----- Original Message -----
From: Pakito Arriaran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 3:35 PM
Subject: [MLL] Weekly News Update on Colombia #549, 8/6/00
WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #549, AUGUST 6, 2000
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
(212) 674-9499 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*3. COLOMBIAN STATE WORKERS STRIKE
Colombia's 700,000 state employees staged a 24-hour strike on
Aug. 3 to protest the government's neoliberal economic policies,
which have provoked the country's worst recession in nearly 100
years--the economy shrank 4.48% during 1999--and an urban
unemployment rate of 20.4%, the highest in Latin America.
"This is a protest strike, it's a political strike, to call the
Colombian people's attention to the need to tell the government
that we are not inclined to keep carrying the rich people of this
country on our shoulders," said Wilson Borja, president of the
National Federation of State Service Workers (FENALTRASE). Julio
Roberto Gomez, president of the General Confederation of
Democratic Workers, said about 80% of state workers participated
in the strike. [CNN en Espanol 8/3/00 from Reuters; El Tiempo
(Bogota) 8/4/00; El Pais (Cali) 8/4/00]
Strikers marched in most of Colombia's cities and set up
roadblocks in many areas, causing traffic congestion. In Popayan,
demonstrators clashed with police after the mayor barred the
marchers from passing through Caldas park. Twenty people were
hurt, including 12 riot police agents--one of them injured
seriously--and 50 people were arrested. In Cali, Colombia's third
biggest city, demonstrators clashed with police during an
afternoon march to the center of the city. In Pasto, members of
the indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities staged a
march against "Plan Colombia"--the government's US-backed
counterinsurgency and drug eradication program--and to demand a
serious agrarian reform program and an end to the spraying of
herbicides on drug crops. [ET 8/4/00; EP 8/4/00]
*4. COLOMBIA: OFFICERS CHARGED IN MASSACRE
On July 27, the Colombian Attorney General's Office brought
formal charges against three high-level active-duty army
officers--two generals and a colonel--and two retired generals
for failing to take adequate measures to prevent a May 4, 1998
paramilitary massacre of at least 18 civilians in the village of
Puerto Alvira, in Mapiripan municipality, Meta department [see
Update #432].
Charges were brought against Gen. Jaime Humberto Cortes Parada,
currently the army's inspector general; Gen. Freddy Padilla Leon,
commander of the army's 2nd Division; Col. Gustavo Sanchez
Gutierrez, deputy director of the army's personnel department;
retired brigadier general Jaime Humberto Uscategui Ramirez; and
retired major general Agustin Ardila Uribe. Cortes and Ardila
commanded the army's 4th Division around the time of the
massacre, while Uscategui and Padilla headed the 7th Brigade.
Sanchez was commander of the Joaquin Paris Battalion, operating
in nearby San Jose del Guaviare, in Guaviare department. [El
Tiempo 7/28/00; El Colombiano (Medellin) 7/28/00]
During the eight months prior to the massacre, residents of
Puerto Alvira repeatedly complained to government officials that
paramilitaries were operating in the area and were threatening to
kill them. Beginning in October 1997, Defender of the People Jose
Fernando Castro Caicedo sent 25 urgent messages to the Armed
Forces, based on reports from the Meta regional defender's
office, urging the military to protect the residents of Puerto
Alvira. The messages were sent to the president, defense
minister, commanders of the armed forces and army, as well as to
the commanders of the 4th Division, the 7th Brigade, and the
Joaquin Paris Battalion. Investigators for the attorney general's
office found abundant evidence in daily log books that military
commanders in the zone were well aware of the situation.
Uscategui says he can't be held responsible, since he left his
post as commander of the 7th Brigade at the beginning of 1998,
four months before the massacre. Padilla, who replaced him in the
post, says he ordered units under his command to take care of the
situation. Padilla's immediate superiors, Ardila and Cortes, say
the same thing. Investigators found that Ardila did issue an
order, with dates and timelines, for an operation to protect
Puerto Alvira. But Uscategui ignored the order, they say, and
Ardila never followed up on it. [EC 7/31/00]
The attorney general's office has also charged six
paramilitaries, including United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
(AUC) commander Carlos Castano Gil, with direct responsibility
for the Puerto Alvira massacre. Only one of them, John Tovar
Jaramillo, is in custody. [EC 7/31/00]
According to Aug. 1 press reports, Uscategui and another officer,
Lt. Col. Hernan Orozco Castro, have been ordered arrested by a
military court to face charges in connection with a July 1997
massacre in Mapiripan, in which some 30 people were murdered. The
reports cited military sources saying that Uscategui is accused
of "homicide, breach of trust by omission and falsification of
documents" for his failure to send troops to the region after a
local judge warned authorities about the presence of paramilitary
groups. Uscategui had already been arrested for the 1997 massacre
by order of the attorney general's office, but his case had
passed into the jurisdiction of the military courts, which had
granted him conditional release. [EC 8/1/00; El Diario-La Prensa
8/1/00 from EFE]
=======================================================================
Weekly News Update on the Americas * Nicaragua Solidarity Network of NY
339 Lafayette St, New York, NY 10012 * 212-674-9499 fax: 212-674-9139
http://home.earthlink.net/~dbwilson/wnuhome.html * [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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