STOP NATO: �NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.ORG.UK --------------------------- ListBot Sponsor -------------------------- Get a low APR NextCard Visa in 30 seconds! 1. Fill in the brief application 2. Receive approval decision within 30 seconds 3. Get rates as low as 2.99% Intro or 9.99% Ongoing APR and no annual fee! Apply NOW! http://www.bcentral.com/listbot/NextCard ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Subj: CLM: Daily News 26 June 2001 Date: 6/26/01 1:00:59 PM Mountain Daylight Time From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Colombian Labor Monitor) Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ________________________________________________________________ COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR www.prairienet.org/clm Tuesday, 26 June 2001 [NOTE: As you may have noticed, over the past couple of weeks you have not been receiving CLM-NEWS with the regularity you may have grown accustomed to. This is as a result of a severe financial crisis that has accomplished what constant death- threats and harrassment have not managed to do: jeopardize the operation of the Colombian Labor Monitor. Please accept my sincerest apologies. - Dennis Grammenos] ************** * DAILY NEWS * ************** 1. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Tuesday, 26 June 2001 98 Inmates Escape in Bogota Jail By Juan Pablo Toro 2. AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE -- Tuesday, 26 June 2001 US hails Colombia's arrest of suspects in kidnappings 3. THE INDEPENDENT [London] -- Tuesday, 26 June 2001 Tattooed tribes keep a vigil for kidnapped chief By Jan Mcgirk 4. AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE -- Monday, 25 June 2001 FARC claims responsibility for attack at Bogota jail 5. AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE -- Monday, 25 June 2001 FARC threatens to unleash urban warfare in Colombia 6. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Monday, 25 June 2001 Six arrested at protest over Monsato's role in spraying of Colombia By Betsy Taylor 7. THE GAZETTE [Montreal] -- Monday, 25 June 2001 FARC captors deserve death: Oilman 8. AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE -- Sunday, 24 June 2001 Colombian Army controls town after deadly battle with FARC rebels By Jose Ramos 9. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Sunday, 24 June 2001 Venezuela's Chavez denies meddling in neighbors' affairs By Alexandra Olson 10. UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL -- Sunday, 24 June 2001 Colombian guerrillas justify violence By Martin Dayani 11. UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL -- Sunday, 24 June 2001 Venezuela promises deportation of Montesinos 12. WASHINGTON TIMES -- Sunday, 24 June 2001 LETTER TO THE EDITOR Drug crop eradication is accelerating environmental decay By Rensselaer Lee 13. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Saturday, 23 June 2001 Chavez Criticizes Free Trade Deal By Alexandra Olson 14. UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL -- Saturday, 23 June 2001 Guerrillas still a threat despite peace talks By Martin Arostegui 15. AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE -- Friday, 22 June 2001 OCP Ecuador says oil pipeline project will bring economic benefits 16. INTER PRESS SERVICE -- Friday, 22 June 2001 Officials divided on drug crop spraying By Yadira Ferrer 17. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Friday, 22 June 2001 Colombian Drug War Clashes Heat Up By Jared Kotler 18. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Friday, 22 June 2001 Fifty-seven arrested in Ecuador oil kidnap in which an American killed By Margarita Martinez 19. SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS [Texas] -- Friday, 22 June 2001 LETTER TO THE EDITOR Colombia collapsing from American 'aid' By Consuelo Donahue 20. ASSOCIATED PRESS -- Thursday, 21 June 2001 Colombia Refugees Storm Red Cross By Susannah A. Nesmith 21. XINHUA NEWS AGENCY [China] -- Thursday, 21 June 2001 Colombian Presidential Candidate Denounces Death Threat ________________________________________________________________ **************************************************************** * 1 * ASSOCIATED PRESS Tuesday, 26 June 2001 98 Inmates Escape in Bogota Jail -------------------------------- By Juan Pablo Toro BOGOTA -- Two days after a dramatic jailbreak, authorities revealed that 98 inmates had escaped, including 19 leftist guerrillas, after rebels blew a hole in the prison's outer wall. Five prisoners were killed and twelve others injured in a shootout during the breakout Saturday from Bogota's La Picota federal prison. Dozens of armed rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, provided cover fire outside as their comrades fled through the gaping hole. None of the inmates have been caught. Officials had delayed revealing how many fled to complete a head count. Among them was Olivio Merchan, who is believed to be a FARC