5. Colombia

This Liberaiton AGM believes that the human rights situation in Colombia is of grave concern and needs to be addressed urgently. Already in the year 2002, more than 90 trade unionists have been assassinated by paramilitaries and many remain disappeared. At the rate they are being killed, numbers will far exceed the more than 200 who were assassinated and disappeared last year.

Many hundreds of campesinos in rural areas have also been murdered in paramilitary/army incursions into their communities, while thousands have been displaced, condemned to internal exile with the more than 2 million who already live in precarious conditions in make shift accommodation with inadequate food, water, sanitation and health care.

Evidence of ongoing and widespread paramilitary/army collusion is overwhelming and the State provides army and paramilitaries with total impunity for their appalling crimes against humanity. The United States continues to provide more military aid to the Colombian armed forces in spite of their extensively documented human rights abuses. Such a climate of impunity along with aid from the US send a very clear message of support for the terror being perpetrated by these two mutually dependent armed groups.

Since the peace negotiations with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) were unilaterally ended by President Pastrana in February of this year, the armed conflict has severely deteriorated and several thousand have already been killed in direct combat. The few remaining spaces for dialogue have been closed by the inclusion of the FARC in the EU list of terrorist organisations, so allowing an already incendiary situation to be further inflamed and closing the door on any possibility of a humanitarian exchange of political prisoners or any calming of events in the country.

The newly elected President Alvaro Uribe Velez who takes up office in August 2002 is bad news for the human rights situation in the country. He is promising to implement legal mechanisms which will limit freedom of speech, restrict movement and severely constrain the fundamental and constitutional rights of the people. He intends to give extensive judicial powers to the military, enabling them to stop, search, detain and try without transparency, and to limit the authority of civil bodies.

We are deeply concerned about the lessening prospects for peace through negotiation in Colombia and the implications of a deepening conflict and war drive on the humanitarian and human rights situation. Serious efforts need to be made immediately to reestablish sincere and meaningful peace talks with both the FARC and the ELN and, in order for this to be possible, the FARC needs to be removed from the EU list of terrorist organisations and the United States needs to stop its military funding of the Colombian armed forces.

Further Liberation shuold affiliate to the Trade Union based organisation "Justice for Colombia".

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