PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release
CONTACT: info at colombiavisit.org

September 8, 2009

COLOMBIAVISIT.ORG LAUNCHES COUNTER-TOURISM CAMPAIGN TUESDAY AT UNION STATION WITH DISRUPTIVE STREET THEATRE, COUNTER-GUIDES

WASHINGTON, DC -- Today a group of Colombians, Colombian-Americans and allies will launch ColombiaVisit.org to market exploitation opportunities and luxuriously abusive vacation packages to US taxpayers, who provide the South American nation with over $500 million annually in US aid. The campaign kicks off to counter a deceptive PR push by the administration of Colombian president Álvaro Uribe Vélez, "Colombia is Passion: Discover Colombia Through Its Heart," launching this week in Washington, DC. Their PR offensive purports to be about tourism, but is in fact designed to push Congress to drop its opposition to the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

The ColombiaVisit.org campaign kicks off at 11:30am outside Union Station, and will feature Quick Trip Simulation (disruptive street theatre simulating illegal military action), Real World Guides (look for the pink polo shirts!) and Floating Advertisements in Union Station. There will also be Beverage Promotion (Coca-Cola, which has been accused of complicity in trade unionist murders) and Food Sampling (Chiquita bananas, Chiquita has been fined for paying off paramilitaries).

The Uribe administration kicked off their FTA push this with an exhibit in Union Station touting its "strategic ally relationship" with the US, and promoting commerce-related trivia; did you know that Colombia buys a lot of US agricultural products? Our question is: Do potential tourists care?

We don't think so -- we're not interested in having politicians visit Colombia. Which is why our campaign is free of any such political pretensions. We want US taxpayers to know Colombia is Number One!

• We're #1 in Union Member Killings -- more than the rest of the world combined over the last 20 years, with just 3% of the cases brought to prosecution.
• We're #1 in Internal Displacement in the hemisphere -- 4.5 million forced from their homes and counting.
• We're even #1 in Impunity -- over 90% of the cases of human rights defenders, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people assasinated for political reasons go uninvestigated and unpunished.

More information on the benefits of investing in and visiting Colombia is available at http://www.ColombiaVisit.org.

We also want to potential visitors to know about All-Expenses Paid Trips the government army commonly provides to civilians, featuring kidnapping, execution and false charges of terrorism, all verified by the United Nations.

This campaign is being launched in conjunction with http://www.NoMoreBrokenHearts.net

COLOMBIAVISIT.ORG SEPTEMBER 8 EVENT DETAILS
WHEN: 11:30am at the front entrance of Union Station in Washington, DC
VISUALS: Satiric "Counter-Tour Guides" talking up Colombia, actors reenacting illegal military action described in UN reports, satiric food/drink tasting
CONTACT: info at colombiavisit.org