CPTnet
22 June 2007
COLOMBIA/CANADA:: The struggle for a safe place to live knows no borders
by Robin Buyers
A homeless woman was raped and murdered in Toronto a month ago, but the
media spoke of her death as a private tragedy. No one referred to homeless
women as displaced people. No one called the violence that pushes women and
children out of their homes to face further violence in the streets "forced
migration."
Displacement and forced migration happen somewhere else, in places with
armed conflicts, like Colombia. Almost four million Colombians, the
majority women and children, have been internally displaced over the last
twenty years. Seventy percent are without adequate shelter, in spite of
Colombian government legislation that guarantees assistance to internally
displaced people.
Yet when displaced Colombian women and their families come together to
demand their rights, the parallels between their lived realities and those
of homeless women in the north become clearer as do the failures of
governments to offer viable solutions to housing crises in poor communities.
On 23 and 24 May 2007, Christian Peacemaker Teams Colombia accompanied
families occupying vacant property in Barrancabermeja. National Police
arrived on site quickly, but the families involved--members of a woman-led
organization of displaced people, ASEMDESAMUBA--remained nonviolent. They
hung banners publicizing their struggle for housing and staked out lots for
their new homes.
By nightfall, the mood changed. Though the Police Chief had assured CPTers
that the police would respect those involved in the occupation, the growing
police presence made parents begin to fear for their children's safety. At
4:00 a.m., the police launched tear gas into the crowd and started beating
young people. The attack sent a two-month-old baby and a young man to
hospital.
"You must have proposals for displaced families if you want to avoid these
actions," Popular Women's Organization (OFP) leader Yolanda Becerra told
local government representatives. They replied that they had already
allocated resources for Barranca's 20,000 displaced people elsewhere.
Women in Toronto met almost the same official response when police brutally
broke up a nonviolent takeover of an abandoned building on 3 June 2007. In
Barranca or Toronto, it seems local governments excel at sending out the
police to protect property, but fail at meeting people's basic needs.
National governments do no better. Colombia's President Uribe is
negotiating a free trade agreement with the United States, and will be
meeting with Canada's Prime Minister Harper this summer, despite the
increasing documentation of the gap that these agreements cause between the
richest and the poorest. In speaking out against the American War in Viet
Nam, Martin Luther King noted that when "profit motives and property rights
are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism,
extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered."
Rather than wait for King's long-overdue revolution of values to transform
"a thing-oriented society into a person-oriented society," poor communities
are taking nonviolent direct action to seize what states will not yield.
They have no intention of allowing governments and economic systems to
continue beating and robbing them on the multiplying Jericho Roads of the
Americas.
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Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) seeks to enlist the whole church in
organized, nonviolent alternatives to war and places teams of trained
peacemakers in regions of lethal conflict. Originally a violence-reduction
initiative of the historic peace churches (Mennonite, Church of the Brethren
and Quaker), CPT now enjoys support and membership from a wide range of
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