wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] WCC condemns US military role in Colombia

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Note #7408 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

WCC condemns US military role in Colombia
02332
September 2, 2002 
    
WCC condemns US military role in Colombia  

by Stephen Brown  
Ecumenical News International

Geneva - The World Council of Churches has warned of a military escalation in Colombia's almost 40-year-old civil war and called on the United States to cease its military aid to the Colombian government.  
  	The WCC's main governing body, its central committee, meeting in Geneva until September 3, said on Monday that the violence in Colombia posed a threat to the "entire Latin American continent."
 	It called on the US "to withdraw all its military forces, including military and other related advisers, from Colombia and from its other installations in the Latin American region without delay."  
  	The WCC committee also demanded an end to a state of emergency imposed in August by Colombian President Alvaro Uribe.  
  	It urged the Colombian government "to rescind all emergency measures, to guarantee full respect of the human rights of its citizens and to respect fully those provisions of international rule of law applicable in times of civil conflict," especially the protection of civilian populations.  
  	The committee also called on the armed rebel movement to desist from actions that endangered civilians and to seek a return to peace negotiations.  
  	Uribe was swept to power in May buoyed by a war-weary population frustrated by increasing violence and by the collapse of peace talks between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the main rebel movement.  
  	A report presented to the WCC meeting said churches in Colombia had for many years opposed the government's military escalation, had engaged in non-violent protests and in actions for a peaceful, negotiated solution to the conflict.  
  	The report said Christian leaders and lay people were increasingly being targeted as violence in Colombia intensified.  
	The churches believed the root of the conflict lay in a long history of social injustice rather than in drug-trafficking or in the violence of the armed guerrilla movements, the report said.  
  	The WCC committee singled out for criticism "Plan Colombia," under which the US has provided military aid ostensibly to eradicate Colombia's drug trade but which critics charge the Colombian military has used to reinforce its war with the guerrillas.  
  	The WCC called on US churches to press their government for an immediate end to its role in Plan Colombia and for foreign assistance to be switched from military to humanitarian purposes.
 	The New York Times reported in August that the Bush administration through recent anti-terrorism legislation is authorizing US $1.7 billion in direct military assistance to the Uribe government to be used expressly for fighting leftist guerrillas.  
  	The report presented to the WCC central committee said violence had "intensified dramatically" in recent years.   
  	An average of 20 people a day were being killed or had "disappeared" as a result of the "continuing social and political turmoil," the report said. 
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