Paramilitaries committed 173,183 homicides: PG (Colombia)

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Colombia Reports

Paramilitaries committed 173,183 homicides: PG
Thursday, 13 January 2011 21:16
Adriaan Alsema

Colombia's Prosecutor General's Office said Thursday it has registered 173,183 homicides allegedly committed by members of the now-defunct paramilitary organization AUC.

According to the website of the PG Office's Justice in Peace unit, in charge of investigating crimes committed by the paramilitaries, the AUC committed 1,597 massacres, displaced 74,990 communities and recruited 3,557 minors.

The paramilitaries are also held responsible for 3,532 cases of extortion, 3,527 kidnappings and 677 cases of rape.

According to the report, 429 politicians and 381 members of the security forces have been investigated for links to the AUC.

The Justice and Peace Unit was created in 2005 as part of the Justice and Peace Law which allowed lower sentences for 31,000 members of the paramilitary organization in exchange for the collaboration with justice and reparation of victims. 17,000 of these paramilitaries were excluded of prosecution as they were not suspected of committing crimes against humanity.


Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13724-paramilitaries-committed-173183-homicides-pg.html

[Judi Lynn]

1. Neo-paramilitary, drug gangs Colombia's 'new enemy:' Minister

Neo-paramilitary, drug gangs Colombia's 'new enemy:' Minister
Thursday, 13 January 2011 15:07
Adriaan Alsema

Criminal gangs like the Rastrojos or those that emerged from paramilitary organization AUC are a "new enemy" of the Colombian authorities, the country's Interior and Justice Minister told national radio.

In an interview with W Radio, Minister German Vargas Lleras said the police and army have increased the pressure on emerging drug-trafficking groups that, according to President Juan Manuel Santos, must be controlled.

"We have seen a significant growth of organizations that are increasing their number of troops, territorial presence and access to long-range weapons," the minister told W Radio.

The minister announced the change in priority following the murder of two students in the north of Colombia. This double homicide was allegedly committed by drug gang "Los Urabeños," one of the groups that emerged after the demobilization of the AUC and is led by former members of Colombia's largest-ever paramilitary group.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13718-neo-paramilitary-and-drug-gangs-colombias-new-enemy-minister.html

[boppers]

4. New boss, same as the old boss.

Pretty screwed up since 1499. :(

[Judi Lynn]

2. Interview: Afro-Colombian Farmers on Displacement and Resistance

Interview: Afro-Colombian Farmers on Displacement and Resistance
Written by Jake Hess
Wednesday, 05 January 2011 19:33

Five years after the alleged demobilization of army-backed paramilitaries in Colombia, violence and human rights abuses remain widespread in the countryside, displaced Afro-Colombian farmers and community leaders Juan Sanchez and Roberto Guzman* say.

Activists working on behalf of Colombia’s internally displaced population are subjected to extrajudicial killings and death threats by paramilitary groups supported by the Colombian army and palm oil firms active in rural areas, Sanchez and Guzman report. "They say we're guerrillas and that they're going to kill us," says Sanchez.

Sanchez and Guzman are members of grassroots community councils representing thousands of Afro-Colombians and Mestizos who have been working to reclaim their land since they were displaced from communities in the river basins of Jiguamiando and Curvarado in the northwestern department of Choco in joint operations carried out by the Colombian army and linked paramilitaries in 1996 and 1997.

Sanchez and Guzman sat down for this interview on a recent afternoon in Washington, D.C., during a U.S. speaking tour. In the conversation, they discuss the link between corporate and paramilitary power, the impacts of palm oil cultivation on local communities, and how displaced people are fighting back.

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/colombia-archives-61/2846-interview-afro-colombian-farmers-on-displacement-and-resistance

[Hulk]

3. Sorta makes Mexico look like a peaceful place, eh?

We don't want to publicize this.....but we'll stomp our southern neighbor into the ground, and pretend it's ALL THOSE DAMN MEXCICANS! No blame here. We are a Palin-nation. Nation of morons.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Arctic Dave]

5. And "they say" Venezuela is a violent place.

Were are the screeching monkeys to denounce Uribe?

[indimuse]

6. "THEY SAY"

;)

[joshcryer]

7. Venezuela is deadlier than Iraq.

That doesn't make the picture rosier for any countries in the America's.

[Peace Patriot]

12. There is a big difference between a street crime problem (Venezuelans are gun lovers) than

the systematic, official, political murder, funded by U.S. tax dollars, that is going on in Colombia. $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid to Colombia, and Amnesty International attributes 92% of the murders of trade unionists in Colombia to the Colombian military (about half) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). Thousands of trade unionists, human rights workers, teachers, community activists, peasant farmers, journalists, political leftists and others who dare oppose the fascist government have been murdered by the military and its death squads.

NOTHING like this is going on in Venezuela. Neither the Chavez government nor the Venezuelan military has killed ANYBODY and there are most certainly NO associated death squads killing rightwingers. Not in all the venomous crap concocted by the rightwing opposition in USAID workshops, and promulgated by the State Department, the CIA and the corpo-fascist press, has there ever been any such accusation (not that it would be make it true, if there were). And it is patently NOT true. NO human rights group has said any such thing about Venezuela. And, believe me, we would be hearing about it, 24/7, if they had.

Venezuela does have a crime problem--but it is private crime. The Chavez government has been slow to move against it. Can you imagine the screams of the rightwing if the Chavez government DID get into aggressive policing or taking peoples' guns away? But they did, recently, found a national police academy with the specific purpose of improving police work and overriding the networks of corruption that exist within local police forces.

What is happening in Colombia is extermination of leftist, pro-worker, community leadership--especially in the areas where the rich, the protected drug lords and multinational corporations want the land. Five MILLION peasant farmers have been displaced from their small farms by state terror--the worst human displacement crisis in the world. No such thing is happening in Venezuela, which is going the other way--restoring farmers to their farms, land reform (very well thought-out land reform) and justice for, and help for, the poorest people.

Venezuela was just designated THE most equal country in Latin America, on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean. I'll bet you didn't hear anything about THAT in the corpo-fascist press! (Colombia is one of the LEAST equal.) Venezuela may have a street crime problem, but their government is making real, substantial, provable and very significant progress toward eliminating poverty. They have cut poverty IN HALF and extreme poverty by over 70%.

As for Iraq, the U.S. bombed and invaded Iraq, for no good reason, slaughtering a hundred thousand people in the first weeks of bombing alone, and proceeded to hack up civil life in Iraq, with numerous extrajudicial killings, induced corruption, promotion of tribal warfare and every other evil imaginable, including allowing at least a billion dollars in US aid to civil society to get 'disappeared.'

No such systematic, murderous, bully force has attacked Venezuela. Except for the border areas with Colombia, where about a quarter of a million poor Colombians have fled across the border into Venezuela--mostly fleeing the Colombian military and its death squads, and also US toxic pesticide spraying--a huge immigrant headache that the Chavez government feels obliged to address with humanitarian aid--and the other border instabilities that have resulted from Colombia's 70 year civil war, and with the exception of U.S.-funded rightwing trouble-makers, no outside force has violently interfered with Venezuela.

The two situations--Iraq and Venezuela--are simply not comparable. Venezuela has a very democratic and stable government. Its people repeatedly express their great satisfaction with their democracy in regional polls. It gets some of the highest marks that any people in Latin America give to their countries. Iraq is still engaged in tribal/religious warfare--ignited by the US invasion and occupation--and will likely be unstable that way for a long time to come.

Venezuela has a street crime problem to solve--and I think they will solve it. They've solved illiteracy and hunger. They have vastly improved educational opportunities and income distribution. They solved the problem of the oil profits bleeding out of the country into the pockets of Exxon Mobil and brethren, and they solved it fairly. They are now solving the displacement of 30,000 to 100,000 people by catastrophic floods. Venezuelans and the Chavez government are good at solving problems, when they determine to do something. Venezuela's police problem--endemic corruption that has been entrenched forever--is the heart of the matter. Many don't do their jobs. They don't enforce the law. And the justice and prison systems also need reform. (They are working on prison reform.)

We have problems, too--in case you hadn't noticed. Not only did a civil political gathering just get shot up, killing and wounding many--including a Congresswoman and a Federal judge, and a child, how many safe places are there, in this country, where you can feel confident that you won't get mugged, robbed, raped, carjacked, shot? With all our prisons and all our billions spent on law enforcement, many areas remain very unsafe and people lived fortressed lives. And that isn't the END of our particular woes. We are engaged in, and paying for, a Forever War around the world--in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and other places, and we are threatening war against Iran, and bully-talking about Venezuela as well. "We the people" have lost control our government. It does not respond to our needs, our common good, our desire for peace and justice. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of multinational corporations and war profiteers. And the violence that is done in our name is horrendous--as well as impacting the lives of our soldiers and their families and communities. There have never been so many soldier suicides. PTSS is a huge problem.

Venezuela may have a street crime problem but they are trying to address it. We have a much bigger problem--our war machine--and are we addressing it? Can we? Do we even have that power any more? How easily do you think we could be looking at Bush Junta II in 2012, and yet more war?

Venezuela has transparent elections. We do not. And that vulnerability in our system is very, very, VERY dangerous.

We should be looking to our own problems, and not harking to Associated Pukes' headlines about Venezuela being more violent than Iraq. And, by the way, did you know that it isn't true?


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

VENEZUELA: NYT Exploits Own Iraq Death Toll Denial to Trash Venezuela
Saturday, 28 August 2010 18:41 Robert Naiman

Robert Naiman discusses the controversial figures the New York Times used recently to exaggerate the scale of murder rates in Venezuela in comparison to Iraq. After a detailed analysis of the figures, he goes on to discuss possible explanations for a surge in the Venezuelan murder rate.

(MORE)

http://www.lab.org.uk/index.php/news/66-analysis/592-venezuela-nyt-exploits-own-iraq-death-toll-denial-to-trash-venezuela

[Judi Lynn]

8. Same Paramilitary Abuses; New Faces, New Names

Same Paramilitary Abuses; New Faces, New Names
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Feb 4, 2010 (IPS) - A leading international rights group urged the Colombian government to take action against what it called the "successors" to the far-right paramilitary militias, which continue attacking civilians and human rights defenders. In its new report, "Paramilitaries’ Heirs: The New Face of Violence in Colombia", Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the 2003-2006 demobilisation of the "brutal, mafia-like, paramilitary coalition known as the AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia)" was a failure, despite repeated government claims that the paramilitaries no longer exist.

The 122-page report, the result of two years of fieldwork, says that after the demobilisation process had come to an end, new groups almost immediately "cropped up all over the country, taking the reins of the criminal operations that the AUC leadership previously ran."

~snip~
"The successor groups are engaged in widespread and serious abuses against civilians in much of the country. They massacre, kill, rape, torture, and forcibly 'disappear' persons who do not follow their orders. They regularly use threats and extortion against members of the communities where they operate, as a way to exert control over local populations," it says.

~snip~
AUC, which emerged in the 1980s and was heavily involved in the drug trade, according to its own leaders, was blamed by United Nations human rights officials for 80 percent of the atrocities committed in Colombia's four-decade civil war. They also worked in close cooperation with the military, as documented by U.N. officials, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the U.S. State Department, and prominent international rights watchdogs like HRW and Amnesty International.

To eliminate evidence of the thousands of murders they committed every year, the paramilitaries sometimes built ovens to burn the bodies. Another frequent practice, to avoid the effort of digging graves, was the use of chainsaws to cut up victims - dead or alive. Rivers were also extensively used, to get rid of entire corpses or dismembered bodies.

More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50225

[Uncle Joe]

10. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Judi Lynn.

[Judi Lynn]

11. Wave of violence hits Tulua

Wave of violence hits Tulua
Thursday, 13 January 2011 09:53 Jim Glade

~snip~
Ten homicides have been reported in the past four weeks in Tulua and authorities are worried because these murders are being committed in public with automatic weapons.

Last weekend saw Tulua's most recent attack in the neighborhood of Tomas Uribe Uribe. A group of people were surprised by several men who allegedly opened fire indiscriminately. Two men were killed and five others were seriously injured.

"We really have to fear this spiral of violence, so we are calling on national and departmental authorities. We understand that there are dark forces that are creating anxiety in our community," Mayor Rafael Palau told El Pais.

Rumors from the city of Tulua, located 63 miles northeast of Cali, state that the recent violence is a result of the arrival of the narco-paramilitary group "Los Urabeños" in Villa de Cespedes, territory of rival paramilitaries, "Los Rastrojos."

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13711-wave-of-violence-hits-tolua.html

[Judi Lynn]

13. Caught in the crossfire

Caught in the crossfire
As the gang war over the country’s lucrative drug trade escalates, locals are increasingly the target
by Nadja Drost on Friday, January 14, 2011 12:01pm

~snip~
Though Colombia has a long history of drug trafficking groups, today’s variety pose an increasing threat to security as they consolidate their local and regional power, and take urban and rural communities into their grip. For much of the 1990s and the early 2000s, after Colombian police brought down the country’s once all-powerful drug cartels, most of Colombia’s drug trade was controlled by right-wing paramilitary groups brought together under the banner of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the AUC. Between 2003 and 2006, after signing a peace deal with the government, over 32,000 AUC members put down arms in exchange for reduced sentences for top commanders and immunity for foot soldiers. Many of the top leaders were extradited to the United States on narco-trafficking charges.

