wfn.org | Church World Service Advocacy for Afro-Colombians

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HUMANITARIAN DELEGATION FINDS PLIGHT OF UPROOTED AFRO-COLOMBIANS
'APPALLING, BUT SPIRIT STRONG'
Church World Service Will Accelerate Advocacy

NEW YORK/WASHINGTON - Tues 6/1 - The condition of Colombia's 10.5
million Afro-Colombians is "appalling, but their spirit and hope are
strong," reports a humanitarian delegation just returning from the
Latin American country.

Co-led by New York-based humanitarian agency Church World Service and
the U.S. Office on Colombia, Washington, D.C., the seven-person
delegation, met last week (Sun 5/23 - Wed 5/26) with Afro-Colombian
activists and community leaders, with Colombian Vice President Francisco
Santos Calderon, and the Director of the UN Office of the High
Commissioner on Human Rights' office in Colombia, Michael Fruhling.

The delegation of advocates, policymakers and ecumenical leaders say
they intend to galvanize U.S. response to the hundreds of thousands of
Afro-Colombians who have been displaced from certified lands, who have
almost no access to public services, and who live in wrenching poverty.

"The squalor that Afro-Colombians endure is unconscionable in a
twenty-first century reality and their disenfranchisement is
profound," says Church World Service (CWS) Executive Director and
CEO Rev. John L. McCullough. "And their situation is made worse by the
reality that so few people outside of Colombia even know that they
exist."

In what the UN is calling the worse humanitarian crisis in the Western
Hemisphere, about three million Colombians have been displaced in recent
years. More than 30 percent of those uprooted people are
Afro-Colombians.

Colombia's 40 year-old internal armed conflict pits left-wing
guerrillas against right-wing paramilitaries and the Colombian Armed
Forces.  While the State Department calls the Colombian government's
human rights record "poor," it is the guerrillas and paramilitaries
who are responsible for the vast majority of the country's human
rights violations.

Afro-Colombians make up about one fourth of Colombia's population and
have been in the country for over 400 years, descendents of African
slaves.

Afro-Colombians from Choco and other areas, particularly on the Pacific
Coast, have been routed from their lands by left-wing as well as
right-wing militants, sometimes with the aid of the military.

One young Afro-Colombian man from the Ecumenical Network in Colombia
told the delegation about his family's experience in the Choco
community of Cacarica during Operation Genesis seven years ago.

16 at the time, the young man said, "They killed many," he said.
"Some were beheaded, women raped and cut open.	It was something we
never expected.  During the incursion, you couldn't hear the sound of
nature because nature too was shocked at what was going on."

In all, he told the group, 23 communities-some 4,500 people-- were
attacked and driven from the 103,000 hectares*	to which they held
title.	For four years the community was dislocated to Turbo and lived
in the Coliseo del Turbo until their return to Choco three years ago.

The 1,500 people who returned now live in two humanitarian zones, Hope
in God and New Life.  Each group has only 12 hectares to farm.	One
lives in the shadow of the military; the other, the paramilitary.

Afro-Colombian lands are now being deforested and planted in African
palm by business interests that have the sanction of the military and
paramilitary.

Forces have killed the community's livestock, burned their crops of
rice and corn, and threatened to tear down a wall that the community
built to protect the humanitarian zone.

Bishop Thomas Hoyt, President, National Council of Churches USA, head
of the Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME) Church in Louisiana and
Mississippi and an African-American, was a member of the delegation.
Hoyt comments, "We talked with people whose communities had
experienced massacres, and because of the climate of impunity, they
weren't heard. Their attackers are still walking free."

Census seen as key to inclusion for Afro-Colombians

CWS' McCullough reports that in the last Colombian census, only .5
million were counted of what is reported to be an Afro-Colombian
population of 10.5 million. "The result is their disenfranchisement
from government services, economic prosperity, and most importantly,
security from the ravages of the nation's paralyzing internal armed
conflict."

McCullough, an African American, says "The census results and the
condition of Afro-Colombians we encountered are clear indicators of some
of the most blatant institutional racism I've ever seen."

Vice President Santos Calderon: 'Formulating policies to benefit
Afro-Colombians'

Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos Calderon told the CWS-USOC
delegation on Tuesday (5/25) that Colombia's 1991 constitution has led
to increasing recognition of Afro-Colombians and that his government is
formulating policies to benefit Afro-Colombians, including counting
beneficiaries.	"The 2005 Colombian census will document numbers of
Afro Colombians for the first time," Santos Calderon told the group.

