Congress writes a letter

I have not written about this but just after I got here PBI Colombia as well as many other organizations received threats from a group called Aguilas Negras (Black Eagles). The threats were emailed to us and said that we were a military target of the Aguilas Negras which is a paramilitary group. These threats came after a march on the 6th of March which many human rights organizations participated in. Although we took the threats pretty seriously nothing has happened since then. Two weeks ago 63 members of congress sent a letter to President Uribe asking him to support human rights defenders in Colombia it was a pretty big deal here. Below is the letter that they sent.
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Ciclovía

Ciclovía is my new favorite thing in Bogotá. It is basically a shutdown of certain streets on Sundays to allow for recreation mostly biking. I did it this morning for the first time since I have been here and it was really fun. I went by myself this time but hope to get other folks energized to go next week or the week after. In addition to shutting down many streets there are also certain spots along the route were people are leading aerobic sessions with more than 100 people participating. It seemed like there were mostly people just out for a slow ride today. I might try and go earlier next time to see if there are more serious riders out. There is a website all in Spanish with some pictures.

Free What!

Although the reason for the the democrats putting off the vote on the Free Trade Agreement with Colombia probably has more to do with election year politics than what was in the agreement most of the folks here were cheering. Read more from the NYTimes here.

Accompanying

This has been a busy week for me here in Colombia. I got to do my first accompaniments both in the city and on a trip outside of the city. During the week I was accompanying a lawyer from one of the lawyers groups that we accompany. He was at a trial involving the murder of two or three campesinos. Some members of the army are accused of the crime. The situation was a little tense because one of the guys had just been captured by the police so there were a ton of heavily armed prison guards and police in the room. This weekend I traveled to a displaced community with two of the organizations that we work with. They are gathering information about what happened to them in order to try and get them back to their land. The trip was pretty fun we stayed two nights. While they were meeting with the community me and the other PBI volunteer stayed outside and mostly played with the kids and chatted. I also experienced my first military road block. They pulled over the bus that we were in and patted down all of the men and looked through our bags. I was pretty nervous about it but it was actually really easy. We did a role play before I left on the trip to train for this kind of thing but the role play ended up being a lot tenser than the actual thing which I guess is a good thing.

NEWS UPDATE: Clinton advisor resigns after meeting with Colombian officials concerning the free trade agreement and is fired by the Colombian government. For more info check out the NY Times article