But most mid-ranking paramilitary commanders either never demobilized, or returned to criminal life, starting new drug trafficking groups and recruiting many former AUC fighters to work for them. By 2006, the national police estimated that 4,000 men belonged to these paramilitary successor groups. Stepped-up police efforts have resulted in 2,765 arrests of their members in 2010 alone, but don’t appear to have put a dent in their size as others fill their ranks. The police put their membership at 4,100 in 2010, while the Nuevo Arco Iris research organization estimates they number at least 10,000. “They have a capacity to keep operating, while losing people and then recouping people immediately,” says Victor Negrete, a professor at the University of Sinú in Montería, Córdoba. Indeed, Mauricio Romero of Nuevo Arco Iris estimates neo-paramilitary groups control about two-thirds of Colombia’s estimated 68,000 hectares of coca crops.

Since 2000, the U.S. has poured $6 billion into fighting Colombia’s drug war, including efforts to decrease coca production. But while the amount of coca grown was down 16 per cent in 2009 according to the UN Office of Drug Control, Colombia remains the world’s top coca producer. And although today’s drug trafficking groups do not have the wide-reaching influence of the famous cartels of the 1980s and ’90s, nor the national scope of the AUC, they now operate in 24 of Colombia’s 32 departments, and their local and regional power is strengthening and expanding.

~snip~
In few other places can their presence be felt more than in Córdoba, a narco-trafficking mecca, home to extensive fields of coca, labs that process it into cocaine, and roads and waterways that can transport it to the Atlantic coast within three hours. Córdoba was the birthplace of the AUC, and after the group’s demobilization there in 2006, the department became awash with former paramilitary fighters, many of whom joined newly established drug gangs. Homicides have climbed every year since 2006, and by mid-December of 2010 had doubled to 569, according to Córdoba’s governor’s office, serving a population of 1.5 million.

More:
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/01/14/caught-in-the-crossfire/

[Judi Lynn]

14. UN 'concerned' about neo-paramilitary violence

UN 'concerned' about neo-paramilitary violence
Monday, 17 January 2011 17:05 Jim Glade

The United Nations and NGO Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) expressed Monday their concern for the high level of neo-paramilitary violence in Colombia, specifically in the northern department of Cordoba.

The UN delegate for the High Commissioner of Human Rights warns that these so-called Emerging Criminal Groups (BACRIM) are a direct result of the disintegration of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). The delegate also urged the authorities and the national government to further ensure the safety of human rights defenders and the general public, reports Terra.com

Violence between neo-paramilitary groups and drug gangs is impacting Colombia's civilian population, primarily in the north of the country where several neo-paramilitary groups are active and drug gang Los Rastrojos is gaining ground.

According to Codhes, 600 people were killed in Cordoba in 2010, along with another 45 so far this year. Police officials affirm only 28 killings in Cordoba this year. International attention was placed on Cordoba after the January 10 massacre of two biology students from Bogota near a beach in the department.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13763-un-concerned-about-neo-paramilitary-violence.html

[Judi Lynn]

15. Paramilitary commander: deputy intelligence chief was AUC member

Paramilitary commander: deputy intelligence chief was AUC member
Friday, 21 January 2011 22:56 Adriaan Alsema

Demobilized and extradited paramilitary chief "Don Berna" has told Colombian prosecutors that a former deputy director of intelligence service DAS was a member of paramilitary organization AUC, newspaper El Espectador reported Friday.

According to the newspaper, it had received a 12-page transcript of the testimony that Diego Murillo, alias Don Berna, had testified from the the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York via video conferencing before the Supreme Court.

"I would like to start with saying that doctor (Jose) Miguel Narvaez was a member of the United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) and I had the opportunity to meet him personally in 1997," Don Berna began his testimony according to the newspaper.
According to the former warlord, the paramilitaries had strong influence in the Colombian security forces and that "we used mister Narvaez as a go-between, as he was teaching at the Superior War School and gave information about operations against the paramilitaries or persons who had links to the guerrillas or the left."

The testimony of Don Berna adds up to testimony given by another former AUC commander, "El Aleman," who had told the court that "we took the addresses and names that he gave us because those people were leftist guerrillas infiltrating universities, NGOs and the media and they had to be killed."

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/13867-paramilitary-commander-says-intelligence-deputy-director-was-member-auc.html