Chicago Religious Leadership Network on Latin America

Early Sunday morning democratically-elected Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya was ousted from the Presidential palace in a military coup orchestrated by Honduran General and SOA graduate Romeo Vasquez.  The coup took place after several weeks of tension within the country between President Zelaya and other branches of government over a referendum planned for Sunday.  Yesterday at 5 a.m. the Honduran military, under General Vasquez's direction, stormed the Presidential Palace and forced President Zelaya onto a plane which landed in Costa Rica.  CRLN received reports that the military has set up curfews and roadblocks throughout the country, cut off public television and community radio, and limited electricity supply to the capital Tegucigalpa.

Later on Sunday, the right-wing Honduran Congress voted the head of Congress, Roberto Michelleti into the presidency. Meanwhile, the Organization of American States (OAS) has stated that: "no government arising from this unconstitutional interruption will be recognized."  The OAS, the European Union (EU), several Latin American governments and U.S. State Department have all publicly condemned the coup. For statements from U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the OAS and U.S. human rights organizations, click here: http://www.lawg.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=447

When now President Obama first ran for Senate, he promised CRLN that he would go to Colombia and meet with grassroots Afro-Colombian and Human Rights organizations. After elected as Senator, CRLN offered him repeated opportunities to meet with human rights defenders and Afro-Colombian leaders on their visits to Washington. Despite his original promise, he never did so. 

On Monday afternoon, President Obama will meet for the first official time with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. CRLN appreciates his openness to meet with leaders all over the world to foster more positive and effective relationships.  However, now that he has committed to meeting with Colombian President Uribe, we ask that he also follow through on his promise to meet with civil society and human rights leaders in Colombia.  We are sure that the story he will hear from Mr. Uribe on Monday will be very different from the stories that grassroots human rights defenders might share with him. 

A member of the Chicago New Sanctuary Coalition and CRLN's board of directors, Mary Naftzger is quoted in a compelling article by Jacqueline Stevens in The Nation on the secret immigration courts in the U.S.  The first paragraph of the story is: 

You don't need to go to Iran or North Korea to find secret courts. They're alive and well right here in the United States. On March 26, 2009, I was denied access to immigration courts in Eloy and Florence, Arizona, even though a federal regulation states, "All hearings, other than exclusion hearings, shall be open to the public" with a narrow range of exceptions--none of which were cited as a reason for excluding me.

To read the full story, follow this link http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090629/stevens

Congress to Vote on Amendment to Force the SOA/ WHINSEC to Release the Names of Graduates and Instructors

Start calling Congress NOW!

SOA Watch has received confirmation that Congress will vote on an amendment to the Defense Authorization Act that would require that the School of the Americas/ WHINSEC to release the names, ranks, country of origin, courses and dates attended of students and instructors at the institute.

The amendment will be offered by Representative Jim McGovern (D-MA), Representative Joe Sestak (D-PA), Representative Sanford Bishop (D-GA) and Representative John Lewis (D-GA) and we expect the vote to happen on Wednesday, June 24.

For the past few years, despite the WHINSEC PR machine proclaiming an open and transparent school, the WHINSEC has been unwilling to provide information about the students and instructors. The Pentagon secrecy took effect after research revealed that the SOA/ WHINSEC continues to train known human rights abusers, and that instructors have been involved in numerous crimes. Freedom of Information Act requests since FY 2005 have all been denied, proof of WHINSEC's unwillingness to submit to oversight from the public whose tax-payer dollars help fund the school.

In just three weeks, the House of Representatives will decide how to spend our tax dollars in Colombia and Mexico. Will they continue with the notorious Plan Colombia and the more recently established $1.4 billion Mérida Initiative in Mexico?  Both aid packages send the vast majority of funds directly into the hands of two militaries responsible for some of the worst human rights violations in our hemisphere.  While such abuses are most often committed in the name of fighting the war on drugs and insurgent groups, they often target civilians and human rights leaders who are working for social change from the grassroots.

Pressure has been mounting--from New York Times columnists to former Latin American Presidents to the thousands of people across the country who took part in the Days of Prayer and Action--pressure to dismantle the archaic theory that spraying pesticides and arming notorious foreign militaries will help us with our drug problem.  The White House's new drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, has indicated that he'd like to stop using the "war on drugs" phrase to describe the Obama Administration's counternarcotics strategy.  Yet, the Administration's proposed budgets for Colombia and Mexico show that changes in terminology have not meant changes in policy. Now it's on us to push Congress beyond words, to make 2010 the year we stop funneling billions in military aid to Colombia and Mexico.  

CRLN member David Black wrote an opinion-editorial piece on lifting the travel ban to Cuba which was published in the Rockford Register Star.  To read the piece, follow this link http://www.rrstar.com/opinions/x986610439/We-all-should-be-allowed-to-travel-to-Cuba

Writing op-ed pieces for local papers and publications is a great way to advocate for just US policies towards Latin America!  If you'd like to do so and need resources or materials, please contact CRLN at jvondracek@crln.org or 773-293-2964.  In addition to reaching the readers of the paper, pieces like this also reach members of Congress, whose staffs run automated daily Google searches for articles that mention the representative or senator.   

For more information about the legislative effort to lift the travel ban to Cuba, read this update from the Latin America Working Group, one of CRLN's key policy partners in Washington D.C.  http://www.lawg.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=434&Itemid=64

Watch a video from Democracy Now on the violence against the indigenous in Peru by clicking here.  The following report comes from the Alliance for Responsible Trade at www.art-us.org :

During the last week, deep in the Peruvian Amazon, confrontations between nonviolent indigenous protesters and police have left up to 100 people dead. The vast majority of the casualties are civilians, who have been conducting peaceful demonstrations in defense of the Amazon Rainforest.

For almost two months , as many as 30,000 Indigenous people have been blocking road and river traffic, demanding the repeal  of Presidential Decrees issued last year to facilitate implementation of the US-Peru FTA.   According to the Indigenous leaders, several of these decrees directly threaten Indigenous territories and rights. After having attempted several times to negotiate with the government the repeal of the most egregious of the decrees, and faced with a permanent influx of extraction equipment into the region, the people decided it was imperative to ‘put their bodies in front of the machines' in order to prevent this equipment from entering their territory.

There has been a rise in violence against the indigenous peoples of Peru, tied to the government's attempts to open up  their land to development by multinational corporations under the US/Peru free trade agreement.  For an excellent article on this, follow this link http://www.truthout.org/061009K

Leaders of the indigenous opposition claim that 40 people, including children, were killed by government forces over the weekend, and that the massacre is being covered up.  They said that security forces are tossing bodies in the river to destroy evidence of the killings. 

Earlier this month the Obama Administration submitted its foreign aid budget request to Congress, giving us the first clear indication of where the administration intends to take Colombia policy. The administration has said many good (and needed) things since coming to office, but now that they're showing us the money--and repeating the Bush Administration's military aid request--it's clear that these positive words are not yet being backed up with positive deeds.

We need you to act today to put the brakes on the Obama Administration's Bush-lite approach to Colombia:

• Call your members of Congress. Encourage them to get in touch with the Foreign Operations Subcommittee chair (in the House or Senate, depending on who you're calling) to express their support for a new direction in U.S. policy towards Colombia. Click here to see a call script.
• Send President Obama an email. Tell him that his Colombia aid request does not reflect your values--and that you expect more from him.