Reflection on the Colombia Accompaniment

This week CPT won an award from the Catholic Diocese of Barranca for our peace and justice work. It is a reflection of how much CPT is respected in this community and how valuable they consider our accompaniment work. How the local and regional human rights workers view our work feels important because it makes me feel like we are accomplishing something, even when we ourselves are not sure what that might be.

Human rights violations on the part of the Colombian army are staggering. Two of us did an accompaniment in another region this week which was a community process to verify human rights violations on the part of the army and report them. The community was afraid to do the verification process without our presence. We learned that the army came into town, accused some men of being guerrilla, and the men put their hands up in the air to surrender and the army killed them. This was verified by numerous witnesses. They also shot a child who was running away from fright.

I have reflected a lot on why I am here, what it means to me. Part of it is that we--meaning citizens of the US--are paying for this war. And it feels to me like this war looks like all the other wars that we pay for. We hear something in the news about US soldiers being killed, or so-called terrorist actions, but we never really hear about or think much about the real human costs of what we are paying for.

The cases of mistaken identity. The families forced to flee. Violations of women. Poverty. Refugee camps and homeless shelters. Random assassinations. I think that most of us do not know what our money is doing. We have dehumanized the "enemy."

CPT organized a workshop the last couple of days for women of the region to learn about the process of documentation of all the abuses against them in this armed conflict. Listening to women talk about what they have been through was powerful. They all told stories about spouses being assassinated by one group or another, or one of their children. Of displacements, and not being able to support their families in the city. Of verbal abuse from soldiers or paramilitaries. Of sexual assault.

I often feel inadequate. We are so few. I felt this way in Palestine as well...that if there were 5,000 of us, we could transform the conflict. Right now we are 5, and about to be 4. And the regular team members who are leaving for retreat do so very reluctantly, because people are dying and displacing here, and our accompaniment might prevent some of it.