No U.S.-Colombia Pact If Violence Goes on-Rights Group

[Judi Lynn]

No U.S.-Colombia Pact If Violence Goes on-Rights Group
By Hugh Bronstein
February 3, 2010

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia must act to halt rising violence, including against trade unionists, if it is to secure U.S. congressional approval for a long-delayed trade agreement with Washington, a U.S. human rights group said on Wednesday.

Murder rates have climbed in Colombia over the last year as authorities say thousands of criminals, led by former right-wing militia chiefs, reorganize their cocaine-smuggling and extortion organizations.

Human Rights Watch said in a report that the emergence of these successor groups was predictable due to Colombia's failure to dismantle paramilitary networks when the groups were demobilized between 2003 and 2006.

Colombia is lobbying hard for a U.S. trade deal, but Tom Malinowski, head of Human Rights Watch's Washington office, said Democratic lawmakers would block it until President Alvaro Uribe did more to stop violence.

"There is a potential majority in the House (of Representatives) to approve a trade deal with Colombia. But for that majority to materialize the government has to try to solve these problems rather than trying to spin its way out of them," Malinowski said.

More:
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=9738514

[Judi Lynn]

1. Colombian Paramilitaries’ Successors Called a Threat

Colombian Paramilitaries’ Successors Called a Threat
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: February 3, 2010

CARACAS, Venezuela — Criminal armies that emerged from the ashes of the Colombian government’s attempt to disband paramilitary groups are spreading their reach across the country’s economy while engaging in a broad range of rights abuses, including massacres, rapes and forced displacement, a human rights group said Wednesday.

A report by the group, Human Rights Watch, detailed the activities of the paramilitary successor groups, which feed off Colombia’s cocaine trade. The drug trade remains lucrative despite Washington’s channeling of more than $5 billion of security and antinarcotics aid to Colombia, making it a top recipient of United States aid outside the Middle East.

“One major reason why combating these groups is not a priority is that it’s hard for the current government to acknowledge that a significant part of its security policy is failing,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, speaking in Bogotá, Colombia.

Seeking to influence the Obama administration’s policies toward Colombia, the group recommended delaying ratification of a long-awaited trade deal until Colombia’s government vigorously and effectively confronts the criminal groups, which succeeded paramilitaries formed by landowners decades ago to combat guerrillas.

More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/world/americas/04colombia.html?ref=world

[Judi Lynn]

2. United States’ Policies in Columbia Support Mass Murder

United States’ Policies in Columbia Support Mass Murder

Over the past two years, Colombia has been Washington’s third largest recipient of foreign aid, behind only Israel and Egypt. In July of 2000, the U.S. Congress approved a $1.3 billion war package for Colombia to support President Pastrana’s “Plan Colombia.” Plan Colombia is a $7.5 billion counter-narcotics initiative. In addition to this financial support, the US also trains the Colombian military.

Colombia’s annual murder rate is 30,000. It is reported that around 19,000 of these murders are linked to illegal right-wing paramilitary forces. Many leaders of these paramilitary groups were once officers in the Colombian military, trained at the U.S. Military run School of the Americas.

According to the Human Rights Watch Report, a 120-page report titled “The ‘Sixth Division’: Military-Paramilitary Ties and US Policy in Colombia,” Colombian armed forces and police continue to work closely with right-wing paramilitary groups. The government of President Pastrana and the US administration have played down evidence of this cooperation. Jim Lobe says that Human Rights Watch holds the Pastrana administration responsible for the current, violent situation because of its dramatic and costly failure to take prompt, effective control of security forces, break their persistent ties to paramilitary groups, and ensure respect for human rights.

Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair contend that the war in Colombia isn’t about drugs. It’s about the annihilation of popular uprisings by Indian peasants fending off the ravages of oil companies, cattle barons and mining firms. It is a counter-insurgency war, designed to clear the way for American corporations to set up shop in Colombia.

Cockburn and St. Clair examined two Defense Department commissioned reports, the RAND Report and a paper written by Gabriel Marcella, titled “Plan Colombia: the Strategic and Operational Imperatives.” Both reports recommend that the US step up its military involvement in Colombia. In addition, the reports make several admissions about the paramilitaries and their links to the drug trade, regarding human rights abuses by the US-trained Colombian military, and about the irrationality of crop fumigation.

Throughout these past two years, Colombian citizens have been the victims of human rights atrocities committed by the US-trained Colombian military and linked paramilitaries. Trade unionists and human rights activists face murder, torture, and harassment. It is reported that Latin America remains the most dangerous place in the world for trade unionists. Since 1986, some 4,000 trade unionists have been murdered in Colombia. In 2000 alone, more trade unionists were killed in Colombia than in the whole world in 1999.

More:
http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/articles/3-united-states-policies-in-columbia-support-mass-murder/

[Bacchus39]

4. President Pastrana??? yeah, things were really bad then n/t

s

[Peace Patriot]

3. So Rotters is chiming in, too. I wonder what's up (I mean what's really up).

See my comment on this story as it manifested in the NYT/Simon Romero, here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=7623513&mesg_id=7638509

The above is comment #54 in this thread: "Is the U.S. military involved in mass murder in Colombia?")
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7623513