June 12, 2000

The Propaganda of Benjamin Gilman

by Garry Leech

An article written by the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Republican representative Benjamin A. Gilman of New York, and published June 2 in the Washington Times, is a master work of propaganda that radically distorts reality in its portrayal of the conflict in Colombia. Gilman´s article, titled "Colombia Aid Impetus," urges the United States Senate to immediately approve the $1.1 billion Colombia aid package previously passed by the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee in order to avoid more deaths in both Colombia and the United States. However, in stating his case, Gilman tries to deceive the American people by omitting certain essential facts and attempts to instill fear through a campaign of misinformation.

Gilman, as have many other aid supporters, uses the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia´s (FARC) attack on the town of Vigia del Fuerte and the resulting deaths of a mother, her two children and 21 police officers as an example of why increased aid must be sent to Colombia immediately. Even though the FARC attack resulted in the unjustifiable killing of civilians, it is clear that the principal target was a military target: The Colombian Police Force stationed in the town.

Not once during the article did Gilman mention the role of paramilitary organizations in Colombia, their relationship with the Colombian Armed Forces, or the fact that the huge majority of massacres and human rights abuses have been attributed to them by international human rights organizations, the United Nations and even the U.S. State Department. According to Human Rights Watch, paramilitaries were responsible for 78% of the human rights abuses committed in 1999.

Gilman focuses solely on the FARC attack and neglects to mention recent paramilitary offensives: The assaults on members of the Embera-Katio indigenous tribe by the largest paramilitary organization in Colombia, the United Self-Defense of Colombia (AUC), which recently resulted in the torture and death of a young Embera boy; the recent murder of human rights worker, Jesus Ramiro Zapata Hoyos, by paramilitaries in Antioquia; and the invasion of a neighborhood in the municipality of Cuatrobocas on May 5 by 300 members of the Colombian Navy and the AUC. They occupied the neighborhood for two days and accused the administrator of the local food cooperative of being a guerrilla. The paramilitaries kidnapped four people and the military took the cooperative´s food products and forced the population out of the neighborhood. In none of these cases was the target a military one. All the victims were civilians.

Gilman continues to focus on the FARC when he states that, "For the past three years, the FARC has used profits from cocaine and Colombia´s new-found heroin industry to destabilize a wide swath of Colombian territory from Venezuela to Panama to Ecuador." In fact, the FARC has been funding its insurgency through the taxation of coca growers, not for the past three years as Gilman suggests in order to create a sense of urgency, but for the past twenty years. Gilman also fails to point out that the FARC and its predecessors have been waging war against the Colombian government for more than four decades, long before they began profiting from the drug trade. Also, it was in the mid-1960s, not three years ago, that the FARC split into several fronts in order to, as Gilman says, "destabilize a wide swath of Colombian territory from Venezuela to Panama to Ecuador."

Furthermore, his claim that, "Each passing day brings the rebels closer to their goal of a narco-state in Colombia" ignores the reality that narco-traffickers are already, and have been for 20 years, a powerful force in Colombia. Not only does Gilman fail to mention the paramilitaries and their atrocities, he also neglects to mention that many of the paramilitary leaders are narco-traffickers, including, according to the DEA, the leader of the AUC, Carlos Castaño. The paramilitary narco-traffickers are closely allied with the Colombian Armed Forces in their war against the guerrillas. Their mutual goal is to defeat the insurgent threat in order to preserve the political, economic, social and drug trafficking status quo.

Finally, Gilman claims that, "Panama, also a FARC target, remains an American national security priority despite the pullout from the Canal Zone." This is clearly a renewal of the "domino theory" so prevalent during the Cold War. Though the FARC are present in the border regions, sometimes even crossing them, their target has always remained the Colombian state. One has to wonder why Gilman would claim the FARC is targeting Panama--with no evidence to support the claim--other than to use the old reliable "domino theory" strategy to strike fear into the hearts of the American people.

Gilman also fails to address another tragedy of the conflict in Colombia: Forced population displacement. More than 1.9 million Colombians have been displaced from their homes by the ongoing violence--the third largest refugee population in the world, behind only Angola and the Sudan (see, Colombia´s Forgotten Refugees). It can only be assumed that Gilman ignored the problem of displacement because a huge majority of the displaced population was forced from their homes and off their land by the paramilitaries, often with the acquiescence of the military.

Gilman`s campaign of misinformation--or perhaps his ignorance of the situation in Colombia--even goes so far as to rename the president of Colombia when he states his name as Carlos Pastrana instead of Andres Pastrana.

The article is a piece of propaganda that distorts reality and omits essential facts in order to push an aid package through Congress that will drastically increase support to a military that still retains close ties with paramilitary narco-traffickers. As an elected official and chairman of the House International Relations Committee, Gilman has a responsibility to accurately present all the facts at his disposal to the American people. His failure to do so not only illustrates the sad state of our own democracy, but will result in an escalation of the war and increased suffering for the Colombian people.

This article originally appeared in Colombia Report, an online journal that was published by the Information Network of the Americas (INOTA).

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