Colombia and Latin America
Date: Fri, 27 Apr 2001 14:54:48 +1000
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Please forward this invitation to community leaders and Latin American
solidarity networks within your own state or country, and more
particularly, consider sending a national Greens representative to
attend this two-day meeting in El Salvador, 20-22 July.
Chris Chaplin
State Secretary, The Australian Greens (Victoria)
member, Committees in Solidarity with Latin America & the Caribbean
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LETTER OF CONVOCATION
First international encounter for solidarity and peace in Colombia and
Latin America
The following signatories-
Jos� Saramago, winner of Nobel Prize for Literature, Portugal; Adolfo
P�rez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Prize winner; Bishop Pagura, President of
the World Council of Churches, Argentina; Professor Heinz Dieterich,
President of the Forum for the Emancipation and Identity of Latin
America, Mexico; Professor James Petras, New York State University;
Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT, United States; Doctor Clark Ramsey,
ex-attorney general; Mumia Abu-Jamal, political prisoner, United States;
R. James Sacouman, Professor of Acadia University Wolfville, Nova
Scotia, Canada; Henry Veltmeyer, Professor of St. Mary's University,
Halifax, Canada; Ahmed Benbela, ex-president of Algeria and President of
the Arab Parliament, Algeria.
CONSIDERING:
1. That Plan Colombia means a direct military intervention by the
United States of America in the internal affairs of a sovereign Latin
American state, the Republic of Colombia, in keeping with the Monroe
Doctrine and Roosevelt Corollary, the destruction of the legitimate
government of Salvador Allende in Chile, the continuous aggression
against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the direct U.S.
involvement in the Central American war, and its continuing hostility
towards Cuba in maintaining the criminal blockade, despite the
pronouncements of the United Nations every year;
2. That this intervention constitutes a flagrant violation of
International Law, of the right to self-determination of a people, and
is a threat to peace and stability in the region;
3. That due to its counterinsurgency nature, Plan Colombia is
fundamentally aimed against Colombia's civilian population, and has as
its immediate goal, to destroy or neutralize all social resistance
opposed to the project of the neo-liberal restructuring of the Colombian
and Latin American economies;
4. That Plan Colombia is in reality a military plan that involves and
jeopardizes in many ways the sovereignty of other countries in the
region - through the "Andean Initiative" - with its clear objective of
gaining control of the Amazon Basin; that it endangers the
consolidation, in Venezuela, of the process headed by Commander Hugo
Ch�vez, and affects those Central American countries committed to the
development of democracy by means other than war;
5. That Plan Colombia, as a plan of war, constitutes the principal
obstacle to the search for peaceful solutions to the Colombian conflict;
6. That Plan Colombia produces massive displacement into neighbouring
countries of civilians living in areas under attack;
7. That the use of modern war technology, including the use of
biological weapons against coca plantations, constitutes an
unpredictable and grave danger to the ecology of the world's most
important zone of bio-diversity, the Amazon;
8. That the plan of regional military intervention weakens the unity
and good relations among neighbouring countries, and prepares the stage
for war, creating uncertainty and anguish for the peoples of the region.
We resolve:
1. To summon international public opinion and democratic forces of the
world, to support the International Encounter for Peace in Colombia, to
take place in San Salvador, El Salvador, from the 20th to the 22nd of
July, 2001;
2. To denounce and reject Plan Colombia, and its annexe, the Andean
Initiative, as plans of United States military intervention that will
affect negatively the peaceful co-existence, the democratic stability
and the economic development of the peoples and states of Latin America;
3. To promote the international solidarity of peoples and governments
towards the struggles of the Colombian people in their search for a
peaceful solution to the social and armed conflict through which they
now suffer;
4. To generate possibilities for strengthening ties of friendship,
integration, and good will, to allow the pursuit of development with
social justice and peace;
5. To endorse the process of dialogue between the Colombian Government
and the insurgent forces;
6. To support proposals for the substitution of illicit crops and the
fight against narco-traffic, without the use of warfare, because this is
an economic and social phenomenon that affects all of humanity.
Signatures of the parties:
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