Report: FARC says 11 hostages killed

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Report: FARC says 11 hostages killed

By TOBY MUSE, Associated Press Writer
1 hour, 17 minutes ago

BOGOTA, Colombia - Eleven kidnapped former state lawmakers held
hostage for five years were killed after a military attack on the
jungle camp where they were being kept, according to a statement
Thursday on a Web site sympathetic to the country's largest rebel
group.

The interior minister and a close adviser to President Alvaro Uribe
told Colombian media that they had no information on the reported
deaths. There was no way to independently confirm the report.

The Web site of the left-wing news agency ANNCOL carried a
statement purportedly from the western command of the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. It said 11 of
the 12 ex-provincial deputies being held were killed in the crossfire
after an "unidentified military group" attacked the rebel camp
June 18.

-snip-

The 12 were kidnapped in a brazen daylight raid in April 2002 in the
southwest city of Cali. The statement said that just one survived,
Sigifredo Lopez, who was not with the others at the time of the
attack.

-snip-

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070628/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_hostages_4

---

Source: Reuters

Colombian rebels say 11 lawmaker hostages killed
28 Jun 2007 12:39:23 GMT

-snip-

By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, June 28 (Reuters) - Left-wing Colombian rebels said on
Thursday that 11 provincial lawmakers kidnapped in 2002 were killed
last week in crossfire during a military rescue attempt.

Twelve hostages were taken by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, from Valle del Cauca's capitol building in a raid
that shocked this Andean country for its audacity.

"Eleven deputies of the Valle assembly who we took in April 2002 died
in the crossfire when an unidentified military group attacked the camp
where they were," a statement issued by the FARC said. It said the
raid occurred June 18.

The government said it did not know the location of the 12 hostages
and did not know of any attempt to rescue them.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N28221256.htm

[lonestarnot]

1. Sick bastards.

[Bacchus39]

2. "died in the crossfire"

yeah, sure.

[Mike Daniels]

3. Just like the Israeli athletes "died in the "crossfire" during that rescue attempt

Who do these idiots think they're fooling?

[Bacchus39]

4. I do not think they care

they enjoy little support in Colombia, because of actions like this of course.

[Judi Lynn]

5. For the merest appearance of balance don't forget the OTHER fighters, the ones

who are viewed as the truly violent monsters in Colombia. If posters don't know this, by all means, be good enough to start reading until you have a grasp of the situation, and don't accept anything anyone tells you instead of finding out for yourself.

The paramilitaries (death squads) are discussed in these articles:

Colombia: Paramilitary Scandal, Crimes, and Media ‘Coincidences’
Saturday, April 28th, 2007 @ 04:13 UTC
by Carlos Raúl van der Weyden Velásquez

Villalba assures that for the cutting up learning they used peasants who brought up together during the occupations of neighboring towns. “They were older people taken on trucks, alive, tied”, he described. The victims arrived to the estate on topped trucks. They were taken down with their hands tied and moved to a room, where they remained locked for several days, waiting for the training to start.

Then the “bravery instruction” came up: people were separated in four or five groups “and there they were cut into pieces”, Villalba told during the deposition. “The instructor told me: ‘You stand up here and secures the one who cuts’. Every time a town was occupied and someone is going to be cut, the ones doing that job must be provided with security”.

Men and women were taken out the rooms on their underwear. Still with their hands tied, they were taken to the place where the instructor awaited to start the first recommendations: “The instructions were to take off their arms, their head, to cut them alive. They came out crying and asked us not to hurt them, they had a family”.
(snip/...)

http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/04/28/colombia-paramilitary-scandal-crimes-and-media-coincidences/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

March 12 / 13, 2005

Run, Fight or Die in Colombia
The Paramilitaries Burned Wayuu Children Alive and Killed Others With Chainsaws
By JAMES J. BRITTAIN

Colombia's civil war is a conflict between two ­ and only two ­ principle groups; the people struggling for change and the Colombian state. No greater example of this can be realized than the recent massacre of several inhabitants of the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó (Peace Community of San José in the Apartadó municipality of the Antioquia department).

