WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #550, AUGUST 13, 2000
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
(212) 674-9499 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*10. COLOMBIA: MORE PARAMILITARY MASSACRES, ARMY COMPLICITY?
Paramilitaries murdered eight people, one of them a 17-year old
girl, on Aug. 7 in a rural area of Sardinata, Norte de Santander
department. [Hoy (NY) 8/8/00 from AP, EFE] At least nine more
people were found murdered and four others disappeared by
paramilitaries on Aug. 8 in the municipalities of Villanueva,
near Cartagena in Bolivar department; and San Diego, Cesar
department. In San Diego, the four massacre victims were
apparently killed with machetes, and had been decapitated and
skinned. Villanueva mayor Marco Mendoza said the killers left the
letters "AUC"--the acronym for the paramilitary organization
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia--painted around the farm
where the bodies were found. [El Pais (Cali) 8/9/00 from EFE,
Colprensa; Hoy 8/9/00 from AP, EFE] Another six people were
massacred by paramilitaries in Los Brasiles, on Colombia's
Atlantic coast. [Hoy 8/10/00 from AP]
An international humanitarian observer mission has released a
report detailing the alleged collaboration of the Colombian
military in AUC massacres that left 20 people dead on June 20 and
23 in the village of Sabaletas and other areas of Buenaventura
and Dagua municipalities, Valle del Cauca department. The report
was signed by 140 nongovernmental organizations. "How can it be
explained," the report asks, "with the main points of access to
Sabaletas guarded by the Army and members of the Second Marine
Infantry Brigade, that more than 80 armed men wearing uniforms
designated for the exclusive use by the Military Forces could
have entered in four vehicles, and no one saw anything?" [EP
8/10/00] Both the AUC and the leftist rebel Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia (FARC) say that businesspeople in the Pacific
port city of Buenaventura are financing an AUC unit there known
as the "Pacific Bloc." [EP 8/11/00]
Meanwhile, 83 members of the US Special Forces have begun
training soliders from a Colombian "anti-drug" battalion at
Larandia military base in the Amazon jungle in southeastern
Colombia, as part of the $1.3 billion US aid package approved by
the US Congress in late June and signed by US president Bill
Clinton on July 13 [see Update #546]. [Washington Post 8/9/00]
Representatives of human rights organizations including Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch met with officials from the
US State Department during the week of Aug. 7 to discuss the
"certification" process provided for in the aid bill, which
allows some aid to be suspended if certain human rights
conditions are not met in Colombia. [El Tiempo (Bogota) 8/10/00]
*11. COLOMBIA: PARAMILITARY LEADER SAYS US SOUGHT HIS HELP
In a two-hour interview with RCN television on Aug. 9, AUC leader
Carlos Castano claimed to have received a message from US anti-
drug agents, via one of his collaborators, requesting his help in
wiping out the drug trade by forcing Colombian drug traffickers
to surrender to US justice. Castano rejected suggestions that US
officials had offered him money or weapons in exchange for his
help. US authorities including the DEA have accused Castano's
paramilitary forces of smuggling cocaine and heroin and using the
proceeds to fund their operations. Castano has admitted receiving
contributions from drug lords but insisted he is "an enemy of
drugs."
The Castano interview coincided with a visit to Colombia's
Caribbean coast resort of Cartagena by a high-level US delegation
including US Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering and the
director of the White House Office of Drug Control Policy,
retired general Barry McCaffrey. Clinton is due to make a one-day
visit to Cartagena on Aug. 30, the first visit to Colombia by a
US president since George Bush went there in 1990. [Reuters
8/10/00]
*12. COLOMBIA: U'WA AT LOS ANGELES CONVENTION PROTESTS
A group of elders from the indigenous U'wa tribe of Colombia will
lead an Aug. 14 march to protest the US Democratic National
Convention (DNC) in Los Angeles, California. The U'wa have been
fighting the efforts of Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum
(Oxy) to drill on their traditional lands. Al Gore, whose father
was a vice president and board member of Occidental, owns at
least $500,000 in the company's stock. Environmentalists have
lobbied Gore to divest or to pressure Occidental to abandon the
project. Instead, as the left-liberal journal The Nation reports,
the Clinton administration "has been quietly helping the company-
-a generous donor to the Democrats in recent years--to win
support in Colombia for its drilling plans." [San Francisco Bay
Guardian 8/9/00]
As of Aug. 9, Occidental officially suspended crude oil
production at its Cano Limon field in eastern Colombia because of
attacks by Colombian leftist rebel groups on the Cano Limon-
Covenas pipeline. Oxy announced that it couldn't meet oil
delivery contracts, invoking a contract clause that allows it to
renege on commitments due to circumstances beyond its control.
Production was halted on July 23 following a series of attacks by
the National Liberation Army (ELN). The previous time Oxy invoked
the contract clause was in June 1998. [Miami Herald 8/10/00 from
Bloomberg News; El Colombiano (Medellin) 8/10/00 from Colprensa]
=======================================================================
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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