Colombia minister of justice asks US to shift from aerial drug fumigation efforts
Source: Colombia Reports
Colombia minister of justice asks US to shift from aerial drug fumigation efforts
Mar 19, 2014 posted by Alexandra Jolly
Colombia’s Ministry of Justice is hoping to use US aid previously directed to the aerial fumigation of coca and poppy fields toward alternative crop incentives and other preventative measures.
Colombian Minister of Justice Alfonso Gomez has requested that his counterpart in the United States, Attorney General Eric Holder, divert funding in the countries’ joint efforts against the illicit drug trade toward less combative strategies.
According to a Ministry of Justice statement, Gomez would prefer that some of the substantial aid money Colombia receives from its northern ally be invested in programs that encourage farmers to grow other crops, rather than punish them for a predicament in many cases outside of their control.
“In the case of illicit crops there is a need to attack the causes, i.e. what makes a farmer engage in the growing of illicit crops; and if we direct some of our resources which are currently dedicated to aerial fumigation, we have resources to attack the causes,” said the minister.
Read more: http://colombiareports.co/colombia-ministry-defense-asks-restribution-us-aerial-fumigation-funds/#prettyPhoto
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School children from both Colombia and neighboring Ecuador actually drew these pictures included in this diary..... The spray not only kills coca plants, but any other, legal, crops in the vicinity. Sadly it also kills livestock and far worse it has also killed many children.
More:
http://mydd.com/users/redstatehatemonitor/posts/bush-policy-of-spraying-poison-on-children
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Colombia: Chemical Spraying of Coca Poisoning Villages
by Hugh O'Shaughnessy, The Observer (London)
June 17th, 2001
Bogota -- Franci sits on the veranda and whimpers. The little girl is underweight. Her armpits are erupting in boils. Like most of her people, she has suffered from respiratory problems and stomach pains since the aircraft and the helicopter gunships came over at Christmas and again at New Year dropping toxic pesticides on their villages.
The tiny indigenous Kofan community of Santa Rosa de Guamuez in Colombia had it hard enough with pressures from settlers on their reservation, without Roundup Ultra containing Cosmoflux 411F, a weedkiller that is being sprayed on their villages in a concentration 100 times more powerful than is permitted in the United States.
Aurelio, a Kofan village elder, shows us around his village. The Kofan have been here 500 years. Now it looks as though their time is up. Pineapples are stunted and shriveled. The once green banana plants are no more than blackened sticks. The remains of a few maize plants can be seen here and there, but the food crops have been devastated. There is hunger at Santa Rosa. He is close to despair.
Colombian babies and children are falling ill. Peasants, already miserably poor, are getting hungrier. Indigenous tribes are being torn apart and whole communities pushed into exile.
More:
http://mydd.com/users/redstatehatemonitor/posts/bush-policy-of-spraying-poison-on-children
