More than 15 000 marched against last Thursday (27 March) from the Central Administrativo Distrital to the US Embassy in opposition to the attack on Iraq and U.S. intervention in Colombia. The blue block of uniformed telephone exchange workers stood out visually amongst the unions, womens organizations, students, teachers, artists and political movements (FSP, MODEP, MOIR, PTC, PPS, PST, Unios, MRPM, Banderas Negras, VA, MRI, PCC), all united against the imperialist war.
The march left at midday and began arriving at the embassy at 13.10. People refused to disperse until around 2pm when the amount of teargas became too much and the police had started to surround some of the young people present, arresting 17 of them. Clashes ensued.
Rubber bullets injured one young woman in the eye and a photo journalist in the leg. Two photographers from international agencies denounced the fact that they were beaten. After the march was dissolved some people leaving it occupied a petrol station.
This march followed a symbolic display of black umbrellas by 1,000 people two days previous.
On Friday 30 700 university students and teachers marched through central Bogota. The rain didn’t deter twenty students from taking off all their clothes in front of TV cameras along the way, and accusing President Uribe of being a “terrorist” and a “sellout” as they did so. They rallied in a park, where speakers denounced armed conflict whether in Colombia or abroad, stating “we are saturated by war”. the march tried to head for the presidential palace but decided to avoid a full head on clash with the large number of riot police, who along with regular police had accompanied the event from the start.

Elsewhere on the same day 5,000 members of indigenous communities from the department of Cauca blocked the Pan American highway for several hours to protest the problems they have faced locally as well as the war on Iraq.

On Thursday 27 the town of Sincelejo became what local newspaper El Universal called “the first city on the Carribean coast to protest against the war on Iraq”, stating that 4,000 people took part in one of the biggest ever protests in the Sucre region.
The day began with a gathering of employees of the Family Welfare Institute (ICBF) and their supporters, striking that day against cutbacks and redundancies in that body. They were joined by unpaid local schoolteachers, who had also called a day strike, local school students, parents and other public sector workers.
At the same time in the nearby municipality of Coloso (Montes de Maria) employees of the ICBF’s children’s homes denounced delays in receiving vital food supplies due to the army’s labourious checks on incoming vehicles – part of the security measures ordered because they are in one of Colombia’s “Rehabilitation Zones”. These are areas where the government has suspended civil liberties and increased repression in the name of the war on the guerrillas. These restrictions make the protests held even more impressive.

(Information taken from Colombia indymedia and Colombian press.)