wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] Day 118

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Note #8519 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

04447
October 8, 2004

Day 118

Jailed Colombian church worker awaits government investigation

by Alexa Smith

BARRANQUILLA, Colombia - Mauricio Avilez gets slightly choked up as he talks.

	"For me, the hardest thing about being here is the suffering that it
causes my family," he says, his voice catching somewhere deep in his throat.
"For me, personally, this is the way I've chosen to spend my life, and I knew
there would be consequences. But my family is paying the price."

He stares at the floor for just a second.

	He's talking about the two years that he has worked as the director
of a volunteer ministry of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, linking
student lawyers like himself with Colombia's growing number of people
displaced by violence. The law students help refugees file for government
assistance and document human rights violations by the armed groups that
force them off their land and into shantytowns on the edges of the cities
like this one.

	Government officials estimate that more than 70,000 refugees are
crammed in makeshift camps or dingy apartments on Barranquilla's fringe.

	Sister Crisanta Cordero, the nun who visits Avilez almost daily in
his prison cell, reaches for his hand and holds it tightly as he begins
talking again.

	"To defend life in any country in Latin America implies this kind of
risk and worse. I assumed these consequences," he says, gesturing at the
peeling paint and dingy lighting inside the prison where he's been stuck for
nearly five months, accused of crimes against the state.

	"I didn't realize how much my family would suffer," he says, sighing,
"and how that would add to my own suffering."

	The room goes quiet. Or at least the conversation stops. The
background noise here never subsides. Now, at midday, iron doors are
slamming. Men are hollering as they head into the walled courtyard for some
sunlight, or to meet a wife or a sweetheart if they've been granted visiting
privileges. Catcalls ricochet off the concrete walls as other men pace back
and forth in their cells, their voices rising and falling. The noise inside
is a perpetual dull roar.

	It is quiet only at night, Avilez says. That's when he reads books
that his family brings to him, mostly on theology and poetry. Or he writes
the poems in which, these days, he stashes most of his dreams.

	Avilez shakes his head and smiles. He's 24 years old. He looks 19,
maybe younger.

	MEANWHILE, in a whirlwind of meetings in Bogota, high-placed
officials in the United Nations Human Rights Office and the Colombian
attorney general's office assure U.S. church leaders that resolving Avilez'
case is a top priority because of international scrutiny.

	Speaking on Avilez' behalf were Rick Ufford-Chase, moderator of the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) General Assembly; the Rev. Cruz Negron from San
Juan, Puerto Rico, representing the Latin American Council of Churches; and
the Rev. Milton Mejia, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of
Colombia, headquartered in Barranquilla.

	Yolanda Sarmiento Amado, director of international affairs in the
attorney general's office, told the delegation that the vice president has
asked that the case be handled quickly. It is what she calls "a high
priority."

	UN officials said they had assurances that Avilez' case would be
dispatched within the week-but that was three weeks ago. And there is no word
yet on whether he will be tried on formal charges or released.

	The oddity here is that Colombian justice presupposes guilt, not
innocence. The system is slated for overhaul, but not until 2005.

So for now Avilez is under arrest while the government investigates whether
there is enough evidence to turn the accusations made against him into formal
criminal charges. A paid informant, who is apparently part of a federal
amnesty program, alleges that Avilez is part of Colombia's clandestine
guerrilla network and has accused him of terrorism and murder.

	The testimony reportedly links him to the bombing of a Barranquilla
department store last December, when one shopper was killed and more than 50
others were injured. The store is owned by a prominent politician.

	Avilez was arrested on June 10 by an elite arm of the Colombian
military and, because of the nature of his charges, may be held for 260 days
before the government is required to produce evidence.

This is day 118.

	Mejia worries about both Avilez and the church that he serves.

	"Mauricio is accused of being a terrorist. I am absolutely convinced
that is a baseless conviction," Mejia told Amado during his meeting.

	But the arrest tipped off the church to other frightening realities.
During interrogations by government agents it has become obvious that the
denomination's Barranquilla office is under video surveillance and its
ministry - particularly to displaced people - is under intense scrutiny.

	Human rights work, the interrogators say, is tantamount to
subversion. And the people who do it are just guerrillas in disguise.

	"There's nothing illegal going on," said Mejia. "But it appears there
is an attempt to link the activities of our office with the FARC (Colombia's
largest and oldest guerrilla group)." And if the church is connected to the
guerrillas, it not only puts church workers like Avilez at risk, it also 
scares needy people away from getting the help they need at the church.

	Mejia, and a lot of people like him, think that is the point - to
stop the church's human rights ministry.

SCARED HARDLY describes the feeling inside the Avilez household.

	Mauricio's mother, Eli Maria Alvarez, seldom leaves the house now,
except to visit the jail and to go to church. A car with darkened windows to
conceal its occupants has passed slowly by the house. A similar car followed
Eli Maria from church one day, easing up to the sidewalk where she walked and
then slowing down, keeping pace with her steps.

	She put her head down and kept going, her heart racing.

