Attack on Peace Community in Colombia
February 2008 By Teo Ballvé
Last July, two armed men in uniform identifying themselves as Black Eagle paramilitaries stopped a vehicle traveling to the small town of San José de Apartadó in northwest Colombia. They forced Dairo Torres from the car at gunpoint and told the driver to be on his way. Minutes later another car passed and discovered Torres's lifeless body. He had been shot at close range.
Torres was a leader of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, which is made up of several hundred families who were forced to flee their lands. When it was founded in 1997, the Peace Community declared its neutrality in Colombia's long-running internal conflict. This meant that the entry of armed actors into the community, including the state security forces, was forbidden. Another key principle was that community members refuse any direct or indirect assistance to the armed groups.
In recent years, the Peace Community, now numbering almost 1,300 people, has been organizing to recover lands its members were forced to leave. With a return by community members to the hamlet of Mulatos planned for February 2008, para- militaries are once again on the rampage, while the army and police continue abetting the repression—in many cases, as active participants.
On the ten-year anniversary of the Peace Community, campesinos and supporters gather to honor those assassinated by the paramilitaries—photo from www.cdpsanjose.org
Torres was the fourth leader of the community killed in the last two years. In one month alone, two sympathetic neighbors of the community were also murdered—one by the army and the other by paramilitaries, according to a statement released by the community.
A recent legal study published by the Law School of the Autonomous University of Colombia found that in its 10-year history not one of the more than 600 crimes registered—including murders or disappearances— has ended in a conviction. In fact, few have even gone to trial. "You come face to face with the perversity of justice in this country, because the mechanisms of impunity operate in both directions: they not only declare the guilty innocent, but they also declare the innocent guilty," says community leader Milton Barrera.
Indeed, the government often accuses the community of harboring guerrilla sympathies and even of being a guerrilla hotbed, despite the fact that out of the 168 violent deaths endured by the community about 25 were at the hands of guerrillas. The legal study attributes the remainder to paramilitaries and the military.
More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/zmag/viewArticle/16309~~~~~~~~~Colombia: Peace community members return home three years after massacre
Posted: 20 February 2008
Amnesty International today urged the Colombian government and armed groups involved in the country's internal conflict to respect the right of members of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó to return to the Mulatos hamlet in safety, three years after a massacre on 21 February 2005 forced some of them off their land.
Amnesty International's Americas Programme Director, Susan Lee said:
'People across Colombia are being forced into a conflict that has killed or forcibly disappeared tens of thousands of civilians and displaced millions more. The Colombian government must ensure that the right of the civilian population not to be involved in this deadly conflict is protected.'
'We are extremely worried about the safety of the men, women and children going back to Mulatos particularly because of the abuses committed precisely when the community has in the past tried to resettle abandoned areas of land.'
The hamlet of Mulatos is part of the San José de Apartadó Peace Community, located in the department of Antioquia, northwest Colombia. Over the last decade, the Peace Community has urged all combatants to respect their right not to be drawn into the conflict. Since its creation in 1997, more than 160 of its members have been killed or forcibly disappeared, most at the hands of army-backed paramilitaries and the security forces, but also the guerrilla.
On 21 February 2005, eight members of the Peace Community, including a prominent leader, Luis Eduardo Guerra, three children aged 2, 6 and 11, and a 17 year-old woman, were killed and their bodies mutilated. Some of the killings took place in the Mulatos area.
Judicial investigations suggest the killings were carried out by the security forces in coordination with paramilitaries, despite efforts by the Colombian authorities to attribute the massacre to the guerrilla.
More:
http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=17662 ~~~~~~~~~Massacre in Colombian Peace Community
Once again, the trail of blood leads to the SOA:
SOA graduate commands accused brigade
"We have always said, and in that we are clear, that until this very day we are resisting. And our work is to continue resisting and defending our rights. We don't know until when, because the truth we've lived in our story is this: today we are here talking; tomorrow we may be dead. Today we are here in San Jose de Apartado; tomorrow the majority of people here could be displaced because of a massacre." -- Luis Eduardo Guerra, in an interview on January 15 of this year, 37 days before he was assassinated by the Colombian military
On February 21-22, 2005, eight members of the San Jose de Apartado Peace Community in Uraba, Colombia -including three young children, were brutally massacred. Witnesses identified the killers as members of the Colombian military, and peace community members saw the army's 17th and 11th Brigades in the area around the time of the murders.
Among those killed was Luis Eduardo Guerra, an internationally recognized peace activist and a co-founder of the Peace Community. In November 2002, Luis travelled from Colombia to Fort Benning, Georgia to speak out against the School of the Americas and to give a first hand testimony about the brutal impact that SOA training and US foreign policy have on the dire situation in Colombia.
