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From: Red Palante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Weekly News Update on Colombia #612, 10/21/01
WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #612, OCTOBER 21, 2001
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
(212) 674-9499 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*2. COLOMBIA: UNIONISTS SEIZED DURING STRIKE
In the pre-dawn hours of Oct. 19, agents from Colombia's
Administrative Security Department (DAS) and from the Technical
Investigations Corps (CTI), a unit of the Colombian attorney
general's office, conducted raids around the country targeting
leaders of the United Union of Workers (USO), which represents
workers at the state oil company Ecopetrol.
The arrests came just a few hours after the USO began, at
midnight, a 24-hour strike to protest threats and attacks against
USO members by rightwing paramilitary groups. According to the
Attorney General's office, the arrests resulted from a 10-year
investigation and had nothing to do with the strike. Ecopetrol
president Alberto Calderon Zuleta said the company did not oppose
the protest, but could not accept any halt in oil production.
Calderon refused to comment on whether the arrests had any
relation to the strike.
The attorney general's office said five people were arrested in
the raids; USO secretary Daniel Rico said at least six people
were arrested nationwide, five of them USO leaders. Another USO
leader said at least eight people were arrested, four of them in
the city of Barrancabermeja. The arrested USO leaders, who are
being charged with "rebellion," are Edgar Mojica and Alonso
Martinez, arrested in Bogota; Ramon Rangel, arrested in
Barrancabermeja; retiree Luis Viana, arrested in either Cartagena
or Santa Marta; and Jairo Calderon, arrested in Bucaramanga. Also
arrested in Bucaramanga was Fernando Acuna, ex-president of the
Federation of Oil Workers (Fedepetrol). [El Tiempo (Bogota)
website 10/19/01; Colombia Support Network Urgent Action
10/20/01]
The DAS and CTI agents also raided the Barrancabermeja home of
human rights activists Gladys Rojas and Carlos Mejia, members of
the Regional Body of Permanent Peace in the Middle Magdalena
Region, looking to arrest the two; they were not home at the
time. [CSN Urgent Action 10/20/01] A day earlier, on Oct. 18, DAS
agents arrested Nelson Tovar, a leader of the Colombian Communist
Party (PCC) in Tolima department, a former mayor of the town of
Coyaima, and current Secretary of Agriculture for Tolima, on
charges of subversion. [Notipaco (news from the PCC) urgent
communique 10/18/01 via Vientos del Sur (VISUR) 10/20/01]
USO president Hernando Hernandez called the arrests of the
unionists "unjust," and said he was among those being sought by
authorities. He said he would meet with Attorney General Luis
Camilo Osorio on Oct. 19 to discuss the charges against him. The
attorney general's office said the meeting between Osorio and
Hernandez would also address the threats and attacks to which USO
members have been subjected by the paramilitary United Self-
Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC). [ET website 10/19/01]
Hernandez revealed on Oct. 18 that early that morning, the entire
leadership of the national USO and of the Casabe field had
received copies of an AUC death threat declaring the USO a
"military target." The announcement, printed on AUC stationery,
was signed by the AUC commander known as "Esteban," who operates
in Barrancabermeja. [El Pais (Cali) 10/19/01 from Colprensa;
Vanguardia Liberal (Bucaramanga) via VISUR 10/19/01]
Despite constant threats, said Hernandez, the government has
refused to provide USO leaders with any protection. The Oct. 19
strike followed the abduction and murder of two Ecopetrol workers
near Cucuta earlier in the week; and attacks in previous weeks
against USO activists Cervando Lerma Guevara, Arturo Escalante
and William Walles. [EP 10/19/01 from Colprensa]
Lerma's Oct. 10 murder in Barrancabermeja, Santander Departament,
had prompted the USO to call a 24-hour protest strike beginning
at 6am on Oct. 11. Lerma was an USO activist and leader of the
"temporary" workers at Ecopetrol, having worked as a "temporary"
worker at the company for eight years. [VL 10/12/01 via VISUR
10/14/01] Escalante was abducted by an armed group in Tibu, Norte
de Santander department; his body was found on Oct. 16 in the
area of Versalles. Walles disappeared more than six months ago.
[VISUR 10/19/01] Another USO leader, Juan Rafael Atencia, was
murdered on Mar. 18 of this year, also in Barrancabermeja,
Colombia's oil capital. [VL 10/12/01 via VISUR 10/14/01]
Letters can be sent to Colombian president Andres Pastrana Arango
(fax # 571-286-7434, -286-6842 or 284-2186 or email
[EMAIL PROTECTED]) and Attorney General Osorio (fax
#571-70-2022) demanding that the government release the arrested
unionists and drop charges against them; take measures to protect
all threatened union members and human rights workers; and take
firm action against paramilitary groups and elements within the
military which support such groups [see Update #610]. Letters can
also be sent to the Director General of the International Labor
Organization (ILO) (fax #41-22-799-6111 or email
[EMAIL PROTECTED]); US residents should contact their
representatives and senators and urge them to immediately cut off
all military aid to Colombia. [CSN Urgent Action 10/20/01]
*3. COLOMBIA: US TO BROADEN TERRORISM FIGHT?
