The
furore which has erupted within the Irish media
and amongst the political establishment after the
Colombia Three arrived home safe and well has in
the main neatly side stepped the truth about the
current political situation within Colombia. Partialy
this has come about due to the type of campaign
those who campaigned tirelessly to bring the men
home decided to conduct on their behalf, in which
the campaign was fought along the lines of the men
being innocent peace campaigners caught up in Colombia's
less than perfect legal system. In
other words, all politics were gutted from the campaign
to bring the men home, especially any criticism
of the US administration's role within Colombia.
Horses
for courses and most would say the proof of the
pudding is in the eating, i.e., the men were originally
found not guilty and are now back home. However,
it is difficult not to conclude the latter came
about because the men had decided, after their not
guilty verdict was set aside and a retrial called,
not to mortgage their freedom to the Colombian legal
system, hence they are now safe back home. How much
of a role, if any, the Colombian Three ("Bring
Them Home") campaign played in the men's return
home is debatable, but what it did undoubtedly manage
to do is keep the men in the public eye; no small
thing in itself when they were imprisoned in a prison
system with an unsavory history.
This
being so, I have no wish to denigrate the hard work
which was put in by those who campaigned for the
three men's freedom, however, things have clearly
moved on since they arrived home. Perhaps it is
now time to highlight the destructive and opportunist
behavior of the US administration within Colombia,
which has made the current Colombian Government
of President Alvaro Uribe little more than a servile
client of the US Administration. If any state can
be described as a Neo-Democracy, it is Colombia.
Indeed some see it as the template for the Neo-Conservatives
who dominate Foreign Policy in the George Bush Jnr
Presidency.
On
the surface it has all the trappings of a normal
Democratic State: opposition and governing political
parties, regular general and local elections, a
legal system that at first glance appears to function
in a democratic manner; and an open and free media.
If one looks under all this froth, the reality is
somewhat different: a brutal state-within-a-state
is at work in Colombia which allows the writ of
the free market, the multi-nationals and the local
big bourgeoisie to run free at the expense of the
majority of Colombians.
The
oppressive apparatus of the Colombian State is justified
as being necessary to fight the narco-traffickers
and local 'terrorists'. In reality nothing of the
like actually occurs, as Colombia is a society in
which money talks, and money is something the narco-traffickers
have stacks of to purchase the freedom to go about
their business.
In
the early part of the decade, the ruling Colombian
elite and the Bush administration came up with a
plan, known as Plan Colombia, which was supposedly
designed to eradicate from Colombia cocaine production,
processing and shipping, and the criminality which
accompanies it. In reality, Plan Colombia's true
purpose was to crush the last of the South and Central
American guerrilla armies which sprang up in the
wake of the Cuban revolution, and by so doing making
the Americas safe once again for the multi-nationals
to exploit at will without fear of opposition from
trade unions, uppity peasants or human rights groups.
The scale of the US involvement in Colombia can
be judged by the fact that to-date almost $1.5 billion
dollars have been channeled into Plan Colombia since
the turn of the century. If anyone doubts that the
destruction of the cocaine cartels was nothing but
window dressing for a gullible US electorate, then
they need to take note of the fact that despite
this huge sum, the amount of cocaine coming into
the USA from Colombia since the project began, far
from being stifled, has increased.
Multi
National Corporations have a history in Colombia
of using right-wing para-militaries [AUC], which
are controlled and financed by members of the Colombian
bourgeoisie, large land-owners, a section of the
military and the cocaine drug cartels. They use
para-military's like AUC to terrorize workers into
accepting sub-standard working conditions and wages.
BP
and Coca-Cola spring to mind. For example, the former
is facing a £15m compensation claim from a
group of Colombian farmers who say that the British
oil company took advantage of a regime of terror
by government paramilitaries to profit from the
construction of a 450-mile pipeline. Local farmers
say that those who tried to stop the development
were either forced by the paramilitaries to leave
their homes or were murdered.
As
for Coca-Cola, trade unionists like Juan Carlos
Galvis, Human Rights Director of SINALTRAINAL (Colombian
Food and Drinks Workers' Union) is one of the plaintiffs
in a court case in the USA, where the multinational
stands accused of complicity in the forced displacement,
kidnap and assassination of trade unionists in their
Colombian bottling plants. Again, it is common practice
for the armed forces of Colombia to turn a blind
eye when right wing militias in the pay of the multi-nationals
kidnap and murder rank and file TU activists (See
Boycott
Coca-Cola campaign).
To conclude, the failure to paint a broad picture
of what is actually happening within Colombia has
meant the main source of news and information the
Irish people have had about the situation there
is that which comes from reactionary politicians
like Fine Gael's Enda Kenny, plus the regular press
briefing given to pliable journalists and politicians
by the Colombian Government and the US Embassy in
Dublin. Thus, we should not be surprised that a
majority of people believe Colombia is a democratic
state, defending itself against narco-terrorists
[which they wrongly believe the FARC to be], whose
sole purpose is to flood the US and Europe with
their poisonous wares.
It
is vital whenever the opportunity arises that progressive
minded people bring to the attention of the Irish
people the truth of what is happening within Colombia,
and not just the side of the story which places
the USA and its Colombian satraps in a favorable
light. If this were to happen, no Irish government
would even consider sending Irish patriots back
to a nation in which the rule of law is the play-thing
of the rich and powerful.
