[3-27-07]

This message is from Bob Leslie and Shelley Ritchie, accompaniers with the Presbyterian Church here in Barranquilla, Colombia.

What follows is a rough translation of a document we received late last week concerning death threats in a town of Uraba called San Jose de Apartado, an area controlled by paramilitaries and which has suffered a lot of the last years.

Brief Summary: This document tells the story of a man, a paramilitary, who was co-opted by the military and police working in the area, and eventually brain-washed and forced to do the dirty work that they deemed necessary. Ultimately this has meant death threats to 7 families living in a small town near this city, who although they are not part of the Peace Community are well known in the area, and are now on a hit list. We are not told exactly why they are so threatened but the given reason is that they attacked a person with the same last name of the member of the paramilitary group. This is the pretext, but the real reason is hidden. Nevertheless the threats are very real and our effort is to try to prevent any violence by telling this story far and wide and asking for letters to various officials who can investigate and order an end to such impunity. Please consider reading the complete text below outlining recent death threats in San Jose de Apartado, Colombia as reported by this Human Rights Network. Please email the listed individuals raising this serious matter and asking the officials to do all they can to prevent these threats from being carried out.

If you can compose a letter in Spanish, so much the better, but English is fine too.

Fernando Araujo
Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores
e-mail: cancilleria@cancilleria.gov.co
Tel-fax: Carlos Holguín Sardi

Ministro de Interior y Justicia
e-mail: dhdirector@mij.gov.co
Tel-Fax: 57 1 444 31 00

Juan Lozano
Ministro de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo Territorial
e-mail: atencionalusuario@minambiente.gov.co
Tel-fax: 57 1 332 3434

Dr. Carlos Franco
Director of Human Rights Programs,
Vice-presidency of the Republic of Colombia
Fax: 011 (571) 565 97 97 ext. 744
E-Mail: cefranco@presidencia.gov.co

Coronel Efraín Oswaldo Aragón
Director of Human Rights Programs of the Police
Fax: 011 (571) 428 06 59
E-Mail: efrainaragon@gmail.com

Dr. Juan Manuel Santos Calderón,
Defense Minister,
Fax: 011 (571) 222 18 74
siden@mindefensa.gov.co

Dr. Volmar Perez Ortiz
National Human Rights Ombudsman
Telephone: 011 (571) 314 73 00 Fax: 011 (571) 691 55 00
E-Mail: defensoria@defensoria.org.co

Dr. Edgardo Jose Maya Villazón
National Solicitor General
Telephone: 011 (571) 336 00 11
E-Mail: cap@procuraduria.gov.co , or quejas@procuraduria.gov.co

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Human Rights Colombia
Network of Non-Institutionalized Defenders of Colombia.

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TO: Dr. FRANCISCO SANTOS C., Vice President of the Republic

Asking for your full consideration.

By means of this written document following the Constitutional Law of Petition given in Article 23 of the National Constitution and in the articles 5 and following of the Administrative Code, permit me to ask you in an urgent manner to bring to a halt the plan that has been revealed among the collaborators of the Public Force of San Jose de Apartado, that threatens to take the lives of seven more in said population; the development and context of which I will outline below:

In the next to last week of February of 2007 (Feb.19-24), the paramilitary person, ELKIN DARIO TUBERQUIA, who since 2004 worked illegally in the service of the XVII Brigade of the National Army, approached various persons of San Jose de Apartado in the surroundings of the transport terminal of Apartado, and showed them a list of seven persons who he identified as guilty for an attempt perpetrated against a person there, NUBAR TUBERQUIA, the 13^th of November of 2006. The seven persons who appear in this list are campesinos who inhabit some houses just outside of San Jose de Apartado and who are widely known in the zone and, although they are not members of the Community of Peace, they have lived in this place for many years. Their names are CARLOS ARTURO CATANO SERNA; JORGE MARIO HIGUITA HIGUITA; ALNUARIO ANTONIO HIGUITA RAMIREZ; HENRY HIGUITA; JOHN KENNEDY HUGUITA and two others whose names the witnesses do not remember. According to this paramilitary Elkin Tuberquia, it is strange that the guerrilla have not assassinated these persons who perpetrated the attempt against Nubar, and much more so, if one takes into account that the Public Force that is installed in San Jose de Apartado is disposed to let the guerrilla enter to assassinate these persons. If the guerrilla dońt kill them in the next few days, they (Army & paramilitary) will kill them.

