With the classical meaning of a “diplomat is one who listens and reads twice”, I've been diplomatic with this book and diplomacy has paid.
I underestimated the book when I first read it and appreciated it better after going through it twice. Initially I was put off by some inaccuracies of fact and deficiencies of judgement when referring to Colombian history. Soon I came to value the usefulness of the overviews mainly for non-Colombian readers and the ability of the book to fulfil…
The US describes Colombia as harbouring the hemisphere's biggest terrorist threat. Not surprisingly, the plan it supports to solve Colombia's social ills, Plan Colombia, will have a significantly detrimental effect on the region as a whole. Both these books not only provide a coherent critique of Plan Colombia and offer alternative proposals for dealing with the drugs issue, they delve beneath Colombia as merely an exporter of cocaine or a perpetrator of terrorism and explore the political,…
This brief book was initially written by its Colombian author in order to explain to a US American friend the roots of the complex situation of violence in Colombia.
However, it is actually addressed to the population living there, as if the author could not hold back a need to urge a people despised for centuries by their own plunderers (aristocracy of unscrupulous political leaders, immoral world market and ever increasing military expenditure - utterly useless) to recover their…
In July, 36 activists were sentenced to terms of between 90 days and six months in prison for their symbolic trespassing at the US “school for assassins” the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation, (formerly the School of the Americas) in November 2001.
Some were also given fines on top, with one activist receiving a US$5,000 fine and a six-month prison sentence. Four of those sentenced elected to go to prison immediately, the rest were released on bail and will be…
Being Chilean, I was prevented from visiting Cuba between 1973 and 1990: had I travelled there I would not have been allowed to re-enter Chile, as I would have been labelled a Marxist. At the very least it would have caused me more troubles than the ones I was already experiencing with the dictatorship for being part of the human rights movement: in 1982, I was sacked from my academic work at a Chilean university for political reasons.
Getting a visa to enter Cuba was not possible…
Since the violent breakdown in February of the three-year-old peace talks, Colombians have been plunged into yet another round of skirmishes and killings.
From the Colombian state military's massive bombing raids on the demilitarised zone and unofficial support for right-wing paramilitary groups, to FARC's supposedly accidental killing of hundreds of civilians during combat, Colombians are experiencing intensified military activity across the country on a scale not seen for several…
Both independent and foreign journalists, and the lesbian and gay community, have again been under attack in Zimbabwe during January and February.
With the build-up to the presidential election - due to be held on 9 March - a combination of new legislation and political policing is attempting to prevent dissent, through restricting press freedom and banning public demonstrations and opposition party election rallies.
At the end of January the restrictive new media bill and…
I had a Rwandan student who told me that during the genocide of 1994 husbands in cross-community marriages would kill their wives (and vice-versa). It is beyond imagining. This was not some bureaucratically organised, impersonal, rational process like the Holocaust of the Second World War. This was a genuinely popular genocide.
What most of us cannot understand is how it came about that hundreds of thousands of people who had never killed before took part in the mass slaughter. It is…
Brighter than New Year's Eve, the fireworks of midnight 23 May, that lit up the southern shores of the Red Sea, signified freedom from colonial subjugation and from war. In Africa's newest country of Eritrea – celebrating ten years of liberation from Ethiopian control, eight years of full independence since the referendum that affirmed the widespread desire for nationhood, and less than six months since the ceasefire in a bloody three-year border conflict – the mood is one of cautious…
Sitting under the scant shade of a tree, a small huddle of boys started to talk about their life. I want to be the boss of a garage, said Xavier, a small boy; they all did.
This hope is what keeps them coming back, day after day, year after year. No they were not paid, as apprentices; food at lunchtime is all they receive. I watch them learning their trade in the blazing sun: Xavier and Bernard watch intently while the mechanic welds the car chassis, no more than a foot away from…
An article in the Quaker weekly, The Friend, led me to travel to South Africa with the prime motivation to volunteer and become acquainted with post-Apartheid peace-related initiatives in general, and with the work of the Quaker Peace Centre (QPC) in particular. An email exchange and phone call were enough to book a cheap one-month ticket. In retrospect, I wished I had gone for longer.
On arrival I found a friendly welcome, a pleasant climate and easy going people all around. During…
This is a book to make you cry with pain or inspiration and joy. Some of the testimonies in it come from the depths of a misery that drives young women, just starting out in life, to declare that “we prefer to die fighting than because of cholera or dysentery”.
Others speak of the incredible strength and determination of women rejecting their traditional roles in order to struggle against poverty, domestic and political violence, the absence of healthcare and education. Mention of…
Since October 1996, the war, in what was then still called Zaire under the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, was not just a regional conflict, neither an ethnic struggle. From the beginning of the uprising of the loose AFDL coalition, led by the unknown Laurent-Désiré Kabila, a veteran rebel fighter and gold smuggler from the days of the struggle after independence from Belgium in the early sixties, the real power behind it came from Rwanda and Uganda.
In the…
Nowadays, the Angolan war has become silent almost perfect for both the warmongers and the outsiders who profit from the death and destruction of the country. The Angolan war does not disturb public opinion any longer. It is an old and intractable affair. It causes indifference.
In a recent interview with the Catholic-run Radio Ecclesia, the Angolan minister of defence, Kundy Paihama, dismissed the civilian death toll of a rebel attack against the capital of the Northern province of…
Richard Pakleppa was a conscientious objector to serving in the South African occupation army, and went to Europe, where he worked as a camera assistant. He then moved to Cape Town, along with other young Namibian radicals, and became involved in “civic youth, working class student struggles, organising mass campaigns, the powerful use of culture, propaganda, theatre, music, stayaways, boycotts”. In 1986 he returned to Namibia and worked for some years as an activist and union organiser for…
