From: Red Palante <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 01:48:11 -0500
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Weekly News Update on Colombia #610, 10/7/01
WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
ISSUE #610, OCTOBER 7, 2001
NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012
(212) 674-9499 <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*4. COLOMBIA: REPORT LINKS ARMY, DEATH SQUADS
Human Rights Watch (HRW), a New York-based international human
rights watchdog organization, released a report on Oct. 4
detailing new evidence of close operational links between units
of the US-backed Colombian military and police forces and
rightwing paramilitary groups, whose umbrella organization, the
United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), was recently added
to the US State Department's list of terrorist organizations [see
Update #607]. The HRW report, titled "The 'Sixth Division':
Military-Paramilitary Ties and US Policy in Colombia," charges
that Colombian military and police detachments continue to
promote, work with, support, profit from, and tolerate
paramilitary groups, treating them as a force allied to and
compatible with their own. The Colombian Army has five divisions;
the "Sixth Division" is a phrase Colombians use to refer to
paramilitary groups, seen to act as yet another unit of the
Colombian military.
The relationships described in the report include active
coordination during military operations between government and
paramilitary units; communication via radios, cellular
telephones, and beepers; the sharing of intelligence, including
the names of suspected guerrilla collaborators; the sharing of
fighters, including active-duty soldiers serving in paramilitary
units and paramilitary commanders lodging on military bases; the
sharing of vehicles, including army trucks used to transport
paramilitary fighters; coordination of army roadblocks, which
routinely let heavily armed paramilitary fighters pass; and
payments made from paramilitaries to military officers for their
support.
Human Rights Watch urged the Colombian government to enforce
effective measures to cut these ties and punish the officers
responsible, after investigations carried out by civilian courts.
President Andres Pastrana Arango has publicly deplored
paramilitary atrocities, but "the armed forces have yet to take
the critical steps necessary to prevent future killings by
suspending high-ranking security force members suspected of
supporting these abuses," Human Rights Watch said.
"President Pastrana has recognized the problem, but the military
has yet to take the appropriate measures to solve it," said Jose
Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch's
Americas Division. "This has serious implications for Colombia's
international military donors, especially the United States."
Based on months of investigation, including two missions to
Colombia and interviews with victims, witnesses, and
investigators, the report also addresses US policy toward
Colombia. Human Rights Watch contends that the US has violated
the spirit of its own laws and in some cases downplayed or
ignored evidence of continuing ties between the Colombian
military and paramilitary groups.
Among the recipients of US aid is a unit implicated in a serious
abuse: the army's 24th Brigade, based in the southern department
of Putumayo. Human Rights Watch collected evidence showing that
in 1999 and 2000, the 24th Brigade actively coordinated
operations with paramilitaries, and some officers in charge of
troops received regular payment from paramilitaries for their
cooperation. This relationship persisted even as the US planned
and implemented its "push into southern Colombia" in the region
under 24th Brigade control. Colombian counter-narcotics
battalions--created with US funds and trained by the US military-
-actively coordinated with the 24th Brigade, using its
facilities, intelligence, and logistical support.
HRW has also collected new information that officers of the Third
Brigade, based in Cali, Valle del Cauca department, maintained
constant communication with paramilitaries in the field using
cellular phones and radios. Soldiers also reportedly
"moonlighted" as paramilitaries, and paramilitaries stayed on
military bases and used military transportation.
The report also analyzes the impact of US president Bill
Clinton's decision, in August 2000, to waive human rights
conditions attached to the Colombia aid package. "When the United
States waived the human rights conditions that applied to
security assistance to Colombia, it sent a direct message to
Colombia's military leaders that overshadowed any other related
to human rights," Vivanco said. "Put simply, the message was that
as long as the Colombian military cooperated with the US anti-
drug strategy, American officials would skirt their own human
rights laws." [HRW Press Release 10/4/01]
*5. COLOMBIA: NEW PACT SALVAGES PEACE TALKS
After two days of meetings, representatives of the Colombian
government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC)
signed an accord on the night of Oct. 5 that commits both sides
to continuing and deepening negotiations toward reducing the
intensity of the country's more than 40-year old armed conflict.
