Note #9182 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:
06146 March 6, 2006
Colombian human-rights activist once again is subject of death threats
Warnings follow Avilez from Barranquilla to Bogota
by Alexa Smith
LOUISVILLE - Listening to Mauricio Avilez talk via cellphone from a Bogota coffee shop, it is hard to remember that he's always waiting for someone to kill him.
His voice is clear and his conversation is direct. Only when the talk turns personal does he sigh, as his words become more labored.
Avilez talks as he gulps black Colombian coffee, no sugar, no milk.
According to sources within Colombia's Inter-ecclesial Commission of Justice (ICJP) and Peace, new death threats have been directed at Avilez and the Rev. Milton Mejia, a Presbyterian minister and human rights activist.
Mejia is the former executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia (PCC), which has persisted in its human rights emphasis despite longstanding threats.
The ICJP reported that an internally displaced Colombian was allegedly offered $1,000 by Colombia's military intelligence network to falsely accuse Avilez and Mejia of guerrilla activity. Such an allegation could land them both in prison while the government runs a lengthy investigation to determine whether to press official charges.
Both men say such arbitrary detentions are part of the government's strategy to debilitate human rights networks by crippling their leadership and scaring other workers into silence.
The man who allegedly offered the bribe also said that Avilez and Mejia are on a hit list.
"I'm not the only one taking risks ... to dream this country different," Avilez, 26, says from the noisy, crowded cafe. "We do take care of ourselves. I don't take chances. If it gets really bad, I'll have to leave the country ... In the meantime, I'll try to reconstruct what is broken here."
Avilez says both the British and U.S. embassies are pushing the Colombian government to investigate the allegations. The United Nations High Commission on Human Rights is seeking protection for human rights workers and agencies and for reform of the Colombian intelligence agencies that are apparently spying on them. churches and human rights organizations who work on behalf of the country's more than three million people displaced by violence.
The Colombian Embassy to the United States did not respond to a call from the Presbyterian News Service.
Colombian religious leaders say that most of the country's three million internal refugees are defenseless against both the paramilitary and guerrilla militias who've pushed them off their land and the government forces who view them as an unwelcome burden in the cities where they flee.
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase fired off a letter to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez on Feb. 13, urging him to investigate the threats and insisting that the denomination will seek a formal investigation should the threats continue.
Avilez says that congressional elections on March 12 and presidential elections on May 18 are escalating Colombia's polarized politics. "With the coming elections," he says, " there is just more repression against those who are opposing the government."
Detention, human rights workers argue, is one way the government tries to silence the opposition.
Avilez already has a first-hand experience of detention.
In 2004, Avilez was arrested and held in a Barranquilla jail for four months after he was accused of guerrilla activity, including charges that he helped bomb a large department store owned by a Colombian politician. His family was harassed. He says the charges were trumped up - aimed at squelching the volunteer ministry with displaced persons that he ran out of the Barranquilla offices of the PCC.
Avilez's program linked student lawyers and displaced people who needed legal aid or human rights protections.
During the interrogations of Avilez and others it became clear that the church's offices were under government surveillance.
When the government was unable to justify his incarceration - and after months of international pressure - he was released and immediately fled to Bogota to avoid local paramilitaries bent on killing him. He remained in hiding for months and the investigation was finally officially dropped when he was visiting the Geneva offices of the United Nations and the World Council of Churches (WCC).
Of the 14 people arrested with Avilez two years ago, nine are still in jail. The rumor that some among them are now paid government informants is not unusual in a country rich in tales of treachery, betrayal and conspiracy.
Avilez says he was released more quickly than most because his case was closely watched internationally, including advocacy from the PC(USA). "I left the prison in less than a year," he says, "and that's not common."
Avilez has resumed law school studies in Bogota. It will take two years to finish the degree that was interrupted by his imprisonment.
He continues to help the displaced demand their rights, supported by a small salary from a Catholic human rights group. He left Barranquilla, his family and his girlfriend after a former cellmate - Alfredo Correa De Andreis, a professor and proponent of human rights - was gunned down on the street alongside his bodyguard.
Avilez traveled back to Barranquilla last October to tidy up the details of his life there and to then start over in Bogota, half a country away.
Bogota seems safer, but not much. He is still cautious, but the new threats are a potent reminder that he's still being watched by deadly unseen observers with long memories.
"The fear is permanent ... it feels like others are always checking on me. With all of the oppression in Colombia, I don't think they've forgotten me," Avilez says, adding that he goes about his business, but doesn't stay out late and someone always knows where he is.
Avilez weighed seeking political asylum in Switzerland two years ago when he visited both the U.N. human rights agency and the WCC.
"I saw people there who'd left their lives in Colombia ... and they had no dreams," he says of the Colombian expatriates who opened their homes to him during that visit. "I could have stayed in Geneva. It would be a life without fear, but a life without emotion too.
" I could probably turn 80 there, but it wouldn't be living ... at least it wouldn't be living my life."
In the background, the noise of street life in Bogota intensifies. Passing motorcycles. Honking horns. "So I came back to Colombia and I feel like I'm doing what I love," Avilez says. "I have a feeling of God's calling to do the work of human rights. Maybe I will not live until I'm 80 years old, but I will live fully," he adds.
He's broken up with his girlfriend, Avilez says, because they just couldn't have a normal life
"What's normal?" he laughs softly. "That's a question. I wish for that, but, with all the things happening in this country, with the level of repression ... it is hard to feel normal."
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