Action Alerts and Updates

Bogota D.C.
Colombia
May 15, 2006

NATIONAL AGRARIAN MOBILIZATION
Press Release

The executive committee of the National Agricultural Workers Union Federation (Fensuagro), affiliated to the Workers Unitary Central (CUT), wish to address you in order to state that today, May 15, an important day of national agrarian protest has been carried out:

- Against the Free Trade Agreement;
- Against the fumigations and forced eradication of crops with illicit uses;
- Against the Patriot Plan war policy;
- Against the presidential re-election
- In the defense of national sovereignty and human rights;
- For the right to land, as well as for a comprehensive and democratic agrarian reform.

In this sense, thousands of campesinos, indigenous people and Afro-Colombians are presently in permanent mobilization in the following regions of the country: the municipalities along the Pacific coast (Iscuandé, el Charco and Barbacoas), blockades along the highway from the coast to the mountains in Ricaute, el Diviso and Mondomo (the Pan-American Highway in Cauca), in addition to the campesino concentrations in the departments of Putumayo, Valle de Cauca and Caldas, as well as in the jurisdiction of Puerto Toledo (municipality of Puerto Rico-Meta).

Up to the present moment, the mobilizations have been violently repressed. In the municipality of Mondomo in the department of Cauca (along the Pan-American Highway), CARLOS URBANO GÓMEZ, OSCAR SÁNCHEZ and ALEXANDER PEREZ, indigenous and campesino persons, were wounded by the army and the police. A large number of demonstrators were also detained, as well as an unknown number wounded.

Facing this difficult situation, the mobilized communities urgently request:

1. That the government and the public force respect the agrarian communities' right to free mobilization.

2. The cessation of all violent acts by the public force that may risk the personal safety and life of the mobilized campesino and indigenous communities.

3. Immediate creation of a national negotiation table between campesinos and the government in order to find a definitive solution to the crisis suffered by the rural communities.

Sincerely,

NATIONAL COMMITTEE EXECUTIVE
FENSUAGRO