All this shows well that there exists a plan to assassinate these seven persons and that the massacre is going to be attributed to the guerrilla.

1. In order to understand the motives of this criminal plan, it is necessary to take into account the circumstances of the attempt on the victim, SENOR NUBAR TUBERQUIA, the 13^th of November past, and prior events.

Nubar was the owner of a house on a big lot located close to the cementary of San Jose de Apartado, which he had acquired years before by means of a buy-sell agreement. This property was usurped violently by the police on the 1^st of April of 2005, when the President Uribe ordered the police to enter the housing in the Community of Peace of San Jose de Apartado, after the massacre perpetrated by the Army in the neighbourhoods of Mulatos and La Resbalosa, the 21 of February, 2005. Nubar protested the usurpation of his property, but in the following months he was approached repeatedly by officials of the Police who proposed to negotiate with him over his property and includingto offer to help him with the paperwork of title, so that the business could be taken care of with all the legal formalities. Given that he is a person with very scarce economic resources, Nubar accepted to negotiate from the thought of losing definitely his house and thus to be able to obtain from it at least some economic recompense, given also the blunt nature of the invasive arms of the State. Nevertheless with the passage of time, he began to complain about the non-compliance of the police and to denounce the trick of which he had been a victim. So in a meeting that took place among the houses near San Jose de Apartado the 11^th of November of 2006, called by Military and police, Nubar denounced the police for said trick and he said to his friends that he desired to recoup his property by means of facts, calling the journalists and human rights organizations as witnesses.

For the following week he waited also for the visit of a commission of persons of the United States to the housing area outside of San Jose de Apartado and so he thought he could appeal to them in order to denounce the trick. Two days after the meeting, Monday, November 13, various people who left from this place toward the settlement of San Josesito (settlement of displaced persons) could observe the presence of four armed men in the road, when already it was getting dark; and very afraid, these people greeted the armed individuals, but these armed ones did not respond to them, which raised serious suspicions about the motives of their presence in that place. Moments later Nubar passed by this place, when it was already dark, and on the following day was found unconscious on the road. He was dead suffering a cerebral hemmorage due to overwhelming hits in the head. At first it was believed that it could have been an accident, since perhaps he could have fallen from a horse he was riding, but on analyzing the circumstances of the armed men who were waiting just in the place where he was found unconscious, and given the absence from his body of any evidence of a fall from a horse, there was no doubt that it concerned an attempt on his life. Those who saw the armed persons, thought that they were strange and unknown in the region. On the other hand the seven who were on the list of Elkin Tuberquia, are persons widely known by all of the people of the zone, including some of those who had presented, in the company of Nubar, a claim against the police, when the agents wanted to stop them from access to their zones of cultivation, alleging that the way toward them was mined.

