PEN PAL PROTECTION PLAN

Background

Rural communities in Colombia suffer threats, persecution, murder and attempts on their lives, “disappearances” and forced displacement, as well as other forms of violence. Much of this violence takes the form of terror carried out by the Colombian army and state-linked paramilitary groups, and serves to protect the interests of multinational corporations, such as the British oil giant BP which operates in the department of Casanare in the Eastern planes of Colombia.

The Pen-pal Protection Plan has emerged in response to this, as a means of helping to prevent this violence and enabling communities to live peacefully in the region and build their own forms of organization. It is being coordinated by two organizations, COS-PACC in Colombia and Espacio Bristol-Colombia in Britain, both of which are part of the Red de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia (Network of Friendship and Solidarity with Colombia).

COS-PACC (Corporación Social para la Asesoria y la Capacitación Comunitaria – Social Organization for Community Assistance and Capacity Building), is a Colombian human rights and social development organization that was set up by displaced community activists from the departments of Casanare and Boyacá. They work closely with community organizations in the region, running human rights workshops so that people are better able to organize in response to state terrorism and helping facilitate the re-building of community organizations, which have been all but wiped out by the violent repression. Since April 2007, Espacio members have been working closely with COS-PACC in Casanare.

Why the PPPP?

The PPPP has several objectives:

1) We seek to reduce the level of risk for Colombian participants and their communities and create safe spaces for people to live and organize by making it clear to the Colombian authorities that the eyes of the international community are focused on what is happening in Colombia and that people overseas are actively monitoring what happens to people in Colombia. This type of active monitoring tends to reduce the risk of violent activity being carried out by armed actors by raising the political cost to the Colombian state of engaging in or turning a blind eye to human rights violations.

2) We want to make both Colombian and international authorities aware of specific human rights violations, as well as to remind the Colombian state of their obligation to bring the perpetrators to justice and adopt preventative measures to protect people at risk. We also want to encourage international human rights bodies to put pressure on the Colombian state to this end.

3) Thirdly, we aim to promote international solidarity on a personal level, as knowing that there are people in other continents concerned and aware of the situation can provide an enormous moral support and encourage people to continue living, resisting and fighting for a better world. One of the strategies of state terror in Colombia is to make the victims believe that their lives are worth nothing, that no one is interested in what they think, that they are alone. It is because of this that we are focusing on establishing personal relationships by means of personal correspondence between pen-pals.