Colombia Solidarity Campaign

URGENT ACTION!

From the human rights team of the Process of Black Communities and other organisations:

6th August is the date fixed for the eviction of the black community in La Toma, in the Suárez municipality in north Cauca, Colombia. La Toma´s Afro-descendant inhabitants have been declared ´squatters in bad faith´ in a legal possession order taken out by Raúl Fernando Ruiz Ordoñez and Jesús Sarria. Yet the presence of black communities on these lands dates from 1636, since when they have worked small gold mines which is today the only means of subsistence for hundreds of families.

COLOMBIA SOLIDARITY CAMPAIGN 10am – 5.30pm 4th July 2009

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Brunei Building, Thornhaugh St, London WC1

Current situation in Colombia and Britain

The Minga of  Indigenous and Popular Resistance

Defend Happiness like a trench

Defend her from the scandal and the routine

of misery and those who are miserable

from the transitory absences

and the sure things.

Mario Benedett

CONTINUING PERSECUTION AGAINST THE MINGA OF SOCIAL AND COMMUNITY RESISTANCE

Santiago de Cali, 17 May 2009.

Amidst the pain and indignation of the criminal action against the indigenous movement of Cauca, the organizations which have signed below, express our condemnation of the assassination of ROBERT DE JESÚS GUACHETA the indigenous vice governor of Honduras Council located in the Municipality of Morales, Cauca. We send all our strength and solidarity to his family at this hard time.

Cauca,  11th May 2009

Mayerli Alejandra Legarda Quilcue, daughter of indigenous leader Aida Quilcue, had to flee 4 armed gunmen who were waiting for her outside the family home on Monday the 11^th of May. As Mayerli was leaving the family home at around 6pm, she noticed the men pointing handguns at her from a car parked in front of the house. The 12 year-old managed to flee back into the house, where she was being accompanied by indigenous guards. The men then proceeded to drive around the house in the car, before fleeing when they realised that the indigenous guards were in the house.

URIBE'S STRATEGY - DISPOSSESSION, LIES, AGRESSION, FALSE POSITIVES, JUDICIAL FRAME-UPS and IMPUNITY

Santiago de Cali, 7 April 2009

Valle University, EMSIRVA and EMCALI are laboratories of the Uribe government's third phase of neo-liberalism: the definitive handover of public commonwealth to private corporations and the multinationals.

They were prohibited from going to school and to university.

They were prohibited from constitutional guarantees.

They were prohibited from all the sciences, except military science.

Prohibiting the right to complain, they were prohibited from questioning.

Today I suggest to you, my brother, that this does not happen again,

Prohibited to Forget!

Rubén Blades