2. It is important also, in order to understand the reach of this new death threat, to remember previous things about the messenger in this case. ELKIN DARIO TUBERQUIA is a campesino of 35 years who lived for various years in the place called Las Nieves, of San Jose de Apartado, where in 1996 approximately, he was located as a militiaman of the insurgent group the FARC. Through major effort, already the rural zone, where their families possessed arable land, was in certain measure controlled by the FARC, an organization that watched over the security, obliging all the population of the environment to demonstrate in some way that they were not agents of their enemies. Elkin was denounced, captured, processed and condemned for being connected with the insurgency, and stayed in jail for various years up until 1999 and later was obliged to present himself periodically before diverse judicial authorities. When in 2001 he returned to his parcel of land in Las Nieves, the insurgency obliged him again to collaborate, but this time much less significant and sporadic, as a condition in order to remain in the zone, they promised to help him sometimes with food for his family. Harassed by the poverty and the conflict in the zone, Elkin decided to retire and move to the housing area just out of San Jose de Apartado. There, the 12^thof March of 2004, he was a victim of an illegal detention, without any order of capture nor flagrant, identified by an informant that the Army had brought also to San Jose de Apartado that very night in order that he might accuse those there of being guerrillas. Carried to the XVII Brigade, he was brutally tortured by Col. Nastor Ivan Duque, Commander of the Batallion Bejarano Mutoz of said brigade, who beat him over all his body and tried to hang him, obliging him in front of a video camera to declare that he was of the guerrilla, under the threat that if he didńt do this, he would be turned over to the paramilitaries who were waiting for him at the door to assassinate him.

Maintained illegally in the Brigade for various days, he was presented to the District Attorney where he was questioned without a lawyer present and where the judge made sure to omit the tortures denounced by the Defender of the People, which would have invalidated his false confession, which resulted in the end being the proof, as the same judge said, of what was said against him. He was let go the 25^thof March thanks to a recourse of Habeas Corpus put forth by the Defender of the People, but the judge made him sign, before letting him go, an act of ̈ acceptance of the charges̈, without him knowing what he was signing and without the technical assistance of a lawyer. This left him in jeopardy of re-arrest, which occurred on December 22, 2004. Carried again to the XVII Brigade in an illegal manner, he was disappeared for 15 days, and when the Defender of the People succeeded in locating him in the XVII Brigade identified strangely as a former combatant now reinserted, the pertinent authorities, like the Minister of the Interior and the District Attorney, denied to the Judicial Counsel of the Community of Peace and to the psychologist that he wanted to leave. From then on he was seen in patrols with troops of the Army and coming to judicial proceedings to accuse falsely the people as ̈guerrillas̈ or ̈militiä. When persons who knew him and spoke with him left him in moments of suffering, receiving his spontaneous testimony of what had been his life, in reality full of persecutions, sufferings and blackmail, we can cede to him his false ̈reinsertion̈, and we can confirm that his personality had been transformed profoundly and that his principles had been destroyed. He was seen frequently rendering false testimonies openly. He did so publicly in the second Constitutional Commission of the House of Representatives, the 25^thof May of 2005, where he offered numerous and serious false things without any caution. One of the most serious offered was the false report about the massacre of the 21st of February, 2005 in the neighborhoods of Mulatos and La Resbalosa, which not only was despicable and offensive for those who knew the backgrounds of the victims, but also since it was done from their total reliance on their killers who divulged it widely in order to exonerate themselves of the crime. All of this was founded on the hypothesis that Elkin was submitted to extremely depraved psychological proceedings of alienation of his conscience (a form of brain-washing). In spite of the fact that we attended the session of May 25, 2005 we asked the House of Representatives to facilitate his delivery to a totally independent international organization, that would guarantee his access to psychiatric help, the directors of the Second Commission of the House did not comply with their promise of facilitating said delivery. Afterwards, Elkin would be sent to the regional District Attorney to declare that he had not been tortured in 2004, in order to clean the slate of Col. Nastor Ivan Duque, whom President Uribe wanted to maintain in high office without paying attention to his status as a war criminal according to the Rome Statute. In the successive years (2005-2007), Elkin has been utilized by the XVII Brigade of the Army in order to commit certain crimes instigated by the military. From Apartado, where frequently he looked for people of San Jose to carry out errands, he has sent numerous death threats, and in June of 2006 was in the middle of the robbery of the computer of the Community of Peace. From there, the plans to assassinate the mentioned seven persons of San Jose de Apartado, revealed the intention of the public force, of which he has become in recent years the obedient instrument and informal spokesman, thanks to the destruction of his moral conscience, which appeared always in his frequent talking with the members of the Community of Peace when still he enjoyed his freedom. The threats that he now offered came, without a doubt, from the public force, who tried to hide, behind this poor human being who they degraded morally up to extremes so humiliating (of alienation), and was their direct responsibility in deeds that always they have wanted to do: the destruction of the Community of Peace.

