Emergency Picket of Downing Street,
Whitehall, London (nearest tube Westminster)
Meet at Parliament Square.
2pm - Wednesday 13 July


Alvaro Uribe Velez, the president of Colombia, will be meeting Tony Blair on Wednesday 13 July. Uribe's government has just pushed
through a 'Justice and Peace' law that effectively pardons the right-wing
paramilitary death squads that have been the principal violators of human
rights, and will grant them indefinite impunity.

Uribe has given the mass murderers a golden chainsaw, and he is visiting
Spain and Britain to seek international approval. We reject entirely this
manouevre as a cover up for a policy of state sponsored terrorism against
the civilian population and social movements. We call on the British
government to give no support to state terrorism in Colombia and to end all
military aid to Uribe's regime.

Colombia's military is itself directly involved in violations, such as the
assassination of three social leaders near Saravena in Arauca on 5 August
2004, and the massacre of eight people (four of them children) in the peace
community of San José Apartado on 21 Feb 2005. These cases and many others
have been clearly documented by international human rights organisations -
Tony Blair has no excuse by pretending not to know what is happening under
Uribe, a US sponsored counter-insurgency war that is directed against the
civilian population.

A broad alliance of social movements in Spain have declared Uribe a 'persona
non grata' and will hold a demonstration against his visit to Madrid on 11
July. In similar fashion we declare our support for the National Movement of
Victims of State Crimes. The precondition for peace is support for the
victims of the violations and recognition of the responsibility of the state
and its paramilitary allies.

We make a special call for the release of Samuel Morales and Raquel Castro,
both teachers and trade union leaders from Arauca who were detained on 5
August 2004 and are still held as political prisoners.

Called by:

Colombia Solidarity Campaign,
Colombia Refugee Association (CORAS),
Latin America Workers Association.
Other support invited.

For more information contact: e-mail  colombia_sc@hotmail.com or tel
07743743041.