The US State Department's top counterterrorism official, Francis
Taylor, told reporters on Oct. 15 that the US would fight
terrorism in the Western Hemisphere using "all the elements of
our national power as well as the elements of the national power
of all the countries in our region." Of the 28 groups that the
State Department officially considers terrorist organizations,
four are based in Latin America, three of them in Colombia: the
leftist rebel groups Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia
(FARC) and the smaller National Liberation Army (ELN); and the
rightwing paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
(AUC). The fourth group is Peru's Maoist Peruvian Communist Party
(PCP, better known as Sendero Luminoso or Shining Path).
The Colombian groups will "get the same treatment as any other
terrorist group in terms of our interest in going after them and
ceasing their terrorist activities," Taylor told reporters at the
Organization of American States (OAS), after attending a closed-
door meeting on terrorism. In comments made the week of Oct. 8,
Taylor called the FARC "the most dangerous international
terrorist group based in this hemisphere."
The State Department has said it is developing a counterterrorist
strategy for Colombia and other Andean nations. Taylor declined
to provide details, but he said the regional strategy will be
based on law enforcement cooperation, intelligence exchanges,
blocks on terrorist financing and "where appropriate--as we are
doing in Afghanistan--the use of military power." Taylor told
legislators during the week of Oct. 8 that the anti-terrorism
strategy would complement both last year's $1.3 billion Colombian
aid package and the $882 million follow-up Andean aid plan
Congress is said to be considering. [The House of Representatives
passed this year's aid bill, the Andean Regional Initiative
(ARI), on July 24--see Update #600. The Senate apparently never
voted on the bill, and the legislation's current status is
unclear.] [Associated Press 10/16/01 via NY Daily News website;
AP 10/15/01]
US and Colombian authorities quickly tried to dispel the rumors
provoked by Taylor's comments that the US was planning an
outright invasion of Colombia. US State Department spokesperson
Philip Reeker said on Oct. 16 that the possibility of a direct US
military intervention in Colombia was never even discussed. "The
US government has clearly said that it respects Colombian
sovereignty and respects that we would see the way to confront
our problems," said Colombian interior minister Armando Estrada
on Oct. 17. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY) 10/18/01 from AP]
*4. COLOMBIA: MIAMI DOLLARS PAY DEATH SQUADS
Colombian authorities are investigating 37 checks from a Miami
bank account which appear to have been used to finance units of
the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), a rightwing
paramilitary organization recently added to the US State
Department's list of designated terrorist groups [see Update
#607]. The checks, worth a total of some $868,300, were written
from an account opened in 1995 at the main branch of Barnett Bank
in Miami. News that the checks had been discovered first appeared
in the Bogota daily El Tiempo on Oct. 17; further details were
confirmed in El Tiempo on Oct. 20. El Tiempo did not reveal the
name on the checking account, although authorities say they have
identified the account holder, a man who reportedly uses the
alias "Machete."
The checks, for amounts ranging from $600 to $5,000, were made
out to more than 10 companies in Colombia and the US, the names
of which were not revealed on the request of authorities,
according to El Tiempo. "Authorities found proof of operations
from and to Colombia with financial entities, companies and
individuals residing in the US," El Tiempo reported. The
transactions took place over the past two years. According to El
Tiempo, the Colombian attorney general's office has made contact
with each of the beneficiary companies, nearly all of them based
in Miami, to determine the reasons for the transactions.
The stubs for the 37 checks were found on Oct. 13 by the
Colombian army and agents of the Technical Investigations Corps
(CTI), a unit of the Colombian attorney general's office, during
a raid on a home in a rural area of Calima-Darien municipality in
Valle del Cauca department in southwestern Colombia. The agents
also uncovered other documents, electronic address books and
lists with the names of people presumed to be financing the AUC
in the central region of Valle, as the department is commonly
known.
The raid was part of an attempt to find those responsible for an
Oct. 10 paramilitary massacre that left at least 24 people dead
in a rural area of nearby Buga [see Update #610]. Six people
accused of participating in the massacre were arrested in the
raid, caught with rifles, grenades and AUC armbands.
Gen. Francisco Rene Pedraza, commander of the army's Third
Brigade, said the majority of the funds that find their way to
the paramilitary groups come from drug traffickers, especially
from those who operate in the north of Valle. The checks appear
to have been used to buy weapons and uniforms, he said. [ET
10/17/01; El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 10/21/01 from AFP] [The Third
Brigade--based in Cali, capital of Valle--is one of the units
accused by Human Rights Watch as maintaining particularly close
relationships with paramilitary groups--see Update #610.]
The confiscated documents have been handed over to the human
rights unit of the attorney general's office in the city of Buga,
which began the investigation. The office has requested the help
of the US Treasury Department and the US Customs Service in
pursuing the investigation. [ENH 10/21/01 from AFP]
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Red Palante!
Comunicacion Antagonista y
Resistencia Cultural
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://inquilino.net/palante
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