Gustavo Monroy

Support Colombian Conscientious Objectors

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Demand an end to the punishment of Colombian conscientious objectors
A campaign by War Resisters' International

If you open your mind life teaches you
Testimony from Gustavo Monroy (2006)

If you open your mind life teaches you. I say this for good, but very personal, reasons. Even when I was a boy and living with my parents, I was thinking about weapons, the weapons that displace people, that destroy human lives and the environment. Years passed and I dedicated myself to fishing, but there always remained within me a desire, a drive to be a superhero for humanity. I dreamed of the latest technological weapons being used to end hunger, displacement, poverty and to provide education for all ? male and female.

I dreamed of being a great militant, though I never fixed my sights on any group. Only with militants, with fighters who worked constantly for the good of the community, could I become this superhero I had dreamed of. I was only a boy who scarcely knew how to read and had only just begun to write. I suffered abuse at the hands of government forces, who not only mistreated my friends, my relatives and others, but also assassinated, tortured and displaced people. These actions set a trap of hate within me ? hatred and revulsion at these criminals. I joined the ?revolutionary? groups of the left, where I learnt that the superhero existed only in my imagination and that I too could be displaced, or even killed. At first it felt right to be there ? when I attended meetings I felt that this was where I should be; but I also realised there was a small part of me that did not agree. I could not conceive of taking the life of another human being. I never have and I never will. This, perhaps, is why I was uneasy about using the methods of the militants or the State.

One afternoon a friend invited me to a human rights workshop, which opened a door into a world I had never dreamed of, a place of struggle and resistance but without weapons. It was through this workshop that I became part of Asociación Juvenil Estudiantil (the Young Student Association) ? ASOJER. I love the ideals of the organisation and the way it empowers the young to defend life, human rights and security in their territory.

Days after this first meeting I was illegally detained by the army, by the Mechanised Cavalry Group No. 18 under the command of General Gabriel Revéis Pizarro, based in the municipality of Sravena-Arauca-Colomibia, appointed to Brigade XVIII. As well as checking my background, they wanted to recruit me to become part of the soldardos campesinos (peasant soldiers). No, no sir, I will not do this! Resisting as they trampled on my dignity and my ethical principles, and withstanding all of the deafening insults and psychological abuse inflicted on me by the military, I always maintained my position: that I did not want to be part of any army. I told them that I was not going to take up weapons, that I would not act in violation of my integrity and moral principles and that I would not take the lives of other people. My ethics would not allow it: I was a young person of principles and dreams, working for freedom and unhindered development of the self. I was detained for two days by this battalion, refusing to take up the arms that take lives indiscriminately, refusing to be part of an army that defends a bourgeois and capitalist state, financed by multinationals for their own benefit and defence.

That afternoon after a heavy rainstorm, I do not deny that tears ran down my cheeks, camouflaged by the rain, falling because of the fear that nearly killed my liberal dreams and because they had stripped me of my dignity. My left arm had been inflamed since I had attended a medical examination where First Corporal Téllez said to the nurse, in a poetic way ?Take from this one a litre or two of blood, so that I may take a little of this red, thick, rich, tasty and exquisite blood?. With all the dignity I could muster, and thinking of the letter I would write about this, I asked them not beat me, not to ask me to do inhuman things that violate my principles.

All this demonstrated to me on that 8 August 2005, when I was detained with the intention of recruiting me into the army, that I was not alone in the liberation struggle and the desire to build a supportive, inclusive model for living. I realised that I was always accompanied by the national and international organisations that supported me and applied pressure so that my right not to go to war with any army can be respected. I managed to leave military custody on 9 August 2005, after 37 hours of captivity, insults, psychological maltreatment and death threats by First Corporal Tellez, I declared myself a CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR.

But this was not all, the nightmare had not yet ended. When I returned home my mother cried and my father argued against me endlessly because of my actions; it was so painful that I cried. The next day, very early in the morning, I went with my mother to a friend from the Association [ASOJER]. I said to him, though it was painful to do so ?I have already demonstrated that it is possible, and I am going to beat this military service?. Back home I packed my suitcase, deciding to run the risks and accept the consequences, but not to go to war. ?If I encounter death it will be a welcome and eternal freedom, because nobody is born from a seed and it touches us all?: these were the painful words I spoke to my parents.

Everything changed, I am not the same, my supposed friends call me cowardly when they see me in the street, they won?t go out with me, they say I am a time bomb, my family turned their backs on me, the effort it took to stay behind, not to go to war. The past neither forgets nor forgives, but for my part I forgive everyone, those that discriminate against me, those who think of doing so and those who do not believe in me or in my social ideals.

Today, 13 months later, I have demonstrated with all the anger and pain of a people, that to contest the milarist model you must be aware that an individual?s struggle can benefit many sectors of society. This is one of the motives for those that say that arms are never the way and will not lead to the liberation of which our children dream. I refused to buy the military certificate, that way I did not and will not contribute even one centavo to the war. To buy the military certificate would be to give them the budget to buy munitions, but God does not want even one of the bullets they buy to be mine.

Gustavo Monroy