CSN Editorial Page
Celebration and Commitment
7. 5. 08
The freeing of Ingrid Betancourt, Mark Gonsalves, Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell and 11 other persons held hostage by the FARC guerrillas is very good news. The taking of hostages, whether for political purposes or for payment of ransom, is cruel and counterproductive. Those held hostage experience constant fear and live in intolerable conditions. The FARC and the ELN guerrillas should long ago have foresworn kidnapping as a tactic; they must have realized that when they kidnap they forfeit any good will the public in general might show them.
We at the Colombia Support Network (CSN) have been privileged to get to know the mothers of two of the so-called ”high value” hostages, Ingrid Betancourt and Marc Gonsalves. Ingrid’s mother, Yolanda Pulecio, graciously received a CSN delegation in her Bogota home, where we experienced the tremendous anguish and frustration she felt as the days went by with no apparent progress towards release of Ingrid. She spoke in favor of a Humanitarian Agreement, under the Geneva Conventions, under which the FARC hostages would be released and the Colombian government would release FARC personnel they had taken prisoner, and criticized the Uribe Administration for focusing upon military action instead of negotiation for hostage release. We at CSN have taken the same position.
I sure all of us on that CSN delegation felt thrilled seeing Ingrid and Yolanda embrace after Ingrid’s release. The tremendous determination and hope which Yolanda showed us was rewarded.
And we also feel privileged to have gotten to know Jo Rosano, the mother of Marc Gonzalves, who called CSN to seek our assistance in trying to procure the release of her son. We were able to do very little, other than publicize the fact that the FARC were holding Marc and to speak out for his release. But we were fortunate to experience the unfailing hope and tireless devotion of Jo to the effort to free her son. We were delighted to see Marc safe and sound when he arrived in San Antonio and could contemplate the joy both he and his mother would experience upon being reunited.
We of CSN are better people for having known Yolanda and Jo. They each demonstrated the triumph of the human spirit over adversity. How wonderful it is for them to see the goal of their energetic campaign achieved with the release of Ingrid, Marc and the others!
Yet we must not let the happy events of the past few days obscure the fact that the conflict in Colombia goes on and literally millions of people there continue to suffer. The FARC and ELN guerrillas still hold hundreds of hostages. We must continue to press for a Humanitarian Agreement under which the remaining hostages may be released and the groundwork laid for peace discussions leading to an end to more than forty years of civil conflict. A part of this must be a commitment to providing opportunity for the great majority of Colombians who have been excluded from wealth and power to participate and convert a façade of a democracy into a real democracy. This means protection of the rights of peasants to the lands they have worked for years and, for some 4 million people from rural areas, return of lands from which paramilitary forces, often with support of Colombian Army personnel, have forced them out. And it means an end to the U.S. government-inspired coca crop spraying campaign, which, while failing to reduce the amount of coca produced, has decimated the subsistence food crops of peasants, indigenous peoples and Afro-Colombian communities. It means protection of union members and their leaders and of journalists who often risk their lives to report on truths which are inconvenient for many of the country’s rich and powerful to hear. And the structures of the paramilitaries, who have brought so much death and destruction to the countryside, must be dismantled. Finally, a good-faith, courageous effort must be made to return legitimacy to the Colombian government, which the Uribe Administration through its para-political ties and re-election maneuvers has done much to undermine.
There are reports today of a possible ransom payment of millions of dollars in connection with the release of the 15 FARC hostages. Whether or not such a payment was made—the Colombian government has denied there was such a payment—the result of the freeing of the hostages is a very positive development. It has brought hope and pride back to many Colombians who had lost their faith in the country to address its problems. Let us hope these sentiments bring to fruition the changes needed to make Colombian society more equitable and Colombian institutions again honest and honorable.
