Plan Colombia, The Peace Process And Paramilitaries

EDM number 214 in 2000-01, proposed by Rudi Vis on 17/01/2001.

That this House is concerned about a United States-led campaign to destroy the peace process between Andres Pastrana's government and Colombia's guerrilla movements, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army; notes that this campaign underpins Plan Colombia in its aim to fabricate a myth that guerillas and drugs traffickers are 'one dangerous network' and legitimise an all-out counter-insurgency war; notes that Plan Colombia presents no strategy to combat paramilitaries, almost entirely funded by the drugs trade; notes that paramilitaries, supported by the Army, the Colombian state narcotraffickers and outside interests such as multinational corporations, commit more than 80 per cent. of the human rights violations in Colombia; notes that their atrocities against the civilian population reached unprecedented levels in 2000; fears that the United States in its push for a military solution will waive Plan Colombia's human rights preconditions for military aid to the army for the second time when the Plan is reviewed in February, effectively sanctioning more massacres, displacements, assassinations, torture and disappearances of the unarmed population; believes the military option must be rejected because it will further cripple the country with violence, debt and structural adjustment; and calls for urgent support to be given to peace through dialogue, with pressure put on President Pastrana to uncompromisingly dismantle paramilitarism which gravely undermines Colombia's democratic institutions.

This motion has been signed by a total of 25 MPs.