a city is not a war zone, but today a university campus was

A student protestor was shot and seriously wounded by the police today at the National Unversity of Colombia. We initially thought he'd been killed. This is not the first time this has happened: University Under Attack. The only media outlet that has it so far is IndyMedia. I found out about it when I ran into one of my roommates at the hospital two blocks from our apartment. He looked like death, although it turns out he did not know the student personally. It was his birthday today. I was at the hospital trying to visit my friend who works with a peace organization here...she has not one, but two types of malaria. I took her chicken and arepas but wasn't able to see her today.

Not sure of all the details, but the student was shot by the police during a demonstration against proposed reforms at the university. It's shocking...one sees the police and army anti-riot squads so frequently around here, they become almost (but not quite) part of the scenery. I see them standing under trees for shade, chatting on cell phones, sitting on the benches at pick up soccer games, lounging with their partners in the mid-day heat. It's hard for me to understand.

In the past, students and professors at the university were basically under siege by the right-wing forces in Colombia. Today, that threat has subsided, and a new, more immediate one has taken its place: elite anti-riot squads of the police. Students are being attacked, injured, and even killed by the very forces their parents' tax dollars pay to protect society. How cruel, how misguided, how immoral. I don't really have the proper words for this - what I'm writing sounds so formal, so distant from the reality around me, so I prefer to quote from this report from 2001.

The National University of Colombia, in Bogota, is a colourful and lively place. Almost every available space on buildings, in class rooms and corridors is covered in murals, graffiti, posters and stencils decrying Plan Colombia, protesting the war in Afghanistan and celebrating resistance.

Over 80% of universities in Colombia are private. There are 32 public universities, which have long been recognised as a hotbed of activist and leftist activity. The National University of Colombia is the largest public university and a vibrant centre for a range of critical projects. Students have renamed all of the landmarks, squares and buildings on campus and there is strong sense of radicalism thoughout the university. There are hundreds of active affinity groups on campus from Virus, a media and mural collective, to anarco-feminists and political musical groups. In addition to the diverse groups, the teach in-style meetings and discussions held daily around the campus, there are regular tropels - literally ‘bustles’ - when students directly confront police, taking over streets surrounding the university or blockading the main university entrance. When there is a tropel the hazy smoke of tear gas fills the campus, the constant noise of rallying cries and molotovs and tear gas canisters exploding fills the air.

At a tropel last week students protested the privatisation of health and education, and world wide American imperialism. A group of students were protesting the bombings in Afghanistan when police responded to the demonstration with violence. Police fired tear gas on the crowd and over 15 students were injured, two seriously, and one died. Police denied responsibility for the shooting, but a number of witnesses confirm the shot came from behind police lines. Carlos Giovanny Blanco Leguizamo, a twenty-two year old medical student , was shot at around noon, he died ten minutes later, still on the university campus.

Emilie*, a student from the National University, said, "the media and the autopsy report says it was a shot from a .22 gun and that he was shot from less than 10 metres. They want people to think that there was someone from inside the university who killed Giovanny, but people who saw say that it was the police, they used a gun that isn’t like the guns they officially use so there aren’t many proofs, but many people saw the act."

The following day two more students were murdered at the National University in Medellin. Reports suggest that they were playing chess in an education centre when two gunmen entered and shot them. Protests were been held simultaneously at universities across Colombia. Protesters were demanding respect for their anti-war sentiments and their right to protest and were marching in defiance of the murder of the medical student.

In the past two years, students, professors and university union leaders have been killed at four universities. Three students and six professors have been slain in the last year at the University of Antioquia in Medellin alone. The fact that universities provide a space for resistance activity means that they are also extremely dangerous places for activists, with many plants and right wing groups on campus. The United Auto-Defence groups of Colombia (AUC), which represents some 20 far right-wing paramilitary groups, announced its arrival, through a campaign of bathroom graffiti in student and professor lounges, at the University of Cartagena. There has been precious little reported about these latest killings, as is the case with many of the devastating attacks on civil liberties and human rights in Colombia. Morale is low, people are afraid, but resistance continues.

By this time the National University will be covered in the tents of students staying on campus in protest and new graffiti will mark the walls; ‘asesinos’ - assassins. In spite of the almost complete blind eye the media has turned on this event, the denial of responsibility by police, and the fear and confusion that people feel, ‘many students will stay at the university discussing things and making decisions’. With heaviness Emile finishes her mail, "the situation is very difficult, many people are too scared... but we have to go on. This isn’t the end of the story, we hope and believe that there is another possible story for this country, so we go on..."
*names changed for security reasons
By Alex Kelly ‘The Paper’ www.thepaper.org.au