commander called ''Ivan the Crazy One,'' prisons director Fabio Campos said. Escapes are common in Colombia, where inmates often buy the help of guards and administrators. Guards are often outgunned by their own prisoners. La Picota houses some 2,000 inmates, including guerrillas, rival right-wing paramilitaries and drug traffickers. A senior FARC leader said the guerrilla group would continue busting its members out of prison if the government refuses to exchange them for soldiers and police captured by the rebels. Earlier this month, the FARC freed 55 of its prisoners in return for 11 jailed rebels in what was termed a humanitarian exchange of ill prisoners. The swap occurred as part of peace talks to end a 37-year armed conflict. In a separate episode Monday, officials said suspected FARC rebels commandeered a helicopters and its six occupants, two pilots and four engineers working to install electrical towers in northwest Antioquia state. There was no immediate comment from the 16,000-strong rebel group, which bombs electrical towers in a sabotage campaign against Colombia's infrastructure. Copyright 2001 Associated Press ______*************************************************************** * 19 * SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS [Texas] Friday, 22 June 2001 ************************ * LETTER TO THE EDITOR * ************************ Colombia collapsing from American 'aid' --------------------------------------- By Consuelo Donahue My son and I recently returned from visiting family in Bogota, Colombia. Since Colombia has the highest kidnapping rate in the world, friends worried about our safety. Militaries or their proxies on both sides of the Colombian civil war condone kidnapping for ransom as a way to raise funds for their armed struggle. On this visit, I encountered a disturbing new twist on this practice. Kidnappers took a young child and left their ransom note. Their demand? Food for 15 days! Internal refugees from the civil war in the Colombian countryside are escaping to the cities daily by the thousands. With the national economy collapsing, those in the middle and upper classes who can afford it are fleeing to live abroad. Rural peoples are taking their place in the cities have no work, and there is little food. I listened to the U.S. ambassador to Colombia speak to the World Affairs Council in San Antonio last year. His justification for the investment of $1.5 billion in U.S. military aid followed this logic: Destruction of the coca-growing and refining infrastructure in Colombia would raise the price of cocaine on the streets of the United States, making it more difficult for people to buy and thereby decreasing its use. >From the U.S. perspective, cutting the supply in Colombia is more a priority than cutting the demand at home. Yet daily, this strategy appears more and more self-defeating. U.S. policy is adding fuel to the fire of instability in the Colombian countryside and in the cities. Colombia is quickly becoming a casualty in the U.S. war on drugs. The $1.5 billion military aid package meant to destroy the coca-growing and cocaine-production capacity is actually fueling a mass exodus from the countryside and the country. The Colombian military, its right-wing paramilitaries, cocaine manufacturers and the guerillas are destabilizing the rural population, undermining the social fabric of the cities and bringing the country to the brink of collapse. The United States should use its billions to decrease demand for cocaine in this country through education and by offering treatment to people addicted to cocaine. Our national experience during Prohibition suggests that as long as there is demand for a product, suppliers will be found. Our present policy has not affected the availability or price of cocaine on the street, but it is destabilizing an entire nation. Our war on drugs is a war on the poor of Colombia. The Rev. Consuelo Donahue is pastor of Grace Presbyterian Church in San Antonio. Copyright 2001 San Antonio Express-News ________________________________________________________________ **************************************************************** * 20 * ASSOCIATED PRESS Thursday, 21 June 2001 Colombia Refugees Storm Red Cross --------------------------------- By Susannah A. Nesmith BOGOTA -- Nidia Rojas, forced from her family's coffee and banana farm by guerillas, says it was the desperation of refugee life that led hundreds like her to storm the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Bogota last year. About 280 frustrated families, displaced by Colombia's 37-year civil war, seized the office building on Jan. 4, 2000. They bashed in doors and held Red Cross workers hostage for hours before letting them go and opening negotiations with the government. Many have since moved on accepting government settlements. But about 90 families remain in the building, pressing for more assistance. They have become symbols of the refugee problem in Colombia, where an estimated 2 million people have been displaced by violence in the last 15 years. ''Forced displacement is the largest source of human rights violations in this country,'' Leila Lima, chief U.N. refugee official in Colombia, said on Wednesday, the first World Refugee Day. ''The families are left without homes, without health care, work, education, or a community to belong to.'' Rojas, a small, dark-haired 39-year-old, said that when guerillas looking to recruit young fighters stormed her village in the mountains of western Tolima state, she and her husband grabbed their 10-year-old boy and ran. ''We fled before they could take him,'' she said. ''We ran as fast as we could.'' On that day in August, 1998, they joined the hundreds of thousands who have flocked to Colombia's largest cities the capital Bogota, Medellin and Cali straining the resources of a country where unemployment stands at 18 percent. Slums in the sprawling capital of nearly 7 million are swollen with displaced country people. At stoplights and on median strips they beg drivers for change, holding up signs saying they are war refugees. The Rojas family with their six children sold candy and potato chips on the street and rented a wooden shack in a squalid part of southern Bogota. They met other frustrated refugees and eventually decided to take action. ''The kids were getting bigger and they needed more to eat,'' Rojas said Wednesday during an interview inside the Red Cross building. ''We were getting desperate.'' Refugee organizations don't support the takeover of the office building, and most, including the Red Cross, declined to comment on the squatters. Colombia's courts have agreed with the government that any special help to the squatters would only encourage similar takeovers. Shabby tents extending from the building and laundry hanging from its windows are a stark contrast to the upscale bars and restaurants in the trendy neighborhood known as ''Zona Rosa.'' Inside, families live in offices, sleep on makeshift beds and hang blankets and sheets between them for privacy. A tangle of electric wires run from office to office, powering hotplates, televisions and stereos. ''It is not good living here, but I'm not going back,'' said Maricela Lenis, a single mother of four who says she has been uprooted three times during the conflict first by the military, later by guerrillas and finally by rival right-wing paramilitaries. Lenis, once a coca farmer in southern Guaviare State, spends her days roaming government offices and pressing bureaucrats many of whom know her by name to do more for the squatters. Some government officials say the squatters are just poor people who fabricated war stories to qualify for handouts. Police carefully check anybody coming in or out of the building to make sure no new squatters arrive. The Red Cross, whose diplomatic immunity prevented a forced eviction within the period allowed by law, has set up its headquarters elsewhere in the city. Copyright 2001 Associated Press ________________________________________________________________ **************************************************************** * 21 * XINHUA NEWS AGENCY [China] Thursday, 21 June 2001 Colombian Presidential Candidate Denounces Death Threat -------------------------------- BOGOTA -- One of Colombia's presidential candidates on Wednesday denounced that some rebel groups have prepared a plot to kill him during the campaign which will open this year. Alvaro Uribe, who refrained from revealing concretely the threat, has demanded the Attorney General's office investigate some members of the rebel organization, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), presumed authors of the plan against the liberal candidate. However, he ruled out the possibility of leaving the country because of the threat. "Now more than ever I will continue with my campaign, because there are many citizens supporting me in the attempt to get over with extortion and kidnappings," he said. Uribe, who has the support from a pluralist movement, including right-wing parties, has said if he wins the presidential elections he will abolish the southern demilitarized zone which currently serves as a venue for peace talks between the government and FARC, the largest guerrilla group in the country. Colombia's presidential election is scheduled for May 2002. Copyright 2001 Xinhua News Agency ________________________________________________________________ **************************************************************** * CLM-NEWS is brought to you by the COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR at * * http://www.prairienet.org/clm * * and the CHICAGO COLOMBIA COMMITTEE * * Email us at clm@. prairienet.org or * * Dennis Grammenos at dgrammen@. prairienet.org * **************************************************************** * To unsubscribe send request to listproc@. prairienet.org * * unsubscribe clm-news * **************************************************************** ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
