[continued from part 1]

Incredibly, the presidential investigative service (DAS) has continued illegal wiretapping and surveillance of judges, members of Congress, and presidential candidates well after the worst scandal in DAS history broke.

The scandal of criminal monitoring of journalists, non-governmental organization workers, and Supreme Court magistrates broke in February; yet recent recordings demonstrate that the practice has actually grown. Ricardo Esquivia, Mennonite peace leader and Director of the organization Sembrandopaz (Sowing Peace) and former founding director of Justapaz, appears to be under surveillance.  Even U.S. Embassy officials have not been spared, as reported last week in The New York Times.

The Supreme Court judge who has been the star investigator of the parapolitics scandal continues to be a “target.”  The Uribe administration has systematically used wiretapping to track and obstruct the activities of nongovernmental organizations, government opposition, and a Supreme Court that it perceives as obstructing the administration’s policies.

But a DAS official mentions another specific point to Semana news magazine: “What has happened in the past weeks that interests us?  Simple: the referendum.  We have to know what…the politicians are up to and thinking.” President Alvaro Uribe and his political party pushed legislation through Congress allowing for a referendum on a constitutional change to permit Uribe to run for a third presidential term.  The DAS official’s statements suggest that the wiretapping is part of an all-out effort for reelection by President Uribe.

Even the editorialists from Colombia´s elite, who typically toe a moderate line hardly challenging the status quo, are articulating deep concern for the state of Colombia’s democracy.  The response of former president and OAS Secretary-General César Gaviria was unequivocal, “Uribe is a dictator who has turned the DAS into a criminal machine.”

What do we make of this?  This conclusion appears to be incipient — too simplistic to be a thoughtful analysis of diverse, complex events in disparate parts of the country.  Yet the DAS official’s matter-of-fact description of his daily grind corroborates the implications of rural pastors’ reports uttered in confidence: politically corrupt state institutions mean that power politics trumps the rule of law.

In the midst of corruption and death, Colombian churches issue a Prophetic Call to the international community.  They are recording their suffering and hope, published in a report with the same name.  In 2008, Justapaz, the Christian Center for Justice, Peace and Nonviolent Action, a ministry of the Colombian Mennonite Church, and the Peace Commission of the Evangelical Council of Churches documented political violence revealing 240 individual violations suffered by 158 individual church victims.

In addition, trained program members recorded 31 collective violations against communities during that period.  The sum of individual and collective violations is a total of 2,285 victims.  Paramilitaries allegedly committed 120 individual aggressions against church victims, versus the 97 committed by the guerrilla groups, and 10 by the state.  Through personal interviews with surviving victims, family, and community members, we registered death threats (115), displacements (81), and homicides (22) as the most frequently occurring violations.   You can read the report here, and the executive summary here.

All aggressions are equally harmful and wrong, no matter by whom they are committed.  However, what is worrisome about government violation of national and international law regarding the protection of human life and dignity, and about government-paramilitary collusion, is that it is the state’s role to protect its citizens within the framework of the law.  If the government falls short in this role, where can citizens turn? It brings to mind Jesus’ challenge in Matthew 5:13 that the salt not lose its flavor.  We do not disregard positive steps the government has taken, but these reports show areas of much needed improvement.

Through their testimony and invitation to participate in being part of God’s response to Colombia’s ongoing armed conflict, churches declare that fear and injustice do not have the last word.  The cases noted above are a sampling of the types of political violence, perpetrated by the guerrilla, paramilitary and Public Security Forces.  The march is an illustration of the ministries of peace and compassion carried out by churches.

We also invite your accompaniment of churches in Córdoba and Pastor Justo´s family.  To respond to the Córdoba crisis, click here for suggestions for prayer and for a sample letter to Colombia´s Attorney General requesting a thorough and expeditious investigation.  Send prayers and letters of encouragement to Pastor Justo’s family to Justapaz at Av. Calle 32 No. 14-42.

Janna Hunter-Bowman works for Mennonite Central Committee in Bogotá, Colombia, as the coordinator of the Documentation and Advocacy Program for Justapaz.