Summer vacations are generally a time to relax and forget about your problems. However several students at DePaul University instead used this time to care about the problems of the people in Colombia, Palestine and the Philippines.

Matt Muchowski and Katie Williams of DePaul's Activist Student Union spent two weeks in Colombia. They worked with the trade union SINALTRAINAL against coca-cola's intimidation of the union, met with workers from USO the oil workers union which recently won a national strike, and met with members of various human rights and peasant organizations.

Ben Meyer and Gihad of DePaul's Students for Justice in Palestine went on two seperate trips to Palestine. Ben went with a group that is supporting youth who are affected by the apartheid seperation wall. Gihad traveled through several refugee camps, and documented the suffering of a people who's home is occupied by an army.

Jon from DePaul's Asian Cultural Exchange spent 2 months traveling throughout the Philippines, visiting many rural villages and learning about the effects of the US military presence in that country.

The students will be speaking at DePaul University on the following nights:

Colombia:
Thursday Oct 28
4:30
room 312 of DePaul's Student Center (one block south of the fullerton stop on the red, brown, or purple line)

Palestine-
Weds. Nov. 3
7:00
Room 154 in SAC (from fullerton stop- one block west to kenmore, take a right and walk south to the entrance near belden and kenmore.)

The Philippines
Tuesday Nov 9
5:00
room 154 in SAC

All the students are also looking to speak at other colleges and other events. To book them e-mail rockgod2099 (at) animail.net


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Entry from Colombia journal
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Today we met with General Gustavo Matamoros. He is the head of the Colombian armed forces in the department of Arauca. Arauca is in the eastern part of Colombia, borders Venezuala, and because of the oil pipeline owned by the American company Occidental, is one of the most violent locations in Colombia's civil war.

General Matamoros had his office in an air conditioned mansion located in an army base. Soldiers with automatic rifles were everywhere. Before we left we were able to get some of them to pose and take their photo.

We had a very specific reason why we were meeting with the general. We wanted to travel deep into the heart of Arauca. This was dangerous territory. Already on our trip we had been less than 2 miles away from a gun fight between the communist rebels and the army's forces. The places we wanted to go would have us cross through several army check-points, check points that Meredith would later tell us reminded her of the checkpoints she had to go through on the gaza strip.

If we wanted to travel to Santo Domingo, where the army bombed a civilian population, or to Flor Amarillo, where paramilitary members of the AUC recently massacred 5 civilians and left their bodies in the towns elementary school, we would need to pass through the army checkpoints with little harrassement.

That is why we went to see General Matamoros, to get his permission to travel into Arauca.

Throughout our discussion with him, we were terrified. He spoke of human rights groups as being equivelant to siding with the guerrilla's, guerrilla's he considered to be worth only shooting, not dialoging with.

He spoke of indigenous groups in Colombia with such racism in his voice to make us think we were dealing with some hillbilly from georgia. Then he told us where he was trained, "the ranger school in georgia." This general was trained at the School of the America's.

He gave us his permission to travel into Arauca, but I'll never for get his warning or the guerrilla's, "If I were them, I would kidnap you." I doubted his claim that the guerrilla's would kidnap human rights workers, but I did remember how closely the Colombian army and the rightwing paramilitary groups work together against the guerrilla and the civilain alike. Then I wondered if some of his pals in the AUC would kidnap us...