En inglés

A growing group of resident Columbians abroad, members and supporters of the Polo Democrático Alternativo (left Colombian party), with a very clear profile who call themselves Polomosca, has issued a statement internationally regarding the judgments that the Colombian senator and defense of human rights, Ivan Cepeda has made. The official report, although signed in Boston, includes the signatures of members of the Polomosca group, who come from different cities in America and Europe. 

Entitled “Diatribe against the regime, defence of the defenders,” the pronouncement says:

“We are writing from outside of the country to those Colombians within Colombia. We are writing from outside of the country to the international community.  We want to bring to attention the distressing situation which affects the millions of Colombians who still live in Colombia.  This ‘still’ is not arbitrary.  This is because there are now 6 million Colombians who live outside the country, and who constitute 15% of the total population of the Colombia. This percentage is one of the highest in the world.

We do not hesitate in classifying the regime, which governs us, as a dictatorship. We know very well that it successfully manipulates information to give the appearance of it being a democracy.

In Colombia we do not have a democracy. What we do have is a minor group of families and individuals who achieve power through violence and fear. We all know these individuals and families by their proper name.

And these groups have never received any popular support.  In the last elections, which they presented as an ‘overwhelming triumph’ for their candidate, he actually won less than 50% of possible votes in the country.  If this is a triumph, then what is a loss?

Political assassinations, forced disappearance, criminal attacks against trade unionism, indigenous leaders and their territories and against popular organizations, aggression against difference, persistent crimes against freedom of expression or thought, accusations against anyone who dares to question the status quo, who are branded as terrorists or guerrillas… All of this proves that opportunities for political action are not just restricted, they are non existent.

However the fictions that we live in are complex.  Those outside of Colombia think that there is an opposition, represented by a candidate that obtained three and a half million votes in the presidential elections, but this is not the case. This is perhaps an option, a possibly respectable one, but remains just that, an option.

The opposition has focused on the ‘Polo Democratico Alternativo’. Within this opposition, the Polomosca makes a difference. We must make this opposition, this difference vigorous.

What happens in Colombia matters very little to the rest of the world. Governments like that of Zapatero, in Spain, Mr. Harper in Canada, Miss Merkel in Germany and Mr. Cameron in Great Britain, are all accomplices to what goes on in Colombia, accomplices whose eyes are wide open.

Miss Merkel, for example, has recently delivered to the police (the corrupt and perverse Colombian Police), laboratories so that they can carry out their investigations.  Do the Germans know what kind of investigations they are talking about when we talk of investigations carried out by the police in Colombia?

When the policy of plunder and terror which reigns in Colombia is recognized on an international scale, it becomes clear that their priority is doing business.

These businesses have their own name: they are known as Free Trade Agreements. In several countries they are on the waiting list to be legalized, casting aside the requirement to respect human rights.

The ratification of these agreements will give the green light to the regime to launch an assault the human rights, the honour and the property of the Colombian people.

It goes without saying: the government turns a blind eye to the most sordid international economic interests because they are reliant on this type of support.  

 We look on anxiously, at the way in which they grant licenses of exploration and exploitation of mining, in territories which form part of the nature reserves. If this carries on at the same rate then Colombia will become a wasteland within a few decades.

What a contrast this is with other countries, governments and leaders. In Colombia these types of policies are unknown.

When the president Correa declared that it is the companies who are responsible for the oil exploration in Ecuador and the Ecuadorians are the ones who exploit it, we realise what a government is. The Colombian government is limited to acting on interests, which are not their own.

 No one knows and no one is interested, but Colombia has become the fiction of a democracy through the perverse use of state resources.

A high percentage of electoral results which favor the usual criminals came from the charity which the government gave to those who were dispossessed by the same government and its thugs.

The manipulation is perverse. They deprive the community of what belongs to them, in order to set up agricultural and mining industries which they then put in the hands of national or international tycoons, close to the regime, and once these communities are cornered in the slums of the big cities, they return to them a fraction of what belongs to them through charity, with which they buy their votes for the elections. In this way, the victims end up voting for their persecutors and what’s more, thanking them.  

We cannot allow this state of affairs to continue. Our job as spokespeople for the Colombians that are in exile for economic or political reasons is to expos the real situation in Colombia to the international community.

To give just one example of the criminality of the regime, it only needs to be said that the judge who condemned the perpetrator of the disappearance, torture and murder of eleven innocent people in the capture of the Palace of Justice, to 30 years in prison, was forced to flee from the country with her family because of threats from groups close to the National Army.

Right now, before the pronounced sentence by the International Court of Human Rights against the state, for the murder of Senator Manuel Cepeda, the accusations against civil organizations and the people that speak for those who refuse to take it lying down and be stripped of what is rightfully theirs, have worsened.  

These judgments, do not only threaten the people but also hold a tremendously dangerous possibility, which is that the paramilitary groups and the drug trafficking start to become accepted, among the unconscious collective, as the norm. At the moment this rings true, but it doesn’t have to be that way. This senselessness forms part of that which we are trying to fight against.

One of the organisations which deals with investigations, complaints and claims is The National Movement of Victims of State Crimes (Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado), which is directed by Ivn Cepeda, son of Manuel Cepeda and, as such, someone who has experienced firsthand the violence created by the regime.

Iván Cepeda has just been elected as Representative of the Chamber of Representative of Colombia. Through him, it might now be possible for the country to recuperate the voice that has been gradually lost.

However the system does not neglect any of the fronts that the system considers “at war”. Therefore, it has courtiers and spokesmen.

Andrés Felipe Arias and José Obdulio Gaviria are courtiers and spokesmen. It's worth mentioning that they have now been held to investigation for the abusive use of power tools which were in their care.

After the conviction passed by the CIDH (a sentence which is now being evaded), Arias and Gaviria have pointed out that the elected representative is close to the guerrillas of the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces Group, frequently described as the largest, oldest and best organized armed leftist group in South America). In Colombia, this judgment is tantamount to a death sentence.

We want to denounce this fact before the community of the nations. If what usually happens in Colombia happens to Iván Cepeda, with those that are not accomplices of the system, it will be this system, this regime, this government and those spokes people who should assume the responsibility for what happens.

We hope that Iván Cepeda is able to carry on with his intellectual and political work without suffering any new threats or accusations.

We sign this statement in Boston. We are a collective which unites hundreds of people scattered across cities in various countries worldwide. Therefore the origin of our bulletins will go from one place to the other, due to the nature of the group, which has set out to develop the idea in each location.

Boston, julio 8 de 2010

Colombians abroad

Polomosca