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www.stbudg.ucoz.ru спецвыпуск № 42 от 26 июня 2009 г.
НОВОСТИ ИЗ КОЛУМБИИ
Recently Published Article Exposes Colombian Army's Role in Massacre
Colombia Support Network
Friday 17 April 2009
The Colombia Support Network (CSN) has been deeply concerned about the terrible massacre of seven persons of the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó in February 2005 ever since this horrific event occurred. One of the worst aspects of this crime was that three children were among those killed. Shortly after the massacre, we sent an investigative delegation to Apartadó and they prepared a report (upport.net//2005/6_26_RPT/San_Jose_Investigation.htm) that clearly identified the Colombian Army's responsibility for the massacre. Luis Eduardo Guerra, a peace community leader, who was among those murdered on February 21, had visited us in Madison, WI, and we knew him as a courageous, principled leader and co-founder of the Peace Community.
Recently, Father Javier Giraldo, tireless human rights leader and defender of the victims of paramilitary and state-sponsored violence in Colombia, was called to provide information to the Colombian Attorney General's Office (Fiscalía) as to what he knows of the massacre. We believe the focus of the Attorney General's investigation should be upon Colonel Duque and General Fandiño of the Seventeenth Brigade of the Colombian Army for their roles in ordering and carrying out the massacre, not upon Father Giraldo, who has raised his voice on behalf of the victims of the massacre.
The Colombian news magazine, Semana, recently published an article about the massacre that comes to the same conclusions we did many years ago. We have translated the article into English, and it can be viewed here:
biasupport.net/2009/Por_que_mataron.pdf
ACTION : Please write to the following people DEMANDING that the United States stop giving military aid to the Colombian Government:
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: go to www.state.gov and click on "contact us"
- U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations Chairman John Kerry: ate.gov/contact/email.cfm
- Your representatives in Congress; find out who they are and how to contact them at CSN's Action Center:
biasupport.net/actioncenter.php
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al.org/spip/spip.php?mot95
Re-electionist referendum: The turning point for Colombia
Sebastian Castaneda
Friday 3 April 2009
It is widely conceived that Uribe has split Colombia's history in two. His supporters, on the one hand, mention the weakening of the FARC, the demobilization of the right-wing paramilitaries and the revitalized foreign investment confidence. Uribe's detractors, on the other hand, point out at the human rights violations in combating the FARC, the leniency on the paramilitaries and the failure of his trickle-down economics to benefit the poorest in society. However, the real reason Uribe has split Colombia's history in two is due to the damage done to democracy that would be be further aggravated if a second re-election is successful.
Uribe accomplished the first re-election in congress thanks to a congresswoman acceptance to change her vote in return for some lucrative public office seats and a congressman who was allegedly paid off to miss the voting. In the end the Constitutional Court ruled that one immediate re-election would not undermine the crucial check and balances characteristic of strong democracies.
Currently, a new re-election attempt is being promoted through a referendum, which would circumvent the Constitutional Court's provision after approving the first re-election. Once again there are various allegations of fraud in the collection of signatures for the legislation of the referendum. First, the financing surpassed the ceiling permitted by law. Second, dirty money may have financed it. Third, there are allegations that the National Registry leaked information to the collectors of signatures. More than the popular support this new re-election attempt illustrates the powerful and shadowy economic interests at work.
Different sectors in civil society openly oppose a second re-election, including the church - somewhat paradoxical when the church's system is based on a similar authoritative structure. Some congressmen are reluctant to openly oppose the referendum due to repercussions in their constituencies. Some others have denounced the fraud, however, their denouncements before the Prosecutor General and the Inspector General offices may be futile. The PG has delayed and changed the prosecutor in charge of investigating the fraud allegations and the IG has demonstrated his bias tracked record towards the government.
These new developments may not impede the approval of a national referendum in congress. Even if congress changes the wording so Uribe can run in 2010, instead of 2014 as the wording that people signed stipulated, the Constitutional Court, which now has a pro-Uribe stance after he appointed three new judges, may deem the referendum constitutional. Nonetheless, all these allegations do have some repercussion in the population and the seven million signatures needed for the approval of the constitutional amendment may not be reached. It can be expected the president, with his well oiled machinery, to govern around raising public support for the referendum with populist policies such as the 'personal dose' criminalization. The main strategy, however, would be to intensify militarily operations against the FARC as has just been announced. This, after all, is the reason for his popularity. However, the FARC's deliberate-timed calls for a humanitarian exchange, without demanding a demilitarized zone, may try to undermine public support for Uribe's war policies. As was to be expected, Uribe rejected the offer until the FARC cease their terrorist attacks. Even if the attacks are stopped the government would continue hastily blaming the FARC for any incident as the Meta water supply bombs exemplified.
If the legislation for the re-electionist referendum is approved in congress it would signify the Constitutional Court assumptions of one re-election not disrupting the check and balances of Colombian democracy to be utterly mistaken. Another re-election would only result in a escalation on the sabotage to democracy and probably the rule of law unless citizens understand what is at stake.
Foreign exchange
Colombian activist waits in prison limbo
Human rights groups say Carmelo Agamez's case is an example of how Colombia's justice system is broken, and how unjustifiable arrests are used to intimidate dissidents.
