And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Date: Mon, 08 Mar 1999 05:03:23 -0500
>From: Marie Samuel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Organization: Yachay Wasi, Inc.
>X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.04 [en] (Win95; U)
>To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>Subject: Follow-up on 3 deaths in Colombia
>Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>X-MIME-Autoconverted: from 8bit to quoted-printable by lists.speakeasy.org
id CAB11230
>
>A Feast in honor of Ingrid Washinawatok, Lahe'enae'e Gay and Terrence
>Freitas took place yesterday March 7 at the American Indian Community
>House in New York City.
>
>Below Saturday, March 6 NY Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
>articles.
>The NY Times and NY Daily News featured on March 7 also 2 major articles
>with photographs telling of their work for Indigenous Peoples.
>A second article in NY Times seemed to shift blame for FARC to
>right-wing paramilitary groups.
>Ingrid Washinawatok was Menominee from Wisconsin. Amid her very busy
>schedule, she took the time in 1994 to be the Chair of the NGO Committee
>on the United Nations International Decade of the World's Indigenous
>Peoples.
>The NY Times and NY Daily News featured March 7 also 2 major articles
>with photographs telling of their work for Indigenous Peoples.
>A second article in NY Times seemed to shift blame for FARC to
>right-wing paramilitary groups.
>--
>Marie Samuel, VP
>YACHAY WASI - NGO/DPI - NYC - Cuzco, Peru
>Member of the NGO Committee on the UN International Decade of
>the World's Indigenous Peoples
>708 West 192nd St. # 6B
>New York, NY 10040-2450 USA
>Tel: 212-567-6447
>La Conquista # 3, Saphi
>Cuzco PERU
>Tel: 51-84-252618
>e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>-----
>March 5, 1999
>
>Kidnapped Americans Slain; Colombian Rebels Suspected
>By ANDREW JACOBS, NY TIMES
>
>Three Americans who were kidnapped last week in the Colombian rain
>forest were found slain Thursday just across the border in Venezuela,
>the authorities said yesterday.
>The two women and a man, members of a group that is trying to preserve
>an indigenous tribe threatened by oil exploration, were found bound,
>blindfolded and shot several times, according to the Venezuelan
>military, which discovered the bodies in a wooded area on the outskirts
>of Rio Arauca.
>Initial reports suggested that the three had been abducted by leftist
>guerrillas in Colombia, who often use ransoms from kidnapping to finance
>their military activity.
>
>The State Department condemned the killings, for which it blamed a
>prominent leftist guerrilla group, and it called on the Colombian
>Government to arrest and extradite to the United States those
>responsible.
>
>The State Department has identified the three dead as Terence Freitas,
>24, and Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, both of New York, and Lahe'ena'e Gay,
>39, of Hawaii.
>
>The three had traveled to Colombia to study conditions among the Uwa
>Indians in a community of 5,000 that is 200 miles northeast of Bogot�.
>
>In recent years, Occidental de Colombia, an affiliate of Occidental
>Petroleum of Bakersfield, Calif., has been trying to explore the region,
>a move that anthropologists and environmentalists say would devastate
>the Uwa and their land. In 1997, the Uwa won a legal battle against the
>company that prevented it from drilling on their reservation.
>
>The three Americans, members of the Hawaii-based Pacific Cultural
>Conservancy International, had been invited by Uwa leaders for a
>weeklong visit when they were abducted. "Everyone is in shock," said
>Myra Scheer, a spokeswoman for The Rainforest Foundation, on whose board
>Ms.Washinawatok served. "They went there to help people. We just can't
>understand why they were killed."
>
>Friends and family members said they had assumed that the three would be
>released unharmed, as was a group of American bird watchers who last
>month were held captive by Colombian guerrillas for more than a month.
>
>Ms. Gay and Ms. Washinawatok were shot four times each, and Mr. Freitas
>was shot six times, according to Col. Luis Eduardo Tafur, a Venezuelan
>police commander in La Victoria, which is just across the Arauca River
>from Colombia. He said officers had been drawn to the site by the sound
>of automatic gunfire.
>
>Friends and relatives of the dead said the three had been aware of the
>potential danger in the region but were deeply committed to helping the
>Uwa people preserve their way of life. A graduate in biology from the
>University of California at Santa Cruz, Mr. Freitas had traveled to the
>area three times in the last few years, family members said. "I'm proud
>of my son," said his mother, Julie Freitas, who lives in Los Angeles.
>"He lived the life he wanted to live."
>
>Ms. Washinawatok, a member of the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin, lived in
>Brooklyn with her husband and their 14-year-son. She was a filmmaker and
>a lecturer on Native American issues and was active with the American
>Indian Community House in lower Manhattan.
>
>No group has claimed responsibility for the killings, but a
>representative from the Uwa Indians who was with the group when they
>were abducted blamed the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or
>FARC, Latin America's largest and most experienced rebel group.
>
>In recent months, the rebels have been holding preliminary peace talks
>with the Colombian Government to end an armed conflict that has cost
>more than 30,000 lives in the last three decades.
>
>Politically, the new killings made little sense, and they were far
>different from other abductions the FARC has carried out, raising some
>question about the rebel group's involvement.
>
>The abductions occurred at a roadblock in Arauca, where right-wing
>paramilitary groups have been waging a campaign of extermination among
>trade unionists, leftists, human rights activists and suspected rebel
>supporters.
