Statement from family of FARC victim Terence Freitas in reaction to Justice Department indictment, April 30, 2002

Statement from family of FARC victim Terence Freitas in reaction to Justice Department indictment, April 30, 2002
For Immediate Release: April 30, 2002

Following Grand Jury Indictment of Colombia's FARC Leadership for 1999 Murders, Statement by Family and Friends of Terence Freitas, One of the Three US Citizens Killed by FARC

Contact: Abby Reyes, girlfriend of Terence Freitas, Julie Freitas, mother of Terence Freitas, Pete Freitas, father of Terence Freitas

FARC guerillas kidnapped and murdered our son, brother, and friend, Terence Unity Freitas, in early 1999. Terence was one of three US citizens taken by FARC after visiting the Colombian indigenous U'wa community on land coveted by US-based Occidental Petroleum. In Washington today, a grand jury announced the indictment of FARC leadership for authorizing the murders, findings that parallel a separate grand jury investigation taking place within the Colombian justice system. Today's announcement fuels the fire for President Bush's proposed expansion of the war on terrorism in Colombia. We are dismayed to see the Administration's cynical and exploitative use of Terence's murder to justify further US military aid to the Colombian armed forces, aid the President has slated for training the Colombian troops to defend a beleaguered Occidental oil pipeline. Terence went to Colombia to work with local communities grappling with the escalation of legal and extralegal armed violence that Occidental's presence in the region has wreaked over the last 15 years. To the 2 dozen social organizations in the Arauca region protesting US military intervention on behalf of Occidental, oil equals violence. Employing Terence's death as a means to continue perpetuating violence in Colombia grossly contradicts everything Terence believed in.

We deplore the use of kidnapping and executions as political, economic, and military tools. We demand that those responsible in this case be arrested, given a fair trial, and, if proven guilty, sentenced severely, with full respect for due process of law in Colombia. However, we object to twinning the pursuit of justice for Terence's murder with the pursuit of the war on terrorism. As we have said from the beginning, we do not believe that meeting violence with violence is a legitimate means to obtain justice and peace. It has never worked in Colombia before, and it is certainly not working now. We are distressed to see the Bush Administration championing Terence's murder as a rallying cry for war. If it is to be held up as anything, we implore that it be held up as a mirror reflecting back to our own country the fractured complexity of Colombia's civil war and our own stark complicity in it: as long as we maintain our addiction to oil, Colombia will not see peace.