wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Moderator: Standing for non-violence and the poor can

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

mean murder in Colombia

04422
September 24, 2004

Moderator: Standing for non-violence and the poor can mean murder in Colombia

Corruption, drugs, guerrilla warfare deadly problems

by Bill Lancaster

LOUISVILLE * Rick Ufford-Chase, fresh off a trip to Colombia, South 
America, preached urgently about the chaotic, violent, dangerous situation 
facing the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and human rights workers and 
others there.
	 Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the 
Presbyterian Church (USA), told the General Assembly Council during a 
meeting here Wednesday that the church's simple act of standing for 
non-violence and standing for the poor * the simple act of being church * 
could be considered subversive and result in church members being gunned 
down in the streets by violent factions.
	 "Colombia has been experiencing civil war for 40 years," he said. 
"The people of Colombia can no longer easily determine what it is that is 
being fought about. The guerrilla movement, if it at one time had 
legitimate interests to try to protect, and I expect they did, can no 
longer be identified as working on behalf of the people for a change for 
the people."
	 Ufford-Chase said guerilla interests have become so corrupted over 
time that it's difficult to identify them as standing against oppression in 
any significant way. Rather they have become actors and rivals themselves.
	 The elder at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ, said 
people in Colombia can no longer distinguish between which armed groups are 
responsible for which violent acts, each using tactics of terror and 
abduction to carry out its interests.
	 "We can't tell who are the protagonists and who are the 
antagonists," Ufford-Chase said. "We can't even tell who might be
suspicious.''
	 Then there's a paramilitary force called the Self Defense Forces 
of Colombia," Ufford-Chase said.
	 "They have been operating for many years now with a wink and a nod 
from the government, operating in plain clothes with automatic weapons, 
with almost a complete situation of impunity," Ufford-Chase said. "Carrying 
out a level of violence that is truly unimaginable for most of us in the
room."
	 The government is giving guerrilla forces an opportunity for 
reinserting themselves back into Colombian society by providing information 
on other guerrilla groups, Ufford-Chase said.
	 "So there is a general situation in which anyone can be named by a 
person (who is) reinserting themselves into society," the moderator said. 
"With only the foundation of that accusation, that new person's life is now 
at risk as they try to defend themselves against the claim that they also 
have been involved in guerrilla work."
	 Ufford-Chase said drug trafficking involving huge amounts of 
money, people at the highest levels of society and international 
connections runs rampant in Colombia. Adding to the dilemma, he said, is 
Colombia's supply of oil, tweaking U.S. interests.
	 The recent arrest of Mauricio Avilez Alvarez, a human rights 
worker with the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, has brought these issues 
to the forefront. Alvarez was arrested based on the word of a reinserted 
guerrilla officer and held in jail for the last three months after being 
accused of involvement in a bombing in December, the moderator said.
	 Ufford-Chase said there's currently a great deal of concern for 
the incarcerated human rights worker as well as for others working in his 
office.
	 "Mauricio's life is at risk regardless of whether or not he is 
convicted," Ufford-Chase said. "Because it is simply enough to be named a 
guerrilla in the media, to be a target of Self Defense paramilitary forces.
	 During his visit to Colombia last week, Ufford-Chase accompanied 
the Rev. Milton Mejia, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church in 
Colombia, from office to office of the highest government officials, and 
assured the Colombian Church that "we as a church in the United States are 
greatly concerned and we are watching."
	 On Sept. 21, during the end of the moderator's visit, Mejia's 
phone rang.
	 "He answered the phone and I watched as his face went white," 
Ufford-Chase said. "He sobbed. 'No. It can't be. No it can't be,' he said."
	 One of Mejia's colleagues, another human rights worker who also 
had been accused earlier working with the guerrillas, had been assassinated 
in broad daylight two blocks from his office in Barranquilla.

	 "This situation calls us as a church," Ufford-Chase said. "But 
even more significant to us in the moment in which we live, it has a great 
deal to teach us. Colombia is, in the most disturbing way possible, a 
window on the world right now, a situation of generalized violence."
	 Ufford-Chase said called the guerillas "armed actors," some 
certified by the Colombian government, some acting on their own.
	 "I believe the Presbyterian Church of Colombia has something to 
teach us as a church," the moderator said. "They have determined that the 
only appropriate response to that kind of violence with so many armed 
actors, is to insist that the church stands for non-violence. The church 
stands for peaceful resolution of conflict. The church will stand with the 
poorest, the displaced, those who have the most to lose and simply insist 
that it will be church."
	 The text for Ufford-Chase's sermon was a reading of the 
Beatitudes. He concluded by saying, "The poor, the sad, the humble, those 
who seek what is good and true. The kind, the forgiving, those who are not 
malicious or vengeful, the peacemakers, the persecuted--blessed are all of 
you when you find yourselves in this position."

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