wfn.org | Charges against rights protesters dropped

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Note #7340 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

12-July-2002
02248

Charges against rights protesters dropped

2 Presbyterians among 8 who occupied Ohio Senator's office

by Alexa Smith

LOUISVILLE - Charges have been dropped against eight Ohio human-rights activists who refused to leave the office of a U.S. Senator who wouldn't meet with them to discuss the government's military aid to Colombia.

Two of the eight - part of a group of 10 arrested on April 30 in the Columbus, OH, office of Sen. Mike DeWine - were Presbyterians John Ewers, 67, and his wife, Paula, 66, who worship at College Hill Community Presbyterian Church in Dayton, OH.

DeWine, a Republican, is one of the architects of "Plan Colombia," an appropriations act signed into law by President Clinton in 2000 that provides more than $1 billion a year to Colombia - three-quarters of it to support military and police forces.

U.S. and Colombian churches have protested the package, noting that Colombian military and police officials have often violated the human rights of Colombians, including innocent civilians. They also object to Colombia's aerial spraying of coca crops with herbicides, which they claim is harmful to humans.

The biggest grant included in the aid package is $328 million for helicopters to be used in a campaign against drug producers and traffickers in southern Colombia.

Church activists argue that it is poverty, not coca - the raw material for cocaine - that is the primary cause of political violence in Colombia. They say the focus of "Plan Colombia" should be the development of alternate crops for poor farmers who now cultivate coca because it is their only viable source of cash.

The charges against the eight Ohio activists were dropped on July 9 at the joint request of the Columbus city prosecutor and DeWine's office. The Senator also agreed to meet with a group of constituents on Aug. 13 to discuss the issue - which he had refused to do for two years.

The activists were charged with trespassing and resisting arrest.

"My daughter's reaction is that we hit a home run," said Ewers, who has visited Colombia numerous times through a partnership between Miami (Ohio) Presbytery and the Presbyterian Church of Colombia. "We got the charges dropped, and we got the face-to-face meeting we've wanted for two years."

He added: "We had a sympathetic and joyous judge (Anne Taylor), who closed the proceedings by saying, 'Let us all pray for peace in Colombia.'"

Ewers said the Ohio Working Group on Latin America (OWGLA) wants more than a single meeting with DeWine. "We're hoping to build a bridge for continuing dialogue," he said, adding that he thinks the meeting can be held without rancor. "I hope that's what is going to happen. I don't know why it shouldn't."

DeWine's office did not respond to a request for comment from the Presbyterian News Service.

According to the Rev. Milton Mejia, a spokesperson for the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, the effect of the U.S. military aid is the opposite of what its patrons envisioned.

"There is more planting of coca," he said. "The war is more intense. The army has more weapons. ... 'Plan Colombia' is not helping anything. ... We are more in danger than before."

Mejia said advocates of the human rights of Colombia's poorest people, including union leaders and church workers, are being labeled "terrorists" by right-wing elements such as wealthy landowners and paramilitary forces supported by the military.

According to the Latin American Working Group (LAWG), a church-based lobby in Washington, DC, the U.S. aid supports the fumigation of coca fields in southern Colombia despite evidence that the spraying harms other food crops, schools, livestock, water supplies and homes.

LAWG says 37,000 families in the state of Putumayo signed pacts with Colombia's government last summer to manually eradicate cocoa in exchange for development money and an end to the fumigation. But by February 2002, fewer than 30 percent had received any aid - although the spraying continued.

"The funding for alternative (crop) development has been implemented extraordinarily slowly," said Lisa Haugaard, an LAWG spokesperson.

Ewers, who returned from Colombia on July 8 to attend his sentencing hearing, served six months in federal prison last year for trespassing on federal property during a non-violent demonstration at Fort Benning in Columbus, GA.

Fort Benning houses the U.S. Army's Spanish-language training facility for Latin American military personnel, long-known as the School of the Americas, whose graduates have been implicated in a series of human-rights abuses. The school's defenders claim its curriculum now includes instruction on the preservation of human and civil rights.
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