Attendees of the January 28 launch event held at the People’s Forum in New York City for the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Economic Coercive Measures
If you had missed it, don’t worry.
On January 28, the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, and Coercive Economic Measures launched at the People’s Forum in New York City.
In the two-and-a-half months since then, the tribunal has held four virtual hearings across multiple time zones. Each hearing has zoomed in on a country that has faced Western sanctions. Experts provide testimony in a couple of hours’ time. So far, the impact of sanctions has been examined in hearings held on Zimbabwe, Syria, Korea and Libya.
Not only do the hearings intend to expose the effects of U.S. sanctions and blockades on targeted countries. The goal is to create strategies for legal accountability. Hearings will take place until June on a total of 15 countries in the Americas, Africa and Asia.
The tribunal’s website states:
People’s Tribunals capture the ethos of self-determination and internationalism that was expressed through twentieth century anti-colonial struggles and was institutionalized in the 1966 Tricontinental Conference in Cuba. They bring together movement lawyers, scholars, and organizers from around the world and are designed by and accountable to the social movements and communities in which they are rooted. Operating outside of the logics and institutions of capitalist and imperialist law, People’s Tribunals make decisions that may not be binding and do not have the force of law, but their achievements in a political and discursive register inspire and provide the tools necessary for present and future organizing. People’s Tribunals allow the oppressed to judge the powerful, defining the content as well as the scope of the procedures, which reverses the norm of the powerful creating and implementing the law.
There is a long tradition of radical organizers and lawyers using the law to put capitalism and imperialism on trial. Organized by the Civil Rights Congress, and supported by the Communist Party as well as a host of Black leftist luminaries, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Claudia Jones, and Paul Robeson, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief of a Crime of the United States against the Negro People, indicted the political-economic system of capitalism and white supremacy for inflicting numerous forms of structural and physical violence on Black people in the U.S. as well as drawing parallels to U.S. imperialist violence abroad. The Russell Tribunal was set up in 1966 to judge U.S. military intervention and war crimes in Vietnam. The same format reemerged in later Russell Tribunals dealing with the U.S.-backed Brazilian and Argentinian military dictatorships (1964 and 1976, respectively), the U.S.-backed coup in Chile (1973), and the U.S.-European interventions against Iraq (1990, 2003). The 2016 International Tribunal for Democracy in Brazil critically examined the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and the role of the U.S. government. Organized in Brussels by both Philippine and international groups, the 2018 International People’s Tribunal on the Philippines exposed and condemned the multiple forms of state violence visited on the people of the Philippines since Rodrigo Duterte became president in 2016. And finally, the U.S. government was put directly on trial by a pair of innovative People’s Tribunals, including the 2007 International Tribunal on Katrina and Rita and the 2018 International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes Against Puerto Rico.
Check out the video of the tribunal’s launch.
The launch event featured jurists, scholars and activists, including:
Nina Farnia, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Professor of Law, Albany Law School
Niloufer Bhagwat, Confederation of Lawyers of Asia and the Pacific
Brian Becker, ANSWER Coalition
Mireille Fanon Mendès-France, The Frantz Fanon Foundation
Booker Omole, Communist Party of Kenya
Carlos Ron, Vice Minister of Foreign Relations for North America
Suzanne Adely, President National Lawyers Guild & Tribunal Steering Committee
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas, Former United Nations Independent Expert
Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, Historian & Scholar
Claudia De La Cruz, People’s Forum
Sara Flounders, Sanctions Kill
Helyeh Doutaghi, Co-chair of the Tribunal Steering Committee & Adjunct Professor, Carleton University
With the possible extradition of a Venezuelan diplomat to the United States on bogus charges, an emergency human-rights delegation organized by the International Campaign to Free Alex Saab was quickly dispatched to Cabo Verde, where he is imprisoned. This island archipelago nation off the west coast of Africa is one of the smallest, poorest and geographically isolated countries in the world.
The international human-rights delegation did not gain Alex Saab’s freedom. Officials denied them a visit with him. But breakthroughs were made in raising the visibility of the case, which involves enormous political, legal and moral issues with long-term political consequences.
The case involves the abduction of a diplomat by the world’s sole superpower locked in an unequal struggle to destroy the formerly prosperous, oil-rich country of Venezuela. The attack on Venezuela is not motivated on the U.S. part by the imperfections in Venezuelan society, but on Venezuela’s past successes in fighting poverty, promoting regional integration, and acting like a sovereign nation. Otherwise, the United States would be lavishing aid on Venezuela, instead of on the apartheid state of Israel, the nacro-state of Colombia and the absolute monarchy of Saudi Arabia.
The kidnapping of Alex Saab is a dramatic and far-reaching effort to enforce the illegal U.S.-decreed policy of economic sanctions. The United States is attempting to impose its will on a country by deliberately attacking the civilian population. Illegal sanctions are a conscious policy of imposing economic havoc to “make the economy scream.”
Saab, a Venezuelan diplomat abducted by the U.S. government a year ago, has been held under torturous conditions. The United States denying diplomatic immunity violates international law.
International Campaign to Free Alex Saab
The powerful corporate media, by omission, can render a news item invisible. The Saab case is virtually unknown in the United States, even among progressive political journalists, left organizations and solidarity activists. Washington’s demand for the extradition of Alex Saab is being covered more extensively in African and Latin American publications. In Venezuela, as expected, the case is well known.
Among some who are aware of the case, an inordinate concentration on the Saab, the individual, obscures the larger issues of national sovereignty and human rights.
Gathering information on what was involved was no easy task. The U.S. charge of “money laundering” by a private businessman in a country wracked by extreme shortages hardly created sympathy for Saab’s case. It was only as the actual facts emerged that a support plan evolved for the international solidarity campaign.
That Saab has withstood a year-long arrest, torture and months of solitary confinement rather than comply with U.S. demands to cooperate indicates he is not just a businessman willing to sell to the highest bidder.
The four-person human-rights delegation in Cabo Verde knocked on government doors, conducted interviews and spoke with the media. The local activist movement and a strong legal team supported them. The delegation was led by a Cabo Verde citizen, Bishop Filipe Teixeira, OFSCJ, a religious leader who lives in the Boston area and leads a congregation of Cabo Verdeans. Teixeira has a history of participating in social justice campaigns. Tweets, Facebook links and news reports have helped penetrate the wall of silence.
After collecting thousands of signatures, an international petition is being forwarded to the president and prime minister of Cabo Verde as well as to U.S. President Joe Biden. Several webinars to raise awareness were held, including one with Saab’s lawyers speaking from Cabo Verde and Nigeria.
— FreedomForAlexSaab (@FreedomAlexSaab) June 7, 2021
Role of Solidarity Activists
Solidarity and people’s movements working together can become a powerful material force, breaking through silence, fear and repression. The focus for international solidarity work in this period is to defend movements and even countries under relentless U.S. imperialist attack and destabilization. This is done without placing unrealistic expectations or creating unrealistic images of how wonderful the internal situation in the targeted country is. Solidarity is not a pass for interference, second guessing, criticism or for euphoric idealism.
It is essential to focus full attention on the source of the problem—U.S. imperialism—and not get lost in the weeds of criticizing the victim. U.S. sabotage, imposed shortages, mercenary attacks and fueling national antagonism are intended to create and intensify internal divisions. Shortages are intended to increase corruption, side deals, privilege and resentment. The targeted country may be wrongly blamed for the crisis created by U.S. actions.
Simply put, many progressive goals are thwarted under conditions of illegal sanctions, because that is the purpose of sanctions. The victimized country is obligated to defend itself in the face of destabilization and constant sabotage.
At each step, keeping the focus on the crime of U.S. actions provides a grounding for progressive solidarity. This is true not only in defending attempts at revolutionary change, such as in Cuba or Venezuela. We also raised the U.S. role in Cabo Verde, a country that clearly didn’t decide on its own to pull Saab from his flight or order him detained. Cabo Verde’s isolation and strategic position simply made that country a convenient location for the long arm of U.S. extraterritorial judicial overreach.
This case must be used in the global challenge against arrogant U.S. lawlessness.
This article was originally published by the International Action Center and edited by Toward Freedom. A previous article by Roger Harris delved into the impact of sanctions.
Sara Flounders of International Action Center and Roger D. Harris of Task Force on the Americas were in Cabo Verde June 3-10 on the emergency human-rights delegation organized by the International Campaign to Free Alex Saab. The case can be followed on Twitter.
U.S. President Donald Reagan toasts with South Korean President Chun Doo Hwan during a reception at the Blue House, the South Korean presidential palace in Seoul on November 13, 1983 / credit: White House
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis, originally published in Hampton Think.
General Chun Doo Hwan was the corrupt military dictator that ruled South Korea (Republic of Korea or ROK) from 1979-88, before handing off the presidency to his co-conspirator General Roh Tae Woo. Chun took power in a coup in 1979, and during his presidency he perpetrated the largest massacre of Korean civilians since the U.S. war on Korea. He died on November 23, in pampered, sybaritic luxury, impenitent and arrogant to the very last breath.
Many western media outlets have written censorious, chest-beating accounts of his despotic governance and the massacres he perpetrated (here, here, here, and here)—something they rarely bothered to do when he was actively perpetrating them in broad daylight before their eyes. Like the light from a distant galaxy—or some strange journalistic time capsule—only after death, decades later, do “human rights violations” in South Korea burst out of radio silence and become newsworthy.
Better late than never, better faint than silent, better partial than absent, one could argue. Still all of them miss out on key facts, spread lies through omission. A key dimension of Korean history and politics looks to be buried with his death. A little background history is necessary to elucidate this.
The Sorrows of the Emperor-Dictator
The “imperial president,” Park Chung Hee
Chun’s predecessor and patron, the aging South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, had ruled the country as an absolute totalitarian despot for 18 years, but he knew in his bones that his days were numbered. He had survived two violent assassination attempts, mass civil protests, and even opprobrium from his U.S. puppet masters, despite serving them loyally by sending 320,000 South Korean troops to Vietnam. Even Park’s closest advisors were worried about the fragility of his rule.
Park Chung Hee had been a former Japanese military collaborator during Japan’s colonization of Korea. A U.S.-installed puppet Syngman Rhee had smashed socialism in the South through genocide—a method later to be replicated in Indonesia’s “Jakarta method.”
But the puppet-genocidaire Rhee was in turn toppled by student protests in 1960, and the integration of South Korea into a U.S.-led security structure and capitalist order looked precarious due to popular hatred of the United States. Into this foment, Brigadier General Park took power in a vicious putsch. Park was a totalitarian fascist groomed within the Japanese military system, where he had conducted counterinsurgency against Korean independence fighters in Manchuria. (One of them, a legendary guerrilla leader called Kim Il Sung, would escape his clutches and become a life-long nemesis.) He had then been trained and cultivated by the United States during the 1950s, attending military school in the United States. When Rhee was deposed, Park rapidly took power, pledging fealty to the United States and total war against communists. Having already proven his anticommunist credentials through a massive treachery, betrayal and slaughter, he was welcomed by the Kennedy administration. This established the Junta’s legitimacy, while maintaining the continuity of U.S. colonial “hub and spoke” architecture in the region.
Park Chung Hee as a Japanese military officer
Park nominally assumed the presidency through an election but then tightened his regime until he attained the powers of the Japanese emperor, whom he had worshipped and admired during Japanese rule. He formally rewrote the constitution after the Japanese imperial system, legally giving himself the powers of Showa-era Sun God. This, along with his dismissal of colonial atrocities to normalize relations with Japan, in obeisance to the U.S. strategic design for the region, resulted in massive civil insurrection against him. These protests were barely put down with mass bloodshed, torture, disappearances and terror. But even among his inner circle, doubts were voiced about his extreme despotic overreach.
The Insurance Policy: Ruthless and Cunning
From the earliest days of his rule, Park Chung Hee had cultivated high ranking officers to key positions, as loyal retainers in an insurance policy in case a coup happened against him. A secret military cabal, later to be called “Hanahwe” [also, “Hanahoe”; “the council of one”], a group of officers within the 1955, 11th class of South Korea’s Military Academy, had signaled their total fealty to Park during Park’s military coup in 1961. As a result, Hanahwe members were rapidly brought in-house, rewarded with powerful roles within the military government, and formed a deadly, elite Praetorian guard within the labyrinthine power structures of the Park Administration.
Park Chung Hee with U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1963
Two of them were the leaders of this secret-society insurance policy. One of them, Chun Doo Hwan, would be referred to as the “ruthless one”, known for his amoral brutality and utter lack of conscience. He would later be called “the slaughterhouse butcher.” The other was Roh Tae Woo, Chun’s military blood brother, the “cunning one,” known for his strategic, tactical and political cunning.
Leaft to right: Roh Tae Woo, Chun Doo Hwan, Cha Ji-Chul
Together, “Ruthless and Cunning” would prove their mettle in Vietnam, auditioning as understudies for the U.S. imperial war machine, and proving their bona fides by operating a rolling atrocity machine, the SK 9th Infantry “White Horse” Division, where Chun’s 29th regiment would cut its teeth on brutal massacres against Vietnamese civilians. Psychopathic and amoral, they would form a two-headed hydra, ensuring Park’s rule against enemies within and without. A third member of Hanahwe, Jeong Ho Yong, would also cut his teeth in the 9th Division in Vietnam, as would the Capital Mechanized “Fierce Tiger” Division, and various Marine and special warfare brigades. All would gain recognition and favor with the U.S. military brass in Vietnam, where South Korean troops would eventually outnumber U.S. troops on the ground. They would also play key roles in future Korean history. Sex, Whiskey and Guns: High Deductibles
Park’s insurance policy kicked in when his KCIA chief pumped him full of bullets at a whiskey-sodden orgy gone bad in late autumn of 1979. Two young women—a nervous college student and a popular singer—had been procured to serve the sexual whims of the president at a luxurious KCIA “safehouse” that had been set up for such routine vernal assignations. During the pre-coital dinner banquet, with expensive whiskey serving as lubricant, a heated argument arose between the KCIA Chief, Kim Jae Kyu and Chief Presidential Bodyguard Cha Ji Chol, about how to put down massive civil protests against Park’s rule in Pusan and Masan. Cha Ji Chol proposed the “Pol Pot option” arguing that a massacre of 30,000 civilians would subdue civilians and put the genie back in the bottle. This was accompanied by insults at Kim for not having implemented such “effective” measures. Kim Jae Kyu, incensed either at the casual brutality or at the blatant criticism, put an abrupt end to the debate by drawing his pistol and shooting Cha and Park. “I shot the heart of the beast of the (Yushin) dictatorship,” he would later claim. Park’s insurance policy would rapidly kick in at that point, although the deductible would be his own life. Enter the Praetorian Guard: Tigers, Horses, and Dragons
After Park’s death, Oct 26th, Lt General Chun Doo Hwan, the head of the Armed Forces Defense Security Command (DSC)—Park’s institutional Praetorian Guard—rapidly took matters in hand. Chun would rapidly take over, first the investigation of the assassination, then key army positions, and then the government. Some historians marvel at the rapidity with which Chun consolidated power and how quickly he disciplined loose factions within Park’s old guard. This ignores the rhizomatic base of Hanahwe deep within the executive and in all branches of the military, and the institutional powers baked into the DSC to preserve loyalty and deter subversion and coups. Chun, using his statutory powers, and good dose of military firepower, arrested key military leaders for the assassination, and then on December 12, 1979, instigated a coup, supported by Hanahwe comrade Roh Tae Woo, now division commander of the 9th “White Horse” Division. Roh withdrew the elite unit from its critical position on the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that separates northern and southern Korea to the Capital, where they were joined by another Vietnam/Hanahwe classmate, general Jeong Ho Yong. These troops, with another Vietnam-veteran division, the Capitol Mechanized “Tiger” Division, and various special warfare brigades, fought the old guard in the streets before rapidly subduing them. Not long after this class reunion, Chun would declare martial law and appoint himself president with a new constitution and fill all key military ranks with his Hanahwe classmates. A “Splendid Holiday” Turns Sour
Mass protests broke out again after Chun’s declaration of Martial Law on May 17, 1980. In the city of Gwangju, hundreds of students protested. Chun’s response was to send a crack division of special warfare troops to smash heads, assault bystanders and shoot protestors, in an operation named “Splendid Holiday.” Beatings, rapes and mass killings were the order of the day; “blood flowed like rivers in the streets.”
Mass protest in Gwangju, May 1980
However, in an extraordinary turn of events, stunned protesters, instead of capitulating at the terror, responded by storming police armories and requisitioning weapons, taxis, buses and improvised explosives, to fight the elite troops to a standstill. Despite the deployment of helicopter gunships and Armored Vehicles, 3,000 Special Warfare Paratroopers, along with 18,000 riot troops, found themselves driven out of the city. In this, the liberation of Gwangju stands out as one of the most astonishing feats of civil resistance of the 20th century.
Riot troops and paratroopers assault protestors and bystanders in Gwangju
This victory was not to last, however. After the rebels surrendered thousands of arms as a gesture of good faith to seek amnesty, Chun’s administration would assault the city with two armored divisions and five special forces brigades. An untold number of civilians—excess death statistics note 2,300 individuals—would be slaughtered, searing Gwangju into the historic annals of atrocity and infamy. Anti-government protests would go underground, and re-erupt seven years later, when Chun’s presidency, which had been awarded the Olympics found it inconvenient to perpetrate another massacre in front of the international press in the run up to the Olympics. Chun would accede to protesters’ demands for a direct election, the outcome of which conveniently passed the presidency to his Hanahwe second, General Roh Tae Woo. The Missing Factor: Who Let the Dogs Out?
The above are the basic historical outlines, acknowledged by most journalists and historians. But what they miss out, is the platform and permissions that circumscribed these historic events. In particular, two questions arise: Under what authority did Chun initiate his coups? And how did he subdue Gwangju? The answer leads back to the same place. South Korea has never had a policy independent of the United States—it has always been a vassal neo-colony. This was demonstrated when the United States placed Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missiles on Korean soil, ignoring the explicit orders of President Moon Jae-In by coordinating secretly with the South Korean military. Even U.S. Ambassador Donald Gregg acknowledged openly before Congress that the U.S.-South Korea relationship had historically been a Patron-Client relationship. This is because the southern state of Korea, from its inception, was created deliberately by the United States after liberation to thwart a popular, indigenous socialist government (the Korean People’s Republic) from taking sovereign power over the entire peninsula. Since its occupation in 1945 by the U.S. military government, South Korea has always been constrained and controlled by the United States. Its politics and culture, even where it might be nominally independent, has been thoroughly colonized by the United States. For example, in the early 1990s, a fractious intra-party conflict broke out between two cabinet factions of the liberal Kim Young Sam presidency. The “irreconcilable” fight was between cliques that had studied political science at the University of California Berkeley and those who had studied at Yale University. Such were boundaries of South Korean discourse and the overarching nature of U.S. influence. This state of affairs is most true of the South Korean military, which was cloned from the U.S. military during the U.S. occupation of 1945-48, and which has been continuously under U.S. operational control (or OPCON) since July 14, 1950.
A young Chun Doo Hwan at U.S. Army Special Warfare School, Fort Bragg, 1950s
Key leaders, such as Park, Chun, Roh were trained and indoctrinated into U.S. military practices and culture and had close personal connections with the U.S. military. Chun, for example, had attended the U.S. Psychological Warfare school and Special Warfare school in Fort Bragg, Ranger school at Fort Benning, and Airborne training at the U.S. Army infantry school before receiving commissions to lead Special Warfare forces. He then went to Vietnam, fighting under U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) command before ascending to key positions in the ROK military.
This dependency is starkest regarding military operational control, which the United States still maintains in “wartime” to this day. ROK divisions cannot move or act independently without explicit orders from the top of the military command chain, or unless explicit permission is granted to be released from this operational control. The head of the military command chain at the time of Gwangju was General John A. Wickham, Jr., the head of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command, and United States Forces Korea (UNC/CFC) command. Wickham would have been subordinate to the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In other words, South Korean troops do not get to commit massacres on their own. They need a hall pass from the United States to engage in any military maneuvers or actions. The U.S. military granted them such a hall pass to travel down to Gwangju, knowing that this plan that would likely result in the slaughter of students and citizens. The released units under the Special Warfare Command, a lethal killing machine, are all divisions with a deep integration with and long history of serving the United States.
The United States claims that it was utterly in the dark and in no position to refuse the release of OPCON demanded by South Korea: That the Koreans snatched up OPCON, like a bully stealing lunch money, and then went on to commit mass atrocities that the United States could only sit by and watch in slack-jawed innocence. These are after-the-fact re-workings of history by creative lawyers ignorant of military realities. Militaries are instituted to have unity of command, and Chun was a U.S.-trained, known actor in a specific chain of command, with close ties to the U.S. brass. The notion that a partially established coup junta of a client state could simply Swiss-cheese U.S. military command structure and snatch OPCON to commit massacres at will strains credibility. The absurd official portrayals of the U.S.military brass as hapless damsels before roguish generals is refuted by official records and smacks of satire or desperation.
Protesters running from troops, Gwangju, 1980
In fact, journalist Tim Shorrock using the declassified “Cherokee files,” has detailed well the discussions that happened at the time of Gwangju: Top U.S. officials in the Carter administration 1) knew of the brewing crackdown and 2) greenlighted military action, knowing full well the costs. According to Shorrock’s meticulous reporting:
[Troops] were sent with the approval of the U.S. commander of the U.S.-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham… That decision, made at the highest levels of the U.S. government… exposed how deeply the Carter administration was involved in the planning for the military coup of 1980… the Carter administration had essentially given the green light to South Korea’s generals to use military force…
This action was authorized to avoid a second “Iran” debacle, where another U.S.-placed despot had been overthrown by popular revolt to U.S. consternation, humiliation and loss. Not only did the United States greenlight the massacre by U.S.-familiar Vietnam-veteran divisions, the United States deployed the USS Coral Sea to support the flank of Chun’s military during the retaking of the city and heightened surveillance support with Airborne Warning And Control System (AWACS). In other words, the Gwangju massacre was a U.S.-enabled-and-supported operation, done with explicit U.S. knowledge and coordination.
Pentagon lawyers have argued that they had previously “released OPCON” to the Korean military, so that these massacres were not done under direct U.S. control. That is a distinction without a difference, akin to a pit bull owner saying that they took their beast off the leash, and therefore are not responsible for the deadly consequences. The ROK military was a US-trained-and-coordinated combatant force; some units involved had served directly under the US I Corps in Vietnam only years prior to Gwangju. The very fact that the United States released OPCON, knowing full well their capacities, military histories, and what was on the cards, makes the whole argument a poor exercise in plausible deniability. No one who has the smallest understanding of how armies work would fall for “the pit bull ate my homework” excuse.
The United States has also argued that the Special Warfare division was exempt from OPCON at the time. This, too, is a legal fiction—Special Warfare Troops (SWF), of all ROK troops, are the most tightly integrated and bound to U.S. command, where they have a long history of training, coordinating, and working with and as proxies for the U.S. military. (The United States maintains this pretense because SWF are designed to infiltrate into North Korea, where the necessity to avoid U.S. command responsibility requires a legal fiction of “independence”).
The same could also apply for Chun’s coups as well. The Dec 12 coup involved the movement of the Vietnam-veteran 9th division, far away from its position guarding the DMZ to attack the incumbent government, along with maneuvers of the Capital Mechanized Division and Special Warfare Troops. The May 20 coup also involved large troop maneuvers to threaten and dissolve the Korean parliament. South Korea is a small, crowded peninsula, bristling with arms and military bases on hair trigger alert, surveilling and monitoring every inch of its territory for military movement. To assert that the U.S. command was aware of the coups is not conspiracy that presumes U.S. omniscience. It’s simply assuming clear signaling on a crowded dance floor to avoid inadvertent collisions. It’s inconceivable that such a massive troop maneuver would not have been signaled up the chain at minimum to avoid a friendly fire incident.
Return OPCON, Restore Peace
So where do these facts leave us?
As the media stir up the flies around Chun’s sordid past, they also seek to bury with his body the fact that South Korea’s military is an appendage of the U.S. military, and that its warts, chancres, and tumors are grown from within the U.S. body politic. Exorbitant atrocities such as the Bodo League Massacres, or the Gwangju Massacre, accrue to the secret debit account of the U.S. imperial ledger, where human rights violations vanish off the books, and where moral debt and karmic interest are never calculated or reconciled.
Despite a confusing, bifurcated organizational structure (independent command control vs. subordinated operational control; Peacetime OPCON vs. Wartime OPCON), the bare political fact is that South Korea’s military falls effectively under U.S. control, not simply in “wartime,” but whenever it is politically expedient or strategically necessary. This card was obvious when the ROK military simply defied Moon’s moratorium on THAAD missile installation and took its orders from the United States, not even bothering to notify the Korean president that the missiles had been delivered in-country. Subsequent investigation revealed that the South Korean military claimed a confidentiality agreement with the U.S. military as the reason to hide the information from South Korea’s own commander-in-chief.
Not only does the ROK military translate the will of the United States in domestic actions—including coups and massacres, but it also has functioned as a brutal sidekick for U.S. aggressions abroad, and serves as a strategic force projection platform and force multiplier for U.S. containment against China. Unlike any other “sovereign” state in the world, South Korea’s 3.7 million troops and material all fall under U.S. operational control the instant that the United States decides that they want to use them.
This is despite the fact that since the inception of its civilian government in 1993, South Korea has sued the United States for the return of OPCON. This request is now going into its third decade; the United States has simply stalled, moved goal posts, changed definitions and conditions, and stonewalled to this date.
This debate around OPCON is important in the current historical moment as the United States is escalating to war with China. Any de-escalation with North Korea will require the declaration of peace, predicated on the return of sovereign OPCON to South Korea. However, the United States will not seek to de-escalate tensions with North Korea, because if that happens, South Korea is likely to confederate in some manner with North Korea, join China’s Belt and Road Initiative and then become integrated as an ally of China. This would cripple the hegemonic control (or the architecture of U.S. hegemony) in Northeast Asia. Hegemony refers to the dominance of one group over another via various means. This renders any peace with North Korea antithetical to U.S. strategic interests.
Secondly, the U.S. escalation for war with China requires the capacity to access and threaten the Chinese landmass across a series of leverage points. Inescapably, South Korea will be a key theater of battle, because of its geostrategic position as a bridgehead onto China. Also, the temptation to leverage a force of 6.7 million South Koreans (3.7 million troops +3 million paramilitary) as cannon fodder for war against China is simply too irresistible to pass on. In light of this, Korea expert Tim Beal argues that in this moment of heightened tension with China, the most dangerous place in the Pacific is not the South China Sea or the East China Sea, but on the Korean peninsula.
We will see this conflict heighten as South Korea enters into a new presidential election cycle between a U.S.-favored conservative candidate, and a China-sympathetic progressive candidate.
Nevertheless, South Korea’s history offers a stark and ominous lesson, one that the mainstream media would prefer you ignore: A battle is brewing, with very high stakes. Under pressure, the United States has taken brutal actions to maintain control and hegemony. It may do so again.
Chun’s passing is being taken as an opportunity to distribute soporific drafts of historical amnesia—the better to sleepwalk into war or tragedy, again.
People with a conscience should not let this misdirection pass. To close one’s eyes to history is to enable future atrocities and war. Only with eyes wide open does the public have a chance of staving off this coming war.
K.J. Noh is a scholar, educator and journalist focusing on the political economy and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific. He writes for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online. He also does frequent commentary and analysis on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear, Breakthrough News and Flashpoints. He believes a functioning society requires good information; to that end, he strives to combat the weaponization of disinformation in the current cold war climate.
Left-wing presidential candidate Gustavo Petro (bottom left on the mic) addressing a crowd in Colombia / credit: Gustavo Petro
For Francia Márquez, land is life.
The 39-year-old Afro-descendant woman was raised in mountainous territories that have been occupied by generations of Africans in what is now known as Colombia. They are the offspring of people who had escaped slave masters.
“Territory is a space of life and diversity,” said Márquez, who was dressed in white from head to toe and clad in African jewelry. She addressed a standing-room only event held on February 7 at a community center that serves the Spanish-speaking population in Hyattsville, Maryland, on the border of Washington, D.C. “And now, I want to be president of Colombia.”
Militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro is seen as the inevitable Pacto Histórico candidate in this year’s presidential election in Colombia / credit: Facebook / Gustavo Petro
Many say the upcoming Colombian presidential election looks to be the most consequential in decades. That’s because, while some praise Márquez, everyone Toward Freedom spoke to agreed militant-turned-politician Gustavo Petro is the strongest candidate on the left. The most recent poll shows Petro as the most favored left-wing candidate, with 77 percent of the public’s favor, compared to only 12 percent for Márquez. More interesting is that Petro is the most recognized and favored candidate across the political spectrum, according to Centro Nacional de Consultario, a Colombian think tank.
“With the failure of the government of Iván Duque, the public is really looking for something different,” said Gimena Sánchez-Garzoli, Director for the Andes at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). Under the right-wing Duque presidency, murders of social leaders have continued as the 2016 peace accords to demobilize guerillas remain unimplemented. “Last year’s civil strike, the effects of COVID-19 and the economics of the country have pushed people who normally wouldn’t have run.”
Márquez and Petro are seeking the nomination of Pacto Histórico, a left-wing coalition, during today’s party consultations. These primary-like events will determine who will move on to first-round runoff elections on May 29. A second round would be held on June 19 if no candidate wins at least 50 percent of the votes. While Petro seeks the coalition’s nomination as a Colombia Humana party candidate, Márquez is vying with the support of Polo Democrático Alternativo, a social democratic party.
Aside from Pacto Historico, a center-right coalition, Coalición Equipo por Colombia (Team Colombia), and a center-left coalition, Coalición Centro Esperanza (Hope Center), are deciding on candidates today as well. A few candidates, including the notable former senator and once-exile Ingrid Betancourt, have opted out of today’s consultations and will run against the coalitions on May 29, either on a party ballot or independently.
Left-wing presidential candidate Francia Márquez (left) with members of the Afro-Colombian community in 2018 in La Toma, Cauca department. Márquez seeks the Pacto Histórico nomination in today’s party consultations / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
Putting Colombia in Context
Colombia is among the top 20 most violent countries in the world. That is partly because the United States has provided $4.5 billion in arms and military training via Plan Colombia, a 22-year-old anti-narcotics program implemented during the presidency of right-wing president, Álvaro Uribe (2002-10). The U.S. military also reportedly has helped build out and now occupies seven Colombian military bases.
Out of 49 million people, 8 million have been displaced since 1985, according to Human Rights Watch. That’s because of decades of struggle between coca producers and traffickers, miners, Indigenous and Afro-descendant people, and those who represent foreign interests.
The Ovejas River in La Toma, Cauca department, Colombia, where a fierce battle has raged over land and displaced millions of mostly Afro-descendants and Indigenous people / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
The Fear of ‘Becoming Venezuela’
Dan Kovalik got much pushback for announcing in February his support for Petro, who was roundly lambasted for recently saying in a radio interview, “We do not like [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro. We have said it many times. We don’t like what is happening in Venezuela in terms of the extinction of democracy.”
Another attack came on Twitter: “I suggest Maduro stop his insults. Cowards are those who do not embrace democracy. Get Venezuela out of oil, take it to the deepest democracy. If you have to step aside, do it.”
Le sugiero a Maduro que deje sus insultos. Cobardes los que no abrazan la Democracia.
Saque a Venezuela del petroleo, llevela a la más profunda democracia, si debe dar un paso al costado, hágalo. https://t.co/kA8DBwQ3fT
These kind of comments have moved some to call Petro “another Boric,” alluding to Chile’s new president, Gabriel Boric, who recently criticized Venezuela and Nicaragua.
“It might be tactical,” said Kovalik, who teaches international human rights at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. “He still represents that [guerilla]. That’s why I still like him. He’s opposed to U.S. imperialism.”
Petro has gotten backing from figures of the international left, including U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. While regional leaders, including Maduro, assailed Petro on Twitter for criticizing Venezuela while it undergoes a process of socialist construction that began in 1998, some understand the rationale.
Sánchez-Garzoli has been working on Colombian issues since 1998 and has been exclusively focused on the country since 2004. She said Uribismo, the far-right ideology of Uribe that helped escalate the drug war, is to blame for the inflamed relationship with Venezuela. That has created a fear among Colombians that their country is “becoming Venezuela.”
“Colombians think of Venezuelans as their cousins,” Sánchez-Garzoli said. “There’s always been good relations, people to people—it’s just been the government that has had this antagonistic approach.”
Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist who co-founded a grassroots organization called the Black Alliance for Peace. He has lived in Calí, a predominately Afro-Colombian city, since 2011, and regularly advises movement and elected leaders in the country. “This spat between him and some figures like Maduro, while it is politically unwinding in terms of regional politics, plays a certain role in Colombian politics.”
Baraka said it is unclear if real ideological differences exist between Petro and Maduro, or if Petro’s statement was a critique from the left, or if it was Petro’s way of creating space between him and Maduro. “It’s understandable, but also opportunistic,” Baraka said.
Sánchez-Garzoli said part of the reason Petro lost the 2018 presidential election was because he wasn’t able to attract more moderate elements of the population to vote for him because of the public’s aversion to anything related to Venezuela.
Baraka said the question is similarly complicated among Afro-Colombians. “Part of it is confusion,” he said. “Part of it is the relative conservatism that’s across the region, unfortunately.”
When a candidate is considered in favor of Venezuela, that reinforces the right wing and the moderates because they fear a public seizure of companies as well as persecution of political and economic elites, Sánchez-Garzoli said. She added the center and the right recently have come together. “They are making alliances [with groups] they’ve never worked with before,” Sánchez-Garzoli said. “It’s very hard to know what that will mean in practice.”
In a region where the left has successfully taken state power, many said it is important for Petro to win to create more stability for the Western Hemisphere’s left pole, which includes Bolivia, Chile, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua and Perú. “They’re not going to go away quietly,” Kovalik said of Colombia’s ultra-right wing.
James Early, a board member of Washington-based think tank Institute for Policy Studies, also sees potential in a Petro presidency. “Getting rid of this ultra-right Duque government and whoever would become the steward of state power is really the bottom line. This is where the rub comes.”
Left-wing presidential candidate Francia Márquez (fifth from left in the second row) poses in 2018 with members of the Afro-Colombian community in La Toma, Cauca department / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
The Afro-Descendant Question
Charo Mina Rojas, an Afro-Colombian who supports Márquez’s candidacy, believes it would be a boon if Petro wins the presidency. But that support comes with reservations.
“Gustavo Petro continues to be part of that white supremacist voice that does not recognize diversity and the political power that diversity can have in this country, particularly from marginalized ethnic groups,” said Mina, who is a member of the Proceso de Comunidades Negras, or Black Communities Process, which represents more than 100 Afro-descendant community councils and organizations spread across 4 departments, or states. “Colombia always performs as a Mestizo country, but it’s white people governing.”
Unfortunately, Petro’s campaign did not respond as of press time to Toward Freedom’s inquiry.
Sánchez-Garzoli noted Petro has been known for a more top-down approach, keeping decision making to a tiny circle of advisors.
That is unlike the Afro-descendant tradition, in which every aspect of life is collectivized, attracting many to Márquez’s candidacy.
“She’s fearless—she’s a leader,” said Victor Hugo Moreno Mina, an Afro-descendant who is running for a seat in Colombia’s congress under the Green Party banner. “She has been defending Black communities in the cities, but also in the rural areas.”
Moreno is the Consejo Mayor, or president and legal representative, of the Asociación de Consejos Communitarios del Norte del Cauca (ACONC, or the Association of Community Councils of Northern Cauca). ACONC represents 210 rural communities and 10 municipalities in Cauca department.
Moreno was with Márquez on May 4, 2019, when armed assailants shot at their group as they were preparing for discussions with the government on what they see as negligence. “She defends people who don’t have their basic needs [met] in our communities.”
For Afro-descendants, their ancestral territories dating back to the 17th century have been equated with life itself. They descend from Africans who were kidnapped from the same villages in Africa and sold together, which meant they could communicate in their native languages to outsmart the slave masters. After escaping into the mountainous jungles of Colombia, they established the first African settlements. Their descendants had been able to continue the traditions of their homeland in relative isolation until the drug war in the early 2000s that began mass displacement. Then an influx of mining companies continued the violence in the 2010s.
A poster depicting Francia Márquez features her campaign slogan, “Soy Porque Somos,” or “I am because we are.” / credit: Francia Márquez
Ubuntu, a term with roots in the Bantu languages of central and southern Africa, means “I am because you are and you are because I am.” That is reflected in Márquez’s campaign slogan, “Soy Porque Somos,” or “I am because we are.” Marquez helped organize rural Afro-descendant women in her hometown of La Toma, located in the Cauca department, against foreign mining companies. Eighty women walked 350 miles in 10 days in November 2014 to the capital, Bogotá. That, as well as a 22-day protest in Bogotá, moved the government to end illegal mining activities and convene a national task force. But before that had taken place, the death threats had become too much to bear. On April 5, 2014, she was forced into exile with her two children, landing in the city of Calí. Her efforts caught international attention, winning her the Goldman Environmental Prize in 2018.
Left-wing candidate Francia Márquez, who seeks the Pacto Histórico candidacy, seen in 2018 accepting the Goldman Environmental Prize / credit: Goldman Environmental Prize
The collectivism of the Afro-descendant community filters into Márquez’s approach to campaigning for president.
“I don’t have anything to offer. We have to change the logic,” Márquez told a crowd of mainly Spanish-speaking people on February 7 in Maryland. “That’s why we have a mandate.”
Instead of running on a platform, she brings to the public the demands of the Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities, which includes distributing land to women, a focus on education, the legalization of drugs, an end to obligatory military service, the right to abortion and an end to the country’s 60-year-old civil war.
“She is contesting these structures from a very clear Black feminist perspective,” Mina said.
A Black woman at the event stood up wearing a Daishiki, a West African blouse-like patterned garment. “You have not let those evil forces touch you,” she told Márquez.
“To see you gives me hope,” said Pedro, an Indigenous Colombian who wound up in the Washington area after fleeing the violence.
“She defends everything with her body and soul,” Moreno told Toward Freedom.
The Afro-descendant population in Colombia is mostly concentrated in coastal areas, as represented by the shades of brown / credit: Wikipedia / Milenioscuro using data from OCHA Colombia’s Censo DANE 2005
‘Tricky Ethical Situation’
Mina said Márquez’s candidacy represents a grassroots process. And the people are patient.
“Nothing is going to change in a four-year period,” Mina said. “But in a long-standing process, we can expect a successful political alternative.”
Petro will need help to not only broaden his base, but to keep his current base excited. That’s where Márquez, who is unlikely to win today, can play a role.
“Francia has really forced the debate on different issues,” Sánchez-Garzoli said.
The 1991 reformed constitution includes a declaration that Colombia is a plurinational state. Unfortunately, that has not played out in giving Afro-descendants and Indigenous Colombians full reign over their lives. That contradiction again has come to a head with the ethnic chapter of the 2016 peace accords not being acted upon, according to a 192-page report Instancia Especial de Alto Nivel con Pueblos Étnicos (IEANPE, or Special High-Level Body with Ethnic Peoples) issued in December. Non-governmental organization Instituto de Estudios para el Desarrollo y la Paz (INDEPAZ, Institute for Development and Peace Studies) reported murders of social leaders, which includes activists, politicians and journalists, surged to 1,270 between 2016 and 2021. Although forced displacements hit their peak in the early 2000s, as seen in the INDEPAZ chart below, about 100,000 or more people have been displaced every year since the peace accords were signed.
Chart showing how many people have been displaced each year in Colombia / credit: INDEPAZ
“The citizen backing is going to have to be significantly organized to broker deals with whoever emerges,” said Early, who, as part of a delegation, met with militants in Cuba as the peace accords were being hammered out. He said, as the only Afro-descendant at the meeting, he advocated for the safety of Afro-Colombians. “That is the principal question inside Colombia: How will the candidacy of Francia negotiate with the forces who are gathered around Petro?”
Mina takes a more realistic, or perhaps pessimistic, view.
“I don’t think they can change the relationships as they are,” she said. “You need a lot of economic power to do that.”
Mina added Petro has been trying to gain alliances with those in power. She and others saw that as a tough road to walk. More right-wing elements like the Catholic Church may require compromises that can go against a candidate’s positions.
“That is a tricky ethical situation,” Mina told Toward Freedom on a phone call from her Calí home. “If that was just words, that is okay. But that is not just words. When he wins, all those people will come back to cash the check.”
Kovalik said the international left, much of which has not seized state power, should support Petro’s candidacy.
“Even if he’s not openly supporting Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, he’s not a lackey of the military in Colombia,” he said. “It will be a huge step forward for Latin America to have a president of Colombia who’s not willing to allow Colombia to be a giant military base for the United States.”