General Hector Jaime Fandino Rincon is the commander of the 17th Brigade of the Colombian army. Like Luis Eduardo, Fandino Rincon also travelled to the School of the Americas -- not to speak out for justice and peace like Luis, but to attend the "Small-Unit Infantry Tactics" course in order to become "familiar with small-unit operational concepts and principles at the squad and platoon level, receive training in planning and conducting small-unit tactical operations." Fandino Rincon is a 1976 graduate of the notorious School of the Americas. In December of 2004 he was promoted to the rank of Brigadier General.
Since the massacre, the Colombian administration of Alvaro Uribe has done little to investigate the murders. No investigation into the military or the 17th or 11th Brigade has begun. All the focus now of the government agencies intervening in the situation is to force the community members to testify at risk of their lives' instead of focusing on the military that was in the area at the time of the murders.
~snip~
The Peace Community writes:
"In this context, it is important to understand the Army-paramilitary strategy to clear villages and take control of the land. First come the indiscriminate bombings and then the operations in which they eliminate everything they come across: animals, crops, homes and, as the most recent events show, entire families. But there is no doubt that the strategy is working: just two weeks ago we pointed out that as a result of these operations in Mulatos and Resbalosa, only 10 families remained, and now nine of them have been displaced to San Jose."
Many of the Colombian officers cited as responsible for massacres and other human rights abuses graduated from the SOA, and the strategy of using paramilitary groups for the military's dirty work is nothing new for SOA/ WHINSEC students. Roberto D'Aubussoin established the Death Squads that were responsible for much of the violence in El Salvador in the 1980's, and Benedicto Lucas Garcia masterminded the creation of the Civil Defense Patrols in Guatemala. Mexico's Jose Ruben Rivas Pena, who took the SOA's elite Command and Staff Course, called for the "training and support for self-defence forces or other paramilitary organizations in Chiapas."
~snip~
The Colombian conflict is rooted in social inequalities. Between 60 and 68 percent of the population are currently living at or below the poverty line. The Bush administration's military approach has remained at the forefront of their failing strategy to "solve" the problem. The SOA-style repression that is killing thousands every year is supposed to maintain the status quo - to keep the rich powerful and the poor silent. More:
http://www.soaw.org/article.php?id=1024 ~~~~~~~~~
http://4.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_harpqh_9IwQ/Se4rkoRZVRI/AAAAAAAAAk0/5cBTyIvWivA/s320/rai+5.jpgThis vivid, intense easy-to-grasp image was available in an article posted by DU'er dcsmart. It's worth far more than a thousand words:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x14383~~~~~~~~~Colombia: army colonel admits participation in Peace Community massacre
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Sat, 08/02/2008 - 20:15.
Retired Colombian army colonel Guillermo Armando Gordillo confessed to the Fiscalía (attorney general) his participation in the slaying of eight people, including three children, at the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó on Feb. 21, 2005. The Fiscalía said Col. Gordillo was in command of the Bolívar Company, Vélez Battalion, 17th Brigade, which was carrying out a counterinsurgency operation code-named "Fénix" in the area. The massacre was carried out by a "joint command" of Col. Gordillo's troops and paramilitaries, the Fiscalía found. (Radio Caracol, Aug. 2; El Tiempo, Bogotá, Aug. 1)
http://ww4report.com/node/5841 ~~~~~~~~~Colombia: Massacres by US Backed Death Squad Government Exposed, Again
topic posted Tue, April 1, 2008
Translation By: Colombia Human Rights Committee (Washington)
March 27, 2008
For the Office of the Attorney General (the "Fiscalía") it is clear that the action at San José de Apartadó sought to impose fear and terror in the civilians of that community.
The decision was provoked by the testimony of Jorge Luis Salgado, a former paramilitary who accused the soldiers of assassinating, in association with the AUC, the three children and eight adults.
"The children were under the bed. The girl was very nice, 5 or 6 years old, and the little boy was also a curious little one.... We proposed to the commanders to leave them in a neighboring home, but they said that they were a threat, that they would become guerrillas in the future.... 'Cobra' grabbed the girl by the hair and ran the machete through her throat," Salgado, a native of Carepa (Antioquia), told the authorities last January 30. The massacre in the peace community occurred on February 21, 2005.
That day, the mutilated and decapitated bodies were left in the middle of the jungle and in have-covered graves. All the victims were members of a group that declared itself neutral in the Colombian armed conflict, and who had been zealously requesting special protection.
Though at first testimony indicated that the persons responsible for these deeds were members of the 17th Army Brigade and men under the command of Diego Murillo, 'Don Berna,' this is the first time that someone who was in the ranks of the executioners has told the story.
"None of us knew where we were arriving at, we only knew that we had to go to the hamlet La Resbalosa and go through the area accompanied by the Army," stated the former paramilitary.
Three second lieutenants involved
His testimony just precipitated several important decisions in this emblematic case that has already come before international courts. .
