Colombia lifts bombing truce after Farc attack in Cauca

[Eugene]

Source: BBC

Colombia lifts bombing truce after Farc attack in Cauca

1 hour ago Latin America & Caribbean

Colombia has lifted the suspension of its bombing campaign against Farc rebels, following the death of at least 10 soldiers in a clash with the left-wing guerrilla group.

The military launched a strike against what they call "a strategic Farc rebel position" later on Wednesday, a military source told the BBC.

The Colombian government declared a temporary halt to air strikes in March.

The two sides have been holding peace talks in Havana, Cuba, since 2012.

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Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-32318890

[Marksman_91]

1. Santos is naive. You can't negotiate with narcoterrorists.

On one thing I certainly agree with Uribe, they should've just kept fighting them and treat them like the criminals they are. After all, they are an insurgency which wishes to overthrow the current government. But of course, none of the Chavistas here would dare say they are instigating a coup.

[Judi Lynn]

2. You should take the time to start looking for the facts about Colombia's history.

Wouldn't it be exciting to know about the subject you try to discuss?

This information is available in so many places it's a wonder you haven't learned about it already. Here's one source:

Death Squads Continue to Reign in Colombia
Posted: 03/24/2014 3:18 pm EDT Updated: 05/24/2014 5:59 am

The vast majority of human rights violations in Colombia last year were committed by paramilitaries and government forces, according to a conflict analysis NGO.

In the report published this summer by the Center for Research and Public Education (CINEP), the group registered a total of 1,332 human rights violations against Colombian civilians last year.

Groups that had emerged from officially defunct paramilitary organization AUC were the biggest offenders, responsible for some 44% of the violations, while state forces, including the military and police, were responsible for 43%. The FARC and other guerrilla groups committed about 15% of the violations.

2013 human rights violations in Colombia

Neo-paramilitary groups like the Urabeños or the Aguilas Negras were suspected of carrying out the vast majority of homicides and threats, while the police received most complaints over assault.

The numbers released by CINEP are in line with figures from a recent report by the Colombian NGO “Somos Defensores” which claimed that of the 194 crimes against community leaders, five of the known perpetrators were from the FARC or ELN. Paramilitaries and state forces were responsible for 128 of these crimes.

http://colombiareports.co/state-paramilitaries-human-rights-violations/

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Anti-guerrilla paramilitarism in Colombia
From Wikipedia

Right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia are armed groups that claim to be acting in opposition to revolutionary Marxist-Leninist guerrilla forces and their allies among the civilian population. Anti-guerrilla paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other substances and are the parties responsible for most of the human rights violations in the latter half of the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict. According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces.

The first paramilitary groups were organized by the Colombian military following recommendations made by U.S. military counterinsurgency advisers who were sent to Colombia during the Cold War to combat leftist political activists and armed guerrilla groups. The development of later paramilitary groups has also involved elite landowners, drug traffickers, members of the security forces, politicians and multinational corporations. Paramilitary violence today is principally targeted towards peasants, unionists, indigenous people, human rights workers, teachers and left-wing political activists or their supporters.

Plan Lazo[edit]

US General William P. Yarborough was the head of a counterinsurgency team sent to Colombia in 1962 by the US Special Warfare Center. Yarborough was one of the earliest proponents of "paramilitary [...] and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents"[1].
In October 1959, the United States sent a "Special Survey Team", composed of counterinsurgency experts, to investigate Colombia's internal security situation, due to the increased prevalence of armed communist self-defense communities in rural Colombia which formed during and after La Violencia.[2] Three years later, in February 1962, a Fort Bragg top-level U.S. Special Warfare team headed by Special Warfare Center commander General William P. Yarborough, visited Colombia for a second survey.[3]

In a secret supplement to his report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yarborough encouraged the creation and deployment of a paramilitary force to commit sabotage and terrorist acts against communists:

A concerted country team effort should be made now to select civilian and military personnel for clandestine training in resistance operations in case they are needed later. This should be done with a view toward development of a civil and military structure for exploitation in the event the Colombian internal security system deteriorates further. This structure should be used to pressure toward reforms known to be needed, perform counter-agent and counter-propaganda functions and as necessary execute paramilitary, sabotage and/or terrorist activities against known communist proponents. It should be backed by the United States."[4]

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-guerrilla_paramilitarism_in_Colombia

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May 27, 2014

Extinction Forecast for Indigenous Colombians

Plan Colombia’s Genocidal Legacy

by NICK ALEXANDROV

Extinction may well be the shared fate awaiting some 40 Colombian indigenous groups, UN official Todd Howland announced last month. Howland’s assessment underlined the risks mining operations pose to these communities, and echoes the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia’s finding, presented last year, that 66 of the country’s 102 indigenous communities could soon vanish—“victims of a genocide that is forcing cultural and physical extermination.” The government, for its part, considers mining “one of five ‘engines’ of the Colombian economy,” the U.S. Office on Colombia notes, adding that, in “the last twelve years, over 1.5 million hectares of Colombian land have been sold off to large-scale mining corporations for exploration and exploitation of Colombia’s extensive mineral deposits [.]”

