Colombians Deserve Consideration
Dayton Daily News, Letters to the Editor,
5/29
Dear Editor:
Colombia is in the midst of a forty year
civil war that continues to get worse. 2.3 million citizens are
internally displaced with continuing displacement at the hands of
guerrilla, paramilitary and regular armies. The Colombian
government has failed to stanch these atrocities and, indeed, its
own military frequently works closely with the paramilitaries.
Farmers fields are being aerially fumigated
in an unsuccessful attempt to reduce the growth of coca.
Fumigation is killing legal crops, driving the farmers off their
land and causing serious health problems -- even death among
children. Progressive leaders and innocent civilians are being
murdered and assassinated by the thousands with no arrests or
prosecution of the perpetrators.
Against this backdrop the United States has
pumped 1.3 billion dollars into this beleaguered country as Plan
Colombia -- 80 percent of it in military support. As a purported
attempt to stem the flow of drugs into the United States, this
policy has been an abysmal failure. Yet Congress is currently in
the process of increasing our funding and involvement in this
desperate situation which, instead, cries out for a major
peacemaking initiative.
Against this backdrop, hundreds of Ohioans
have been attempting -- for two years without success -- to secure
a face-to-face meeting with our Senator DeWine, who is one of the
architects of the US Colombia policy. We have met numerous times
with his staff but have been repeatedly refused a meeting with the
Senator. This led a group of us to visit the Senator's Columbus
office last week in another attempt to secure a meeting. His staff
had us arrested.
We, who have seen the situation on the
ground in Colombia, know that it is the people of Colombia who can
least afford our rebuffs by the Senator. For it is their
story -- they who suffer the effects of toxic fumigation, they who
are most frequently targeted by paramilitaries acting in collusion
with the Colombian military -- it is their story
which needs to be heard by the Senator and US media. And, sadly,
it is their story which Senator DeWine seems determined not to
hear at all.*
* The Dayton Daily News chose to
not print the italicized section.
Paula Ewers
