-Caveat Lector-
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: RCA: Colombian 'assassination' attempt on Wellstone smells like ruse
Date: Fri, 1 Dec 2000 21:46:18 -0600 (CST)
From: Colombian Labor Monitor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: ?
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Resource Center of the Americas
Friday, December 1, 5 p.m.
www.americas.org
-------------------------------
COLOMBIAN 'ASSASSINATION' ATTEMPT ON WELLSTONE SMELLS LIKE RUSE
Traveling with senator, Pam Costain of Minneapolis calls for U.S. commitment
to peaceful solution to 40-year-old civil war
-------------------------------
After a regional Colombian police commander announced his officers had
foiled an attempted assassination of Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minnesota) and
U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson yesterday, officials retracted the story
today. The timing of yesterday's announcement, as government peace talks
with the area's leftist guerrillas reached a crucial stage, raised the
prospect the "assassination" attempt was a ruse intended to disrupt the
talks.
The Colombian National Police, in a written statement today, denied
any evidence two land mines discovered yesterday at 11 a.m. on a road near
the city of Barrancabermeja were targeting Wellstone and Patterson, due to
visit the city an hour later. "The police did not thwart any attempted
attack against the U.S. officials," the statement said.
Barrancabermeja, 155 miles north of Bogot�, the capital, is the site
of Colombia's largest oil refinery and is considered one of the nation's
most dangerous cities. Human rights groups, tallying more than 500 political
slayings in the area this year, blame most of the violence on rightist
paramilitary groups that work closely with the U.S.-backed Colombian army
and national police.
Wellstone's delegation included Pam Costain, executive director of
the Minneapolis-based nonprofit Resource Center of the Americas. Yesterday's
incident, she said by telephone this afternoon from Bogot�, "reflects the
militarization of this society and the violent reality that millions of
people live everyday."
"Senator Wellstone, one of three senators to oppose the U.S.
military aid, was here to promote peace, dialogue and respect for human
rights," she said, referring to a $1.3 billion U.S. package of mostly
military aid for Colombia that President Clinton signed into law July 13.
"Everyone we talked to is interested in finding a peaceful solution to the
conflict. And that's where the energy of the United States should go."
Costain flies home to Minneapolis tomorrow. She gives a public talk
about her five-day trip to Colombia on December 16 (see below).
The "assassination" attempt coincided with a report today by
Colombia's largest television network, Caracol, that the government and the
National Liberation Army (ELN), the area's most powerful guerrilla group,
were "on the verge" of a peace accord.
Bitterly opposed to any accord with the guerrillas are the area's
paramilitary groups, who work on behalf of cattle ranchers, drug
traffickers, transnational oil firms, mining companies and other vested
interests. Government tolerance of the paramilitaries is well known in the
area. On May 16, 1998, during a party on a Barrancabermeja soccer field, a
hooded group slaughtered a dozen people and hauled away dozens more in
trucks. Neither an army unit within earshot nor the National Police did
anything to pursue the killers.
Nationwide, paramilitaries committed 63 percent of the nation's 219
massacres last year, according to the Permanent Committee for Defense of
Human Rights in Colombia. A report last December by New York-based Human
Rights Watch blames three quarters of abuses on the paramilitaries, and a
February report by the group cites collaboration between the Colombian army
and the paramilitaries. Together, they are behind most of the 35,000
political slayings over the last decade.
Much of the paramilitary violence aims to clear away peasants from
land. As many as 40,000 Barrancabermeja area residents, most lacking titles
for their plots, have been displaced in recent years. About half of the
refugees have ended up in shacks on the outskirts of the city.
Paramilitaries also target organizers such as Workers Trade Union leader
Alvaro Remolina, who has called attention to the labor practices of Texaco
and Occidental, two U.S.-based oil firms in the area. On January 11 this
year, his nephew was murdered in a nearby town, while his brother and a
friend disappeared in another nearby town. He lost another brother to
assassins in 1996, and uniformed soldiers killed his sister-in-law last
July.
In the nearby San Lucas highlands, the site of rich gold deposits,
U.S. and Canadian conglomerates such as California-based Conquistador Mines
have been moving in over the last few years. Small, independent miners are
in the way. On April 25, 1997, according witnesses' written accounts,
paramilitaries entered the town of R�o Viejo, decapitated local miner Juan
Camacho, played soccer with his head, and mounted it on a stick.
Besides oil and gold, resources in the Barrancabermeja area include
fertile land, timber, platinum and precious stones. Nearly all of the wealth
from these resources leaves the area. Colombia's oil industry generates $3
billion a year in profits for the government oil company and firms such as
Occidental, Texaco and British-based BP Amoco. Yet more than 70 percent of
the area's 750,000 inhabitants live in poverty and nearly 40 percent are
unemployed, double the official nationwide rate. Making matters worse are
national policies that prioritize free trade over the welfare of small-scale
farmers. Without the tariffs, subsidies and credit necessary to sustain
legal crops, most area peasants have turned to growing coca, the shiny leaf
processed into cocaine.
Armed groups are constantly fighting for control of these producers.
The paramilitary groups exact taxes from growers and run the country's major
cocaine processing and trafficking facilities. The area has also seen
concerted activity by the ELN, which formed in 1964, inspired by the Cuban
revolution. Since then, the ELN has grown into the nation's second largest
rebel force. With as many as 6,000 combatants, it has targeted transnational
mining firms and the privatization of Colombia's energy sector. Hundreds of
ELN bombings have ruptured oil pipelines and disabled electricity pylons.
COSTAIN TO SPEAK AT DECEMBER 16 'COFFEEHOUR': On December 13, 1998,
explosions in the Colombian village of Santo Domingo, Arauca, killed 19
civilians, including seven children. Community leaders say the Colombian air
force targeted the village with missiles. The military, for its part, blames
the blasts on a guerrilla car bomb. The Colombian government has resisted
investigating the incident. At the request of Colombian human-rights
organizations, a tribunal convened in Chicago this fall to review the case
in accordance with international legal standards. The tribunal will issue
its verdict December 13, the bombing's second anniversary. Daniel de la
Pava, coordinator of the Colombia Support Network's Chicago chapter,
discusses the case and the spiraling violence of Colombia's U.S.- funded
war. Joining him, Resource Center executive director Pam Costain reports on
her November trip to Colombia on a delegation led by Sen. Paul Wellstone
that met with a variety of human rights organizations and political
representatives. After the discussion, Resource Center librarian Mary
Swenson dedicates the Resource Center of the Americas library in memory of
U.S. journalist Penny Lernoux, a voice for the poor who lived for years in
Bogot�, the Colombian capital. The event continues the Resource Center's
weekly "coffeehour" series. 10 a.m. Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 2730 31st
St. E., Minneapolis (around the corner from the Resource Center).
612-276-0788. www.americas.org.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Chip Mitchell, Editor
Connection to the Americas
AMERICAS.ORG (http://www.americas.org)
Resource Center of the Americas
3019 Minnehaha Ave.
Minneapolis, MN 55406
612-276-0788 (ext. 15)
612-276-0898 (fax)
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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