Colombian paramilitaries admits to killing 21,000

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Agence France-Presse

Colombian paramilitaries admits to killing 21,000
AFP
Tuesday, July 14, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) - Colombian right-wing paramilitaries have admitted to killing 21,000 people, prosecutors said yesterday.

"We are up to 21,000 murders that have been confessed to," Luis Gonzalez, of the public prosecutor's office, told local radio.

The confessions by the former fighters spanned a three-year period and are part of a peace deal that includes a drive to demobilise 31,000 former fighters, know as the United Colombian Self-Defence Forces, or Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).

Gonzalez told Radio Caracol that the full extent of the "horrors" may be unknown "because there are still many murders to confess to".

"We have documented around 246,000 cases that occurred in the regions that had the Autodefensa forces," he said.



Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/html/20090713T200000-0500_155331_OBS_COLOMBIAN_PARAMILITARIES_ADMITS_TO_KILLING________.asp

[Peace Patriot]

1. The rightwing paramilitary death squads in Colombia are NOT being demobilized.

They are simply changing their stripes, and are furthermore consolidating ill-gotten gains in land, wealth, drug routes and power within the government and over the devastated, extremely impoverished population of peasant farmers and laborers.

-----------------------------

Continuation of Paramilitarism

Paramilitarism in Colombia has not disappeared; its power structures continue to be intact. In 2007, it was reported that paramilitary groups maintained a presence in 22 departments of Colombia and that more than 60 groups remain active. Additionally, paramilitaries operate politically and their economic power has grown due to their collaboration with large scale development projects (and especially due to the appropriation of the lands of the more than 3.6 million internally displaced persons). The cessation of hostilities agreed to at the beginning of the negotiation process has also not been honored. More than 3,300 homicides have been committed against the civilian population, including congress members, judges, journalists, human rights defenders, indigenous people, unionists, and peasants. These homicides must be added to the more than 14,000 crimes against humanity committed by paramilitary groups over the 15 years prior to the initiation of the negotiation and demobilization process.

The failure to truly dismantle the paramilitary groups is also seen in that, of the 34,261 supposedly demobilized paramilitaries, only 18,051 weapons were surrendered. Furthermore, over the last few years over 1,000 demobilized persons have been murdered as well as 78 injured, 1,070 detained for new crimes, and 144 convicted. A suitable follow-up and monitoring has also not been carried out of the demobilized paramilitaries. Currently 4,693 demobilized cannnot be located and another 6,567 have been lost their privileges to the benefits.

In addition to this, there are also other concerns. On the one hand, major drug traffickers acquired whole paramilitary blocs or fronts -or they simply posed as paramilitaries- in order to legalize their assets and avoid the many extradition requests of the US government. On the other hand, the OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process (MAPP/OEA) has not carried out a serious and independent verification process.

As far as the few paramiltiaries who will be tried, the prison sentences will also not be proportional to the gravity of the crimes committed. They will only serve sentences from between 5 to 8 years and not in formal prisons.

Lastly, far from dismantling paramilitarism, the national security policy has implemented strategies that increasingly erase the line between military and civilian life. In particular, the civilian population has been involved in programs like the informers’ network, peasant soldiers, civilian police corp, private security systems, manual illicit crop eradication programs, and the creation of new paramilitary groups.

http://colombiasupport.net/news/2007/07/evaluation-of-paramilitary.html

See also
http://www.colombiasupport.net/news/2007/07/paramilitaries-murder-peace-community.html

[Judi Lynn]

2. Tell the desperate people who seek shelter in the Peace Community the paras are demobilized.....

Here's a longer look at the story from your second link:

Attack on Peace Community in Colombia
Creating Alternatives
February 2008 By Teo Ballvé

Last July, two armed men in uniform identifying themselves as Black Eagle paramilitaries stopped a vehicle traveling to the small town of San José de Apartadó in northwest Colombia. They forced Dairo Torres from the car at gunpoint and told the driver to be on his way. Minutes later another car passed and discovered Torres's lifeless body. He had been shot at close range.

