace negotiators from the FARC-EP.
  6. Colombia uses its territory as a launching pad for U.S. interference in and aggressions against Venezuela.
  7. Colombian aggression toward the people of Venezuela is the same as the aggression it uses toward the people and the popular movements of Colombia.
  8. Colombia acts in the name of the U.S. by creating a massive media and political attack on Venezuela throughout Latin America.

END U.S. ROLE IN COLOMBIA - END U.S. IMPERIALISM IN THE REGION

  1. The U.S. has militarized Colombia in order to invade any area or country that opposes U.S. corporate policy. It also supports the repression of popular movements within Colombia.
  2. The U.S. undermines the Colombian Peace Accord of 2016.
  3. The U.S. has readied Colombia as the main political and military enemy of Venezuela.
  4. The U.S. supports all of the repressive policies of the right-wing government of Ivan Duque. It does not support the Peace Accord.
  5. The U.S. demands the extradition of left Colombian leaders to the U.S. for trial. The Farc-EP leader, Simon Trinidad, has been a political prisoner in the U.S. for 15 years.
  6. The U.S. arranges the extraditions of right-wing narco-traffickers and paramilitary leaders in order to cover up investigations into their ties with Colombian political and business officials as well as their responsibilities for grave human rights violations.
  7. The U.S. government ignores the point of the peace agreement about crop substitution and has pursued violent forced eradication of coca by the Colombian Armed Forces. This has resulted in many deaths and even whole scale massacres. Presently the U.S. insists on the use of the carcinogenic glyphosate (RoundUp Ultra) to aerial spray coca growing communities causing massive displacement.
  8. The U.S. has militarized Colombia in order to invade any area or country that opposes U.S. corporate policy. It also supports the repression of popular movements within Colombia.
  9. The United States government keeps the FARC-EP on the State Department terrorist list. The peace accords are the law of the land in Colombia. The FARC-EP no longer exists as a guerrilla army and has been replaced by the new and legal political party, the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force (FARC).
  10. The U.S. has spent more than $12 billion dollars to support the military and state institutions of repression in Colombia.
  11. The U.S. is the political and military author of the civil war in Colombia for over 52 years. The Pentagon’s Yarborough Commission even urged Colombia in 1962 to use tactics of terror and to organize paramilitary and military assaults against popular movements in rural Colombia.
 

Contact Us

Alliance for Global Justice
225 E 26th St Ste 1

Tucson, Arizona 85713-2925
202-540-8336
afgj@afgj.org

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