From: Jessica Sundin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Organization: University of Minnesota
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 16:50:08 -0600
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [CAN] Colombia News 1/17
Colombia Action Network http://www.freespeech.org/actioncolombia
Contact us at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To subscribe to this newslist, send a message to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
To help plan the Colombia Action Network Founding Conference (Chicago,
April 7 & 8), and other joint actions, subscribe to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
According to official sources, then, one hundred unarmed civilians have
been executed by death-squads backed by the Colombian military and
wealthy landowners in just the first 17 days of this year! At the same
times, Clinton stands ready to sign another waiver of human rights
requirements before he leaves office. This is a very important time to
be organizing in solidarity with the Colombian people, to STOP U.S. AID!
1. Upcoming CAN events
2. Clinton Likely to OK Colombian Aid 1/13
3. Gunmen burn homes, kill 22 in attack on northern village 1/17
4. Gringos protest Plan Colombia in Bogata 1/17
5. Rebels and paramilitaries fuel tensions in oil town 1/16
6. Guerrillas confirm they'll free captive soldiers and police 1/16
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Saturday, January 20, 2001: Anti-Inauguration Day events!
* New York Colombia Action Committee is headed to D.C. to join the
national protests. To get a ride & join their contingent, you can
contact them at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
* Minnesota's Anti-War Committee is hosting an Anti-Inaugural Ball,
which will include a DJ, dancing, hors d'ouvres, mocktail drinks, and
activist awards. Please join them at this event, and help inaugurate a
new year of resistance! 6:30 to 10pm at Todos los Santos Church, 610 W.
28th St., Minneapolis. $5 requested donation, no one turned away.
* Chicago's Colombia Solidarity Committee will host the world premier of
a video based on last summer's delegation of Colombia Action Network
activists to Colombia.
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Colombia Action Network
Founding Conference
April 7-8, 2001 ~ Chicago, Illinois
The conference will bring together activists from around the country to
learn from eachother & make joint action plans for the coming year. The
conference will include guest speakers who are activists from Colombia.
To get involved in conference planning, join the CAN activist list serve
by sending a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
________________________________________________________________
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Saturday, 13 January 2001
Clinton Likely to OK Colombian Aid
By Ken Guggenheim
WASHINGTON - Despite objections from human rights advocates, President
Clinton is expected to clear the way next week for the release of the
remaining money in a $1.3 billion Colombian anti-drug aid package.
``The president has supported Plan Colombia and you can expect that he
will continue to support Plan Colombia,'' said National Security Council
spokesman P.J. Crowley.
In a report issued Friday, human rights groups urged Clinton to block
the aid, saying Colombia has failed to meet any of the rights
requirements set out by Congress.
The groups fear that Clinton will invoke a national security waiver to
bypass the conditions - as he did in August when he allowed most of the
package's money to go through.
``We're pretty certain these conditions will be waived. That's the
message we've been hearing,'' said Andrew Miller of Amnesty
International, which issued the report together with Human Rights Watch
and the Washington Office on Latin America.
What's at stake is a relatively small part of the $1.3 billion package.
Rights groups estimate about $100 million is left. Neither Crowley nor
State Department officials could provide a precise figure.
Most of the package was for the last fiscal year, providing Colombia
with helicopters and other military equipment to fight leftist
guerrillas who partly finance their insurgency by protecting coca fields
and cocaine laboratories.
Because of concerns about Colombian army links to paramilitaries blamed
for most of the country's massacres, Congress set six conditions - five
related to human rights - that Colombia had to meet before the money
could be spent.
But Congress allowed the president to waive these conditions on national
security grounds. In August, Clinton waived five conditions and
certified only one: that Colombia's president has directed that soldiers
accused of rights violations be tried in civilian courts.
Miller and George Vickers, executive director of the Washington Office
on Latin America, said they expect one more condition will be certified:
the deployment of a judge advocate general corps to investigate military
misconduct. They expect the other conditions will be waived.
``It sends a p.r. message that will be played very widely in Colombia:
That the president of the United States says that they are making
progress in human rights concerns, when in fact nothing substantively
has changed and in fact some things have gotten worse,'' Vickers said.
Crowley said Clinton will act on the Colombian aid before his term ends
next Saturday, but he said no decision has been made about how he will
address the rights conditions.
On Thursday, two Democratic senators called on Clinton not to use the
waiver again.
``The Colombian military has still not taken the firm clear steps
necessary to remove human rights abusers from its ranks or to ensure
that its personnel are not linked to paramilitary organizations,'' Paul
Wellstone of Minnesota and Tom Harkin of Iowa said in a letter to
Clinton.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
________________________________________________________________
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Wednesday, 17 January 2001
Gunmen burn homes, kill 22 in attack on northern village
By Michael Easterbrook
BOGOTA -- Gunmen killed as many as 22 people in a village attack
Wednesday, setting homes on fire and sending villagers fleeing for
safety, police said.
