Caritas urges protection after Colombia threats

[Judi Lynn]

Caritas urges protection after Colombia threats
03 May 2010

Caritas calls on the Colombian Government to guarantee safety to people carrying out humanitarian work following threats to humanitarian organisations working in Colombia.

The armed group Rastrojos-Urban Commandos have declared people who work for humanitarian organisations and those who defend human rights to be permanent military targets in southern Colombia.

“While there have been improvements in the situation in Colombia there have also been worrying signs recently regarding the rearming of paramilitary groups,” says Msgr Hector Fabio Henao, director of Caritas Colombia.

“This along with renewed activities by the FARC (left-wing guerrilla group) over the past few months and extra-judicial killings causes us great concern.”

Caritas in Tumaco has been specifically threatened by the group. Sr Yolanda Cerón, head of Caritas Tumaco, was assassinated in 2001 after speaking out against paramilitary groups. Caritas aid worker was killed in the area two years ago. Caritas Colombia also says that a missionary was recently killed in the northern town of Tierralta.

More:
http://www.caritas.org/newsroom/press_releases/PressRelease03_05_10.html

My god, are they ever barking up the wrong tree. The truth is there is NO ONE who will help them once the military-connected criminal narcokillers are out to get them. What a profound shame. They are acting as if an appeal for haven from professional terrorists will be respected. We ALL know better.

Our own tax dollars are probably paying the salaries of these sub-human assassins, passed to them from the enormous LOAD of US tax dollars being poured into Colombia constantly, leaving Colombia the U.S. taxpayers' 2nd largest foreign aid recipient, 2nd only to Israel.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Other threats from these same murderous a-holes:"Los Rastrojos sends threats to NGOs and senators"

Los Rastrojos sends threats to NGOs and senators
Wednesday, 21 April 2010 08:02 Camilla Pease-Watkin

One of Colombia's most notorious drug-trafficking gangs "Los Rastrojos" sent threatening emails and letters to over 60 non-governmental organizations (NGOs), senators and human rights activists, Colombian human rights NGO the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) said Tuesday.

CODHES said that along with its own members, groups such as the United Nations Development Program, as well as Colombian Senators Alexander Lopez, Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, and Jorge Enrique Robledo, have received threatening messages from the criminal gang.

Trade unionists and displaced citizens were also targeted.

The threats warn recipients to "leave behind subversive, archaic discussion which favors the rights and ideologies of the 'narcoterrorists,' from the FARC and ELN to all their accomplices from the past and present."

It went on, "we reserve out right to fight for a country free of scum like you, the only thing you do is to deceive the people, teaching them communist doctrines."

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/9266-los-rastrojos-sends-threats-to-ngos-and-senators.html

[Peace Patriot]

2. Amnesty International says that 92% of the murders of union leaders in Colombia

have been committed by the COLOMBIAN MILITARY (about half) and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads (the other half). Only 2% are attributed to the FARC guerrillas (which AI says were collaborators with the military). (The rest were ordinary murders of the street crime variety.) A recent UN report gives similar statistics on extrajudicial murders overall (union leaders and all others). The vast majority of the murders of union leaders, human rights workers, teachers and other community organizers, journalists, peasant farmers and others are committed by the AUTHORITIES and their death squads.

Caritas may not be in a position to say so, since they have personnel doing humanitarian work in Colombia on a daily basis, and may feel that they have a better handle on getting protection for them by blaming the deaths on the rightwing death squads and the guerrillas. But the facts overwhelmingly indicate that the government IS the problem--a government propped up by $7 BILLION in U.S. military aid. The purpose of that aid is to create a U.S. client state, cleansed of political leftists and bothersome advocates of the poor, with a population of landless peasants desperate for work (3 to 4 MILLION deliberately displaced campesinos in Colombia)--the ideal country in which to implement "free trade for the rich" as well as using the Colombian military as a front for U.S. aggression in the region.

I wish Caritas would speak more honestly about this, but I understand why they have to be careful. The CIA and its local operatives in Latin America have no compunction about killing priests, nuns and archbishops. They did so during the Reagan horrors on the 1980s and those policies of targeted assassination and genocide have made a comeback, and are grossly evident in Colombia and now in Honduras.

A recently discovered mass grave in La Macarena, Colombia, contains up to 2,000 bodies, with grave dates (but no names) from 2003 through 2009. The mass grave is very nearby to a U.S. military base, in a region of special interest and activity by the U.S. military and the USAID. The Colombian military claims that the bodies are of FARC guerrillas (as if that justifies dumping bodies into a mass grave!). Local people say that the bodies are those of local 'disappeared' community activists. I have the suspicion that the U.S. military has not only been encouraging the murder of community activists in Colombia but has been participating in it--possibly even as "turkey shoot" practice for Afghanistan. (The tactics for subduing local opposition to U.S.-imposed government laid out in the U.S.-generated plan for the "pacification" of La Macarena are very similar to U.S. tactics currently employed in Afghanistan.)

The recently signed U.S./Colombia military agreement contains provision for at least SEVEN U.S. military bases in Colombia, U.S. military use of ALL civilian airports and other infrastructure and full diplomatic immunity for all U.S. soldiers and U.S. 'contractors.' Those trying to sell this U.S./Colombia agreement have stated that it merely formalizes existing arrangements. And you've got to wonder about that. Why did the U.S. need an official signature on an immunity document? And how is it that the U.S. has created SEVEN U.S. military bases in Colombia without Congressional approval and with the people of the U.S., who are paying for it, and in whose name these activities are occurring, never having been informed?

In any case, the highly suspicious circumstances around the signing of this agreement--secretly negotiated and recently signed by the Bush Junta-appointed ambassador to Colombia--point to devious purposes, and retroactive immunity for crimes committed may be one of them. A vast expansion of the U.S. military into Latin America (especially in areas proximate to Venezuela's oil coast and northern oil provinces) is obviously another purpose of this agreement. And we have yet to see the full cost of this expansion--in dollars and in lives--even while millions of Americans suffer homelessness and joblessness, and our educational systems and other common good efforts are ravaged by "cutbacks." WHAT is the militarization of Colombia, including the reactivation of its rightwing death squads, FOR? The reason may be seen in aerial photographs of that stuff pouring out of the BP well and heading for Florida's beaches.

Caritas workers are not threatened and killed with impunity in the U.S. client state of Colombia for no reason.

[Judi Lynn]

3. So sad, so true. It's a complete nightmare for peaceful people.

The ability of the U.S. to secure immunity for ALL gov't personel there, not expecting them to behave as conscientious people toward the Colombian citizens is appalling. I've heard already of U.S. sexual attacks on young Colombian girls, and we all have heard of the soldiers' trafficking drugs, and weapons in the last few years.

As long as they can keep a fascist government in control of the people of Colombia, rather than working FOR the people of Colombia there's not a chance this dreadful ongoing crime against humanity can be reversed.