	Her daughter, Renata, says the same kind of not-so-subtle
intimidation happened to her.

	This isn't the life Eli Maria chose. Until her son's arrest, she was
an anonymous mother in this steamy, sprawling Caribbean city that operates
something like Oz - some of its workings are seen, but its seamy underside is
not visible until it rears its ugly head.

	Millions of the city's residents go about easily observable daily
routines. Vendors hawk fruit on rickety push-carts that they trundle through
the streets. Little girls march off to school in trim, plaid uniforms. Old
men sit on benches, watching the passersby and catching up on the gossip. The
traffic is always noisy. Loud music blasts out of restaurants and pool halls.
And the streets are always packed with people, even after dark.

	But there is another, less observable world, whose purpose is terror.

	Its occupants lurk around corners, unseen until it is too late. Or
they drive by on motorcycles with a gunman riding on the back. They issue
telephone threats. They cut up union organizers with chainsaws. Emerging out
of nowhere, they visit their destruction and then disappear, leaving behind
desperation and death.

	Eli Maria never imagined she'd be watched like this.

	"She's nervous, and she wasn't like that before," says her oldest
son, Moises, 29, who is also studying law and who has assumed the work that
his brother was doing before his arrest. "Our family always had economic
problems, but it was always very calm in our house."

	When Mauricio was arrested that changed.

	His father - who already had a heart condition - just sits in his
chair and stares. He seldom speaks.

Eli Maria wakes up at the slightest sound, so sleep deprivation escalates her
anxiety. Her blood pressure is up. She has stopped hawking catalogues on the
street - the way she earned money to support the family and pay for her boys'
law school education.

	Watching the dream of a better life for her children dissolve breaks
her heart.

	"What about his future?" she asks about Mauricio, acknowledging that
Mauricio will have to leave Colombia to save his life, even if formal charges
never get filed against him. He has only one year of law school remaining.
"He hasn't finished his studies yet. With no degree, what job is he going to
get?

	"I don't know what's going to happen." Her head drops wearily on this
reporter's shoulder.

	Moises is more practical. Right now he's focused on getting the
charges dropped, and then, on getting his brother out of Colombia. That's
just the way it is, and he's in a hurry to get it done.

"	We are all of us more spiritual," he admits, adding that the family
prays more than ever. "Something good always comes out of the bad."

	Moises says Mauricio is the upbeat one in the family. "That's what
he's like," he says, talking in a presbytery conference room one block away
from the spot where the store bomb went off that changed their lives. "I
admire him a great deal for his ability to do this. I think if I were in
Mauricio's situation, I'd be going crazy."

	 Moises visits his brother in jail every Saturday. He listens as
Avilez "gets things off his chest." He marvels that his brother's girlfriend
still visits and still imagines a future with his brother. He thinks they are
naC/ve, too young to know what they're up against.

	If Avilez is released, he will definitely have to leave the country,
his friends and family agree. Otherwise, he'll risk ending up as dead as his
old cellmate, Alfredo Correa De Andreis, a university professor and human
rights advocate who was also accused of guerrilla activity.

Correa was gunned down on a Barranquilla street last month, his bodyguard
murdered at his side. Ufford-Chase spoke briefly at his funeral.

	FOR NOW Avilez rises at 6:00 a.m. for roll call. He bathes and then
has breakfast. Lunch is at 11 o'clock. There's another roll call at 5 p.m.,
and he's locked in his cell shortly thereafter.

	He seldom leaves his cell. He eats there. He exercises there as best
he can. Mingling with other inmates B	some of whom would be after him on
the outside B> is too risky. His mother brought him a rollaway cot, so unlike
some others here he at least has a bed.

	Sometimes other prisoners seek him out for bits of free legal advice.
Otherwise, he thinks and writes poems.

	"When I was first captured," he says, "I felt that my life was over,
that I had no future. I thought I'd bury all of my dreams in this place. But
when I found so much solidarity, I realized that (my work) is still being
carried on, that there is still a way to build a new country that is more
human." He refers to the support he has received from the U.S. church, from
friends in Colombia, and from strangers who have sent books and other notes.

	Avilez insists that human rights work is not wrong. It is legal. And
he isn't sorry that he followed his conscience.

	He felt so passionately about the work, he says, that he'd forget to
do other things. He'd forget to eat. "It is what made my life worth living .
. .

	"I know that I have even more to give to those who suffer," he says,
the sweat sticking to his forehead, his back and the back of his knees. He's
wearing baggy below-the-knee shorts. Kind of hip for prison attire, but the
temperatures here are stifling.

	An admitted idealist, Avilez grins. He acknowledges that he's more
pudgy since he's been jailed, a combination of too little exercise and too
many carbohydrates. But he's very focused on the present: how to survive it
and not be embittered by it.

	The future is harder to ponder.

	"If I should stay here in Colombia, I could very easily be
assassinated. And all my family," he says, his voice catching slightly. "I do
not like to think about leaving Colombia. That causes me real pain.

	" . . . This is my country."

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