However, grassroots activists told the U.S. delegation that, when
polled, many people won't identify themselves as Afro-Colombians.

"It's a sensitive point," says Rev. Nicholas Genevieve-Tweed of
New York City's African Methodist Episcopal Church and one of the
delegates. "A quarter of the population are Afro-Colombians, but
people told us that for historical reasons, many are reluctant to
identify themselves as such." Many Afro-Colombians consider themselves
mestizos, of mixed race."

One Afro-Colombian group told the delegation, "If the numbers don't
bear out that there are a large number of Afro-Colombians, the
government won't allocate a lot of resources to us. If we don't do a
lot of consciousness-raising concerning the census now," the group
said, "it will be easy to discount the census."

"This is one place we as individuals can make a specific difference
from the U.S.," McCullough said. "Colombia's upcoming 2005 census
should be the subject of international scrutiny and monitoring, and we
can urge congressional representatives and international bodies to
ensure that happens."

On the ground, he adds, "non-governmental agencies in Colombia have
the capacity to help Afro-Colombian grassroots leaders inform their
people why being included is vital."

More complex than Plan Colombia and military strategies

U.S. Office on Colombia Executive Director Neil Jeffery says the
delegation members were convinced that the situation in Colombia is more
complex than the U.S. Plan Colombia allows.

"Military strategies from all sides will further undermine the lives
and livelihoods of the innocent," warns McCullough.

But Vice President Santos Calderon told the humanitarian delegation,
"A weak state cannot control human rights.

"We're doing interdictions of drugs and seizing property that is
related to drug trafficking. We have to defeat the drug trafficking if
we want to defeat those at the extreme right and left," claimed the
vice president.

The safety and rights of Afro-Colombians are caught in those
crosshairs.

Both Vice-President Santos Calderon and Stewart Tuttle, Deputy Director
of the U.S. Embassy's political section, spoke of the Colombian
government's strategy of increasing government presence in communities
throughout the country. They said the Uribe government has made strides,
particularly at positioning police in many communities.

"More implied than explicit, however," adds CWS' McCullough,
"was the sense from some Afro-Colombians that the
administration's move toward greater police presence in their
communities might be positive for stability- but can also be an opening
for more paramilitary forces to come in."

"Many people in the U.S. look at Colombia and say," said Jess
Hunter, Senior Associate with USOC, "there are no good guys. There are
good guys, but they don't have guns. They're working on issues such
as community development and human rights. We met many people working
hard to improve the situation."

Michael Fruhling, UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
in Colombia,
affirmed to the delegation in Bogota that "there are people in
non-governmental
organizations and in the government who are working hard on behalf of
Afro-
Colombians."

Nonetheless, reports CWS, violence continues and humanitarian workers
are also being
targeted.

Rather than succumbing, Afro-Colombians looking for ways out

Rather than succumbing to the violence," says McCullough,
Afro-Colombians are "looking for a way out," relying on human
spirit, creativity and ingenuity.

USOC Director Jeffery said the delegation visited a women's sewing
cooperative "which has accomplished a great deal with very few
resources. These women are in a particularly difficult situation, but
they've gotten their act together and are really creating
something."

In Aguablanca, a squatter settlement of Afro-Colombians and mestizos,
gang violence rules in many streets. But the delegation met Cazimba, a
group of young Afro-Colombians there, who are making music and money in
the nationwide Proceso Titanio movement.

Proceso Titanio, is working to keep Afro-Colombian culture alive, to
create income, and to gain acceptance for their culture. Titano's
Palenque Productions has put together ten groups like Cazimba - in all,
100 singers and producers- who are creating, performing and recording
underground rap and hip hop.

"The group we met in Aquablanca are brilliant, articulate young
people," says CWS' McCullough, "with no opportunity to pursue
their education and no jobs. And they're forming their own
business."

  "They're also rejecting music that denigrates women," added NCC
President Hoyt.  "They want to do something positive in their music.
They said we're going to be famous one day. In the midst of their
poverty there's still hope."

