On 15 November 2008, around 9:00 a.m., approximately fifteen masked Israeli settlers from the illegal outpost of Havat Ma'on attacked three Palestinian shepherds who were grazing their flocks in a valley south of the outpost.  The settlers came running down from a ridge above the shepherds, hurling rocks. The shepherds were able to get their flocks away before the rocks injured them.

During the incident, the settlers were able to steal two of the shepherds' donkeys.  The settlers killed one donkey with a knife wound in the chest area.  They slashed another across the throat, but the donkey survived.

Julian Gutierrez and Sarah Shirk attended a conference on bio-fuels organized by the regional assembly of the Coalition of Movements and Social Organizations of Colombia (COMOSOC).  The conference focused on palm oil, which can be substituted for diesel, and is being planted aggressively in the Magdalena Medio region.  Presenters noted that cultivation of palm oil damages traditional cultures, decreases food crop availability, and harms the environment . . .

28-30 October

Sarah MacDonald, Pierre Shantz, and Stewart Vriesinga participated in community meetings in Nueva Esperanza and Garzal, in Southern Bolivar. The focal point of each community meeting was a role play, which CPTers conducted together with community leadership. Role plays were designed to prepare the communities for dealing with a consortium trying to buy their land and/or a lawyer trying to convince them to leave the land.Each role play was followed by discussion and analysis, which community members entered into with spirit.Community leadership emphasized that whether or not community members stay on their land does not depend on titles or lawyers, but rather on community members having a vision for how they will develop and live on their land.

CPT is planning a delegation for 13-26 January 2009, to highlight the concerns of Colombia's traditional mining communities.  As well as traveling to Bogota and Barrancabermeja, where CPT-Colombia's full-time presence is based, delegation participants will visit a mining community in the San Lucas Mountains of southern Bolivar province.  There, they will hear firsthand about the miners' struggles to stay on their land and maintain their way of life, despite paramilitary violence, assassinations, unjust accusations and arrests, and the encroaching interests of agro-industry and multinational mining companies.

Now is a crucial time to act on behalf of Colombian's traditional mining communities.  While the communities experience and protest the violence, environmental degradation, neglect, and abuse of their human rights, the Colombian government is negotiating with Canada and the U.S. trade agreements that would further threaten these communities' survival.  Please consider expressing your solidarity with the miners by joining CPT's delegation to the mining zone of southern Bolivar.