Christmas Rapport 2007

Report
CHILDREN AND WAR ( I )

Pastor Alfredo Torres Pachón
funcripaz@hotmail.com

Bogotá, D.C. June 1, 2007

Each time I visit the town of “San Vicente del Caguan”, for reasons of my work, there is always something new. The area is torn by civil strife, with armed groups in regular conflict. The local people are suffering many types of hardships caused by the chaos of infighting not only physical but economical. The main product produced by the peasant farmer is milk and this provided many jobs at the Nestle factory. Due to the civil strife the factory has stopped production and closed its processing facility. The loss of the factory is not just a tragedy to the workers but to the farmers who no longer can sell what they produce. The poor get even poorer.

Seven years ago, when the peace negotiations took place between the Government of Andrés Pastrana and the FARC-EP, We heard about Rosemary Bolaños and her child Javier Bolaños*. She was a teacher working in a rural area where the guerillas were operating and still operate. Her school became caught up in war, were military confrontation was translated into the deaths of soldiers and guerrillas.
What Rosemary said was very distressing and impressive. After a military action the bodies lay in piles for up to 2 days before collection by military helicopter, the children were confronted by this on there way to school it was unavoidable.
Her own children and all the school children have grown up with the sound of rifle and machinegun fire, the passing overhead of helicopter gunships and the paraphernalia of war.
Several of these children did not return to their classes because they were enrolled in the guerrilla ranks.
There is another aspect very sad of this history; Javier is also the son of an official of the army. When the guerrilla found out about it, Rosemary, Javier and another little brother received the order to abandon the region, since they were now declared “war target”.

Members of a Christian organization removed Javier from the area and provided his family with spiritual and pastoral help. This was not easy at all; it was a very risky situation for them. But if you insist in working for peace, and reconciliation of a country, the fist thing to kill is fear. The mission of us all is to be open to all sides in conflict and to help the needy.
What was said then, and what we say is, a child cannot be punished because his father is in the military; this principle is true for all the children. We do not support war we support the children and the future generations of peaceful Columbians. A child of the guerilla will receive the same help, the love of Christ.
Sadly the war is so terrible that the suffering of the children seems to be unending, many projects for the children have to be aborted. The situation seems to be growing worse without any obvious prospect in the short term for peace.
Rosmary has lost her personal strength, and she asked for help to leave this country with her children and to help her other brother who is also in danger to flee. The boy Javier is in new danger that of being taken or recruited to fight in the conflict. She also fears for the safety of his younger brother aged 7.
It has been pointed out by UNICEF and the “Defensoría del Pueblo” (People Defense) that, in Colombia, there are more than 2000 boys and girls engaged in combat in different armed groups.
These children are subjected to cruel excesses, sexual abuse, humiliations, and forced to fight in a war which makes no sense. We have knowledge that in conflict zones there is a massive recruiting of boys and girls under age of 16 to be taught the evil aspects of war and brutality.

Look at this history: A little boy, of about 10 years of age told his neighbor, a farmer, that he was going to enroll in an armed group. He advised him not to do it because he was too young, and instead it would be best to try to study, the young boy told that to the commandant of the guerilla group and said to him that he was not interested to enroll. The guerilla soldier gave the boy a rifle and said to him. –“Come with me!” Later, he forced the neighbor to kneel and obliged the boy to shoot him dead. The boy did it, there was no another choice.
Certainly, in Colombia there are places where to give advice is dangerous.
What to do? How to remove boys and girls away from the war, how to build a future? How to impede that they continue being misused as they are? It is necessary to imagine, and to create educational projects with a wide variety of educational possibilities, to create opportunities for development stronger than the appeal of war.
Sometimes, we believe that in other parts of the world, especially in the most developed countries, we are not understood, they think that we exaggerate, but this is not so. We live permanently in an unstable environment this is the reality of our world, this is were we live and work.
Perhaps the developed world knows little of life here, as they believe it has no bearing on there own lives, its something that happens in a land far away, an understanding of our tragedy and help is what we need the most.
It would be wonderful if Governments, social organizations and peoples of the developed countries stopped providing the resources for war instead send aid, medicines tools for building peace, helpful educational projects for children, food security and the legal defense for protection of rights. This would be a positive turning point. It is necessary to build a new common humanity from the pre-schooling with Christian values where the children may grow and be educated properly in order to have a new vision for our country translated into a society at peace.
We the children would like to express thanks to the dedicated people of Norway, local Columbians, and refugees living in Canadians for understanding our crisis and helping to support our Center “Torres de Felicidad” (Happiness Towers) at “San Vicente del Caguan”.
We need more human resources, as well as economical and physical assistance to enlarge our facility at “San Vicente”
There are more and more children in need of a place safety, away from fear and deprivation. The sons and daughters of war want their children to be at peace in a better country.

LOVE AND FRATERNAL SOLIDARITY.

* The names have been changed because of security. We abstain of sending photos out of respect to children.