Former local Red Cross chief linked to paramilitary groups

[Judi Lynn]

Former local Red Cross chief linked to paramilitary groups
Sep 15, 2014 posted by Christoffer Frendesen

A former local Red Cross head from the north of Colombia appears in court records where hundreds of hectares have been deprived by paramilitary forces. The now-Red Cross volunteer denies accusations.

Elkin Bechara, former head of Red Cross in northern Caribbean state Cordoba, owns 16 hectares of lands, which originally was stolen from peasants by now defunct paramilitary group United Self Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), according to newspaper El Tiempo.

Bechara, who owns the land with his son Ricardo Velásquez Bechara, claims that the hectares were bona fide purchases.

“I’m willing to prove it to the authorities. Also I am going to sue the person who sold me the land and make his name public,” stated Bechara to El Tiempo.

The cases of stolen land surfaced in 2013, when a Santa Marta family in the Magdalena state, reported to the prosecutor general that AUC forced them to give up their land, which after a couple of transfer ended in Bechara’s name.

More:
http://colombiareports.co/former-local-red-cross-leader-connections-paramilitary-groups/#sthash.fzHguR7M.dpuf

[Judi Lynn]

1. Overview regarding how campesinos in THE U.S. South American ally, Colombia, lose their land:

Colombian farmers risk death to reclaim lost land

The government wants to correct decades of 'land reform in reverse'. But powerful criminal, armed and business interests are ranged against the country's displaced peasants

Sibylla Brodzinsky in Valledupar
theguardian.com, Wednesday 16 October 2013 11.17 EDT

The threats against Sifredy Culma's life come in many forms: suspicious men on motorcycles circling his neighbourhood; a flyer slipped under the door declaring him a "military target"; a menacing phone call warning that he will be killed if he tries to reclaim the plot of land he abandoned when rightwing paramilitary militiamen stormed into his town in Colombia.

The intimidation started in 2010, when Culma began collecting signatures from other farmers who had fled the village of Santafe and been forced to sell their land under threat from the paramilitaries. Culma is reclaiming that property as part of an ambitious government programme to return abandoned or stolen land to millions displaced by the country's half-century-old conflict.

Two hours after he filed the first claim, gunmen from the Rastrojos – a paramilitary-style criminal band that operates in the region – went looking for Culma to kill him. He had already left town. Since then, the threats of violence have not let up. In 2011 a warning came through on his mobile. "I was told that if I kept insisting on claiming our land, I would end up like other land claimants in the country," he said. Culma understood the message: by that time at least a dozen people leading land claims had been killed.

The struggle for land has been a cause and consequence of five decades of conflict in Colombia, where 52% of rural property lies in the hands of just 1.15% of landowners, according to the United Nations Development Programme.

More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/16/colombian-farmers-death-reclaim-lost-land

Colombia was the 3rd largest US foreign aid recipient for years until very recently, and is currently the largest foreign aid, and military aid recipient in the Americas, of course. Their paramilitaries, and the Colombian military have been tied together for many years, as testified in many court trials by both military and paramilitary narcotraffickers (death squad members), and many Colombian Congressmen and Presidential administration officials have also been tried and convicted for ties to the paramlitaries, or otherwise implicated, going directly to the cousin, and a brother of the former President, Alvaro Uribe, good friend of the _Bush administration.