wfn.org | Bloodbath in Colombia Threatens Presbyterian Workers

[PCUSA.NEWS@pcusa.org]

9-June-1997 
97234 
 
       Bloodbath in Colombia Threatens Presbyterian Workers 
 
                          by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky.--The late-May murder of a former Jesuit priest researching 
human rights abuses in Colombia is the latest death in a killing spree that 
targets both Catholic and Protestant religious workers. The assassinations 
are geared to scare churches into preaching an edited gospel and to 
obstruct pastoral outreach among the more than one million displaced 
peasants trying to escape the violence. 
 
     Presbyterian lay preacher Pedro Alzate Varela was killed by armed men 
in late November and another pastor, Isa! Prez, has been transferred to 
another parish after receiving death threats in Urab , a lush banana-rich 
agricultural region along Colombia's violent Caribbean coast where a 
labyrinth of regional paramilitary groups,  leftist guerrillas, drug 
traffickers and government counterinsurgency fighters struggle over land 
along the Gulf of Urab .  Reportedly, the gulf is also a primary shipping 
lane through which to get weapons into Colombia and get cocaine out. 
 
     Urab  is a strategic area, since many believe multinational 
corporations intend to buy land there to build another canal connecting the 
Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean once the Panama Canal is handed over to 
Panama in 1999. 
 
     But while it may well be the bloodiest, Urab  is just one conflict 
zone within Colombia. 
 
     Human rights groups estimate 10 gruesome political killings a day in 
Colombia simply to terrorize peasants into leaving their land and to 
silence critics.  That not-very-subtle tactic is seldom prosecuted by the 
state since, according to international critics, evidence links the 
Colombian army to paramilitaries and to drug traffickers eager to buy up 
real estate as a way of sheltering unlimited supplies of unlaundered money.  
 
     But the May 19 shooting of former Jesuit Mario Calder"n and his family 
in a Bogot  apartment sends the powerful new message to human rights 
workers, according to Washington, D.C.-based Human Rights' Watch/Americas 
(HRW), that even those attached to international organizations or working 
in what was thought to be relative security within more visible city 
churches or organizations are not safe. 
 
     "Colombia's army is clearly the most abusive in the hemisphere," said 
HRW's Colombia researcher Robin Kirk.  There is impunity for human rights 
violations in military courts, he said, and civilian investigations are 
impeded so that convictions are next to impossible.  "Everyone who works in 
human rights work in Colombia will be terrified.  You never know when your 
name will be taken down.  You never know.  What you do know is they will 
act without mercy. 
 
     "There is no defense.  No discussion.  No mercy. ... That's the 
message: We can still get you." 
 
     It's often hard to tell exactly who is doing the threatening, since 
death lists are often passed anonymously through neighborhoods and threats 
are spray-painted onto houses during the night.  As Cecila Zarate of the 
Colombia Support Network of Madison, Wis., puts it: "The army works in 
cahoots with the paramilitaries and the paramilitaries work in cahoots with 
the drug lords. ...  And most of the killings are of grassroots people." 
 
     Threats and killings nearly emptied the town of Saiza, where Alzate 
was once pastor of a Presbyterian church.  Alzate's name just appeared on 
what many believe to be a paramilitary's death list with no explanation. 
"The whole church left ... Saiza because the paramilitary came and 
threatened the whole town.  Everybody left," said the Rev. Milton Mej!a, 
the Presbyterian Church of Colombia's synod executive in Urab , emphasizing 
that paramilitaries, or guerrillas, allow only their unflinching backers to 
remain on the land.  "That's happening a lot now in C"rdoba [one of the 
provinces in Urab ].  ..." 
 
     He said the Apartad" church once staffed by Prez now has another 
pastor who no longer works with displaced people, as Prez once did. 
Working among the displaced is suspect by any of a number of groups. 
 
     Mej!a told the Presbyterian News Service attempts to control the 
people do not stop in the fields -- outsiders may eavesdrop on worship, on 
prayer meetings, on Bible studies in any of the conflict zones, though the 
pressure is far worse in Urab , where there are 35 Presbyterian churches. 
 
     "People tell us that ... some people go to observe what is being said 
to make sure that nothing is being said against what [those in control] 
might want," said Mej!a.  "People have to sing and pray and talk about the 
Bible without mentioning social questions," he said, noting those questions 
may be precisely where people's pain lies.  "[Some] have told the church to 
preach only about the Bible ... not talk about justice, not talk about poor 
people, not talk about human rights. 
 
     "If pastors refer to these things, they'll be accused, and this is why 
they are killed," said Mej!a, stressing that these violent groups often 
push churches to take sides and that churches "almost always" decline 
support for either side. 
 
     He said more radical pastors are contemplating reusing the Bible's 
apocalyptic language to disguise meaning and to speak to insiders in a way 
that will only confuse outsiders, just as early Christians turned to 
apocalyptic symbolism in times of persecution.  "We focus, a lot on hope," 
he said, "telling people to try not to lose hope or fall into thinking that 
there's no way out of this." 
 
     Statistics on the violence compiled by the Colombian Commission of 
Jurists in its 1996 summary of the human rights situation in Colombia are 
staggering.  Approximately 65 percent of political/ideological killings or 
disappearances are attributed to the military or its paramilitary allies; 
35 percent are thought to be committed by guerrillas.  The Bogot -based 
Inter-Congregational Commission of Peace and Justice, which documents human 
rights abuses and is financed by 55 Catholic orders, emphasizes the 
shocking severity of the terrorism by pointing out that more cases are 
reported to the commission each year in Colombia than the 2,700 cases of 
political murder reported during the entire 17-year Pinochet dictatorship 
in Chile. 
 
     "And if there's an investigation at all, the investigation never comes 
to a conclusion," said Kirk, insisting that too many people are too afraid 
to talk and investigators too afraid to investigate.  "The problem is not 
the civilian investigators.  It's the army.  The army is not allowing cases 
to be investigated. 
 
     "Why?  They're involved." 
 
     Coletta Younger of the Washington Office on Latin America is adamant 
that Colombia is "by far" the worst human rights situation in the Southern 
Hemisphere.  "This is extreme violence, extreme human rights violations 
committed against anyone who is at all suspect. ... And the threats come 
from so many different sides, there's always uncertainty [about the 
source]. ... 
 
     "But," she said, referring to the May 19 death of Calder"n, "this is 
the first major paramilitary action in Bogot  and it has people scared. ... 
It threatens a whole 'nother range of individuals and networks." 
 
     The Global Service and Witness arm of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) 
financially helped the Presbyterian Church of Colombia to rapidly relocate 
Prez when his life was threatened.  "We're in intimate solidarity with the 
church in Colombia and we try to help them in every means," said Eriberto 
Soto,  PC(USA) liaison to South America.  "These people are not involved in 
politics at all, not involved in political protests. 
 
     "But Protestant churches," he said, "have become a strong influence in 
communities." 

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