People's Travel Advisory on Colombia

People’s Travel Advisory on Colombia, As part of the Call for International Actions for September 27, 2019 we will picket the Colombian Consulate in San Francisco.
Join Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Piedad Córdoba, and Noam Chomsky and sign the People’s Travel Advisory on Colombia: https://afgj.salsalabs.org/peoplestraveladvisoryforcolombia/index.html

Please email us to endorse our local action.

The below organizations and individuals call on the international community, to unite with us to organize diverse activities including: demonstrations, vigils, educational and cultural events, and other actions for Peace in Colombia for September 27, the “International Day for Tourism”, to show the world that Colombia IS NOT a tourist destination, but a place of genocide and repression.

We issue this People's Travel Advisory because the present administration of President Iván Duque and his mentors, Álvaro Uribe and the U.S. President Donald Trump, have no interest in the construction of a true Peace in Colombia. They do not listen to the people at all!

Peoples Travel Advisory for Colombia:

The Colombian government has launched many campaigns to change the image of the country and present it as a safe and fun place for all the family, indeed, a tourist paradise. That is a lie, given that one of the worst human rights crises is in Colombia.

North American Coalition for Peace in Colombia: Points of Unity

WE CALL FOR AN END TO THESE CONDITIONS IN COLOMBIA:

1. The Colombian government of Ivan Duque is sabotaging the Peace Accord and its agreements signed between the FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army) and the Colombian government in 2016.
2. Human rights defenders, social movement leaders (especially among afro and indigenous communities), and former FARC-EP combatants are being assassinated daily by military, police and government backed paramilitary groups with impunity.
3. Political prisoners and prisoners of war are still in jail under
despicable conditions even though the peace accord agreed to their release.
4. President Duque and his mentor, Alvaro Uribe make every legal
and illegal effort to break and make dysfunctional the new peace court (the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, JEP).
5. The Duque government, along with the U.S., has supported the
extradition of the Peace negotiators from the FARC-EP.
6. Colombia uses its territory as a launching pad for U.S.
interference in and aggressions against Venezuela.
7. Colombian aggression toward the people of Venezuela is the same as the aggression it uses toward the people and the popular movements of Colombia.
8. Colombia acts in the name of the U.S. by creating a massive
media and political attack on Venezuela throughout Latin America.

U.S. ROLE IN COLOMBIA - END U.S. IMPERIALISM IN THE REGION

1. The U.S. has militarized Colombia in order to invade any area or
country that opposes U.S. corporate policy. It also supports the repression of popular movements within Colombia.
2. The U.S. undermines the Colombian Peace Accord of 2016.
3. The U.S. has readied Colombia as the main political and military enemy of Venezuela.
4. The U.S. supports all of the repressive policies of the right
wing government of Ivan Duque. It does not support the Peace Accord.
5. The U.S. demands the extradition of left Colombian leaders to the U.S. for trial. The Farc-EP leader, Simon Trinidad, has been a political prisoner in the U.S. for 15 years.
6. The U.S. arranges the extraditions of right-wing narco-traffickers and paramilitary leaders, in order to cover up investigations into their ties with Colombian political and business officials as well as their responsibilities for grave human rights violations.
7. The U.S. government ignores the point of the peace agreement about crop substitution and has pursued violent forced eradication of coca by the Colombian Armed Forces. This has resulted in many deaths and even whole scale massacres. Presently the U.S. insists on the use of the carcinogenic glyphosate (RoundUp Ultra) to aerial spray coca growing communities causing massive displacement.
8. The U.S. has militarized Colombia in order to invade any area or country that opposes U.S. corporate policy. It also supports the repression of popular movements within Colombia.
9. The United States government keeps the FARC-EP on the State Department terrorist list. The peace accords are the law of the land in Colombia. The FARC-EP no longer exists as a guerrilla army and has been replaced by the new and legal political party, the Revolutionary Alternative Common Force (FARC).
10. The U.S. has spent more than $12 billion dollars to support the military and state institutions of repression in Colombia.
11. The U.S. is the political and military author of the civil war in Colombia for over 52 years. The Pentagon’s Yarborough Commission even urged Colombia in 1962 to use tactics of terror and to organize paramilitary and military assaults against popular movements in rural Colombia.

Therefore, September 27, at Colombian embassies, consulates, and offices of tourism, we will observe “International Day for Tourism” with the People's Travel Advisory and international demands for Peace in Colombia.

Our message is: Colombia will not be safe for tourism, neither for the Colombia people, until the right-wing violence against the peace is terminated and Colombia becomes a land at peace.

INDIVIDUAL endorsers - (list constantly being updated) See organizations below:
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Nobe Prize Winner (Argentina)
Noam Chomsky, Author and international peace advocate (United States)
Former Senator Piedad Córdoba, founder of Colombians for Peace (Colombia)
Daniela Gonzalez, People’s Human Rights Observatory (International coalition with headquarters in Oaxaca Mexico)
Bob Brown, All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party-GC (International)
Nidia Quintero, Treasurer for FENSUAGRO (National Unified Federation of Agricultural Workers Unions – Colombia)
Rodrigo Vargas Becerra, Director de Comité Permanente de Derechos Humanos, capítulo Cali (Colombia)
Héctor Marino Carabali, Consejo Comunitario Cuenca Río Timba Marilopez de Buenos Aires Cauca (Colombia)
Stella Calloni, Journalist and correspondent for Mexico City’s La Jornada newspaper (Argentina)
Carlos Romainville, Director of the Alpha and Omega Movement (Peru)
Anahit Aharonian, Agronomist and ex-political prisoner (Uruguay)
Ana Andrés Ablanedo, Human Rights Defender (Spain)
Victor Mayorga Miranda Former Ambassador to Cuba and Congress Person (Perú)
Dr. Fernando Cebamanos, President Frente Amplio por la Democracia de Panamá (Broad Popular Front of Panama)
Dan Kovalik, Human Rights Defender and Author (United States)
Alice Loaiza, Marcha Patriótica, California Chapter (United States-Colombia)
Banbose Shango, National Network on Cuba (United States)
James Jordan, Alliance for Global Justice (United States)
Raquel Mogollón, Camino Común (Colombia-United States)

ORGANIZATIONS (list constantly being updated):
- Permanent Committee for Human Rights (CPDH – Colombia)
- People’s Human Rights Observatory (International coalition with headquarters in Oaxaca Mexico)
- Alliance For Global Justice (United States)’
- Answer Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism – United States)
- Fundación Lazos de Dignidad (Links of Dignity Foundation – Colombia)
- Coalition Against Foreign U.S. Military Bases (United States)
- Task Force on the Americas (United States)
- Peoples Alliance - Bay Area (United States)
- Portland Central America Solidarity Committee (United States)
- Camino Común (Colombia – United States)
- Communist Workers League (United States)