September 24, 2004
by Bill Lancaster

LOUISVILLE - Rick Ufford-Chase, fresh off a trip to Colombia, South America, preached urgently about the chaotic, violent, dangerous situation facing the Presbyterian Church of Colombia and human rights workers and others there.

Ufford-Chase, moderator of the 216th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA), told the General Assembly Council during a meeting here Wednesday that the church's simple act of standing for non-violence and standing for the poor - the simple act of being church - could be considered subversive and result in church members being gunned down in the streets by violent factions. "Colombia has been experiencing civil war for 40 years," he said. "The people of Colombia can no longer easily determine what it is that is being fought about. The guerrilla movement, if it at one time had legitimate interests to try to protect, and I expect they did, can no longer be identified as working on behalf of the people for a change for the people."

Ufford-Chase said guerilla interests have become so corrupted over time that it's difficult to identify them as standing against oppression in any significant way. Rather they have become actors and rivals themselves. The elder at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson, AZ, said people in Colombia can no longer distinguish between which armed groups are responsible for which violent acts, each using tactics of terror and abduction to carry out its interests. "We can't tell who are the protagonists and who are the antagonists," Ufford-Chase said. "We can't even tell who might be suspicious.'' Then there's a paramilitary force called the Self Defense Forces of Colombia," Ufford-Chase said. "They have been operating for many years now with a wink and a nod from the government, operating in plain clothes with automatic weapons, with almost a complete situation of impunity," Ufford-Chase said.

"Carrying out a level of violence that is truly unimaginable for most of us in the room." The government is giving guerrilla forces an opportunity for reinserting themselves back into Colombian society by providing information on other guerrilla groups, Ufford-Chase said.

"So there is a general situation in which anyone can be named by a person (who is) reinserting themselves into society," the moderator said. "With only the foundation of that accusation, that new person's life is now at risk as they try to defend themselves against the claim that they also have been involved in guerrilla work."

Ufford-Chase said drug trafficking involving huge amounts of money, people at the highest levels of society and international connections runs rampant in Colombia. Adding to the dilemma, he said, is Colombia's supply of oil, tweaking U.S. interests. The recent arrest of Mauricio Avilez Alvarez, a human rights worker with the Presbyterian Church of Colombia, has brought these issues to the forefront. Alvarez was arrested based on the word of a reinserted guerrilla officer and held in jail for the last three months after being accused of involvement in a bombing in December, the moderator said. Ufford-Chase said there's currently a great deal of concern for the incarcerated human rights worker as well as for others working in his office. "Mauricio's life is at risk regardless of whether or not he is convicted," Ufford-Chase said. "Because it is simply enough to be named a guerrilla in the media, to be a target of Self Defense paramilitary forces.

During his visit to Colombia last week, Ufford-Chase accompanied the Rev. Milton Mejia, executive secretary of the Presbyterian Church in Colombia, from office to office of the highest government officials, and assured the Colombian Church that "we as a church in the United States are greatly concerned and we are watching." On Sept. 21, during the end of the moderator's visit, Mejia's phone rang. "He answered the phone and I watched as his face went white," Ufford-Chase said. "He sobbed. 'No. It can't be. No it can't be,' he said." One of Mejia's colleagues, another human rights worker who also had been accused earlier working with the guerrillas, had been assassinated in broad daylight two blocks from his office in Barranquilla.

"This situation calls us as a church," Ufford-Chase said. "But even more significant to us in the moment in which we live, it has a great deal to teach us. Colombia is, in the most disturbing way possible, a window on the world right now, a situation of generalized violence." Ufford-Chase said called the guerillas "armed actors," some certified by the Colombian government, some acting on their own. "I believe the Presbyterian Church of Colombia has something to teach us as a church," the moderator said. "They have determined that the only appropriate response to that kind of violence with so many armed actors, is to insist that the church stands for non-violence. The church stands for peaceful resolution of conflict. The church will stand with the poorest, the displaced, those who have the most to lose and simply insist that it will be church." The text for Ufford-Chase's sermon was a reading of the Beatitudes. He concluded by saying, "The poor, the sad, the humble, those who seek what is good and true. The kind, the forgiving, those who are not malicious or vengeful, the peacemakers, the persecuted - blessed are all of you when you find yourselves in this position."

Presbyterian News Service