Twelve days ago, the Fiscalía send a communication to the commander of the Army, Gen. Mario Montoya, in which it asks him to order the appropriate persons to arrest 15 active-duty members of that armed body who in 2005 were assigned to the area where the facts unfolded. In the letter, the Fiscalía notes that initially the members of the Army will give sworn statements.
But one of the investigators assured EL TIEMPO that their arrest was ordered "because there are sufficient indicia to presume their responsibility in the events in Apartadó." The list that Gen. Montoya received includes three second lieutenants, four sergeants, and eight corporals.
Already in November 2007, Army Capt. Guillermo Armando Gordillo Sánchez was arrested in connection with these same facts. The officer, mentioned several times in the record, opted to remain silent throughout the sworn statement taken from him a few months ago.
More:
http://ww4report.com/node/5841 ~~~~~~~~~No room for sentimental sweetness here, like that "pie in the sky" gesture by true monster, the US right-wing, and fundie Christian ghoul, Guatemala's President Efraín Ríos Montt, when he offered "guns and beans" ("If you are with us, we'll feed you, if not, we'll kill you."):
GENERAL EFRAIN RIOS MONTT
President of Guatemala
"A Christian has to walk around with his Bible and his machine gun", said born-again General Efrain Rios Montt, military ruler of Guatemala from March 1982 to August 1983. Rios Montt was one in a long series of dictators who ran Guatemala after the Dulles brothers and United Fruit, backed by the CIA, decided that democratically-elected President Jacobo Arbenz was too reform-minded. And so, they overthrew the country's constitutional democracy in 1954. The succession of corrupt military dictators ruled Guatemala for over 30 years, one anti-communist tyrant after another receiving U.S. support, aid, and training. After the 1982 coup that brought Rios Montt to power, the U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala said "Guatemala has come out of the darkness and into the light". President Reagan claimed Rios Montt was given "a bum rap" by human rights groups, and that he was cleaning up problems inherited from his predecessor, General Romeo Lucas Garcia. Ironically, Garcia had given $500,000 to Reagan's 1980 campaign, and his henchman, Mario Sandoval Alarcon, the 'Godfather' of Central American death squads, was a guest at Reagan's first inaugural celebration. Sandoval proudly calls his National Liberation Movement " the party of organized violence". Montt simply moved Garcia's dirty war from urban centers to the countryside where "the spirit of the lord" guided him against "communist subversives', mostly indigenous Indians. As many as 10,000 Indians were killed and over 100,000 fled to Mexico as a result of Rios Montt's "Christian" campaign.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/dictators.html~~~~~~~~~'Frijoles y Fusiles'
On June 9, the other two members of the junta were forced to resign, leaving Ríos Montt as the sole leader, head of the armed forces, and minister of defense. Violence escalated in the countryside, with the massacres becoming much more generalized in a campaign known as frijoles y fusiles (beans and guns). This was an attempt by Ríos Montt to win over the large indigenous population to his version of the rule of the law, unleashing a scorched earth campaign on the nation's Mayan population, particularly in the departments of Quiché and Huehuetenango, that, according to the United Nations truth commission, resulted in the annihilation of nearly 600 villages. One example was the Plan de Sánchez massacre in Rabinal, Baja Verapaz, in July 1982, which saw over 250 people killed. The administration established special military courts that had the power to impose death penalties against suspected guerrillas. Tens of thousands of peasant farmers fled over the border into southern Mexico. Meanwhile, urban areas saw a period of relative calm. The June 1982 amnesty for political prisoners was replaced by a state of siege that limited the activities of political parties and labor unions under the threat of death by firing squad.
In 1982, an Amnesty International report estimated that over 10,000 indigenous Guatemalans and peasant farmers were killed from March to July of that year, and that 100,000 rural villagers were forced to flee their homes. According to more recent estimates, tens of thousands of non-combatants were killed by the regime's death squads in the subsequent eighteen months. Based on the number of people killed per capita, Ríos Montt was probably the most violent dictator in Latin America's recent history, more so than even other notorious dictators such as Chile's Augusto Pinochet, Argentina's Jorge Rafael Videla, and Bolivia's Hugo Banzer.
U.S. backing
Given Ríos Montt's staunch anticommunism and ties to the United States, the Reagan administration continued to support the general and his regime, paying a visit to Guatemala City in December 1982. <5> During a meeting with Ríos Montt on December 4, Reagan declared: "President Ríos Montt is a man of great personal integrity and commitment. ... I know he wants to improve the quality of life for all Guatemalans and to promote social justice."1
Reagan later agreed, in January 1983, to sell Guatemala millions of dollars worth of helicopter spare parts, a decision that did not require approval from Congress. In turn, Guatemala was eager to resurrect the Central American Defense Council, defunct since 1969, to join forces with the right-wing governments of El Salvador and Honduras in retaliations against the leftist Sandinista government of Nicaragua.
More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efra%C3%ADn_R%C3%ADos_Montt
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