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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-14-11 11:03 AM
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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
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Jan-14-11 01:27 PM
Response to Original message
1. 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
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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Jan-15-11 02:24 AM
Response to Original message
2. 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/
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