In Valle de Cauca, the delegation met with Dr. Saulo Quinones Garcia,
Mayor of Buenaventura, and Oscar Gamboa, advisor to Governor Angelino
Garzon on Afro-Colombian affairs in Valle de Cauca. Garcia and Gamboa
detailed the region's lack of social investment, high rates of
malnutrition, infant mortality, malaria, tuberculosis, and homicide.

With few jobs available, Quinones said young people in Buenaventura
have five main options: army, paramilitary, guerrilla, prostitution, or
drugs.

Gamboa, a renowned Afro-Colombian activist, noted that recently,
despite social marginalization, Afro-Colombians are gaining position and
influence within Valle de Cauca.

Quinones believes that with investment, the natural resources
surrounding Buenaventura--especially its port--position the municipality
for growth in tourism, fishing, and logging industries that would
generate jobs.

'Without advocacy, they're going to kill us here.'

""What is happening with Afro-Colombians is only a microcosm of the
terror that grips this nation of 40 million," McCullough cautions.

Colombia is the third largest recipient of foreign aid from the United
States.  "The largest part of that aid," notes McCullough, "is
committed to the war on drugs, including fumigation and interdiction."

Carlos Rosero, a leader of the Proceso de Communidades Negras and the
Afro-Colombian National Conference, told the U.S. group, "It's
coming to a breaking point between President Uribe and those calling for
true democracy.  Without advocacy, they are going to kill us here.

"There is in essence a marriage between the police, the military and
the paramilitaries," claims Rosero.  "And there is the presence in
various areas of the guerrilla groups.

UNHCHR's Fruhling commented that this year the guerrillas have been
responsible for slightly more of the attacks and displacement.

"We insist," Afro-Colombian Rosero" says, "that there must be a
negotiated solution to the conflict.  It's clear that a military
solution isn't the correct solution."

'Our daily bread:' imposed coca, fumigation, violence,
displacement

Afro-Colombians are also echoing the cries of other rural Colombians
that indiscriminate aerial fumigation of crops is not succeeding in
destroying the coca crops.

Said Afro-Colombian and activist Elda Cabezas of San Miguel,
"Fumigation is a U.S. initiative. Toxic chemicals are being used
that aren't used anywhere else in the world.

"Coca has been imposed," she said. "Fumigation has been imposed.
What is really happening in Colombia? Armed actors are killing and
displacing people from their lands. In Putamayo, this is our daily
bread."

"Members of the U.S. Congress should seriously consider the impact of
such contradictory policies," CWS director McCullough urged, "where
more than one hundred million dollars of humanitarian assistance through
USAID is countermanded by nearly five hundred million dollars of
military aid.

"It is this contradiction between attention to military aid over
humanitarian assistance," he concluded,  "that leads many Colombians
to hold the United States as a major contributor to their years of
misery."

McCullough says Church World Service now  intends to  "make every
effort to bring this perspective to the attention of Secretary of State
Colin Powell and will particularly seek to encourage African-Americans
including the Historic Black Churches and the Congressional Black Caucus
to be more activist about this situation within our Western
Hemisphere."

Delegate Genevieve-Tweed, an African American, told the
Afro-Colombians, "It is not only your plight. It is our plight.  We
share in a common challenge to which we all must respond. Thank you for
helping me to understand the commonality of our struggle.  I will work
to help the U.S. government to understand."

Members of the delegation included McCullough, Jeffery, Bishop Hoyt,
Rev. Tweed, Dr. Mischa Thompson, Foreign Policy Legislative Assistant
for U.S. Congressman Gregory Meeks, USOC Executive Director Neil Jeffery
and Senior Associate Jess Hunter, and Rolanda Hughes, also of CWS.

The Office on Colombia is an independent non-profit organization that
seeks to educate U.S. policymakers, the media and the U.S. public about
the impact of U.S. policy on Colombia.

Church World Service has been providing aid, development assistance,
and advocacy for Colombians since 1985. CWS is a non-governmental
organization and cooperative ministry of 36 Protestant, Orthodox, and
Anglican denominations, providing sustainable self-help and development,
disaster relief, and refugee assistance worldwide.

*Note: one hectare = 2.471 acres
						###

CONTACTS:

Ann Walle/CWS/New York
Phone: (212) 870-2654
e-mail: awalle@churchworldservice.org

Jan Dragin/New York/Boston -24/7
Phone: (781) 925-1526
e-mail: jdragin@gis.net