>
>In addition, the FARC's roadblocks are typically manned by uniformed
>troops in full combat gear, not lightly armed fighters in civilian
>dress.
>
>Covering Arauca is the group's 43rd Front, which organizes its fighters
>into squadrons of 12 rebels headed by a veteran combatant, making it
>unlikely that a handful of FARC teen-agers, as described by the Uwa,
>could carry out an attack.
>
>The rebels stand to win nothing from killing foreigners now.
>
>Since the overtures with the Government began, the FARC has sought the
>support of foreign powers. In Washington, its alleged role in abducting
>two missionaries from the New Tribes Mission in 1994 continues to hamper
>the ability of Clinton Administration officials to support the peace
>effort.
>
>And the abductions did not bear other trademarks of FARC operations.
>Last year, when the group seized three American bird watchers at a
>roadblock outside Bogot�, the rebel group announced that they would be
>investigated for possible intelligence links and either executed or
>released.
>
>This time, the FARC has yet to confirm or deny the abduction.
>
>Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------
>>From Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Online:
>
>Bodies of 3 kidnapped Americans found.
>Woman with state ties among victims from Colombia
>
>By Jesse Garza of the Journal Sentinel staff
>March 6, 1999
>
>
>A woman who grew up on Wisconsin's Menominee reservation was among three
>people whose bodies were found in a remote area of South America, where
>they had gone to help with the education of a local tribe.
>
>Ingrid Washinawatok, 41, and two other members of the Hawaii-based
>Pacific Cultural Conservancy International were found shot to death in
>Venezuela near the Colombian border, a statement from the U.S. State
>Department said Friday. The three were apparently abducted by guerrillas
>Feb. 25, the State Department said.
>
>They disappeared about a week after they arrived on the reservation of
>an indigenous people, the U'wa, to help develop education using
>traditional culture, language and religion, Menominee Tribal Chairman
>Apesanahkwat said Friday when reached by telephone.
>
>"She was a dynamic woman of the world and an incredible humanitarian,"
>Apesanahkwat said.
>
>"This is a great tragedy for our people," he said.
>
>The two other bodies were believed to be those of Terence Freitas, a
>24-year-old environmentalist from Los Angeles, and 39-year-old
>Lahe'ena'e Gay of Hawaii.
>The two women had four bullet wounds each, the man had six, and all
>three victims were hooded and bound, said Col. Luis Eduardo Tafur, the
>police commander of Arauca state in eastern Colombia.
>
>The three were kidnapped in Arauca state, and their bodies were
>discovered Thursday by Venezuelan judicial police in La Victoria,
>Venezuela, just across the Arauca River, Tafur said.
>
>Washinawatok was born on the Menominee reservation, in northeastern
>Wisconsin, and went to New York City at age 17 on an internship with the
>International Treaty Council, said Apesanahkwat, who spoke for
>Washinawatok's family at their request.
>
>She later traveled extensively throughout Central America, helping
>tribes develop their own education models, he said.
>"She used local people rather than teachers or professors," he said.
>She married in New York City and had a son who is now 14. She continued
>traveling and consulting for indigenous people around the world,
>Apesanahkwat said.
>
>At an international conference last year, she met the chief of the U'wa,
>who told her the tribe's school closed because the influence of the
>missionaries who ran it was negating the native culture, Apesanahkwat
>said.
>
>"He was very much intrigued by (the conservancy group's) model," he
>said.
>"He invited Ingrid down to show them how to implement it."
>
>Though living in New York City and traveling the world, Washinawatok
>would visit the reservation, where her parents and sister lived, in
>summer.
>
>Her father, Jim, was a tribal judge and her mother, Gwen, was a nurse
>and an educator, said Apesanahkwat, who last saw Washinawatok at her
>father's funeral last year, he said.
>
>"She was just very intrigued about helping people and relieving
>suffering," Apesanahkwat said.
>
>A deeply spiritual person, Washinawatok was a member of the Midewiwin
>Society Medicine Lodge, Apesanahkwat said.
>
>"And she was a great shawl dancer," said Ed Bonkoski, who met
>Washinawatok in the 1970s during a Native American studies program at
>Nicolet College in Rhinelander.
>The two adopted each other as siblings, Bonkoski said.
>
>"She loved her people, and she loved her life," he said.
>
>Washinawatok, Gay and Freitas were seized 200 miles from Bogota by armed
>men in civilian clothing. No group claimed responsibility, but an U'wa
>representative who was with the Americans when they were seized, Roberto
>Afanador, said he suspected the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,
>or FARC, the country's oldest and largest rebel group. The State
>Department also suspects FARC in the abductions and killings.
>
>"We also demand that the FARC accept responsibility for this coldblooded
>murder and turn over those of its members who perpetrated this crime to
>be held accountable by the courts," State Department acting spokesman M.
>Lee McClenny said in a statement.
>
>Two tattoos found on Washinawatok's body confirmed her identity,
>Apesanahkwat said, and Colombian police said a credit card bearing her
>name was also found.
>
>The bodies were being transferred to a morgue in the regional capital of
>San Cristobal in Venezuela.
>
>Arrangements were being made Friday to bring Washinawatok's body back to
>the Menominee reservation, Apesanahkwat said.
>
>The Associated Press contributed to this report.
>
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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