3. These types of threatening messages of collective massacre have been frequent in the 10 years of existence of the Community of Peace, but it has increased especially after the beginning of the presence of the Police and the Army in these outskirts of San Jose de Apartado, since April of 2005.

So it was like in the last months of 2005 that various paras who approached the settlement of San Josesito or who called there by telephone, among them ELKIN TURERQUIA, began to announce a massacre for the days of Christmas and New Years. The urgent interventions of the international community obliged the director of the Presidential Program of Human Rights to go to the zone and meet with military and police in order to deal with the calls of alert that came from within and outside of the country. With all this, the massacre was perpetrated the 26^th of December of 2005 in the town La Cristalina, with the Army giving death to 6 youths of both sexes while they slept. This massacre which the Army perpetrated with clear premeditation that they had made clear in their persistent announcements for some months, was also ̈negotiated̈ with a militiaman who had decided to deliver himself to the Army and whose initial contribution that was demanded was to prepare said massacre, awarding him as payment 4 million pesos for each human life destroyed. Worse moral vileness is difficult to conceive. So also, the 4^th of June of 2006 at 11am, military and police present in these outskirts of San Jose began to talk about the great massacre that was prepared against the Community of Peace, while two witnesses of the same Community were among those that listened in silence.

The 22nd of August of 2006 at 10am before three witnesses who each said it independently to members of the Internal Council of the Peace Community, the police and military quartered there in San Jose talked about their plans already designed to execute a great new massacre against the Peace Community and attributing it later to the guerrilla. The 25^thof September of 2006 already there were 40 uniformed and armed paras, who at 10 minutes from this place near San Jose, intensely guarded by the Army and Police, said that their mission continues to be to destroy the Peace Community and their leaders. Later on the 19^thof October, the renowned para, Henry Guzman, came sneaking into the settlement of San Josesito and penetrated into various houses, where he announced an end of the painful year for the Community, leaving time to talk with the police quartered in San Jose. The 30^thof October, 2006, at 11am, a para who said he called himself ̈Eduardo Cardenas̈ visited a family who belonged to the Community and who by various needs lived now in Apartado, in order to offer him great sums of money if he would collaborate with an internal espionage in the Peace Community with the goal of preparing for the extermination of the leaders. The 6^th of November of 2006, the now para, Ovidio Torres, who the 30^th of last June, robbed the computer from the Community by command of the Army, which offered him a high remuneration for it, presented himself in the company of the supposed para, ̈Eduardo Cardenas̈, in order to try to convince the families of San Jose de Apartado who still remain in Apartado, about the acceptance of the monetary offers of spying on the movements of the leaders of the Peace Community, with the objective of assassinating them.

The 27th of February of 2007, a person called by telephone to the settlement of San Josesito, whose timber of voice clearly revealed the para Apolinar Guerra, announcing again a great massacre against the Peace Community. APOLINAR GUERRA is another campesino who lived in the territory of San Jose de Apartado and who the 12^thof March of 2004 was illegally captured with ELKIN TUBERQUIA, submitted to the same brutal tortures by the Col. Nastor Ivan Duque and to the same judicial stuff of before, appearing later as a ̈reinserted̈ in the XVII Brigade in December of 2004 and patrolling from then with the official troops in an illegal manner. The transformation of his moral conscience has been verified through repeated practices of torture that he has done in the company of the soldiers of the XVII Brigade in the neighbourhoods of San Jose, particularly taking children as his victims. To no one was it hidden that he had changed from being the tortured to the torturer, knowing it himself only by means of psychiatric proceedings to a perverse extreme. In the last two months, it has been confirmed that a number from between ten and fifteen campesinos who have had a similar experience to that of Elkin Tuberquia and Apolinar Guerra, deeply transformed in their moral conscience up to the point of constituting a collective identity plainly distinguishable, are coming together as a counter insurgent unit absolutely illegal – within the structure of the XVII Brigade, since they are going out into the neighbourhoods of San Jose de Apartado under the name of the ́Batallion of the Black Eagles̈, such as has been seen in La Cristalina (Jan./Feb. of 2007), just taking the same name of the recycled contingents of paras, who were terrorizing the Colombian population far and wide in the country.