Survivors told police some 50 suspected right-wing paramilitary gunmen
dressed in military uniforms dragged men from their homes and then shot
them.
Sucre police Col. Alexander Collazos said the gunmen converged on the
village of Changue in Sucre State, about 372 miles (600 kilometers)
north of the capital Bogota, early Wednesday.
The gunmen allegedly set fire to 80 percent of the houses in the
village, he said. Most of Changue's 1,200 residents deserted their
community after the attack.
Eyewitnesses told police the massacre appeared to be the work of
right-wing paramilitary gunmen, but police were still investigating,
Collazos said. The exact death toll would not be known until all the
bodies were recovered, he added.
A team from the International Red Cross was traveling to the region to
care for those who fled the village after the attack, police said.
Severing links between the army and the paramilitaries and curbing
right-wing violence are key conditions for Colombia to continue
receiving U.S. military aid and training under a dlrs 1.3 billion
counter-drug aid package.
Police say the landowner-backed right-wing militias this year have
killed about 100 people accused of sympathizing with leftist guerrilla
groups. Human rights groups say paramilitaries are responsible for the
majority of human rights abuses committed in Colombia.
The nation's largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, blamed army-paramilitary ties for its
unilateral freeze of peace negotiations in November.
Peace envoy Camilo Gomez and some six government peace negotiators were
meeting with FARC commanders on Wednesday to try to find a solution to
the impasse.
The FARC's aging commander and founder, Manuel ''Sureshot'' Marulanda,
said in an interview published Wednesday in the Communist newspaper
Voice that an agreement to resume negotiations was fast approaching.
''We are working to close in on the differences and studying the
possibility of resuming the dialogues,'' said Marulanda. ''Something
will come out of this.''
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
________________________________________________________________
COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR, www.prairienet.org/clm, Wednesday, 17 January
2001
Gringos protest Plan Colombia in Bogota
By Dennis Grammenos
A rare spectacle greeted drivers as they zoomed by one of the most
fortified complexes in the world.
A group of U.S. protestors were holding a demonstration in front of the
U.S. embassy in Bogota.
The peaceful protest was intended to denounce U.S. military aid to
Colombia, a country whose security forces has the worst human rights
record in the western hemisphere.
It was a diverse group of protestors that included professionals,
students and activist conncted with a number of U.S.-based peace and
human rights organizations.
As part of the protest, members of the group laid fruit and flowers in
front of the main gate to the fort-like embassy.
Prayers were accompanied by a press conference.
"We do not believe that helicopters will resolve the problem of poverty
in Colombia, nor the great problem of drug addiction in the United
States," said Witness for Peace representative Gail Phares.
Phares, an organizer of the demonstration, has a history of peace
activism that includes protesting against U.S. intervention in Central
America during the eighties, especially the assistance to the Nicaraguan
"contras."
This was the first protest by North Americans in front of the U.S.
embassy in Bogota, according to sources.
A wave of protests and other public events is expected in the U.S. in
the coming weeks, to draw attention to the role of the U.S. government
in escalating the conflict in Colombia.
Under the guise of fighting a "war on drugs," the U.S. has been arming
and training the Colombian military.
For its part, the Colombian military and the right-wing death-squads it
sponsors have been responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Unionists have been a major target for the assassins.
More than half of all unionists killed world-wide each year are killed
in Colombia.
Copyright 2001 Colombian Labor Monitor
________________________________________________________________
INTER PRESS SERVICE, Monday, 15 January 2001
Rebels and Paramilitaries Fuel Tensions in Oil Town
By Yadira Ferrer
BOGOTA - Human rights groups in Barrancabermeja, Colombia's leading oil
town, asked international observers Monday to help ensure their safety
as they work on behalf of victims of political violence there.
Representatives of the non-governmental Committee for Human Rights
(Credhos), who withheld their names for reasons of personal security,
reported they had contacted ambassadors from the European Union and
delegates from international human rights and aid groups to seek help in
facing threats from right-wing paramilitaries and leftist guerrillas.
Last year Credhos received 20 anonymous notes that warned against human
rights work and the group had to close its offices several times because
its staff was being intimidated.
A similar situation confronts government agencies, such as the Social
Solidarity Network, which is in charge of community assistance
programmes, and the Office of the People's Defender (ombudsman).
Marco Romero, a researcher at the state-run National University, told
IPS that these threats are part of the "logic of the regionalisation of
the war" that has been raging for decades in this country, involving
leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitaries and government forces - and
claiming an average of 25,000 lives each year.
