No to International Impunity! No Military Aid to Uribe! Support the Victims of Human Rights Violations!
Whitehall, London (nearest tube Westminster)
6pm – 8pm Tuesday 12 July
(We will protest on Wednesday as well)
Alvaro Uribe Velez, the president of Colombia, will be meeting Tony Blair on Tuesday 12 and/or 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.