General News and Announcements

November 2006

Colombia's Supreme Court has indicted two senators, a congressman, and two former politicians on charges of collaboration with the paramilitary death squads in the department of Sucre.

The charges came on November 9, 2006, when two people from The United Church of Canada were visiting with victims of crimes committed by the same paramilitary groups.

Jim Hodgson, the United Church's Caribbean, Central America, and Colombia Program Coordinator, and Royal Orr, the host of the United Church's television program, Spirit Connection, were in Colombia to prepare several short documentary pieces that will be aired in 2007 and 2008.

In Sucre, as they visited local congregations of the Methodist Church of Colombia (a United Church global partner) they were taken to the site of a mass grave and heard the stories of people who lived under more than five years of paramilitary occupation.

In the department of Sucre, more than 3,000 people have disappeared. The five politicians were accused of working with paramilitary leaders and mass murderers Rodrigo Antonio Mercado Peludo ("Cadena"), Rodrigo Tovar Pupo ("Jorge 40"), and their boss, Salvatore Mancuso, from 1999 through 2005.

The Supreme Court indictments said this collaboration enabled the politicians to silence political opponents, control the coastal drug trade, and win elections for members of President Alvaro Uribe's conservative coalition. It's the biggest political scandal in Colombia since 16 members of congress were arrested in the mid-1990s for complicity in the drug trade.

The indictments substantiate two decades of denunciations by churches and human rights organizations, vehemently denied by successive governments, that the paramilitaries, the armed forces, and senior politicians are all connected to each other.

The Supreme Court investigation only came after years of allegations and stalled investigations, when investigators got hold of a computer that belonged to Jorge 40, and found the evidence that links the politicians to Jorge 40, Cadena, and Mancuso. Cadena is missing or dead, but Jorge 40 and Mancuso are now detained in a former country club near Medellín. The two were shown recently in newspaper photographs happily tending flowers in a greenhouse.

The currently accused politicians cannot benefit from similar treatment under the Justice and Peace Law because they have missed the necessary deadlines. Opposition politicians say they can be expected to implicate others in exchange for lighter sentences.

"This is the tip of the iceberg," said Orsinia Polanco, an Indigenous congresswoman who belongs to the opposition Polo Democrático party. The scandal, she said, will eventually affect President Uribe, re-elected earlier this year to a new four-year term.

Read Jim's in-depth reflection on violence and hope in Colombia.

For more information about the human rights situation in Colombia, visit the Colombia section of the KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives* website.

The United Church's Colombian Partners

The Methodist Church of Colombia

Responding to a call by the Council of Evangelical Methodist Churches in Latin America (CIEMAL), The United Church of Canada has joined efforts to accompany this relatively new church in Colombia. The church now has 17 congregations; half of its pastors are women. Many of the 3.5 million people displaced by civil war have ended up in the north coastal city of Cartagena and in the national capital, Bogotá, where the Methodist Church of Colombia is operating cafeterias for children of displaced families in three marginalized neighbourhoods. The Methodist Church was the only church to continue its pastoral presence in Brisas del Mar and Rincón del Mar (on the northwest coast in Sucre department) during the five-year paramilitary occupation of the communities.

Latin American Centre for Popular Communication (CEPALC)

This ecumenical centre has served Colombia's rural and urban poor since 1978. Its work includes support for community-based radio and TV, children's and women's rights, and popular education on gender, ecumenism and popular history. All efforts are geared toward strengthening the voices of ordinary people in Colombia in the quest for justice and peace and placing "communication at the service of the people." CEPALC theatre groups look at social issues such as family violence and Colombian history, and provide space for children and youth to talk about and share issues that concern them.

The Life and Justice Project (PVJ)

An ecumenical group of Christian human rights activists and lawyers ensuring a consistent Christian witness for social justice in a time when the Colombian government pursues a so-called peace process with paramilitary groups that provides no justice, no truth, and no reparations for victims. PJV is a member of the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes, a partner of KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives.