Paramilitaries committed 173,183 homicides: PG

[Judi Lynn]

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.

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

[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

[Judi Lynn]

3. 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