From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subj: PPC: Call from Colombia's political prisoners
Date: 4/18/01 6:11:48 AM Mountain Daylight Time
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Colombian Labor Monitor)
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POLITICAL PRISONERS' COLLECTIVE [Colombia]
Thursday, 12 April 2001
HECTOR ABAD GOMEZ LA PICOTA PENITENTIARY
For the life and freedom of political prisoners in Colombia
CALL FROM COLOMBIA'S POLITICAL PRISONERS
Colombia is a country that has a long history of injustices and
inequalities. A corrupt, intolerant and exclusive political justice
system, in which only the interests of an oligarchy linked to the United
States are taken into account, and which makes the living conditions of
the majority of the population regrettable. The decomposition of the
actual system manifests itself not only at a material level but also at a
moral level. In this context, the State has lost all its legitimacy by
putting itself in the position as middlemen for the enrichment of a few
and the repression of the majority. The application of the Neo-liberal
model of accumulation with the predictable consequences of increased
unemployment, cutting of social investment, degradation of education and
public health, are all elements that worsen this very grave scene.
Meanwhile the workers political and union organisations do not have the
most basic rights: threats, assassinations and disappearances are everyday
occurrences, which impede any form of protest, which has also been
criminalised. Financed by large land owners, industrialists, other
sectors of the oligarchy, as well as from the profits of drug trafficking
and with the training and protection of the Army and the State security
organisations, there has been an organisation of paramilitary
groups. These groups are used to advance a campaign of terror and
extermination against unionists, students, teachers, human rights
defenders and all those that oppose the government's system. There are
constant massacres of rural peasants and there are now over three million
internally displaced people. Many of our fellow countrymen have had to
abandon their country and seek exile in far away lands to protect their
lives, because there is no truce to the intolerance.
In this scene, the insurgent organisations are the only way the oppressed
people have to struggle for their rights. When the conventional political
channels have been utilised so as to create opposition, all its leaders
have been assassinated. It is for this reason that today, right
throughout the country there is the political and military presence of the
insurgency, which has led to an internal war in the country that has
already claimed thousands of lives.
As a consequence of their participation as combatants or for their
opposition to the living conditions that have been imposed on them, there
are thousands of people in the Colombia's jails. Teachers, students,
unionists, members of left wing organisations, members of guerrilla
organisations, etc. The State utilises its juridical and penal apparatus
as one more weapon of repression, giving these people sentences of up to
40 to 60 years.
The conditions in the jails are depressing: lack of the possibilities to
work, study, or any activity that dignifies the prisoner. The
infrastructure and the conditions of health and hygiene are completely
inadequate, there is overcrowding at close to 60% at a national level, in
short the jails are where people are deposited and where time passes
without any hope.
As if this critical situation was not enough, the political prisoners also
have an even greater threat: the movement of the internal conflict into
the penal system, now that many of the prisoners here are members of
paramilitary groups. In this way, the state uses these people as an
element of control, so as to stop the organisation and protest of the
Colombian prisoners. The paramilitary has publicly announced its decision
to exterminate all those that have something to do with any of the diverse
leftwing organisations in Colombia. This decision covers more than 3000
political prisoners who are in the different jails around the country, in
a condition of absolute vulnerability in the hands of our opponent the
Colombian State, which represents the interests of the oligarchy, and
excludes the great majority of our people.
It is for this reason that every day there is an increase in the bloody
confrontations inside the jails. The last of these, to this date,
occurred last week in the jail of Barrancabermeja, where the paramilitary
attacked the area of the political prisoners with a hand grenade, causing
two deaths. To this we add the police operations that intend to
intimidate and destabilise those that promote organisation and peaceful
protest of the political prisoners.
In this scenario, there is very little possibility of the political
prisoners leaving jail alive. This threat has become greater still now
that the Peace Negotiations with the government have put forward the
possibility of a prisoner exchange, or a humanitarian interchange of
prisoners. Because of this possibility the paramilitary have increased
their threats, saying that they: "will make sure only corpses leave the
jails for the humanitarian exchange of prisoners".
Everyday our situation becomes worse. This last year a new model of jail
has been imposed, which far from guaranteeing the fundamental human rights
of the prisoners, they have become an element of repression and
punishment. They are jails constructed and administered by the United
States Prisons Office where they try to isolate the prisoner from their
family and social contacts and submit him. All this comes as part of the
package that has been arranged with that country to advance the deplorable
Plan Colombia of which we all know the real intentions.
In this scenario, we are making our call out to all the human rights
organisations, to all the revolutionary and progressive people and
organisations to place pressure on the Colombian Government, to guarantee
the security, life and physical integrity of the Colombian Political
Prisoners. That absolutely all our rights are respected.
By the same token we call out to support the search for a negotiated end
to the internal conflict, particularly promoting the humanitarian
interchange of prisoners, that will permit that thousands of Colombians
that are now serving long sentences for our beliefs will be able to
recover our liberty.
The construction of a society with justice and in peace, is the most
prized objective for those who in this task have been prepared to give up
our liberty and our lives. We want the end of the blood bath that the
pettiness and egoism of a few have imposed on us. And that our children
and the future generations can leave behind all the infamy and the hate
that now imprisons us and kills us in the cities and in the country of
Colombia.
We aspire for a prosperous and peaceful Colombia, and for this object we
have been prepared to give up our liberty and our lives. Behind the bars
we keep up the struggle and we understand that it is another arena in
which we can keep on working, even in the middle of so many difficulties
and limitations. They have tied our hands and bodies but never our dreams
or ideals.
A fraternal and revolutionary embrace that crosses walls and borders.
POLITICAL PRISONERS ARE NOT CRIMINALS:
WE ARE FREEDOM FIGHTERS FOR THE PEOPLE
THEY CAN TIE OUR HANDS BUT NEVER OUR DREAMS OF JUSTICE AND LIBERTY
Collective of Political Prisoners
HECTOR ABAD GOMEZ
LA PICOTA PENITENTIARY
Bogota D.C,. 12 April 2001
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