The Comunidad de Paz was established as the first organically constructed and established peace community within Colombia that sought the existence of an alternative autonomous society surrounded by a raging four decade old war. San José's goal was to be a progressive community independent from violence existing apart from the armed activities and actors presented throughout the country. One of the principal founders of the historically significant community was a man named Luis Eduardo Guerra. Guerra, like all too many social justice-minded personalities within the Andean country, was brutally murdered on February 21st. His remains were found alongside Deyanira Areiza Guzman (Guerra's partner), Deiner Andres Guerra, (Guerra's son), Luis Eduardo Guerra, (Guerra's half-brother), Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia Graciano (a leader/member of the Peace Council of the Mulatos humanitarian zone), Sandra Milena Munoz Pozo (Graciano's partner), Santiago Tuberquia Munoz and Natalia Andrea Tuberquia Munoz (Graciano and Munoz's children). The murderers, according to several eye-witnesses, were members belonging to the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army.
(snip/...)

http://www.counterpunch.org/brittain03122005.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trade and Terror in Colombia
By Benjamin Melançon,
Posted on Sun Jun 17th, 2007 at 10:23:34 PM EST

Sean Donahue wrote an article on Colombia, published in the Maine newspaper "The Times Record" – impressive work getting information usually found few places but on Narco News in front of more folks.
"Paramilitarism has not been dismantled, it has simply been 're-engineered.'" (Amnesty International)

Imagine that you work bundling cut flowers in Colombia. After years of working 10- and 12-hour days for very little pay, you and your fellow workers finally form a union to fight for better conditions and better pay and you are elected president. Your manager calls you into his office and tells you that unions only bring trouble and that you should really consider your family's safety.

Three days later you wake up to find the words "military target" spray-painted across the front of your house. Later that day, while you're at work, your 10-year-old daughter is playing in the street and a strange man comes up to her and tells her to tell her mom to make sure she doesn't get hurt.
The next night a teenager drives by on a motorcycle and opens fire on your house with an Uzi. He just barely misses you and your daughter and your walls are riddled with bullets.

Over 400 union organizers have been murdered in Colombia since Alvaro Uribe became president in August 2002. The majority of them were killed by right-wing paramilitary groups with a long history of close ties to the Colombian military — and to cocaine and heroin traffickers. Despite the fact that the killers made threatening public death threats, stalked their victims and their families and published public death lists, there have only been convictions in 10 of those murders.
(snip/...)

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/6/17/222334/305

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

From the late Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone:

Published on Tuesday, December 26, 2000 in the New York Times
Bush Should Start Over in Colombia
by Paul Wellstone

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month I traveled to Colombia to learn more about this war-torn country, whose military is getting nearly $2 million per day from the United States as part of an aid package that passed last June after narrow approval in the Senate.

I paid a visit to Barrancabermeja, an oil-refining port city on Colombia's Magdalena River. "Barranca," a city of 210,000, is one of the most dangerous places in one of the world's most dangerous countries. This year so far, violence in Barranca has killed at least 410 people. According to local human rights groups, most of those killed were the victims of right-wing paramilitary death squads.
(snip/...)

http://www.commondreams.org/views/122600-104.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Amnesty Internation 2001

Covering events from January - December 2000
COLOMBIA

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.
(snip)

Paramilitaries

Despite repeated government promises to dismantle paramilitary forces, no effective action was taken to curtail, much less to end, their widespread and systematic atrocities. In contrast to their declared aim to combat guerrilla forces, paramilitary actions continued to target the civilian population through massacres, torture, the destruction of communities and the displacement of the population.

• In February, 200 paramilitary gunmen raided the village of El Salado, Bolívar department, killing 36 people, including a six-year-old child. Many victims were tied to a table in the village sports field and subjected to torture, including rape, before being stabbed or shot dead. Others were killed in the village church. During the three-day attack, military and police units stationed nearby made no effort to intervene. Instead, a Navy Infantry unit reportedly set up a roadblock on the access road to El Salado, thus preventing humanitarian organizations from reaching the village. Arrest warrants were issued against

11 paramilitary members, including AUC leader Carlos Castaño, in connection with the massacre. Marine Colonel Rodrigo Quiñones, commander of the Navy's 1st Brigade, was promoted to General while investigations into the possible criminal responsibility in connection with the massacre of troops under his command were still under way. Government investigations had previously linked General Quiñones to the murders of more than 50 people in Barrancabermeja, Santander department, in 1991 and 1992. However, the military justice system, which claimed jurisdiction in the case, dropped the charges.