Given the special mission that has been confided in you, namely the protection of the fundamental human rights, I pray you, Senor Vice President, to intervene in an urgent manner in order that this plan not be carried out.

After dialoguing with the affected persons, and given their conviction that the members of the public force present in the town and its surroundings have been an aggressive force and in no way protective, which makes one presume that their hierarchies are behind this plan, I pray you, Senor Vice President, not to think about any kind of protection to the victims through the use of members of the public force but rather order them with urgency not to execute said plan. The sanctions and administrative measures will depend on the diverse Organs of the State, but their absolute inefficacy in the last decades carries us to look more to a universal justice.

I lament deeply that the absence of a discussion with the Community didn't permit us to look for solutions that will have to be in depth given these realities so dramatic, since the Government has not accepted the minimal conditions in order that a discussion could be developed in terms of good faith, after it ran out of time in 2005. This doesn't exonerate, however, the Government of Colombia, from acting on the Resolutions of the Interamerican Court of Human Rights and of submitting itself to the canons of the International Law of Human Rights.

Attentively, Javier Giraldo M., S.J.

Five weeks in Colombia -- and going back again

Jane White reports on her 5 weeks of accompanying persecuted Presbyterians in Colombia to provide some safety. And she’s going back again.  
[9-21-05]

One of the most important things I have ever done is to go to Barranquilla, Colombia for five weeks in June-July 2005. I went with Marilyn White to accompany the Presbyterian Church of Colombia because that church had requested accompaniment from our Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Church and human rights leaders had received death threats; some were arrested and jailed, and others were assassinated. We lodged on the campus of the North Coast Presbytery and the Reformed University, thus becoming readily evident to the surrounding community. Because it was known that we were present there, those who were being threatened were made safer.

The church arranged for us to attend worship in different Presbyterian congregations each Sunday. Since there are three million internally displaced persons in Colombia, we went with human rights workers to communities of the displaced. They told us of their anguish of having been given only hours to leave their farms, homes, and all their belongings, threatened by armed groups. They are living in extreme poverty in shacks; they have no work, no water or sanitary facilities, and little food. In Pinar del Rio, a woman on the community committee told us that they weren't beggars. They weren't asking for anything from us: what they wanted was for us to request their government or ours to visit them to learn about their situation. When Marilyn and I visited the U. S. Embassy, we passed along their request.

I want a peaceful, non-violent world for my two grandchildren. In part for that reason, I have volunteered to return to accompany in Colombia from late November to late December this year. Four others of the fourteen of us who accompanied have chosen to return also. We could use the help of Presbyterians in the USA in three ways:

1) Prayers are needed for Colombian Presbyterians and displaced persons.

2) Funds are also needed to help pay for the airfare of accompaniers and can be given through the Extra Commitment Opportunity (E051763)

I hope congregations and presbyteries will consider giving to Colombia accompaniment through their portion of the Peacemaking Offering given on World Communion Sunday.

3) More faithful Presbyterian volunteers are needed to go for a month or two. Accompaniers go in groups of two; one person must speak Spanish and the other does not need to. The next training will be from October 14 - 16, 2005 in Washington, DC. If you know people who are willing to come to the aid of Colombian Presbyterians by traveling there, please encourage them to check out the special web site.

