Colombia becomes the first country in Latin America to enter into an agreement with NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) called “Customized Partnership Program”, which consists of economic cooperation and military training of repressive forces, which already have a long record of human rights violations in our country, where the murder of social leaders is a common occurrence, false positives have increased after the reflux of street mobilization and where it is urgent the release of people imprisoned for fighting. In addition to this, the approval of the “Citizen Security Law” guarantees a greater criminalization of social protest based on increasingly dictatorial mechanisms.
A Plan Colombia 3.0 of war against the people
This agreement does nothing more than deepen the US imperialist military intervention, which since the year 2000, was inserted with greater force with the so-called Plan Colombia; where 9.94 billion dollars in cooperation was provided to the country, 71% of which was directed to the military and police forces. All this money allowed the strengthening of the repressive and paramilitary apparatus in Colombia, turning the country into the main Yankee military base in our continent.
Under the discourse of the “war on drugs and insurgency”, Álvaro Uribe, called for more military support with the Patriot Plan in his rise to the presidency in 2002, which would be a Plan Colombia 2.0 and more recharged, which translates to this day in huge crimes against humanity: 4 million people in condition of forced internal displacement until 2013, 1. 000 trade unionists murdered until 2016, 400 human rights defenders murdered between 2010 and 2015, 489 thousand women were victims of sexual violence between 2001 and 2009 in the course of the war, more than 4,300 extrajudicial executions allegedly committed by the military remain in impunity and the data that fills the streets of the country through huge murals is 6,402 false positives[1].
During almost 20 years of Uribe’s regime, the results of military alliances with imperialist forces are clear. The results are catastrophic, and are a fundamental part of the generalized rejection against the current Uribe government of Ivan Duque, who had to face the historic social outburst of April 28, 2021, where the rejection of the repression of the military and paramilitary forces grew significantly, since during the National Strike countless human rights violations were registered at the hands of the National Police, which has been trained for decades by imperialism with the aim of defeating the struggle of the working, peasant, indigenous and black class that does not give up despite decades of war, on the contrary, it has the energy to lead huge struggles. This is why the regime desperately seeks greater support and receives it as a good subordinate dog of its master, in this period of instability.
Why an agreement with NATO now?
NATO is an imperialist military force, created in the post-World War II period out of US concern over the expansion and influence of the USSR. Since its creation in 1949 it has carried out military interventions and promoted invasions in the world to maintain imperialist hegemony.
It is worth recalling the worst interventions of this imperialist war force against the peoples of the world:
- On March 24, 1999, NATO launched “Operation Allied Force” against Yugoslavia, some 600 aircraft from thirteen countries participated, with daily bombings in Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro. More than 1,500 civilians were killed.
- In 2001 NATO is part of and leads the invasion of Afghanistan with 31,000 civilians killed.
- In 2003 they move forward with the invasion of Iraq, which ends in 2011 with 460,000 Iraqis killed.
- In 2011 they attacked Libya generating greater instability in the continent which had repercussions in the civil war in Syria to this day.
It is precisely with this genocidal force, with which Iván Duque made the cooperation agreement on December 9, he wants to set in place the pact of repression with imperialism against the working class and the popular sectors. It seeks to leave to the next government an agreement for war, after a historic outbreak that cracked and weakened the Uribista regime, one of the regimes most supported by the U.S. It is for this reason that Yankee imperialism, after the National Strike, has also been weakened, that is why it needs more consensus together with other imperialist countries that are within NATO, to guarantee the control of its backyard, in the face of the historic rise of the class struggle in our country and in the continent.
All opposition candidacies must commit to break the NATO agreement now!
We must fight in the streets to break the NATO agreement, as a fundamental part of moving towards more democratic changes. If the next government, whatever its political sign, does not break with this agreement for war, it will be evident that in order to govern all the political sectors need the military boot to pass the policies of austerity and precariousness that the bourgeoisie needs in the midst of the current economic crisis.
It is necessary that all the candidacies of the Historic Pact and the Coalition Center of Hope, which claim to be opposition to Uribism, make a public pronouncement, committing themselves to break with NATO as one of the first and main measures that show real interest in defeating the Uribist regime.
NATO out of Colombia and the whole world!
Against imperialist intervention, organization and struggle!
To overthrow Uribism is to reject the agreement with NATO!
- Taken from: Human Rights Costs during Plan Colombia. https://coeuropa.org.co/los-costos-en-derechos-humanos-durante-el-plan-colombia-infografia/