• Over 40 people were killed in November during an AUC attack on several fishing villages in the municipality of La Ciénaga, Magdalena department. A further 30 people reportedly ''disappeared''.

The government again failed to set up the specialist military units to combat paramilitary groups which it had repeatedly promised. The armed forces failed to attack or dismantle paramilitary bases, the majority of which were located in close proximity to army and police bases.
(snip/...)http://www.web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webamrcountries/COLOMBIA?OpenDocument

[Judi Lynn]

6. Letter to President Uribe from HRW, on his militaries dressing up civilian dead as rebels....

Letter to President Álvaro Uribe

May 2, 2007

President Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidency of the Republic of Colombia
Palacio de Nariño
Bogota, Colombia

Dear President Uribe,

~snip~
Overall Killings

You state that the overall official homicide rate in Colombia has declined substantially since you assumed office—a fact you attribute to your Democratic Security policies. We recognize that the security situation in several major cities and highways has improved, and that your government appears to have pushed the FARC guerrillas out of many regions, such as San Vicente del Caguán, where they were committing abuses.

However, the official homicide rate, which lumps together deaths from common crime as well as killings committed by all sides in the conflict, is too broad to serve as a useful indicator of human rights abuses. To focus only on this general number masks several very troubling trends.

The number of extrajudicial executions committed by the Army, for example, is skyrocketing—a fact that your own Minister of Defense admitted in meetings with me and other colleagues. The United Nations has a list of over 150 cases of extrajudicial executions of civilians committed by the Army throughout the country in the last two years. The Colombian Commission of Jurists, one of Colombia’s most respected human rights organizations, is reporting over 200 cases a year. In many of these cases the civilian has been killed, and later dressed up as a combatant, apparently to inflate the official enemy body count of the military unit in question.

The number of selective killings committed by paramilitary groups is also cause for alarm. Starting in 2000, according to official statistics, the number of massacres by paramilitary groups started to decline sharply. As described to us by paramilitary commanders themselves in Medellin, this decline reflected a shift in tactics by paramilitaries, who had already taken over control of vast regions of the country, and were starting to focus on consolidating that power. In their view, enforcement of their control no longer required large–scale massacres, but rather only selective killings of persons who they considered enemies.

Thus, the number of paramilitary massacres has dropped substantially. However, the number of selective killings attributable to paramilitaries has remained virtually unchanged for more than a decade, since 1996, despite your demobilization program. According to the Colombian Commission of Jurists, to this day paramilitary groups commit between 800 and 900 selective killings per year.
(snip)

Once again, we want to help Colombia to confront the grave threat that paramilitary power is posing to its democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Given the high stakes involved, I urge you in the strongest possible terms to adopt the many recommendations we have made—such as blocking communications between imprisoned paramilitary leaders and their mafias and extraditing to the United States those commanders who fail to turn over assets and cease their criminal activities—to ensure the effective dismantlement of paramilitary groups.
(snip/)

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2007/05/02/colomb15833.htm

[Judi Lynn]

7. Another look at that story of paramilitaries practicing torture & murder on peasants:

Murder Training: Colombian Death Squad Used Live Hostages
by El Tiempo
April 29, 2007

El Tiempo, Bogota -- “Proof of courage”: that is how the how the paramilitaries would term the training they imparted to their recruits so that they learnt how to carve up people while they were still alive.

Initially, the authorities rejected this version of the farmers who reported the practice… but when the combatants themselves started to admit to it in their testimonies before the prosecutors, the myth became a harsh crime against humanity.

Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández (alias Cristian Barreto), one of the perpetrators of the massacre at El Aro in Ituango, Antioquia, received this type of training in the same place where he learnt to handle arms and manufacture home-made bombs. Today, a prisoner at La Picota in Bogota, Villalba has described in details during lengthy testimonies how he applied the learning.

“Towards the middle of 1994, I was ordered to a course… in El Tomate, Antioquia, where the training camp was located,” he says in his testimony. There, his working day started at 5 in the morning and the instructions were received directly from the top commanders such as ‘Double Zero’ (Carlos Garcia, since assassinated by another paramilitary group).
(snip/...)

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=12697

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Into the Abyss: The Paramilitary Political Objective
By Ana Carrigan
August 2001

The lights are going out in Colombia. In the last two years, the growth in the military and political power of the paramilitaries (known as the "United Self-Defense Groups of Colombia," "Auto-Defensas Unidos de Colombia" the AUC), has brought a brutal, illegal army within reach of gaining political control over Colombia's future.

