We must end this collusion with terror in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

We must end this collusion with terror in Colombia

As talks to end a 50-year war hang in the balance, violent repression carries on – and the US and Britain stand behind it

Seumas Milne
The Guardian, Wednesday 30 July 2014 15.45 EDT

The Colombian port of Buenaventura is a place of misery and fear. Four-fifths of the mainly black population live in dire poverty and paramilitary gangs exercise a reign of terror. Most of Colombia’s imports come through the port, which is being massively expanded to meet the demands of new free trade agreements.

But there’s no sign of any benefit in Buenaventura’s slums, whose deprivation is reminiscent of the worst of Bangladesh. Most of the city’s population have no sewerage and many no power. Tens of thousands have been forced off their land around the city to make way for corporate “megaprojects”.

Most horrifically, paramilitaries have been dismembering those who cross them with chainsaws in shacks known as chophouses. The police admit a dozen have met these grisly deaths in recent months, but Buenaventura’s bishop says the real figure is far higher.

The government insists the rightwing paramilitary groups that have terrorised Colombia’s opposition have been dissolved. But in Buenaventura, they can be seen openly fraternising with soldiers on the streets, and they even publish their own newspaper.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/30/we-must-end-collusion-terror-colombia

[Judi Lynn]

1. Information which is always omitted from corporate news accounts:

Colombian officials talk peace and human rights with an evangelical zeal and a dizzying array of flipcharts. But, as one independent report after another confirms, there is a chasm between the spin and life on the ground. Laws are not implemented or abusers prosecuted. Thousands of political prisoners languish in Colombia’s jails. Political, trade union and social movement activists are still routinely jailed or assassinated.

A quarter of a million have died in Colombia’s war, the large majority of them at the hands of the army, police and government-linked paramilitaries. Five million have been forced from their homes. Although the violence is down from its peak, the killing of human rights and union activists has actually increased in the past year.

One of those jailed is the trade union and opposition leader Huber Ballesteros, arrested last year as he was about to travel to Britain to address the Trades Union Congress. Speaking in La Picota prison in Bogotá last week, Ballesteros told me: “There is no democracy in Colombia, we are confronting a dictatorship with a democratic face.”

~snip~
But it’s the Colombian state and military, responsible for decades of dirty war and the worst human rights record in the hemisphere, that the US and British governments stand behind. Colombia is Washington’s closest ally in Latin America, the third largest recipient of US military and security aid in the world.