Censors shut down FARC-EP website
By Andy McInerney
"We are proud to host the BURN! Web site, an online
activist collective of UCSD students that hosts web pages for
various political organizations and projects." That is the
opening sentence of the description of the BURN! Web site on
the University of California at San Diego Department of
Communications Web site.
Sounds great. Except that on May 31, Department of
Communications Chair Carol Padden shut the Web site down.
BURN! hosted Web pages for a wide range of political
organizations, including the support groups for the
Zapatistas in Mexico and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary
Movement (MRTA) in Peru. But the page that seemed to bring
down the wrath of the university administration was the home
page of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's
Army (FARC-EP).
According to a BURN! statement issued during the first
week of June: "About two weeks ago, the Colombian right began
an organized campaign to get the UCSD Communications
Department to shut us down. They have succeeded for now, as
the chair of the department, Carol Padden, has ordered our
machine disconnected."
In 1997, rightists managed to shut down the home page of
the Basque liberation organization ETA. That attempt had a
number of markings of government support. After an outpouring
of support, the group's service provider agreed to restore
the page.
Universities are supposedly havens of free speech.
Thousands of students and activists have a great interest in
what the FARC-EP are saying, as they are leading a liberation
movement in Colombia.
BURN! is asking for supporters to contact Carol Padden at
(858) 534-2843 or cpadden@weber.ucsd.edu to encourage the
UCSD Department of Communications to restore all the web
pages on the BURN! site.
In the meantime, the FARC-EP
has a mirror site at
http://members.tripod.com/~farcep.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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