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From: Colombian Labor Monitor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 14:00:16 -0500 (CDT)
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: CLM: Weekly News Update #595, 6/24/01
WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #595, JUNE 24, 2001
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
(212) 674-9499 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
1. Bolivia: Cocaleros Win Eradication Halt
[.....]
3. Peru: Montesinos Captured in Caracas
[.....]
8. Colombia: Rebels Free Hostages, Attack
9. Colombia: Over 100 Killed in Army Action?
10. Colombia: Controversial Laws Approved
[.....]
13. US: SOA Protesters Sentenced
[.....]
*1. BOLIVIA: COCALEROS WIN ERADICATION HALT
On June 19, facing a virtual uprising by thousands of coca-
growing campesinos (cocaleros) in the Los Yungas region of La Paz
department, the Bolivian government announced it would
indefinitely suspend coca eradication and would withdraw 750
troops from the region. Minister of Government Guillermo Fortun
said the issue of coca eradication in Los Yungas would be left
for the next administration, which will take office on Aug. 6,
2002.
The government had sent 750 military and police troops from the
Joint Task Force (FTC) on June 14 to the Los Yungas region to
carry out coca eradication. The troops used tear gas and rubber
bullets against campesinos who tried to defend their crops; at
least 20 campesinos were injured. By June 19, angry campesinos
had surrounded the Mejillones army base in Chulumani, cutting off
food supplies to the troops inside and threatening to seize the
base. Fortun traveled to Los Yungas on June 19 to negotiate a
solution; faced by thousands of campesinos demanding the FTC's
departure as a condition for dialogue, Fortun ordered the troops
to leave. [Hoy (NY) 6/21/01 from AP; El Diario (La Paz) 6/15/01,
6/19/01, 6/20/01; Los Tiempos (Cochabamba) 6/20/01; El Nuevo
Herald (Miami) 6/20/01]
In acceding to campesino demands, the government agreed to repeal
Supreme Decree 26203, a measure which took effect on June 1 of
this year and mandated the elimination of excess and transitional
coca plants in Los Yungas. The government also promised to review
anti-drug law 1008 and agreed to drop existing regulations for
the marketing of coca leaf in order to seek a consensus on new
regulations. In addition, the government pledged to compensate
campesinos who were injured in the clashes with FTC troops. [ED
6/20/01; LT 6/20/01] On June 22, campesino leaders and government
representatives signed a new consensus agreement governing the
marketing of coca leaf for traditional use. [ED 6/23/01]
US satellite data from last December showed 1,700 hectares of
illegal coca in Los Yungas, in addition to the 12,000 hectares
cultivated there legally for medicinal and traditional use. [Hoy
6/21/01 from AP] Citing unofficial studies, the US government
claims only half of the legal coca goes to traditional use, while
the rest ends up in illegal narcotics.
Speaking at a June 4 press conference in the Bolivian city of
Santa Cruz, US ambassador Manuel Rocha emphasized that the US
government is increasing its support for Bolivia; as proof of
this close relationship, he noted that Bolivia has the second-
largest US diplomatic presence in Latin America (after Mexico),
with about 1,000 US officials stationed there. [ED 6/20/01]
Despite the government's apparent surrender on the Los Yungas
eradication, Only Union Confederation of Bolivian Campesino
Workers (CSUTCB) executive secretary Felipe Quispe Huanca ("El
Mallku") insisted that campesinos would continue with plans to
block highways on June 21 in Bolivia's Altiplano region. Quispe
said he didn't trust the government's promises, and noted that
various points of an accord signed last October remained
unfulfilled. Quispe explained that blockades were called to
demand the repeal of Law 1008; modification of the National
Agrarian Reform Institute (INRA) Law; rural electricity service;
and social security benefits for campesinos. [LT 6/20/01,
6/21/01]
The government mobilized troops to keep highways open, and
Cochabamba daily Los Tiempos reported on June 22 that Quispe's
threatened Altiplano blockades had failed to materialize. No
blockades were expected in the tropical Chapare region of
Cochabamba department, Bolivia's other main coca-growing area, at
least partly because of disputes between Cochabamba campesino
leaders and Quispe, who leads the Los Yungas campesinos. [LT
6/22/01]
[.....]
*3. PERU: MONTESINOS CAPTURED IN CARACAS
On the morning of June 24 Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez Frias
announced that the Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM) had
captured Peruvian fugitive and former security adviser Vladimiro
Montesinos Torres in Caracas the night before. Chavez, who made
the surprise announcement at the closing session of the 13th
Summit of the Andean Community of Nations, held in the Venezuelan
city of Valencia, in Carabobo state, said he had instructed
Interior Minister Luis Miquilena to begin deportation proceedings
and "in less time than it takes a rooster to crow, to put
[Montesinos] at the disposal of the authorities of the Republic
of Peru." Peruvian interior minister Ketin Vidal attributed the
capture "to a coordinated action between the Peruvian national
police [and] the Venezuelan intelligence corps," with the support
of experts from the US Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI).
Peru's acting president, Valentin Paniagua, told reporters that
he had been kept informed about the operation. [El Tiempo
(Bogota) 6/24/01 with info from AP; El Universal (Caracas)
6/24/01; La Republica (Lima) from EFE, AFP]
Montesinos, a lawyer for Peruvian drug traffickers and a former
military officer long suspected of links to the US Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), was the main power in the 10-year
regime of Peru's former president, Alberto Fujimori, who is now
living in Japan. Montesinos dropped out of sight on Oct. 22; he
reportedly fled Peru on Oct. 29, 2000, as Fujimori's government
was collapsing, and was said to be hiding in Venezuela or Aruba
[see Update #568].
Efforts to find Montesinos apparently picked up after center-
right economist Alejandro Toledo won Peru's June 3 presidential
runoff. On June 8 FBI agents arrested a close collaborator of
Montesinos, Peruvian retired police colonel Manuel Aybar [or
Aivar] Marca, and his companion, Liliana Pizarro de la Cruz, in
Miami Beach, where they had been living [see Update #593]. The
FBI then subpoenaed the couple's telephone records to trace the
calls they made and received, according to an unnamed US
government official. Another factor in the arrests may be a
recent shakeup at Venezuela's Directorate of Intelligence and
Preventive Services (DISIP). Retired army Capt. Carlos Aguilera
was named to replace Eliezer Otaiza, under whose command the
DISIP is said to have mysteriously failed to capture Montesinos
on two occasions--in December in Caracas and in April in the Hato
Pinero ecological preserve 60 miles southeast of Caracas. [Miami
Herald 6/24/01]
Montesinos' capture came soon after a report in the Lima daily
Correo that Montesinos had close ties to Mexican brothers Eduardo
and Ramon Arellano Felix, drug traffickers who run the Tijuana
Cartel, and was involved in shipping 18 tons of cocaine from 1995
through 1999. Elizabeth Rosales Linares, a former informant for
the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), reportedly told
Peruvian investigators that the collaboration reached the point
where the Arellano Felix brothers were operating a cocaine
processing laboratory in Pisco, 150 miles south of Lima, under
the protection of Montesinos' agents. Correo also linked
Montesinos to Colombian drug traffickers Pablo Escobar Gaviria
(killed in 1993) and Evaristo Porras Ardila. [El Nuevo Herald
(Miami) 6/18/01 from AFP]
[.....]
*8. COLOMBIA: REBELS FREE HOSTAGES, ATTACK
On June 18, after completing an arrangement in which the
Colombian government released 14 imprisoned rebels and the
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) freed 55 hostage
police agents and soldiers, the FARC announced it would
unilaterally free 100 more hostage police and soldiers. The next
day, June 19, spokesperson Raul Reyes announced the FARC would
unilaterally free more than 250 hostage soldiers and police at a
June 28 ceremony to which President Andres Pastrana Arango and
numerous foreign diplomats have been invited. Critics have called
the move a publicity stunt; Pastrana welcomed the announcement as
further proof that the widely criticized peace negotiations he
launched with the FARC in 1998 are bearing fruit. [Miami Herald
6/20/01; CNN en Espanol 6/22/01 from Reuters]
On June 22, some 500 members of the FARC's Southern Front
attacked the strategic Coreguaje military base near Puerto
Leguizamo in the southern Colombian department of Putumayo, using
grenades and rockets fashioned of gas cylinders packed with
dyamite and ammunition. The troops based at Coreguaje are part of
the elite Southern Task Force, trained by US experts to fight the
"drug war" in Putumayo. The fighting left 30 soldiers and 26
rebels dead, according to army second commander Gen. Nestor
Ramirez. [Clarin 6/24/01 from EFE, DPA; El Espectador (Bogota)
6/24/01]
"Their peace gestures will always be accompanied by
demonstrations of force, trying to make clear that they don't do
it out of weakness, but quite the opposite, because they are
strong," said analyst Alfredo Rangel about the FARC. Accords,
such as the one that allowed for the release of the hostages and
prisoners, "will be preceeded or followed by violence on the part
of the guerrillas," Rangel explained. [CNN en Espanol 6/22/01
from Reuters]
*9. COLOMBIA: OVER 100 KILLED IN ARMY ACTION?