Grace and peace,

Jane S. Wood

ACCOMPANIMENT PROGRAM IN COLOMBIA

An update -- and request for support -- from Len Bjorkman of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship

[8-19-05]

Through the leadership of the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship, the PC(USA) has an Accompaniment Program in Colombia. At the request of the Colombian Presbyterian Church (IPC) in the spring of 2004, and following an August visit there by GA Moderator Rick Ufford-Chase (also a Co-Moderator of PPF), the General Assembly Council approved an Accompaniment Program, and requested PPF to set it up.

The IPC has courageously spoken out against the violence that is endemic in Colombia today. For this stand its members have endured arbitrary arrest and death threats. The Accompaniment Program provides a presence that makes those actions less likely to take place. This is a joint program with Worldwide Ministries Division and the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program.

The first accompaniers, Kelly Wesselink and John Ewers, went down in late November for a month. Since then, the following have spent either one or two months there:

. . . . Britton Johnston and Danna Larson in April and May, and Marilyn White and Jane Wood in June. Beginning on July 2, Cat Bucher will be there for one month and Phil Gates will be there for 2 months.

PPF is very grateful to those who have made special contributions for this witness and invites anyone else who would like to contribute to send a tax-deductible donation of any amount to PPF, P.O. Box 271, Nyack, NY 10960, noted for the Colombia Accompaniment.

Following is part of a report from Marilyn and Jane.

The full report - with photos - is on the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship website.

The Ecumenical Network Meeting

We went to Medellin for a four-day meeting of the Network, which began in 2000-2001 with five organizations and has now grown to ten. In this predominately Roman Catholic country, various churches have decided to unite themselves to help those who suffer and to live in the Oikoumene, a common house, as Jesus taught. All the churches work with displaced persons, to accompany them and help them organize and search for justice.

The Network arose in a period of alienation, and discouragement. It arose in a country that has no ecumenical history, but from the Christian base communities came the push for the Network, as the communities realized the necessity to help those who suffer. An ecumenism of commitment to help the displaced began. Now, people who are displaced and those who have returned to reclaim their land are also part of the Network. It has become a prophetic force.

A priest whose congregation is very engaged in the Network reminded us that the violence in Colombia isn't ending. The political situation has caused enormous reduction in the availability of health care, education, jobs, and protection of people's human rights. Impunity for offenders is rampant, and the paramilitary forces are attempting to control everything, particularly here in the province of the Atlantico.

Alirio Uribe, a lawyer, gave us a general review of the situation in Latin America and what the U.S. is doing. The two major activities of the latter are commerce, and combating terrorism. Mr. Uribe pointed out that human rights have become merchandise. If a corporation wants to be free to do what it wants and gain a large profit, the assassination of union leaders trying to organize the employees is the accepted price. Any who oppose the government are considered terrorists, and therefore expendable.

Mr. Uribe stated that the Colombian government is denying the truth about what is happening; it says good things and then does what it wants, denying that there is any conflict. For example, the government's line is, why should Communities of Peace, where no weapons are allowed, be permitted, if there is no conflict? The army needs access to those places to "protect" the people.

by Alexa Smith, Presbyterian News Service
[5-23-05]

CHICAGO — May 17, 2005 – Five more Presbyterians have been commissioned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Colombia Network to accompany Colombian church, union and displaced leaders who are threatened by death squads for their work in human rights.   [5-23-05]

At its May 9-11 meeting here the network set eight different goals for its work, some intended to directly assist churches in Colombia, others targeting U.S. corporations for study about reported abusive labor practices.

Continuing accompaniment — and stepped-up recruitment — were high on the agenda, as well as debate about how to address labor practices in Coca-Cola’s bottling facilities in Colombia, where some union organizers reportedly have been intimidated or killed.

Sixteen U.S. Christians have completed accompaniment training so far, and a third training program is planned in Washington, DC, in mid-July.

