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Letter to Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young (R-Florida) circulated by Reps. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin), Tom Campbell (R-California), Jerrold Nadler (D-New York) and Janice Schakowsky (D-Illinois), and signed by sixteen others, March 8, 2000
March 8, 2000

The Honorable C.W. Bill Young
Chairman
Committee on Appropriations
United States House of Representatives

Dear Chairman Young:

The instability in Colombia and the flow of drugs into the United States requires urgent action. While we support the elements of the Clinton Administration's proposed $1.6 billion package for Colombia which will be used for alternative crop production, democracy building programs, and prosecution of human rights abuses, we are nonetheless urging you not to appropriate any money for military aid.

This degree of military funding risks drawing the United States from the drug war into Colombia's brutal, forty-year-old conflict that most observers agree neither side can win. According to the "push into southern Colombia" foreseen in the Administration's aid proposal, U.S.-created army battalions are to secure an area the size of Florida that has been a stronghold of FARC guerrillas for decades. For the first time in Colombia, U.S.-aided units will be engaged in offensive counter-guerrilla operations. To achieve this, they are being trained in "counter-drug" techniques that closely resemble counterinsurgency skills taught in the past. We do not believe the American people are prepared to endorse increased involvement in a counterinsurgency war, which has the potential to cost American lives, and further destabilize the rural and indigenous communities in Colombia. We are concerned about attempting to "pacify" the countryside by military means -- an approach that did not succeed in Vietnam.

As you are aware, the Colombian military has a troubled human rights record, and continues to be linked on the local level to paramilitary groups implicated in human rights atrocities throughout the country. Routinely, opposition politicians are assassinated, and those suspected of being guerrillas or guerrilla sympathizers are executed. Colombia's Attorney General's Office, which has been among the most effective government institution combating paramilitaries, arresting 161 persons in 1999, has been a target of violence. In 1998 and 1999, more than a dozen officials from the Technical Investigations Unit were murdered or forced to resign because of death threats. In this atmosphere of violence, innocent civilians are often targets. For example, in January of 1999, paramilitaries dragged twenty-seven worshipers out of a church in Playon de Orozco, Magdalena, and riddled their bodies with bullets. A recent report from the Bogota office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights states that the Colombian government has failed to act consistently to break ties with paramilitaries and pursue those responsible for human rights violations.

The situation in Colombia is a volatile one, which merits our attention. As you work to prepare an appropriations package, we respectfully request that you not support additional U.S. military aid to Colombia. Thank you for considering our request. Sincerely,

Tammy Baldwin
Member of Congress

Tom Campbell
Member of Congress

Jan Schakowsky
Member of Congress

Jerrold Nadler
Member of Congress

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Neil Abercrombie
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George Miller
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Bernard Sanders
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David Minge
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Darlene Hooley
Member of Congress

William Coyne
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Carolyn Maloney
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Debbie Stabenow
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