Over a period of three weeks ending in late May or early June,
the Colombian Armed Forces seized four towns in the southern
Colombian department of Narino in "Operation Tsunami", an anti-
drug mission involving some 4,000 soldiers with support from the
air force and navy. According to reports that emerged on May 28
and 29, Colombian army officials said 116 people were killed in
"Operation Tsunami": 18 leftist rebels from the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and 98 people linked to the drug
trade, most of them low-level workers in coca fields and cocaine
processing laboratories. [EFE 5/28/01; RCN Radio (Colombia)
5/29/01; El Nuevo Herald 6/10/01 from AP] Later reports said 16
FARC rebels were killed during the operation and 29 were
captured, and another 21 people linked to drug trafficking were
detained. [ENH 6/10/01 from AP] The operation has been kept under
a veil of secrecy as the army has refused to let anyone into the
area to talk to survivors. [Colombia Report 6/4/01]
*10. COLOMBIA: CONTROVERSIAL LAWS APPROVED
On June 20, its last day of ordinary sessions, Colombia's
Congress voted to give final approval to a law that changes the
way government funds are distributed. The law has prompted recent
strikes and mobilizations, especially by teachers, health workers
and public employees, who say it will result in reduced funding
for health and education [see Updates #593, 594]. Passage of the
"transfer law" was mandated as part of a December 1999 loan
agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). [Hoy (NY)
6/21/01 from EFE]
On June 14, Colombia's Chamber of Deputies approved a
controversial law that authorizes the nation's military forces to
make arrests, carry out searches and take on other judicial
functions in "war zones" where officials from the attorney
general's office are unable to carry out these tasks. The measure
was previously approved by the Senate. Human rights defenders say
the "war law" violates Colombia's 1991 Constitution; it must now
be reviewed by the Constitutional Court before it can be signed
by President Andres Pastrana. Congress member Gustavo Petro
called the legislation "fascist." [CNN en Espanol 6/15/01 from
Reuters; El Tiempo (Bogota) 6/15/01; El Pais (Cali) 6/15/01,
6/18/01]
[.....]
*13. US: SOA PROTESTERS SENTENCED
On May 23 US federal judge G. Mallon Faircloth in Columbus,
Georgia gave unusually harsh sentences to 26 protesters arrested
during a peaceful civil disobedience at the US Army's School of
the Americas (SOA), a training center for Latin American
soldiers, at nearby Fort Benning last Nov. 19. The 26 defendants,
who were convicted of criminal trespass, were among some 3,400
who risked arrest by entering the fort in the 11th annual protest
to demand the closing of the SOA; about 1,700 were arrested but
most were released [see Update #564].
Twenty of the defendants received the maximum sentence of six
months in prison. A few got off with two years of probation, but
Steve Jacobs of Missouri was given two 6-month sentences. Judge
Faircloth offered Franciscan nun Dorothy Hennessey, 88, the
option of serving her time in her order's residence in Dubuque,
Iowa. According to the National Catholic Reporter, Hennessey told
the judge, "No thanks," because she was not an invalid and wanted
to be treated the same as her 25 co-defendants. Hennessey said
that she and her younger sister, who was also sentenced to six
months, "might want to go into prison ministry" "[i]f there's
time left after we get out." [For a complete list of defendants
and their sentences, go to http://www.soaw.org/soa_26.] [SOA
Watch 5/30/01; San Francisco Chronicle 6/14/01; Portside 6/20/01]
[.....]
=======================================================================
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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