These land sales mark one success of former President Álvaro Uribe’s (2002-2010) “Democratic Security and Defense Policy,” rolled out in 2003, and geared towards “defending Colombia’s sovereignty, the integrity of the territory and the constitutional order,” the government claimed. The state’s expanded presence, consolidation of territorial control, and subsequent auctioning of acquired regions seem to be the real legacies of the Plan Colombia era, too often discussed in “counterdrug” terms, and thus dismissed as a failure. A 2008 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) document, for example, pointed out that “coca cultivation and cocaine production levels [had] increased by about 15 and 4 percent, respectively” since the Plan’s 1999 launch, while Amnesty International mentions that “US policy has failed to reduce availability or use of cocaine in the US,” one indication that “Plan Colombia is a failure in every respect .”

Perhaps, but does Washington even want to roll back drug smuggling? “The vast profits made from drug production and trafficking are overwhelmingly reaped in rich ‘consuming’ countries,” Ed Vulliamy wrote in the Guardian two years ago, summarizing two Colombian academics’ conclusions. Alejandro Gaviria and Daniel Mejía’s research determined that “a staggering 97.4% of profits are reaped by criminal syndicates, and laundered by banks,” in Europe and the U.S. How many bankers has the “drug war” put in jail? Or would Washington undercut an ally’s source of funds? The Colombian paramilitaries, for example, function as the army’s unofficial “Sixth Division,” according to Human Rights Watch. And Carlos Castaño, the paramilitaries’ former leader, admitted in March 2000 that some 70% of their funding came from drug trafficking, an assessment in line with U.S. intelligence estimates, which “have consistently reported over a number of years that the paramilitaries are far more heavily involved than the FARC (guerrillas) in drug cultivation, refinement and transshipment to the US,” International Security expert Doug Stokes writes.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/27/plan-colombias-genocidal-legacy/

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RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Coca-Cola, Nestle and Chiquita Brands on ‘Trial’
By Constanza Vieira
Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Apr 4 2006 (IPS) - The first public hearing held by the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) in its Colombia session accused U.S. and Swiss multinational corporations of benefiting from the civil war in this South American nation in order to boost profit margins.

. . .

Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, who are frequent paramilitary targets. Although private armed groups have long existed in Colombia, today’s paramilitary groups emerged in the early 1980s, financed by landowners to fight the leftist guerrillas, who were kidnapping and extorting wealthy ranchers. The collaboration between paramilitaries and the armed forces has been well documented by the United Nations, the U.S. State Department, and Colombian government investigators, who hold the paramilitaries responsible for the lion’s share of the atrocities committed in Colombia’s four-decade civil war. The two main leftist rebel groups, the powerful Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN), both emerged in 1964. The government of rightwing President Álvaro Uribe, who took office in 2002, negotiated a controversial demobilisation of many of the groups making up the paramilitary umbrella organisation, the United Self-Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), many of whose top leaders are drug traffickers.

The number of trade unionists killed has gone down in the past few years. Official figures put the number at 43 for 2005, compared to 196 in 2002. But according to the National Trade Union School (ENS), a research centre founded in 1982 by academics and trade unionists in the Colombian city of Medellín, 70 members of trade unions were killed last year, while 260 received death threats, 56 were arbitrarily detained, seven were injured in bomb attacks, 32 were persecuted for their labour activism, eight were forced to flee their homes, and three were forcibly disappeared.

Those who report the persecution of trade unionists and attempt to draw attention to their plight are in turn accused of being guerrillas sympathisers, according to the PPT.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2006/04/rights-colombia-coca-cola-nestle-and-chiquita-brands-on-lsquotrial/
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[Zorro]

4. Your demi-god Fidel was suspected of complicity in the 1948 assassination of Jorge Gaitán

in a false-flag operation that incited the Bogotazo and the ensuing years of violence in Colombia.

You should spend some time learning about the history of South America. It might help your credibility on the subject.

