International Court visits Colombia to review State crimes .
International Court visits Colombia to review State crimes .
Tuesday, 16 April 2013 09:23 Benjy Hansen-Bundy
The International Criminal Court (ICC) visited Colombia on Monday to review the framework for the peace process with rebel group FARC and the prosecution of the false positives murders.
On Monday the ICC delegates met with the High Commissioner for Peace, Sergio Jaramillo, and expressed their support for the peace talks between the Colombian government and rebel group FARC, while emphasizing Colombia's obligation to meet the standards of the court.
Since 2004, Colombia has been under "preliminary examination" by the ICC. In November 2012 the court confirmed that the false positives killings, in which around 3,000 Colombian civilians were murdered and dressed as guerrillas to inflate the military's body count, were state policy. Yet prosecution of these cases remains stagnant.
Also under discussion will be Colombia's controversial military justice reform. According to sources, the ICC delegates have not expressed their opposition to the reform in principle, as long as justice remains effective.
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/28946-international-court-visits-colombia-to-review-state-crimes.html
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Here's a quick look at continuing terrorism conducted repeatedly against an innocent group of people there who have been begging for ages to NOT be murdered anymore:
February 27, 2013
Colombia: Peace Community Threatened with Massacre
URGENT ACTION:
Members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó were threatened with a massacre in the context of increased paramilitary presence in the area.
On 23 February a man called a member of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, in Antioquia Department, and told him that a new massacre of the Peace Community was planned. He also told him that the leaders of the Peace Community were the target and that they should take care of the children and not let them out in the streets. The threats come shortly after a decision made by an administrative tribunal on 8 February found that the Colombian State must apologise to the members of the Peace Community for its part in the February 2005 massacre in which eight people (including four children) were killed and their bodies mutilated in a joint army-paramilitary operation. No high-ranking officials of the armed forces have as yet been convicted for these crimes, although a number of paramilitaries and army soldiers were convicted for their role in the 2005 killings.
Witnesses reported that between 11 and 16 February 2013, several trucks transported paramilitaries from the neighbouring department of Chocó to three paramilitary bases in the vicinity of the hamlets of the Peace Community: Piedras Blancas in Carepa municipality; Nueva Antioquia in Turbo Municipality; and a base on the road to Zunguito. The trucks drove through areas with constant military and police roadblocks, without being stopped. Paramilitaries have been able to maintain a strong presence in the San José de Apartadó area despite the fact it is heavily-militarized.
Over recent years Amnesty International has received repeated reports and repeatedly denounced the presence of a paramilitary base in Nueva Antioquia. Despite this, the Colombian authorities have failed to take decisive action to confront the paramilitary presence in the area.
Please write immediately in Spanish or your own language:
* Expressing concern for the members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, especially their leaders, in light of the threat of a new massacre;
* Urging the authorities to order full and impartial investigations into this threat and the increased presence of paramilitaries, publish the results and bring those responsible to justice;
* Reminding them that civilians, including the San José de Apartadó Peace Community, have the right to not be drawn into the armed conflict;
* Urging them to take immediate action to dismantle paramilitary groups and break their links with the security forces, in line with stated government commitments and recommendations made by the UN and other intergovernmental organizations.
PLEASE SEND APPEALS TO:
President
Señor Juan Manuel Santos
Presidente de la República,
Palacio de Nariño, Carrera 8 No.7-26, Bogotá, Colombia
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Arrest warrants issued for 15 members of the military for San Jose de Apartado massacre
Translation By: Colombia Human Rights Committee (Washington)
March 27, 2008
Eight persons died in the massacre.
Photo: Jesús Abad Colorado _ Archive / ELTIEMPO
For the Office of the Attorney General (the “Fiscalía”) it is clear that the action at San José de Apartadó sought to impose fear and terror in the civilians of that community.
The decision was provoked by the testimony of Jorge Luis Salgado, a former paramilitary who accused the soldiers of assassinating, in association with the AUC, the three children and eight adults.
"The children were under the bed. The girl was very nice, 5 or 6 years old, and the little boy was also a curious little one.... We proposed to the commanders to leave them in a neighboring home, but they said that they were a threat, that they would become guerrillas in the future.... 'Cobra' grabbed the girl by the hair and ran the machete through her throat,” Salgado, a native of Carepa (Antioquia), told the authorities last January 30.
The massacre in the peace community occurred on February 21, 2005.
That day, the mutilated and decapitated bodies were left in the middle of the jungle and in have-covered graves.
All the victims were members of a group that declared itself neutral in the Colombian armed conflict, and who had been zealously requesting special protection.
Though at first testimony indicated that the persons responsible for these deeds were members of the 17th Army Brigade and men under the command of Diego Murillo, 'Don Berna,' this is the first time that someone who was in the ranks of the executioners has told the story.
"None of us knew where we were arriving at, we only knew that we had to go to the hamlet La Resbalosa and go through the area accompanied by the Army,” stated the former paramilitary.
Three second lieutenants involved
More:
http://www.iacenter.org/colombia/apartado040108/
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Teaching Peace: The University of Resistance in Colombia’s San Jose de Apartado Community
Written by James Bargent
Thursday, 04 April 2013 09:25
The community of San Josecito in northern Colombia is an idyllic collection of wooden houses linked by dirt streets where the only traffic is the free-roaming livestock. Yet it is a community where every man, woman and child has a tragedy to tell. It is also a community that, since its inception, has lived with the ever-present threat of violence and the knowledge that to leave its wire-fenced perimeter is to put your life at risk.
San Josecito is one of the eleven villages that form the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in the region of Uraba. The Peace Community was founded in 1997 by displaced campesinos who had been hounded from their homes by the Colombian military and their paramilitary cohorts, who were waging war against leftist guerrillas. Weary of a conflict they had no part in but could not escape, the campesinos declared the abandoned town of San Jose a neutral zone, where all armed actors, legal and illegal were prohibited.
While the communities main goal has simply been survival, its members have also made it their goal to “rebuild the fabric of society” that had been ripped apart by Colombia’s unrelenting war. This mission has involved organizing a system of governance that fosters autonomy and plurality and an economic system based on solidarity and sustainability. Over the last five years it has also included the development of an alternative and autonomous education system to care for the community’s children, who had been readily abandoned by the state.
The history of the Peace Community education system is closely tied to that of San Josecito. In 2005, the community was forced to flee San Jose following a brutal massacre in which the military and the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) paramilitary murdered eight people, three of them children. The victims were beaten, garroted and attacked with machetes and their bodies dismembered. While some of San Jose’s inhabitants returned to the ten surrounding villages from where they had been originally displaced, others moved a kilometer down the road, clearing a banana plantation to build a new village – San Josecito.
More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/4215-teaching-peace-the-university-of-resistance-in-colombias-san-jose-de-apartado-community
