Several US and Colombian NGOs and churches sponsored the Days of Prayer and Action to promote peace in Colombia -some good friends of mine have been involved in the organizing. Today they’re asking people to send President Obama a message for “change Colombia can believe in” to urge changes in US policy towards the country. Here’s a link to the Witness for Peace page for more details (you can still send a message even if it’s after April 20).
To go with this news, here’s a few very good materials that have come out recently on the futility of the current way the US is approaching the “War on Drugs” –
Plan Colombia and Beyond, a blog which does a very fine job collecting information and discussing policy and events related to the Colombian conflict, created this Compendium of Drug War Statistics showing the most recent data on drug fumigation/cultivation etc… in Colombia through easy to read graphs. It demonstrates pretty clearly that despite ever increasing military aid from the US used by the Colombian military and police, as well as for manual eradication (digging up coca plants) and fumigation, little has changed in terms of cocaine production and sale.
This excellent Witness for Peace video called “Shoveling Water” talks about the impacts of aerial fumigation with pesticides that is currently done to combat drug cultivation. If I were more tech saavy, no doubt I’d be able to imbed the video here, but, instead, you’ll just have to click here to watch it and afterwards you can sign their petition asking the US government to stop fumigations in the Amazon.
