Their best rifle is the media

"I was in my bed when an explosion rocked our house." I tell of combat on the edge of the Peace Community, and analyze how the military reported on it. Meanwhile, community kids carry on in a party. Filmed on October 30, 2010. If you'd rather read about this, look at the previous post.

Way too close combat

Two weeks ago it was 7:30am and I was in my bed when an explosion rocked our house. I decided to get out of bed. Heavy combat immediately ensued on the hill immediately adjacent to the village we live in including shots from rifles, AK-47s, M-60s (a type of machine gun) and occasional grenades. The combat on the “Hill of the Cross” (named after the cross placed as a memorial for six peace community leaders massacred by paramilitaries in 2000) between guerrilla and military forces continued for the next twenty minutes as I and my teammate scurried around making contact with community leaders, our team in Bogotá and Colombian military officials. While most of the gunfire and combat came from the far side of the hill, enough shots were fired from the side facing our house to induce wincing.

While I did not expect to be woken up by the war on this particular morning, the combat was not unexpected. For a while now the Colombian military has had an encampment on the other side of the Hill of the Cross. For the past four months the nearby military encampment has come up in conversations with peace community members, always accompanied by a worried prophesy that such a close guerrilla target would eventually bring combat and risk to the village. It was only three months ago that for these very reasons the community removed a trench the military had built much closer to the community on top of the Hill of the Cross. Thankfully, no community members were hurt in the combat, but it’s scary to think how much worse it could have been had the community not removed that trench.

The crazy part of this story though, is not that there was combat (we live in a war zone), it’s the news stories that came out the day after. Various regional radio stations reported the following: “In the military’s efforts to protect the peace community from ‘the terrorists’ a soldier was killed when he stepped on a mine near the peace community.” Rest assured that the military was the main, if not only, source of these news stories. The military’s report of the incident via the radio stations completely twists the truth of what happened to support three common discourses of the state.

These news stories paint a picture of the peace community and civil society as targeted by the guerrilla with the military as their sacrificing saviors. The military would have everyone believe that had it not been for their presence the guerrilla would have attacked the peace community. In reality it was the military encampment that drew the guerrilla attack that put us all at risk.

At the same time that they work to portray themselves as the protectors of the peace community, they simultaneously insinuate that the peace community is somehow responsible for the death of a soldier. Given the history of the state’s efforts to politically slander the peace community as being at best manipulated by the guerrilla, stating through radio broadcasts that the mine was near the peace community is enough to insinuate to the residents of this region that peace community members were involved in placing the mine.

Lastly, these news stories in their complete absence of any mention of combat or a guerrilla attack reflect the desire of the military to prove to Colombia and the international community that the war is over, the guerrilla has been defeated, and the massive militarization of civil society has worked. While the combat was happening we called an official of the Colombian military to remind them of our presence. As we were worrying about stray bullets this official tried to placate us by saying that we shouldn’t worry because the combat was happening for our safety and that it posed no risk to us. A day after the combat, we asked another military official for their report of what happened. After checking with a superior for what information he could give he reported, “There was an inconvenience with an armed group. But there’s nothing to be worried about. There were no deaths or injuries.” The military reported no deaths although it had already gone out that morning on several radio stations that a soldier had been killed after stepping on a mine. This clearly shows what the military is willing to report to the international community to maintain their discourse.

When I talked to some of my neighbors in the peace community about the news stories they responded with anger and frustration, but not with surprise. One of my neighbors in response to me venting about these blatant and twisting lies shrugged, “Well, that’s what they always do.” The news stories fit right in line with the discourse the military and state has used for the past several years nationally: that the military’s presence means security for the civilian population while at the same time accusing that civilian population (and especially human rights defenders) of being aligned with the guerrilla, all the while feeding the international community the idea that their work has succeeded in ending the war. The accusations and misinformation broadcast through mass media, which causes innumerable damage to the peace community and other human rights defenders, has become the new weaponry of the Colombian state to do away with those they stigmatize as the enemy. As one of my neighbors commented, “The radio is the military’s biggest rifle.”