Garry Leech Interview

An interview with Garry Leech author of Beyond Bogotá: Diary of a Drug War Journalist in Colombia. The United States has sent more than $6 billion dollars to Bogotá in the past eight years as part of Plan Colombia, to help eradicate cocaine production and secure rural regions held by illegal armed groups such as the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)-Colombia's largest guerilla force-and right-wing paramilitary groups. However, despite significant media coverage of the Colombian conflict, there has been a remarkable absence of firsthand reporting about the situation on the ground. Foreign reporters rarely have the necessary protection to leave Bogotá, and Colombian journalists run serious risks if they report the whole story — with over 30 having been killed since 1995. Independent journalist Garry Leech has spent the last eight years investigating in the country and has seen firsthand the conditions that have garnered international attention: widespread human rights abuses, collusion between government soldiers and paramilitaries, the effects of violent displacement and aerial fumigation on rural communities, and the consequences of American involvement in the region. Leech interviews high-ranking leaders and civilians on both sides of Colombia's conflict as he searches for meaning in the midst of violence, poverty, and devastation. Garry Leech is an independent journalist, editor of Colombia Journal, author of Crude Interventions and Killing Peace, and coauthor of The People Behind Colombian Coal. A lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Cape Breton University, Leech lives in Nova Scotia. Recorded February 24, 2009