Scheduled to go to Colombia are Jane Moore and Marilyn White, both members of the Community Church of the Servant-Savior in Houston, TX; Cat Garlit Bucher of Grand Avenue Presbyterian Church in Sherman, TX; Phil Gates of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Prescott, AZ; and Gert Walsh of First Presbyterian Church in Sheboygan, WI.

Ordained members of the network laid hands on the commissioned accompaniers during a short worship service at the end of the meeting. Also present for the service were the Rev. Milton Mejia, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, and the Rev. Alice Winter, a Presbyterian Church (USA) missionary who teaches at the Protestant seminary in Barranquilla.

The accompaniers go to Colombia in teams of two for month-long stints with the PCC, which is headquartered in Barranquilla, a port city on the northern coast. The church deploys the teams as needed, with union officials, displaced communities and churches under threat.

The accompaniers serve as international eyewitnesses and file reports with the church that are forwarded to human rights organizations.

The program has been under way since December 2004, coordinated by the Presbyterian Peace Fellowship (PPF), a pacifist group within the denomination that has long backed accompaniment as a strategy to deter violence.

"In the first instance, these threats are not personal," the Rev. Dick Junkin, a former accompanier from Hunt, TX, said during a panel discussion. "The real threat is to a better world … and to those who are doing the work to make the world better. The real threat is to what we perceive as the kingdom of God. ... And (the opposition) is doing anything it can to keep that kingdom from coming into existence."

The PCC’s Barranquilla office has been under constant government surveillance. The life of its executive secretary, the Rev. Milton Mejia, has been threatened repeatedly, as well as those of his wife and two young sons.

Mauricio Avilez, a 25-year-old law student and church volunteer, was jailed for more than four months after a paid informant accused him of involvement with guerrillas. He is still living in hiding even though the charges have been dismissed.

A pastor, the Rev. Jesus Goez, is living with threats as well. He was forced to leave his Cartagena parish to protect the lives of his family after unidentified men beat up his 15-year-old son and promised that Goez’ coffin is ready and waiting.

Another volunteer, Guillermo Larios, is in jail now on similar charges, but Mejia told the Presbyterian News Service that the PCC is anticipating that those charges also will be dropped.

PPF is seeking volunteers for its third training session, and will continue placing accompaniers until the Presbyterian Church (USA)’s Worldwide Ministries Division (WMD) completes its search for a full-time accompanier to live in Barranquilla and coordinate delegations of U.S. Presbyterians in Colombia.

Both Anne Barstow (annebarstow@peoplepc.com), who is handling PPF’s recruitment efforts, and Junkin, who led PC(USA) delegations in Central America in the 1980s, said delegations are essential to reducing the fear of U.S. citizens traveling to Colombia. Junkin said delegations to Central America gave U.S. Presbyterian a history with the region — and when accompaniers were needed in the 1980s, the church was flooded with volunteers.

"Trying to build a base of concern takes years," said Barstow, noting that she has been trying to do two things at once — educate and recruit. "We’ve got to figure out a better strategy," she said. "We run into a stone wall with fear, and, I understand that.

"However, the accompaniers who come back don’t feel that what they’ve done is irresponsible at all, but very reasonable. The question is: How to get through that barrier?"

Among its other goals, the Colombia Network cited:

Moore, a former Presbyterian missionary in Cameroon, told the networkers that she’d like the PC(USA) to launch a full-blown boycott of Coca-Cola, based on labor practices at its bottling factories. "I don’t see why we can’t boycott," she said.

That question was set aside after Lois Baker of Monroe, WI, said the network needs to wait on MRTI’s recommendations. "Starting a boycott may not be the smartest way to go," she said. "They may not sit down and negotiate then."

WMD has established 21 networks in recent years for presbyteries, congregations and individuals engaged in mission activity abroad. This is the second gathering of the Colombia network. About 50 Presbyterians took part — about twice as many as last year.