Colombia: FARC and other murder groups target teachers

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report Tuesday August 19, 2003 21:23 by joe ranii

FARC and its right-wing kindred in Colombia continue to murder all those who oppose them, even to the extent of slaying teachers for what they say in the classroom.

Chicago Tribune
- In the cocaine-fueled conflict that imperils Colombia, few civilians face greater risk than the nation's rural teachers.
Working in impoverished areas where roads are mined and combat is frequent makes life difficult enough for teachers. But it is their use as pawns by leftist rebels and right-wing paramilitary forces that makes education such a dangerous career in Colombia.
Until last month, third-grade teacher Marlene Rincon commuted from the government-controlled town of Tame into an area dominated by leftist guerrillas. But then she and more than a dozen other teachers received a stark ultimatum from the FARC rebels: Move permanently into guerrilla-controlled territory, or resign their jobs and never return.
Unwilling to live with her two daughters in a war zone, Rincon disobeyed the order and now is under a guerrilla death threat. She is ready to move to another part of Colombia without an assurance of a new job. Many of her colleagues have made the same decision.
"What the rebels want is for us to teach their politics to the students," Rincon said. "They want us to form the next generation of guerrillas. We don't think the same as them. We have to leave quickly. Our lives are at risk."
Union officials note that insurgents target teachers because they often are the most educated people in rural communities. Many become leaders and represent a challenge to the rebels and paramilitaries alike.
Earlier this summer 25 teachers in the southern state of Narino abandoned their posts after paramilitary forces killed a school director. Later, eight teachers fled an adjacent region after being threatened by leftist rebels, union officials say.
"It's a war of extremists," said Col. Jose Antonio Lopez, head of Colombia's National Police in Tame. "For the extreme right and left, you do what they say or die. It's that simple."
Rincon and other teachers say they try to remain neutral as they pass daily through insurgents' roadblocks. They avoid teaching subjects such as history, economics and social studies out of fear that student informants will relay their views to the insurgents - something that could trigger violent retribution.
The FARC sometimes force teachers to participate in political meetings and mine areas around schools. Even discipline is difficult in a region where the pupils sometimes are the sons and daughters of rebel or paramilitary forces, teachers say.
"One day I told a 12-year-old student that he needed to study, and he told me, `I don't need to study because I'm going to be an assassin for the guerrillas,' " recalled Lucilia Garauito, a third-grade teacher.
Faced with such dangers, the financially strapped Colombian government lacks the resources to provide security and job guarantees even as it struggles to take back large swaths of territory ceded to the insurgencies.
Maria del Socorro Colina, director of a Catholic academy in Tame, said about 50 parents whose children were enrolled in the school have fled this year in terror. One 14-year-old student described how leftist rebels kidnapped her and her mother in May. The girl was freed but later found the bullet-riddled body of her mother dumped on a road.