Thousands March In Washington Against US Military Aid to Colombia

2,000 people rallied outside the World Bank and IMF

On Apr. 21 about 2,000 people rallied outside the headquarters of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) before marching-under extremely heavy police presence-to the Washington monument for the Colombia Mobilization's "Festival of Hope and Resistance." Among the speakers at the festival were leaders of the 5,000-member U'wa indigenous tribe from Colombia, who criticized the administration's proposed $98 million in aid to the Colombian military to protect a pipeline owned by the US- based Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) in Arauca department.

37 people arrested for civil disobedience

Early the next morning, Apr. 22, a crowd estimated by police at 1,000 to 3,000 at its peak took part in a non-permitted and again heavily policed march from the Washington Monument to the Capitol to protest US military aid to Colombia; 37 people were arrested for civil disobedience. [CBS News 4/22/02 from AP; Washington Post 4/22/02, 4/23/02; El Tiempo (Bogota) 4/23/02]

Goal: end US military support to Colombia

Organizers of the weekend-long Colombia Mobilization-planned since last summer-said their goal was to end US military support to Colombia and to close the School of the Americas (SOA), a controversial US military training school at Fort Benning, Georgia that has been renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC). [WP 4/22/02]

For more information

For more information on the Colombia Mobilization, visit ColombiaMobilization.org From the Weekly News Update on the Americas (ISSN 1084-922X), published by the Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012, 212-674-9499, wnu@igc.org.