From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply-To: "STOP NATO: ¡NO PASARAN!" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2001 22:20:56 -0700
From: Hayduke Rocks! <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [ColoVig] AP: Colombian Paramilitaries Take War To City
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Reply To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[NOTE: Colonel Villar is well aware who the paramilitaries are,
since some of them are actually his own men. Indeed, often times
people are afraid to testify against paramilitaries, simply
because they see them at the police stations and the police
roadblocks. -DG]
================================================
''I could go into a neighborhood where 20 guys
are playing soccer and they all might be para-
militaries, but I can't arrest them if residents
are too afraid to testify against them,'' said
Barranca's police commander, Col. Jose Miguel
Villar.
___________ ================================================
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sunday, 1 April 2001
Colombian Paramilitaries Take War To City
-----------------------------------------
By Jared Kotler
BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia -- In night tinged orange by flames flaring off
a huge oil refinery, rightist gunmen are methodically killing suspected
rebels and their sympathizers in an unprecedented urban offensive in
Colombia's oil center.
The victims show up most mornings along streets or in grassy gullies. They
are typically young men shot five or six times in the head a trademark,
officials say, of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, known as the
AUC.
Already this year, police have recorded nearly 200 homicides, compared
with 570 for all of last year.
The landowner-backed AUC previously operated mostly against rural
villages. But the group is now believed to control about 80 percent of the
neighborhoods of Barrancabermeja, a city of 300,000 people that processes
three-fourths of the country's petroleum and was for decades a guerrilla
stronghold.
Should the city fall completely into the hands of the rightist gunmen,
some observers fear the city could become a thorn in peace talks and a
foothold for the paramilitaries to expand their power and influence
nationwide.
''The paramilitaries could become a bigger threat to Colombia's stability
than the guerrillas,'' said the regional army commander, Gen. Martin
Carreno.
The most recent wave of killings including the assassination of a labor
leader dragged from his home at night and shot several times in the head
comes as the AUC opposes government plans to cede a safe haven in two
nearby towns to the leftist National Liberation Army.
The Rev. Francisco de Roux, who is active in peace efforts here, believes
the AUC could easily sabotage planned peace talks in the haven, which is
an hour's boat ride up the Magdalena River from Barranca, as residents
call their city.
''This is the most difficult moment in the history of Barranca,'' said
Antonio Navarro, a Colombian congressman who has scheduled hearings on the
situation. ''My impression is that the paramilitaries have already taken
control.''
The city's violence is drawing international attention.
''This city needs to be freed, freed from the guerrillas and freed from
the AUC,'' U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone, D-Minn., said recently while touring
a soup kitchen run by the Popular Women's Organization.
The group has been declared a ''military objective'' by the AUC because it
does social work in rebel neighborhoods.
A woman who had been slicing onions and cabbage for the day's lunch said
that moments before Wellstone and U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson arrived
on Mar. 24, a man scaled a wall behind the building and pulled a gun on
her.
The intruder, believed to be a paramilitary member, grabbed her kitchen
knife, cut open her blouse and shoved her, said the frightened cook,
declining to give her name. Before leaving, the man demanded she reveal
the whereabouts of families who had sought refuge with the women's
organization.
''I'm sorry this happened to you,'' Wellstone, a critic of growing U.S.
military aid to Colombia, told the woman, whose blouse was held together
by a safety pin. ''The AUC should not be able to do this with impunity.''
The assault on Barranca follows AUC advances in smaller towns and villages
throughout a large northeastern region along the Magdalena River that was
the cradle of the National Liberation Army, Colombia's second-largest
guerrilla group.
The AUC first stormed into a poor Barranca neighborhood in May 1998,
killing seven people at a street fair and taking 25 others away in trucks.
The prisoners were ''tried'' as rebel sympathizers and executed, the AUC
later announced.
Such massacres have now given way to selective assassinations, with rebels
themselves taking part in the slaughter, officials and human rights
monitors said. Offered guns, cell phones and a $250 monthly salary more
than they ever earned as guerrillas dozens of rebels have defected to the
paramilitaries and identified former comrades.
In addition to grabbing enemy territory, the paramilitaries are reportedly
muscling in on a multimillion-dollar trade in contraband gasoline,
''taxing'' gangs that punch holes in pipelines and sell the fuel in
Barranca's back alleys.
Increased police and army patrols in the neighborhoods covered with rebel
graffiti and murals of Cuban revolutionary hero Che Guevara have been
unable to stem the AUC onslaught. But police and military officials deny
charges that they are turning a blind eye or working with the
paramilitaries.
''I could go into a neighborhood where 20 guys are playing soccer and they
all might be paramilitaries, but I can't arrest them if residents are too
afraid to testify against them,'' said Barranca's police commander, Col.
Jose Miguel Villar.
Copyright 2001 Associated Press
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