The paramilitaries appropriated part of the area near Barrancabermeja,
in northeast Colombia, explained Romero, and the rebels took over
another, and both attack the human rights workers who are serving the
civilian population whenever the armed groups think the activists are
collaborating with the other side.
Members of the Social Solidarity Network, which provides food and aid to
the residents of Barrancabermeja neighbourhoods that happen to be
controlled by the guerrillas, have been threatened by paramilitaries who
claim the goods are ending up in the hands of the rebels.
The predominance of paramilitaries along the middle portion of the
Magdalena River, which crosses Colombia south to north, limits the
autonomy of residents of the area. Last year, they opposed the creation
of a demilitarised zone nearby to start up peace talks between the
government and the National Liberation Army (ELN), the nation's second
largest rebel force.
The potential for peace dialogue between representatives of civil
society, the Andr?s Pastrana government and the ELN, sparked the
intensification of armed conflict in Barrancabermeja, where 23
assassinations were committed in the last two weeks, according to
authorities.
The city is widely considered one of the most violent places in the
Americas.
Lawmaker Gustavo Petro, a former leader of M-19, an insurgent group
turned political party, commented that Barrancabermeja, with 600,000
inhabitants and an average of one homicide every 10 hours, is turning
into "the Colombian Sarajevo, where armed groups shoot without looking
and have the sole objective of fuelling terror."
Reports from government security forces indicate that last year some 400
assassinations were committed in Barrancabermeja, a number that would be
more in line with the world average for a city twice the size.
The ELN operates to the east of Barrancabermeja and has stepped up its
attacks on the petroleum and energy infrastructure in an attempt to
force the withdrawal of government troops from an area delineated for
carrying out what the guerrillas call a national convention, in which
they would draft a peace agenda with the input of civil society
representatives.
The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) - the country's
largest insurgent group - are also operating to the east of the city,
while in the central and southern areas, the paramilitary United
Self-Defence of Colombia (AUC) predominate, attacking civilians thought
to be collaborating with the guerrillas.
This oil town is also used as a "bridge" by the drug traffickers
protected by the AUC, who process the paste from coca leaves (to later
be made into cocaine) in Puerto Boyac?, on the Magdalena River.
Colombia's oil-drilling history began in the 1920s in Barrancabermeja,
and currently the area provides nearly 8,000 of the 700,000 barrels of
crude produced in the country daily.
The expansion of the petroleum industry there, and the fact that the
city is home to Colombia's leading oil refinery, is what attracted the
armed groups to the area, according to political observers.
President Pastrana, in response to the rising violence, met last Friday
with the Security Council, made up of government ministers and military
organisations, to adopt measures for defending the local population,
reported Interior minister, Humberto de la Calle.
The official announced an increase in the number of army troops and
police officers stationed in Barrancabermeja, restrictions on carrying
weapons, monitoring of the entry of people and vehicles into the city, a
temporary curfew and strict controls on movements for members of the
security forces.
One of the top complaints of human rights groups in the area is that a
leading cause of violence is the attitude of the armed forces, which
have facilitated - by inaction or omission - the advance of the
paramilitaries, who are responsible for 80 percent of the massacres
perpetrated in and around the city, according to several reports.
Copyright 2001 IPS
________________________________________________________________
ASSOCIATED PRESS, Tuesday, 16 January 2001
Guerrillas confirm they'll free captive soldiers and police
BOGOTA -- Colombia's largest guerrilla group has said it plans to free a
group of soldiers and policemen captured in combat, a move that could
revive the country's moribund peace process.
The prisoner release would be a ''unilateral act to strengthen the peace
negotiations,'' said Raul Reyes, spokesman for the Revolutionary Armed
Forces of Colombia, or FARC, in remarks posted Monday on a Web site.
Reyes did not say how many security force members the group planned to
free out of the roughly 500 it held. He said the release would take
place about 10 days after an exchange of sick prisoners the group is
currently negotiating with the government of President Andres Pastrana.
Local media reports last week citing unnamed FARC sources indicated the
group planned to release between 100 and 150 troops and police. Some of
the prisoners have been in rebel captivity for years in open-air jungle
pens.
Reyes' comments to the Stockholm-based New Colombia News Agency
contradicted statements Monday by mothers and wives of the captives. The
relatives said FARC had told them they had no plans to release prisoners
unilaterally.
A large FARC prisoner release could shore up flagging public support for
Pastrana's efforts to negotiate with the rebels.
Talks have yielded little since they began two years ago. They were
suspended by FARC in November and the rebels demanded Pastrana crack
down on right-wing paramilitaries who massacre suspected leftists.
But Pastrana is demanding guerrilla concessions before Jan. 31, when he
must decide whether to extend FARC control over a territory in southern
Colombia, twice the size of Switzerland, where peace talks have been
held.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
_________________________________________________
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