Torres was a leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, which is made up of several hundred families who were forced to flee their lands. When it was founded in 1997, the Peace Community declared its neutrality in Colombia's long-running internal conflict. This meant that the entry of armed actors into the community, including the state security forces, was forbidden. Another key principle was that community members refuse any direct or indirect assistance to the armed groups.

In recent years, the Peace Community, now numbering almost 1,300 people, has been organizing to recover lands its members were forced to leave. With a return by community members to the hamlet of Mulatos planned for February 2008, para- militaries are once again on the rampage, while the army and police continue abetting the repression—in many cases, as active participants.

http://www.zcommunications.org.nyud.net:8090/FCKFiles/image/feb08zmoimages/Ballve1.jpg

On the ten-year anniversary of the Peace Community, campesinos and supporters gather to honor those assassinated by the paramilitaries—photo from www.cdpsanjose.org

Torres was the fourth leader of the community killed in the last two years. In one month alone, two sympathetic neighbors of the community were also murdered—one by the army and the other by paramilitaries, according to a statement released by the community.

A recent legal study published by the Law School of the Autonomous University of Colombia found that in its 10-year history not one of the more than 600 crimes registered—including murders or disappearances— has ended in a conviction. In fact, few have even gone to trial. "You come face to face with the perversity of justice in this country, because the mechanisms of impunity operate in both directions: they not only declare the guilty innocent, but they also declare the innocent guilty," says community leader Milton Barrera

~snip~
A leftist political party called the Unión Patriótica (UP) emerged in 1985 out of failed peace negotiations between the government and the largest guerrilla group, the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). The UP was made up of unionists, campesinos, and leftist social organizations of all kinds that sought to integrate the guerrillas into a legal, non-violent political movement. The UP became a formidable political force throughout Urabá and San José was a bastion of UP support until the late 1980s when the party dissolved after state security forces and paramilitaries assassinated or disappeared more than 3,000 of its members, including two presidential candidates.

Since San José de Apartado had been a UP stronghold, the right-wing paramilitaries, or "paras" as they are known locally, came down like a hammer on the small town. From 1994 to 1998, paramilitaries, backed by the military, initiated a campaign to "cleanse" Urabá of guerrillas. But much of the violence was directed at non-violent, social organizations deemed "subversive"—namely, unions, left-leaning political movements, farmers' organizations, and clergy members. The military and paramilitaries proudly refer to this process as the "pacification of Urabá."

"The Peace community was born out of this context of confrontation and extermination that social organizations suffered at the hands of the state and the paramiltaries," says Pedro Rodríguez, a community lead- er. "When the exterminations began to increase is when we started thinking about a neutral community."

~snip~
Then came the massacre of eight community members in February 2005. Eyewitness accounts and human rights reports implicate the Army's 17th Brigade in the massacre. The government used the massacre, which it falsely blamed on the FARC, as an excuse to station the police within San José, illegally occupying the house of a community resident.

~snip~
Verbal threats from paramilitaries have increased recently, particularly around the more isolated hamlets. Their methods have changed, but the threat remains: "The paramilitaries have a presence in every municipality of Urabá. They no longer enter a town in huge blocs. Instead, they do it in groups, small groups. And they still do constant and permanent roadblocks and kidnappings. That's how they control the area, economically, socially, and physically," Rodríguez observes.

But the Peace Community remains hopeful. Says Rodríguez, "We're a strong community. In ten years of struggling, not the guerrillas or the state has been able to finish us off."

http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/16309

http://www.revistanumero.com.nyud.net:8090/images/SanJos_peq.jpg http://3.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_z1Jfx2EEkN8/RwKil9S3ttI/AAAAAAAAAJU/X6z9xvd9_vA/s400/San-Jose2abad.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

3. Colombian authorities arrest man in journalist slaying

Colombian authorities arrest man in journalist slaying

New York, July 14, 2009--Colombian police have arrested a man believed to have gunned down veteran radio journalist José Everardo Aguilar in retaliation for his reporting on corruption in southwestern Cauca province. The Committee to Protect Journalists welcomes the arrest and urges authorities to bring the masterminds to justice.
On Friday, the Colombian National Police arrested Arley Manquillo Rivera, also known as "El Huracán," at a routine checkpoint outside the provincial capital, Popayán, according to an official police statement. Authorities believe Manquillo, who has alleged ties to the local drug trafficking gang Los Rastrojos, was hired to kill Aguilar, a police spokesman told CPJ. Police arrested Manquillo based on witness descriptions of the assailant, the spokesman said.

