Kevin Myers appears to believe that human rights (or lack thereof) in Colombia is a whimsical affair ("An Irishman's Diary", November 1st). Frankly, very few people care whether he sings in the Olympia Theatre. But they do care about issues like fair trial, due process, inhumane prison conditions, and collusion between paramilitaries and state "law enforcement" bodies.
Amnesty International certainly does not think human rights abuses in Colombia are a whimsical issue. Colombia gets top billing in their 2000 report on the Americas, which speaks of the population "suffering atrocities at the hands of the armed forces (and) paramilitary groups working with their support or acquiescence."
In 1999, more than 3,500 people were the target of political torture, murder and mass displacement.
Amnesty concludes, "while the Colombian population lives in terror, those responsible continue to walk free". Who are those responsible?
They are the same people who arrested, interrogated, and detained the three Irishmen without formal charges. They lied to the international media, fabricated evidence, set them up for paramilitary assassination and denied them access to legal process. They continue to hold them in inhuman conditions. Colombia's prisons cram over 70,000 prisoners into facilities that were intended for 45,000.
When we visited Niall Connolly, Martin McCauley and Jim Monaghan they were held in a cell that measures about six feet by six feet. Most of this space was taken up by two bunk beds so they could hardly move. They had no room to exercise and had to sit on the top bunk for all of their waking hours.
This was while they waited interminably to get the books of evidence against them. Once they finally got them last week, weeks after they had already been given to the world's media, their conditions of detention immediately worsened. They are now in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. They have no contact with each other. Niall Connolly is the only one who can meet with his lawyer. Kevin Myers repeatedly makes snide comments about "the three harmless ornithologists". The fact is, he has no way of knowing what these three men were doing in the demilitarised zones of Colombia. Neither do the Colombian authorities, although they pretend they know. The three Irishmen insist they were in Colombia for discussions about the peace process there. Under Colombian law, the prosecutor is supposed to collect evidence for and against the accused.
Based on this evidence, she is supposed to make a decision about whether or not they will be formally charged. But the prosecutor in their case has not even done this.
Therefore, their case depends on the ability of their defence team to collect evidence from the only other people who know what they were doing: the residents of the zones themselves. Unfortunately, the Colombian authorities have even blocked the men's Irish defence team from going into the zones to collect these necessary eyewitness accounts.
So why are the they being held? The only solid charge against them is that they entered Colombia with false passports. The forensic and eyewitness evidence that the Colombian authorities fabricated against them, with the sole purpose of holding them unjustly, is now falling apart like a house of cards. Some experts on the region say it is because the Colombian armed forces cynically used them to try and destroy the Colombian Peace Process.
The usual penalty for travelling on false documents is deportation. It is a common practice for journalists, human rights activists, religious people, state intelligence officers and any number of others to travel into contested territories with irregular documentation. Remember Joanne Ridley? Ollie North? I am sure that many of the heroes that Kevin Myers is going to commemorate on November 11th travelled on false documentation. Surely he would even applaud them for this.
Unlike Kevin, we have respect, concern and admiration for the Colombian people. Especially the lawyers and human rights defenders who risk their lives every day. In 1998, 25 of them were killed by the Colombian state and its right-wing allies. And, by the way Kevin, the name of the Colombian Minister for Foreign Relations is not Pedro; it is Fernandez de Soto Guillermo.
As our recent ad in Irish newspapers demonstrates, a thousand Irish people are concerned enough about what is happening in Colombia to lend their money and their names to the Bring Them Home campaign. This is only the tip of the iceberg. Thousands more support the campaign in other ways. They remember the Birmingham Six and the Guilford Four and they are not prepared to wait 16 years for justice.
Fortunately for the three Irishmen, Kevin Myers is not running their campaign for freedom. He appears to think it is suspicious that we take out advertising for our concert. He may be a free marketeer, but he knows nothing about marketing or how to make a profit. We are sure, however, that the Olympia Theatre will be full on Sunday November 11th with or without Kevin.
Caitriona Ruane is chairwoman of the Bring Them Home campaign