The "San Francisco de la Sombra Accord to Clarify and Consolidate
the Peace Process" paves the way for immediate talks over a
proposal for a six-month ceasefire--submitted by a "Commission of
Notables" 10 days earlier--and for President Andres Pastrana
Arango to extend the time limit on the FARC-controlled
demilitarized zone, which is set to expire at midnight on the
morning of Oct. 9 [not on Oct. 6 as suggested in Update #609].
The accord commits the FARC to suspending mass kidnappings on the
highways and allowing presidential candidates to carry out
campaign activities within the zone. The FARC also pledges to
respect the authority of elected municipal authorities within the
zone. [CNN en Espanol 10/5/01 from Reuters, AP; Hoy (NY) 10/7/01
from EFE; Text of Accord 10/5/01, sent by FARC via email 10/6/01]
The new pact came less than a week after two events that appeared
to threaten the peace process: the FARC's refusal to let Liberal
Party presidential candidate Horacio Serpa Uribe and his
supporters into the zone for a rally on Sept. 29; and the killing
the same day of former culture minister Consuelo Araujo Noguera,
shot to death while a hostage of the FARC near Valledupar, in the
northern department of Cesar [see Update #609, which neglected to
say where the killing took place].
In a communique issued on Sept. 30 or Oct. 1, the FARC's Caribe
bloc suggested that the army provoked Araujo's killing by
mounting a military operation against the rebels who were holding
her. "The attitude of the Colombian Army was infinitely
irresponsible and senseless in its quest for triumph and
applause--fleeting sensations which ended up cutting short the
life of the former minister," said the communique. [Equipo
Nizkor/Derechos Human Rights/Serpaj Europa Informacion 10/2/01
from El Espectador (Bogota)] FARC spokesperson Andres Paris made
a similar accusation in an interview with the Venezuelan
newspaper El Mundo: Araujo's kidnapping "was an act of political
retention, but the Army mounted an operation to rescue her and
kill her," he said. "La Cacica was our friend," Paris added,
referring to Araujo by her nickname, which means "the chief."
[Vientos del Sur (VISUR) 10/4/01 from El Mundo]
*6. COLOMBIA: PARAS KILL CONGRESSPERSON
Colombian congressional deputy Octavio Sarmiento Bohorquez was
shot to death by rightwing paramilitaries on Oct. 2 as he left
his farm in Tame municipality, Arauca department. A day earlier,
the paramilitaries had murdered two of Sarmiento's friends:
Marcos Vega and his son Marco Antonio Vega. The murders took
place amid a two-week old paramilitary offensive in the region
which has forced the displacement of hundreds of campesinos.
Sarmiento is the fifth member of Colombia's Congress murdered
this year. He represented the Liberal Party in Congress but was
also a founder of the leftist Patriotic Union (UP), and one of
the first group of deputies to represent that group in Congress.
The UP was formed in 1985, when a ceasefire agreement between the
government and the FARC allowed FARC members to disarm and become
active politically through the new organization; since then the
paramilitaries have wiped out nearly all of the UP's active
members and leaders--some 4,000 people--in a campaign of targeted
assassinations. [El Nuevo Herald (Miami) 10/3/01; Notipaco (news
from the Colombian Communist Party) 10/2/01, 10/4/01 via Vientos
del Sur 10/4/01; Equipo Nizkor/Derechos Human Rights/Serpaj
Europa Informacion 10/2/01 from El Espectador]
In other news, Jesus David Corzo, director of Judicial Police of
the Technical Investigations Force (CTI, a division of the
Colombian attorney general's office) for Norte de Santander
department, was shot to death on Sept. 20 in downtown Cucuta, on
the border with Venezuela. His mother was wounded in the attack.
[ENH 9/22/01 from AP, Reuters; EFE 9/21/01]
*7. COLOMBIA: INDIGENOUS SEEK MISSING LEADER
Some 5,000 indigenous Colombians were set to begin a march during
the weekend of Sept. 30 from four points across Colombia to
Cordoba department, to demand the release of Embera-Katio leader
Kimy Pernia Domico, abducted by presumed rightwing paramilitaries
on June 2 [see Updates #593, 594, 596]. Armando Valbuena,
president of the National Indigenous Organization of Colombia
(ONIC), told journalists: "We've had four months of silence" and
the government of President Andres Pastrana "has been deaf" to
the clamor of indigenous communities for Domico's release. [El
Diario-La Prensa (NY) 9/25/01 from AP]
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