Manquillo denied involvement in the killing, local journalists told CPJ.

Aguilar worked as a correspondent in the southern city of Patía for the Popayán-based Radio Súper. According to police sources, investigators are looking into Aguilar's reporting on local and provincial government corruption as a possible motive for his murder. The journalist's son, Martín, and colleagues at Radio Súper told CPJ they believe Aguilar was targeted for his work.

"We welcome Colombian authorities' speedy investigation into the murder of our colleague José Everardo Aguilar," said CPJ Americas Senior Program Coordinator Carlos Lauría. "Authorities must ensure that all those involved in Aguilar's killing, including the masterminds, are brought to justice."

An individual posing as a delivery man entered Aguilar's Patía home on the evening of April 25, saying he had a package of photos, according to CPJ research. Once inside, the assailant shot Aguilar, 72, three times and fled. Aguilar, who had reported for Radio Súper for 10 years, was known for his harsh criticism of corruption and links between local politicians and right-wing paramilitaries, according to CPJ interviews and local news reports. A 30-year veteran, he had also reported for national Caracol Radio and RCN, Colombian press reports said. Martín Aguilar told CPJ that his father had received death threats two years ago, but he did not know of recent incidents.

More:
http://cpj.org/2009/07/colombian-authorities-arrest-man-in-journalist-sla.php

[Judi Lynn]

4. Colombia’s Dirty War: ‘Chuzadas’ and the future of the DAS

Colombia’s Dirty War: ‘Chuzadas’ and the future of the DAS
Tuesday, 14 July 2009 23:42 Pablo Rojas Mejia

The DAS ‘chuzadas’ scandal has continued to evolve. What seemed at first to be yet another infiltration of the government by organized crime has revealed itself as a case of political persecution, a true Colombian ‘dirty war’.

Semana, the Colombian news weekly spearheading the journalistic investigation into the wiretapping scandal, recently described ‘chuzadas’ as a ‘dirty war’, a term not used lightly in Latin America.

A true dirty war has three basic elements and the chuzadas scandal has all three in spades.

The first is official sanctioning. Everything indicates that most illegal ‘chuzadas’ were perpetrated by a secret DAS entity called the Special Intelligence Group 3. Although the G-3 was not officially a branch of the DAS, it was capable of sending official orders to other government entities and use state resources.

Documents indicate that the G-3 was created by controversial DAS director Jorge Noguera in 2004. Notably, after scandals drove Noguera out of the DAS in shame in 2005, the coordinator of the G-3, Jaime Fernando Ovalle, stayed at the DAS until November 2008.

The second element is political persecution. , It has become increasingly clear that DAS wiretapping was nothing short a campaign of political warfare against the government’s ideological enemies, including human rights activists, journalists and opposition politicians.

The G-3 was entirely dedicated to monitoring public critics of the government. The group not only investigated the private lives of journalists and politicians, but it even intercepted the emails of Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas director of the international NGO Human Rights Watch, and followed the every move of Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi.

Further, according to Semana, after the dissolution of the G-3, the same illegal practices were used to investigate members of Colombia’s Supreme Court, who have on several occasions stood strongly against the President on a number of issues.

The third and final element is violence. The scandal could not be called a ‘dirty war’ without the implication of violence and here, too, the DAS is guilty of abuses. Jose Miguel Narvaez, a former DAS subdirector and alleged architect of the G-3, has on at least three occasions been accused of strong links to paramilitary death squads. Top paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso has alleged that Narvaez gave a speech to paramilitaries entitled ‘Why it is legal to kill communists in Colombia.’

More:
http://colombiareports.com/opinion/111-colombiamerican/4998-colombias-dirty-war-chuzadas-and-the-future-of-the-das-.html

[Mudoria]

5. Between the Para's and FARC, people in Colombia are catching hell from all sides..

[AlphaCentauri]

6. where is the international court to qualify this as Genocide n/t