[Judi Lynn]

10. Suspected by whom? That's a hot one!

Colombian "Magnicidio" Remains a Mystery After 60 Years
Written by Paul Wolf
Tuesday, 08 April 2008 09:58

~ snip ~

Gaitan's assassination, which occurred at a very dramatic moment, sent shock waves throughout the country and created a spontaneous civil war. It is counted as one of the most, if not the most, tragic event in Colombia's history. And to make things worse, no one knows the motivation of his killer, who was himself killed almost immediately.

A Wilderness of Conspiracy Theories

Gaitan's dramatic murder has prompted endless speculation as to what could have motivated Juan Roa Sierra, his killer. These theories are based either on the suspected motives of Roa, or on the motives of others who may have had some reason to kill Dr. Gaitan. While interesting, these theories are ultimately unsatisfying, and tell more about the theorist than they do about the actual events. The mystery remains a mystery to this day.

Roa's own motives can barely be understood. Two theories, now discredited, were put forward shortly after Gaitan's death, which might have made sense if they'd been true. One was that Roa was an illegitimate son of Gaitan's father, that there had been trouble between the two families, and that Gaitan's father had made a settlement to Roa's mother just one month before the assassination. A second theory was that Roa related to the alleged victim of one Gaitan's clients in his criminal law practice, for whom Gaitan had won an acquittal the day before. Although the first director of the CIA, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, reported this version to a Congressional investigating committee as fact, there is no evidence whatsoever that Roa was related to Gaitan or to any of his clients. Why Admiral Hillenkoetter went with this story, instead of reporting that the CIA was still investigating the matter, is another unsolved mystery.

Investigators from Scotland Yard learned that Roa was a disturbed individual, having previously been committed to a mental institution. He was obsessed with witchcraft and the occult, and believed himself to be the reincarnation of General Francisco de Paula Santander, a Colombian revolutionary war hero. According to his astrologer, Roa carried a photo of General Santander in his pocket, and was also a member of the Rosicrucian Society. The detectives also learned, from Gaitan's secretary, that Roa had been trying to meet with Gaitan for days before the assassination, and always told to wait in the lobby, which he did day after day without success.

Scotland Yard was called in by President Ospina, to assist a judge he had appointed to investigate the murder, named Ricardo Jordan Jimenez. The Scotland Yard team remarked to US embassy officials of their frustration with Jordan, who, they said, would not let them interview witnesses themselves. They believed they were being manipulated, and in their report concluded that they had not seen enough evidence to conclude that Roa acted in concert with anyone else. Although Jordan emphasized the conduct of the young and then-unknown Fidel Castro, the British investigators did not find Jordan's evidence to be convincing. Jordan later wrote a book comparing the murder of Gaitan to the JFK assassination, although the mystery surrounding the Gaitan investigation was of his own doing.

US and Colombian government spokesmen wasted no time in blaming "communists" for the death of Gaitan. This was based partly on information that the Colombian communist party (the Partido Socialista Democratico) had intended to disrupt the Pan American Conference and to molest several of the delegations attending it. No doubt, Gaitan's death was also cynically used by the US government to rally the delegates to the Pan American meeting around what the US perceived to be their common enemy: international communism.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/1212-colombian-magnicidio-remains-a-mystery-after-60-years

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Thanks for the moment of humor.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Super good ending to the article excerpted above:

Discovering the Past

For the past eight years, I have been collecting historical materials about the death of Jorge Eliecer Gaitan from the files of U.S. government agencies. Most of these materials I have obtained were located at the U.S. National Archives, including reports from the Office of Intelligence Research of the US State Department, the Office of Naval Intelligence, reports of the US Embassy in Bogota, and the transcript of a closed-door Congressional investigation of the CIA's first "intelligence failure" in not predicting the Bogotazo.

The files of America's premier intelligence agencies, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have proven elusive. I filed suit against both agencies in Federal court in Washington, D.C. in 2001. After four years, I learned that the FBI had "disposed of" most its post-World War II Latin America records without authorization from the National Archives. Technically, this means they could have destroyed them, lost them, or given them to an employee to store in his basement. It means only that the FBI is no longer maintains them and there is no accountability for what happened to them.

The CIA is even worse. For seven years, it argued that it would harm US national security and US-Colombia relations if it were to admit that records about the assassination of Gaitan even existed. Eventually, the DC Court of Appeals decided I was entitled to thirteen documents used by Admiral Hillenkoetter in his Congressional testimony. It was at this point that the CIA admitted that its "Post WWII Era Records" are on microfilm, and that their microfilms are indexed by an old IBM-type punch card computer which is no longer operational. This is the dustbin of our history. The CIA is demanding payment of $147,000 to find the missing reports from the first Congressional investigation of the CIA. I am now seeking judicial review of the CIA's recordkeeping policies. However, aside from the thirteen records used by Admiral Hillenkoetter in his presentation, any other information in the possession of the CIA appears to be outside the reach of the Freedom of Information Act.