Colombian officials admit that the AUC are responsible for 80% of all political murders and massacres in the past year. The AUC's founder and longtime commander-in-chief, Carlos Castaño, is the subject of 22 arrest warrants for massacres, kidnapping, assassinations, and drug trafficking. The American Ambassador in Bogotá, Anne Patterson, and the U.S. Commander in Chief of Southern Command, General Peter Pace, have both warned that the AUC now represent the most serious threat to Colombia’s democracy.
(snip/...)

http://www.crimesofwar.org/colombia-mag/abyss-print.html

[coalition_unwilling]

8. Thank you for helping set the record straight. -n/t

[Judi Lynn]

9. Thank you for considering them. There's a lot more to check whenever

you want to do searches on Colombia, paramiltaries, death squads. You'd be amazed at what jumps up when you do searches for Colombia + "chain saws."

That stuff has so little to do with the "rebels."

You'll find enough reading to keep you going for ages, believe me. Once you've really had a good look, you'll know who has been attempting a little public perception molding.

[Bacchus39]

10. trying to diminish the horrible impact of the FARC are we??

do terrorists deserve sympathy?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070627/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/colombia_bombings;_ylt=AsgAS4H44lxO21NCqhb_ucK3IxIF

[Judi Lynn]

11. Your article says they have no evidence of his connection to the insurgency.

It sounds vague, doesn't it?

I don't trust any government which has a military which kills ordinary citizens and dresses their corpses up as "rebels" to be able to pad out their body counts.

Very feeble, indeed.

[Bacchus39]

13. do you believe the FARC?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/americas/06/28/colombia.hostages.reut/index.html

here is what they say: Eleven deputies of the Valle assembly, who we took in April 2002, died in the cross fire when an unidentified military group attacked the camp where they were," according to a statement from the FARC. It said the raid occurred on June 18.

that is their story, they even admit they are dead. they don't say how they died of course. does that satisfy your suspicions? they seem like an honest bunch don't they? do you think the FARC is real?

[ngant17]

14. FARC has attempted to work within the civilian society

to establish a bona fide political presence, but their enemies have used this as an opportunity to conduct campaigns of assassinations against them. You should read more about FARC's history before being so biased.

FARC has been forced to survive in the jungles just like a hunted and wounded animal would have to behave to survive in that environment.

Hostage-taking and kidnapping is actually a well-established Big Business in many parts of Latin America these days.

[David__77]

12. Dismantle the fascist shadow state.

There is no democracy in a country in which unionists and progressives are slaughtered left and right, and have absolutely no recourse to function within the existing institutional framework. It is not the left but the right and its Washington sponsors that are responsible for the ongoing carnage in that country.

[Peace Patriot]

15. Why would they kill their hostages? And who was the unidentified military group

who attacked the encampment? Why would THEY shoot the hostages?

What makes sense is that one of these rightwing paramilitary groups, who are now notorious for being trigger-happy, and who have been killing union organizers, peasant farmers, and political leftists, and dumping them in mass graves--rightwing paramilitaries with close ties to the Uribe government (Bush pals)--shot up this encampment to get the headline.

The story doesn't make sense otherwise.

Uribe has gotten some bad press here, because his head of the military, his former intelligence chief, and many Uribe office holders including relatives have been found to have very close ties to these fascist military groups. The Democrats in Congress with sensitivity to union issues (U.S. labor unions have been in arms about these killings) and who oppose unfair "free trade" recently managed to cut some of Bush's billions of US taxpayer dollars to the Uribe government. Uribe needed a favorable headline--something to put FARC in a really bad light and justify the billions in military aid.

[Bacchus39]

16. why do they take hostages in the first place?

does the FARC sense to you? they make up a story and you believe them.

[Peace Patriot]

18. I don't know why they took the hostages. Perhaps to keep their own people from

being tortured and killed? What has driven them into the mountains and jungle "in the first place"? Not an easy way of life. Could it be the fascist government with its "unofficial" death squad enforcers, and "official" U.S. backed military machine, spraying peasant farmers with pesticides, to drive them from their farms into urban squalor, so that the big drug traffickers and Monsanto take can over their farmlands?

