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Edited on Thu May-24-07 05:17 AM by Judi Lynn
A large number of crimes against humanity have been committed over the past decades of armed conflict in Colombia and continue to be committed today, mainly by far-right paramilitary groups with close ties to the security forces, and to a lesser extent by left-wing guerrillas who took up arms in the 1960s.
(snip)
Over the past year, as a result of the paramilitary demobilisation process, human remains seem to be sprouting out of clandestine cemeteries that served that purpose for decades, many on estates that were turned into torture centres, a widespread phenomenon that public opinion was unaware of until recently.
Many of the burial sites have been located using information provided by "repentant" paramilitaries keen on obtaining legal benefits like lenient sentences -- a maximum of eight years -- in exchange for full confessions of their crimes against humanity. The benefits are offered by the Justice and Peace Law, which is governing the paramilitary disarmament process.
The locations of other graves have emerged as paramilitaries who were already in prison have sought reduced sentences by cooperating with the courts, while yet others have been found as people living near the torture centres and clandestine cemeteries, or the families of the "disappeared", some of whom always knew where their loved ones were buried, have finally dared to begin speaking out.
The extent of the killing has been revealed as individual graves are discovered, one next to the other, as well as common graves.
The work undertaken by the teams of forensic anthropologists is extremely complex. First, the experts must have information on whose bodies are being searched for. And the field work not only takes extensive planning, but is also carried out in dangerous conditions, which put the investigators and sometimes even their families at risk.
(snip) http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=36652~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Perception Management and the US Terror War in Colombia
by Doug Stokes
June 07, 2002 ~snip~ Klaus Nyholm, the Director of the UN’s drug control agency in Colombia, the UNDCP, stated that "The guerrillas are something different than the traffickers, the local fronts are quite autonomous. But in some areas, they're not involved at all. And in others, they actively tell the farmers not to grow coca”. In the rebels former Demilitarised Zone, Nyholm stated that "drug cultivation has not increased or decreased” once the “FARC took control." Indeed, Nyholm argued that, prior to the Colombian military and paramilitary offensive against the DMZ, the FARC were cooperating with a $6 million UN project to replace coca crops with new forms of legal alternative development. The rebels then are clearly not international drug traffickers, and the narco-guerrilla myth serves a useful propaganda pretext for US interventionism within Colombia’s conflict. John Waghelstein, a leading US counterinsurgency specialist, explained the PR value of the “narco-guerrilla” concept with a “melding in the American public's mind and in Congress of this connection {leading} to the necessary support to counter the guerrilla/narcotics terrorists in this hemisphere. Congress would find it difficult to stand in the way of supporting our allies with the training, advice and security assistance necessary to do the job. Those church and academic groups that have slavishly supported insurgency in Latin America would find themselves on the wrong side of the moral issue. Above all, we would have the unassailable moral position from which to launch a concerted offensive effort using Department of Defense (DOD) and non-DOD assets.” More importantly however, by associating the rebels with drugs, the US obscures the role that the drug-funded paramilitaries play in its dirty war against Colombia’s civil society. The role of the US in Colombia’s paramilitary terror against the Colombian civilian population is made all the more stark considering the fact that US military advisers travelled to Colombia in 1991 to re-shape Colombian military intelligence networks. This restructuring was supposedly designed to aid the Colombian military in their counter-narcotics efforts. Human Rights Watch obtained a copy of the order. Nowhere within the Order is any mention made of drugs. Instead the secret re-organisation focussed solely on combating what was called “escalating terrorism by armed subversion”. The re-organisation solidified linkages between the Colombian military and narco-paramilitary networks that in effect further consolidated a “secret network that relied on paramilitaries not only for intelligence, but to carry out murder”. Once the re-organisation was complete, all “written material was to be removed” with “open contacts and interaction with military installations” to be avoided by paramilitaries. Stan Goff, a former US special forces trainer in Colombia stated that when he “was training Colombian Special Forces in Tolemaida in 1992, my team was there ostensibly to aid the counter-narcotics effort.” He was “giving military forces training in infantry counterinsurgency doctrine” and knew “perfectly well, as did the host-nation commanders, that narcotics was a flimsy cover story for beefing up the capacity of armed forces who had lost the confidence of the population through years of abuse.” The US then, has clearly participated in strengthening the ties between the leading terrorists in Colombia, the Colombian military and their paramilitary allies, who are responsible for over 80% of all human rights abuses committed in Colombia today. Furthermore, as outlined above, the paramilitaries, as stated by the US’s own agencies, are amongst the biggest drug traffickers in Colombia today. In effect, US military aid is going directly to the major terrorist networks throughout Colombia, who traffic cocaine