What should also be made public are the working papers of the Colombian judge who first investigated the matter, Ricardo Jordan Jimenez. These were once in the possession of Gaitan's daughter Gloria, who managed the Casa-Museo Gaitan (the Gaitan House Museum) and are now in the hands of the Colombian government. It's unlikely the public will have access to them any time soon.

Yet this is a mystery that demands resolution. Colombia's war is a war of assassination, and Gaitan's dramatic death is a paradigm of the conflict. The plethora of conspiracy theories is the predictable result of unreasonable government preoccupation with the secrecy of its historical records. As long as these files are kept secret, the suspicion that someone is hiding something will remain. Whatever the answer may be - and most likely, we will never know the answer - there is nothing to be gained from obscuring our common history. After 60 years, it's time we learned the truth.

[Marksman_91]

7. The paramilitaries are a problem, but that's not what I'm discussing

I'm talking about the FARC, and how they should be treated like the narcoterrorists they are: zero amnesty, and full sentences to their members for promoting an armed insurgency against the Colombian state. If there was something like that in the U.S., they would've been dealt with already and none of them would've been granted any form of amnesty. I know you've got this whole delusional vision of them being some kind of freedom fighter force, but you're not fooling anyone. The FARC are narcoterrorists, and no matter for what ideology they stand for, they should not be granted any sort of amnesty and should all be sentenced for being the criminals they are. Now that I think about it, I don't think I've actually read anything from you condemning them for their blatant crimes. Do you or do you not support these armed narcoterrorists who use child soldiers (or at least used to) and kidnap innocent people for ransom and blow up public spaces filled with civilians?

[Bacchus4.0]

9. that is exactly what they are demanding though as a condition for peace

p.s. Of course she supports these scum.

[Bacchus4.0]

14. she supports the FARC of course. The killing, raping, murder, extortion, land minds,

drug trafficking, kidnappings, enslavement, and child soldiers are all for the cause.

On the other hand, holding silly signs during marches or asking inept politicians to resign, well that is a no-no.

[Marksman_91]

16. So I call her a terrorist symphathizer on another thread she posted

and she gets it hidden by jury with the explanation "This one speaks for itself"

Maybe the jury folks would change their minds had they read she never answered my question.

[Marksman_91]

15. You clearly had more than enough chances to respond to my question

I'm gonna take your silence as a "yes," in that you are a sympathizer of the terrorist FARC. It's a real shame that you're so fervently leftist that you're even willing to forgive terrorist factions who share your ideology. I hope one day nobody you know back in Colombia is a victim of those narcoterrorists and human rights violators. Wonder how a Colombian would react if you ever said in their face that you support a group of criminals that has caused so much damage and despair to their nation. Then again, you probably wouldn't have the courage to say it.

[Bacchus4.0]

5. they have little popular support other than marxist keyboard morons

It is the only country in Latin America where there is actually a coup attempt. People that march in the street with silly signs, or opposition politicians that say an idiot president should resign are not engaging in coups. Idiot chavista types are the only ones unablee to distinguish between an armed insurgency vs. freedom of expression.

The FARC simply wants immunity from prosecution for their war crimes. The peace talks have raised the profile of the FARC beyond what they merit as no-one really supports them anyway. If the FARC doesn't cease the assassinations, Colombia should pull out of the talks and ask Cuba to extradite the FARC leadership there. That would be an interesting diplomatic issue.

http://news.yahoo.com/farc-demands-colombia-government-release-classified-files-235630360.html

The talks hit a rough patch on Tuesday, when the rebels insisted they would not sign onto any accord that requires their members be imprisoned for their role in the protracted conflict.

[Marksman_91]

6. It's honestly insane how they're hoping to get some sort of amnesty

The FARC have been committing all sorts of crimes for decades now, and yet they expect to be given a slap on the wrist? This actually makes me wish more that they all get obliterated. If those criminals want to avoid imprisonment, maybe they should've, you know, not declare themselves an armed insurgency in the first place? I really hope whatever "peace" they're negotiating is just an elaborate ruse to get them to drop arms and then have their leaders arrested once things have calmed down enough.

[Bacchus4.0]

8. Yeah, Colombians certainly wouldn't mind if they did that

Immunity is what this is all about. All the marxist bs is just pretext to justify their criminal activity as a political movement.

[bemildred]

3. Gee, who could have predicted this? nt