I would imagine that vast, entrenched rightwing oppression and violence could drive people to take up arms. You see your family members, neighbors, fellow villagers, union organizers, local political leaders, teachers, community elders and others shot, chainsawed, tortured, raped and stomped on often enough, it could turn you into an armed leftist guerilla.

You asked, "why do they take hostages in the first place?" I'm trying to imagine why. They would likely have an easier life if they would just give up being leftists--since it's not allowed in Colombia--turn their rifles against their compadres, and seig heil to rightwing government. Why would they do what they're doing? Why would they take hostages? I can only guess at the answer.

You say "they make up a story and you believe them." But you are making something up by saying "they make up a story." How do you know it's made up? "...and you believe them." No, I don't necessarily believe this story. I was speaking of what makes sense. It doesn't make sense that FARC shot up their hostages. Nor does it make sense, if it was an official (or even unofficial) raid to free the hostages, that THEY would shoot up the hostages they were trying to free. I was saying that what DOES make sense--given the rightwing parmilitary scandals that are being disclosed in Colombia--is that an unofficial, rightwing paramilitary death squad went on a rampage--deliberately created a bloodbath--because their Bush/US taxpayer cash cow was threatened, and they wanted to enhance the notion that the Uribe government needs lots and lots of military aid to retain rightwing control of Colombia.

It could be that something else is the truth. But, on the basis of THIS information, if it is true, the scenario of paramilitary trouble-making and inflaming the situation makes the most sense to me. It's what they do. They're doing it right now on the Venezuela/Colombian border, trying to create "incidents," trying to inflame passions, trying to get people to shoot back.

[Judi Lynn]

17. I surely agree with you. They wouldn't have killed the very people they had kept alive for years.

What WOULD be the purpose of that? If they had wanted to kill them, they wouldn't have made their own lives so much more vulnerable by keeping these people the government would want back with them at all times, not to mention the added time which would be required to watch them, feed them, clothe them, etc., etc.

Political points COULD be made by the other side, however, by blowing up these prisoners, and blaming it all on the very people who had been guarding them for ages.

It can't be mentioned enough the unbelievable dishonesty and untrustworthiness of a side which slaughters peasants, then fixes it all so they can be counted as dead rebels in their body counts!

Once you start looking for it in internet searches it will become blindingly apparent. Here's another reference to this practise from a report by Human Rights Watch:

COLOMBIA
The Ties That Bind: Colombia and Military-Paramilitary Links

(This section appears nearly one half way down the page)

FOURTH BRIGADE (headquarters in Medellín, Antioquia)

"When we would deliver a guerrilla to the Girardot Battalion, they would give us in exchange grenades and R-15 munitions . . . And after the Army received (the corpse), they would dress it in a military uniform."

Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández, a former paramilitary

~~~~~~~~~
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/colombia/

[Bacchus39]

19. and you don't believe the FARC kills people?

they took these people hostage and you admit that. why is it difficult for you to believe the FARC would kill them? they have a history. do you think the FARC is honest and respectable?

[Judi Lynn]

20. Why on earth would they kill the very same people they had been keeping with them,

keeping safe although prisoner since 2002? Not by God likely. It would reveal them to be simply goofy, something even right-wing idiots probably shouldn't attempt.

They have a history? Is that right? Maybe you can enlighten people to the reasons why so many sources name the PARAMILITARY DEATH SQUADS as the ones responsible for the lion's share of the murders, and the infamous tortures, including human rights groups.

Maybe you'll be able to poke holes in the statement by the Human Rights Group and others that the death squads kill peasants and dress them as rebels. That should be productive. Please provide links to your assertions that the rebels, not the murderous DEATH SQUADS are the ones who've slaughtered so very many Colombians, and have driven so many peasants off their land, made them homeless to the point the U.N. views this as a world crisis only second to Sudan, then steals their land after they've gone! If you don't have proof, apparently I'll go ahead and continue to believe the evidence of my OWN research on the U.S. Colombian military supported DEATH SQUADS of Colombia as being responsible for this vast, filthy, evil blood fest.

As for thinking FARC is honest and respectable, they, at least, are fighting against MONSTERS. They are not the ones called the DEATH SQUADS, are they? They are not the ones who STEAL THE LAND OF THE PEASANTS, once they flee from their own homes, are they?