Call to the int`l solidarity movement

Luz Perly addresses int´l friends from the Colombian prison

On February 18 the Colombian peasant leader Luz Perly Cà³rdoba has been arrested by the Colombian intelligence.

She still lingers in prison but she has directed a letter to the international democratic and anti-imperialist forces dated March 8. Here some extracts:

"I write to you from this shameful prison to where the Colombian ruling class has put me depriving me from my most elementary democratic right – as their have done it with hundreds and hundreds of other leaders of the peasant and popular struggles. We all have been accused of rebellion. It it´s the expression of the intolerance of a regime which keeps satanising and stigmatising all those who dissent with their unacceptable politics in the social and political field. Since a long time the regime has been penalising any social protest which means nothing else that the incarceration of all democratic aspiration. The regime of Uribe happens to call this "democratic security".

Facing the accusation of being rebels we admit it. We indeed do not accept the atrocities committed by the state against the Colombian peasants. We refuse the sinister projects of the regime like ALCA and the PLAN COLOMBIA. We are rebels because we fight for a radical and comprehensive agrarian reform transmitting the land from the big landowners to the peasants who cultivate it. We are rebels because we fight for our elementary rights which include the economic, social and cultural ones.

It is urgent that you step up the solidarity campaign. We invite you to organise delegations to visit our communities in struggle, to monitor the operations of the state and their paramilitary forces especially in the regions where a campaign of extermination is carried out. The presence of international friends is important to denounce the daily human rights abuses of the regime."

You can write to Luz Perly via her peasant organisation:

The Anti-imperialist Camp is preparing a solidarity delegation to Venezuela and Colombia. Whoever is interested to join is requested to contact us.

See the call for the liberation and the circumstances of her arrest: