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In an exclusive interview with teleSUR, Huber Ballesteros, a political prisoner who was recently released after more than three years behind bars on trumped-up charges, opened up about his arduous experience and the influence it’s had on his life.
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“It was three and a half years in prison,” Ballesteros said in Spanish over Skype of his immediate reaction to his newfound freedom.
“When you regain your liberty, you’re a bit disconcerted ... after all those years, to see the streets, the mountains, people, to see opened spaces – the truth is that ... I’m still a bit confused by it all.”
Ballesteros, a renowned campesino union leader of the Patriotic March, a political movement consolidating much of the Colombian left, was accused of rebelling against the state and financing terrorism – that is, supporting the FARC. He was imprisoned on Aug. 25, 2013.
After three and a half years of fighting, his lawyer was finally able to free him by proving the case was based on false testimonies and manipulated evidence.
According to Ballesteros, this is common.
“In Colombia, there are many false judicial positives. The most common cases are buying witnesses’ testimonies,” he said, adding that it's usually ex-militants and union leaders who have been caught and forced to supply authorities with so-called false positives.
“They are offered money and reduced sentences” to accuse other people of supposed crimes against the state, many of whom they may not even know personally, he said.
That’s usually followed by the “manipulation of (communication) devices” originally confiscated from guerrilla fighters, which are then planted on campesino and union leaders as evidence of their collusion with so-called terrorists.
Ballesteros himself was accused by three people, two of whom he knew and one ex-FARC guerilla he had never met. The police got to them, offering them money to implicate him in a “guerilla front that never existed,” he said.
“Those are the two main ways the police and prosecution come up with false-positives in order to repress the social protest and the political action of those of us who are against the regime.”
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Nevertheless, he explained, political prisoners have gained a level of organization inside Colombian prisons which put up a fierce fight against that repression.
One can meet as many as eight, 10 or sometimes even 40 other political prisoners in one place, he said, which allows for political organizing to continue as it did outside of prison. While recognizing the work has to be more focused and small-scale – such as building a library for prisoners and fighting for other every-day necessities and rights – there is always a way to get involved.
“So you can establish a work agenda that has to do with political discussion, studying, with analyzing the national and international situation. In that way, you can link with a group and the organizing continues,” he said.
After spending practically an entire lifetime moving around the country organizing – “one day here, another there, walking, through rivers, through highways, by sea, by foot, on horse” – Ballesteros found it agonizing being confined to a small cell. Even harder, he said, was being away from the people with whom he had worked so intimately all those years as a union and campesino leader.
Not “being able to be with the people, to know of their difficulties, to try to help them ... those were the hardest things,” he said. “When you are imprisoned, you lose direct contact ... But the truth is that indirectly, you never lose all contact with the people, and the people never lost contact with me, because there was so much solidarity.”
Ballestero confessed that as hard and limiting as prison may have been, the experience ultimately taught him some valuable lessons, including the virtue of patience and the art of listening. Additionally, he said, after hearing so many life-stories from people that have ended up in prison, he has learned to be more understanding of the socio-political causes behind crime.
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“You learn to respect and understand a person independently of why they are in prison,” he explained. “It’s not an obstacle or controversy but a point of conversation...And all those stories help you understand that even social violence, as the state calls it, has a political cause, because it is generated by the lack of employment opportunities, lack of education opportunities, and lack of economic opportunities for people who sometimes end up on the wrong path.”
Ballesteros expressed hope for the future of Colombia if the peace process between the national government and the guerrilla forces continues successfully. While admitting that it will not be easy, particularly with a “bourgeois class that is not willing” to seek peace, he stressed the importance and power of “social and popular movements” in Colombia.
“The contents of the accords leave us satisfied that the sacrifice of those who have lost their lives in the armed, political and social struggle, as well as those of us who have been imprisoned, have not been in vain,” he said. “We are ready to fight all the necessary battles to ensure that the peace agreements are respected.”
He concluded by reaffirming his commitment to social struggle and peace in Colombia despite the many death-threats he has received in the past and has continued receiving after prison.
“But none of that is an obstacle that will stop me from linking with the organizations to which I’ve always been connected,” he said. Nothing will stop “me from fulfilling the tasks that the union and the political movement have assigned me as one more militant, one more builder of peace, and one more worker of the new Colombia.”
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