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Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Constitutions, Crises and Courage
6.27.08
On June 26 Colombia’s Supreme Court issued a sentence finding in effect that the government of President Alvaro Uribe had bribed Congresswoman Yidis Medina to vote in a Congressional committee in favor of Uribe’s re-election. Her vote was needed in order to approve the proposed constitutional change. In the current Colombian context the decision of the Supreme Court was a real demonstration of courage. President Uribe has sought to expand the powers of the Presidency greatly, at the cost of the separation of judicial, legislative and executive power set forth in the Colombian Constitution. His administration has featured close ties of high government officials, including his cousin and close friend Senator Mario Uribe, with paramilitary forces. According to the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (Comite Permanente por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos), 33 members of the Colombian Congress are now imprisoned for their ties to the illegal paramilitaries, while 60 more are under investigation for such ties. Many of these are of parties close to the President.
President Uribe several weeks ago tried to influence the Supreme Court by making a phone call to a magistrate of the Court to whom evidence supposedly had been conveyed which identified Uribe in a negative light. Before that, in his first term, he had tried to eliminate the Constitutional Court, created by the 1991 Constitution, which has acted as a brake on Presidential power. He was unsuccessful. Informed of the Supreme Court’s decision on June 26, the President immediately called the press to condemn the decision and to propose that Congress approve a referendum to repeat or ratify Uribe’s victory in the 2006 election.
What is obvious here is the attempt to use the powers of the Presidency to consolidate even more power in that office, emasculating the courts. President Uribe, buoyed by surveys that show he has an 84% approval rating, is like another President in this Hemisphere, playing the role of the “decider” whose word is law. The threat to constitutional government, and in fact legitimacy of the government, could hardly be more serious.
The Colombia Support has continuously opposed Plan Colombia and the U.S. aid component of the Plan. But at our National Meeting last month we favored aid to the Colombian court system and the office of the Attorney General (Fiscal General), if that aid could be allocated to the investigation of crimes of the paramilitaries and of agents of the Colombian state and prosecution of those responsible for these crimes. I doubt that any effective allocation of these funds for the specified purposes could be made during the Uribe Administration in Colombia and the Bush Administration in the United States. But we should express our support for the determination of the Colombian Supreme Court to investigate crimes of state and to bring to justice those implicated in these crimes. And we should also support the work of Attorney General Mario Iguaran, who has directed substantial resources to investigation and prosecution of paramilitary leaders and their crimes.
The very existence of constitutional government is at stake in Colombia. But remarkably, much the same is true in the United States. President Bush, our “decider”, has concluded that executive privilege covers virtually all of his determinations as President; Congress in his view has no real oversight role. Karl Rove, “Scooter” Libby, and other Presidential or Vice Presidential advisors are immune from Congressional oversight. Bush can establish by so-called “signing statements” that a law passed by Congress will be enforced not according to its terms, but as he decides to interpret it. These statements have no constitutional basis; we should be dumbfounded that this foolishness is not roundly ridiculed and reproached by Congress and the Courts. And how is it that John Yoo can misread the Constitution and ignore this country’s commitment to international treaties on human rights in his eagerness to enshrine an imperial Presidency in this country? As one who studied constitutional law at Stanford Law School under Professor Gerald Gunther, I wonder what crazy misconceptions Professor Yoo’s students at the University of California Law School at Berkeley may take from his classes. Torture is morally wrong and contrary to the Geneva Conventions and to develop a rationale under which it is acceptable is the height of folly. It is wrong for our country and wrong for the world.
Colombia may have an advantage on us as far as the respective Supreme Courts are concerned. While the Colombian Supreme Court withstands Presidential pressure and seeks to protect the Constitution, a majority on our Supreme Court has undermined our privacy and curtailed freedom in a number of ways. And we shrug our shoulders as Chief Justice Rehnquist, Justice Scalia and the Court majority in Bush v. Gore abandon the states rights position they had developed over several years so that the Republican candidate, Bush, having received 500,000 fewer votes than Gore, could become President. Now we see Justice Scalia trying to divine what the Founding Fathers wanted when this country was much different over 200 years ago; this exercise is, in a word, foolish. Yet we hear serious debate about it.
It is, in short, no less important for us than it is for Colombians to be concerned about protecting our Constitution. Presidential usurpation of power is a phenomenon we both share. Hopefully sensible people in both countries will energetically support the defenders of these two quite remarkable Constitutions.
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Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
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