Across the Americas

CPTnet. 9 November 2006
by Michelle Braley and Joel Klassen

Santa Rosa, Colombia - On Sunday, November 5, 2006, after mobilizing for forty-five days of protest in the town of Santa Rosa, 600 small-scale gold hminers from the south of Bolivar province crammed into the back of flatbed trucks and went home. Amid joyful whoops and hollers, their mile-long caravan made the two hour drive to the end of the snaking mountain road which leads to the mining zone. From there, they walked several more hours along grueling trails to their homes.

Justin Podur interviews Hollman Morris
ZNet, November 04, 2006

Hollman Morris is a veteran journalist from Colombia who visited Canada to receive the International Press Freedom Award from the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). His career spans more than two decades, and includes his role as producer of the weekly program CONTRAVIA, correspondent for the channel RCN, editor of the Peace and Human Rights Section of El Espectador, (one of Colombia's two most prominent newspapers) and founder of the university journal El Universitario.

CIP Release. October 31, 2006

In July 2000, President Clinton signed into law a big aid package called "Plan Colombia," with the ambitious goal of helping Colombia to resolve its related problems of drug trafficking and violence. Since then, the United States has given Colombia $4.7 billion. No other country outside the Middle East comes close. Of that aid, 4 out of every 5 dollars - $1.5 million per day - has gone to Colombia's police and military.

This October 6, we commemorate the sixth anniversary of the detention and forced disappearance of Claudia Monsalve and Angel Quintero in Medellín, Colombia [1]. Angel and Claudia were human rights defenders and members of ASFADDES, the Association of Relatives of the Detained & Disappeared [2]. ASFADDES was launched in 1982 and is the organization that is most emblematic of victims' struggle for truth, justice, and reparations, and against impunity. ASFADDES perseveres in this struggle "with every right," as its motto so aptly says. In the year 2002, for example, 2,355 persons were registered as disappeared in Colombia--that is, 271 per month, or one every two and a half hours. ASFADDES reports that more than 15,000 persons have been disappeared in Colombia since the 1970s, and of every thousand persons reported as disappeared in the country, only one reappears alive.

Interamerican Association for Environmental Defense (AIDA)

BOGOTA, Colombia, Aug. 22 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Six years since the Aerial Spraying Program of Plan Colombia (PECIG) began, the program has failed to meet its goal of eliminating 50 percent of illicit crops in Colombia.