into US markets to fund their activities, and which the US has been instrumental in helping make more effective in creating what Human Rights Watch termed a “sophisticated mechanism…that allows the Colombian military to fight a dirty war and Colombian officialdom to deny it”. During the Cold War, the US sold its counter-insurgency campaigns against social democrats, socialists, independent nationalists and even the Catholic Church, as part of a global struggle against the Soviet Union. In the post-Cold War era, the US has switched to new PR mechanisms to sell its imperial policy. The narco-guerrilla and counter-terrorist pretexts serves as a useful PR mechanism for conflating US “official enemies” with drugs and terrorism. Underlying these myths is the reality that the Colombian state and its privatised arm, the paramilitaries, combined with overt US support, continues to lead directly to the death and disappearances of thousands of Colombian civilians. The US terror war against Colombian civil society fits a consistent pattern within US policy throughout Latin America, which has led directly to the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians. (snip/...) http://www.zmag.org/content/Colombia/stokes_perception-management.cfm~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Amnesty International: The human rights crisis continued to deepen against a background of a spiralling armed conflict. The parties to the conflict intensified their military actions throughout the country in campaigns characterized by gross and systematic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law. The principal victims of political violence were civilians, particularly peasant farmers living in areas disputed between government forces and allied paramilitaries, and armed opposition groups. Human rights defenders, journalists, judicial officials, teachers, trade unionists and leaders of Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities were among those targeted. More than 4,000 people were victims of political killings, over 300 ''disappeared'', and an estimated 300,000 people were internally displaced. At least 1,500 people were kidnapped by armed opposition groups and paramilitary organizations; mass kidnaps of civilians continued. Torture - often involving mutilation - remained widespread, particularly as a prelude to murder by paramilitary groups. ''Death squad''-style killings continued in urban areas. Children suffered serious human rights violations particularly in the context of the armed conflict. New evidence emerged of continuing collusion between the armed forces and illegal paramilitary groups. Progress continued in a limited number of judicial investigations, but impunity for human rights abuses remained the norm.
Escalating conflict
Few areas of the country remained unaffected by the escalating conflict. The number and intensity of direct confrontations between the parties to the conflict increased. The principal victims continued to be civilians. The majority of killings were carried out by illegal paramilitary groups operating with the tacit or active support of the Colombian armed forces. All parties to the conflict, including the Colombian armed forces, routinely breached their obligation to allow and facilitate access by humanitarian organizations to conflict areas to aid civilian communities under attack or caught in the crossfire, and to assist wounded combatants. In separate incidents, wounded combatants under the protection of the International Committee of the Red Cross were summarily executed by the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC), United Self-Defence Groups of Colombia, and the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.
(snip/...) http://www.web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webamrcountries/COLOMBIA?OpenDocument~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~snip~
Published on Saturday, February 10, 2001 in the Guardian of London
Colombian Death Squads Target Volunteers
Gunmen threaten workers from international aid groups as president tries to halt slide towards civil war
by Martin Hodgson in Bogota
Rightwing death squads have threatened to kill members of an international human rights group which includes British volunteers working in some of the most dangerous regions of Colombia.
Paramilitary gunmen have warned members of Peace Brigades International (PBI) that they are now considered a "military objective" because of their work with community groups in the northern town of Barrancabermeja.
PBI teams - which include British, Canadian and Australian volunteers - provide unarmed escorts for community activists, trade unionists and human rights workers who are often targets of the rightwing militias.
Two gunmen burst into the offices of the Popular Women's Organisation (OFP), a local women's group, during a peace demonstration on Wednesday.
Identifying themselves as members of Colombia's largest paramilitary group, the United Self-defence Force of Colombia (AUC), they confiscated mobile phones and a passport belonging to a Swedish PBI volunteer. "From this moment onwards, you are targets," they warned.
OFP runs soup kitchens for war refugees in Barrancabermeja, an industrial town of 200,000 people which has become a battleground for the warring factions.
Once a stronghold of leftwing rebels, the town is now dominated by the paramilitary squads. Guerrillas and paramilitaries rarely confront each other directly, and most of their victims are unarmed civilians accused of collaborating with the other side.
Last year the bloody conflict claimed more than 500 lives in Barrancabermeja. Human rights monitors say most killings are the work of the paramilitaries. "We know that when they make a threat they're not playing around," said Yolanda Becerra, an OFP organiser.
(snip/...) http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0210-01.htm
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