Extrajudicial killings mar new Colombia presidency

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Radio Netherlands

Extrajudicial killings mar new Colombia presidency
Published on 5 August 2010 - 2:01am

Juan Manuel Santos will inherit Colombia's "false-positive" scandal of grisly army killings when he takes over the presidency this Saturday.

The scandal, in which the army presented civilians as guerrillas or paramilitaries who had died in combat, overlapped some of the period when Santos was defense minister, from 2006-2009.

The victims are now believed to be in their thousands.

Details first emerged at the end of 2008 after the disappearance of 14 young civilians in Soacha, near Bogota, whom the army falsely reported as combat deaths in the northeast of the country.

Read more: http://www.rnw.nl/english/bulletin/extrajudicial-killings-mar-new-colombia-presidency

[MisterP]

1. fun Dutch-language trick: the word for "inherit" is the same one as for "consciously, actively

continue"

[Judi Lynn]

2. Peace monument to be sculpted from paramilitary weapons .

Peace monument to be sculpted from paramilitary weapons .
Thursday, 05 August 2010 14:11 Cameron Sumpter

Chilean sculptor Francisco Gazitua will construct a monument to the victims of Colombia's paramilitaries out of 18,000 weapons handed in during the process of demobilization, reports El Tiempo.

Forty-five tons of metal from the melted guns will be transported from a Medellin warehouse to Santiago de Chile, where Gazitua will mould the arms into a sculpture to commemorate victims of the bloodshed.

Colombia's National Commission for Reparation and Reconciliation (CNRR) first contacted the legendary Medellin artist Fernando Botero, but the man famous for his voluptuous sculptures turned down the project, saying that his medium was bronze, not iron.

Gazitua is also the creator of a monument in Chile's capital in memory of the masses that suffered under the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

"We had to find an artist with experience in sculpture with respect to victims, and also the Chilean Bicentennial Committee recommended him," said Panesso Jaime Jaramillo of the CNRR.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/culture/11197-peace-monument-to-be-sculpted-from-paramilitary-weapons.html