Day: August 18, 2012

nasa

Nasa Indigenous Guard

The Nasa indigenous people in Cauca, Colombia, have launched a campaign to press their demands that all armed actors stay off their territories and respect their constitutional right to autonomy. The Indigenous Guard, a traditional self-defense patrol armed only with… Read moreNasa Indigenous Guard

Greater Middle East

Syrian anarchist speaks

The British anarcho-syndicalist website Solidarity Federation runs a statement from a representative of a “group of young Syrian anarchists and anti-authoritarians from Aleppo.”

Europe

Next in Belarus: teddy-bear revolution?

A photographer in Belarus faces seven years in prison for taking photos of teddy-bears that were parachuted into the country by Swedish activists as a stunt.

INDIGENOUS NASA RESIST MILITARIZATION IN CAUCA, COLOMBIA

by Gina Spigarelli, FOR Colombia

On July 11, the indigenous Nasa of Cauca, Colombia began confronting armed groups face to face and peacefully asking them to leave Nasa territories. They removed police trenches from the urban center and disassembled homemade FARC missiles found on their lands. Four hundred Nasa members occupied and observed army soldiers on the sacred indigenous site of El Berlin outside of Toribío, where the army is protecting private cell phone company towers.

On July 16, when the military had yet to retreat from indigenous lands by the proposed deadline of the previous day, the Nasa forcibly removed troops from El Berlin’s mountaintop base. Dramatic photos of the event splashed across national and international news, some featuring members of the Nasa indigenous community surrounding several soldiers, picking them up, and moving them away from their posts and others featuring crying Colombian officer Sergeant Garcia, retreating from the encampment.

Continue ReadingINDIGENOUS NASA RESIST MILITARIZATION IN CAUCA, COLOMBIA