Colombia: The devil wears military boots

[rabs]

Father Elkin Nazrallah has taken a stand against local paramilitaries

The devil wears military boots

BBC NewsOct 6--Every now and then, I meet a person through my work who is so obviously courageous that it restores my faith in being a reporter.

One of them is Father Elkin Nazrallah, a Catholic priest in the small riverside town of Riosucio, western Colombia.
Riosucio means dirty river. It is a town populated mainly by Afro-Colombians. They are descendants of African slaves brought here as forced labour by Spanish colonisers when the indigenous Amerindians began dying off from imported diseases.

Father Elkin is a small man, who works in an unremarkable church in one of the backwaters of the poorest part of Colombia. But his bravery is breathtaking.

"The devil walked through here," he says, referring to a dark chapter in the history of the Riosucio region that began in 1996.

"The devil came down the river wearing a green combat uniform with military boots."

Good read:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8289308.stm

[Judi Lynn]

1. Superior article. It needs a lot of exposure. Keeping this for files.

From the article:

"The devil came down the river wearing a green combat uniform with military boots."

Father Elkin's devil was a paramilitary group led by businessmen and landowners - and, to my astonishment and admiration, he was not afraid to say so, quite openly, to the BBC.

The right-wing paramilitaries said they were fighting left-wing rebels on behalf of the government. But the Catholic priest of Riosucio said the truth was rather different.

"These unscrupulous businessmen said they were fighting the rebels. But that was just their way getting into the area - their way of throwing the black population, and the other poor people around here, off their land," the priest said.

"Massacres started taking place - we don't know why or how. But they caused the black people and the other poor farmers to flee from their farms."

"The justification from the paramilitaries was that they had to chase the rebels but the result was the illegal expropriation of the peoples' farms by this group of unscrupulous businessmen," Father Elkin said.

'New slavery'

Some of the Afro-Colombians who fled their rural homes in the mid-1990s still live in the town of Riosucio. They are refugees in their own land.

Thanks for the good look at the truth we all know is there, rabs. Rec.

[roody]

2. Now much of that land is planted with African Palm or cleared

for cattle. All for export. The extremely rural roads are patrolled by the military.

[spanza]

3. Thanks for the article

:thumbsup:

[Judi Lynn]

4. Jaime Garzon murder was an AUC favor for Army Officers

Jaime Garzon murder was an AUC favor for Army Officers
Tuesday, 06 October 2009 10:10
Ashley Hamer

Former head of paramilitary organization AUC, Carlos Castaño, ordered the murder of Jaime Garzon at the specific request of senior military commanders, claimed ex-paramilitary chief 'El Aleman' on Monday.

Freddy Rendon Herrera, alias 'El Aleman', has brought the case back into the light ten years after the murder of the comedian Garzon with statements made yesterday to the prosecution in a Justice and Peace process.

According to Colombian media, 'El Aleman' declared that one of the 'Castaño Brothers', Vicente Castaño, had told him that Carlos Castaño had taken charge to order the killing of Garzon and that they had the support of some military leaders as well as important persons in Bogota. Castaño had allegedly been visited by important military personel in the lead up to the murder.

'El Aleman' also claimed that he met Jose Miguel Narvaez, the former deputy director of Colombian intelligence agency DAS, in 1997 in one of Carlos Castaño's paramilitary training schools. Narvaez is currently being investigated for his alleged implication in the killing of Garzon.

Though 'El Aleman' said he did not know whether Narvaez had been involved in the Garzon murder, he did state that the ex DAS deputy gave the AUC the addresses of journalists, NGO members and students who were thought to have links with FARC guerrillas.

"We took the addresses and names that he gave us because those people were leftist guerrillas infiltrating universities, NGO's and the media and they had to be killed" concluded 'El Aleman'.

http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/6263-jaime-garzon-murder-was-an-auc-favour-for-army-officers.html

[Judi Lynn]

5. L.A. Times to Colombia: Prosecute Corporate Supporters of Terrorism

L.A. Times to Colombia: Prosecute Corporate Supporters of Terrorism
Written by Leo W. Gerard, United Steelworkers International President
Wednesday, 07 October 2009

In an Oct. 1 editorial, the Los Angeles Times echoes the sentiment that the United Steelworkers union has been expressing for years -- corporate supporters of paramilitaries in Colombia who murder trade unionists must be held criminally accountable.

Specifically, the Los Angeles Times is applauding the order of a Colombian judge that top officials of the Alabama-based mining corporation, Drummond, be investigated as the intellectual authors of the brutal slayings of three union leaders in 2001.

As the Los Angeles Times opines:

"It is troubling . . . that when a defendant is convicted {in Colombia}, it is generally a hit man or low-level thug and almost never the mastermind or shot-caller who ordered a labor leader's murder. That's why it is significant that a judge in Colombia has asked the attorney general to launch a criminal investigation of top executives at Alabama-based Drummond Co., a multinational coal company."

The Los Angeles Times explains:

"at issue is whether Drummond executives collaborated with the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC in Spanish), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to murder union leaders organizing the Drummond coal mine in La Loma in 2001."

This issue arises in the context of an epidemic of anti-union violence in Colombia unprecedented in the world. As the Los Angeles Times notes:

"Colombia is the most dangerous place in the world to be a union organizer. In the last 17 years, more than 2,700 teachers, farmworkers, coal miners and other laborers have paid with their lives for seeking rights that Americans have long taken for granted, such as safe working conditions. During that same period, there were more than 4,000 reported death threats against labor leaders, 350 disappearances and kidnappings, and 75 cases of torture."

More:
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/2147/68/