Chris Kraul
Thursday 2 April 2009
Reporting from Corozal, Colombia — Community organizer Carmelo Agamez has spent five months in jail and still has not seen the evidence against him, been told who his accuser is or been notified of a trial date. Welcome to justice, Colombia style.
Facing what he says is a laughable charge of consorting with right-wing paramilitary leaders, the lifelong socialist says he has been thrown arbitrarily into the maw of Colombian justice.
In a jail-house interview in northern Sucre state, Agamez said the real reason he was arrested was that he was organizing displaced Afro-Colombians in the town of San Onofre. That angered powerful interests trying to assemble abandoned lands for cattle, lumber and oil-drilling projects, he said.
"I was bringing social help to people who were asserting claims for their land and this caught someone's attention," Agamez, who heads the local chapter of the National Movement of Victims of Crimes of State, said Monday. "People who didn't dare speak were starting to get rid of the fear they felt."
Colombian prosecutors did not respond to a request for an interview.
Colombian and U.S. human rights organizations have rallied around the 60-year-old activist, saying he is an example of how community leaders here are sometimes jailed and charged with "rebellion" or "para-militarism" to discredit them and intimidate others.
The arrests also illustrate the broader problem of weak rule of law in Colombia and elsewhere in Latin America, legal experts say. U.S. Embassy officials consider the creation of a stronger and fairer Colombian judicial system one of the keys to ending decades of civil strife.
Human Rights First of New York issued a report in February citing Agamez's arrest as one of 32 questionable cases of Colombian activists jailed on what the group called flimsy charges — such as inciting rebellion, terrorism or para-militarism. The report says such charges often mask the real motive for the detentions: silencing dissident political voices.
One of the group's attorneys, Andrew Hudson, said in an interview that his group had called on President Alvaro Uribe to have the prosecutor general's human rights unit review "all criminal cases of human rights defenders" to vet cases for compliance with due process of the law.
Wrongful detentions are just one of several Colombian human rights issues being examined by Democratic members of the U.S. Congress with an eye toward making improved performance a condition of continued aid.
Other issues include the slaying of hundreds of Colombian labor leaders in recent years, as well as "false positives" — the killing of civilians by soldiers and police officers who later say the victims were rebels killed in battle.
At a House Human Rights Commission hearing last week, co-chair Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) said arrests may be used by the Colombian government to "undermine the legitimacy of human rights work" there.
"Instead of bringing trumped-up charges against human rights defenders," he said, "the Colombian government needs to do much more to support these organizations."
Leaders on both ends of the political spectrum claim to be victims of Colombia's broken judicial system. The family of former Sen. Carlos Garcia, a conservative backer of Uribe who was jailed in August based on questionable evidence that he consorted with right-wing paramilitary groups, says he is a "political prisoner."
U.S. government officials and academics, even those who express admiration for Uribe's success in restoring security to much of Colombia, say they are alarmed by his demonization of his leftist political opponents.
"One of the most serious weaknesses of [Uribe's] highly regarded and successful Democratic security policy has been its systematic neglect of key elements of the rule of law and Uribe's apparent disdain for human rights organizations in general," said Bruce Bagley, a political scientist and Colombia expert at the University of Miami. "The Carmelo Agamez case raises these issues."
Hundreds of people in several Colombian cities heeded a call last week from the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Collective of Bogota, a rights group, to demonstrate against Agamez's jailing.
Agamez said that although his family and close supporters believe he is being held unjustly, his jailing has sown seeds of doubt among some followers, doubt that won't be easily erased.
"That's what these people want," Agamez said, referring to those behind his imprisonment. "I feel impotent before that."
The Liberation of Mother Earth in Cauca
Levi Bridges
Monday 23 March 2009
In Colombia, many indigenous people inhabit officially designated resguardos , or reserves, in highland areas where insufficient space fails to fulfill the agricultural needs of an increasing population. The lives of the indigenous Nasa are further complicated because they live in Colombia's Cauca Department, a violent area where fighting between the army, the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and right-wing paramilitary groups often leaves indigenous people caught in the crossfire. Together, violence and malnutrition caused by the land deficit have resulted in numerous Nasa deaths. Like many indigenous peoples in Latin America, the contemporary problems within the Nasa community began centuries ago. During the Spanish conquest, European settlers claimed flatter lowlands better suited to agriculture for themselves. Hundreds of years later, indigenous groups from Mexico to Bolivia barely eke out a subsistence living cultivating crops on the steep hillsides their ancestors were forced to inhabit. Such is the plight of the Nasa.
(JPG)On December 16, 1991, the sun barely penetrated the clouds in the highlands of Cauca. More than 50 Nasa had gathered to discuss a land dispute on the El Nilo ranch. Years earlier, a previous landowner had permitted some Nasa to live and cultivate crops on unused portions of the land, but when the estate was sold, the new owners sought to expel them. As the daylight faded, and the owners had still not arrived, some returned home, while others gathered around small fires to share a hot plate of food.
Suddenly, the still quiet of dusk was broken by the intrusion of approaching vehicles. Without warning, gunshots and screams signaled the beginning of the supposedly nonviolent meeting which the Nasa had waited for all day. "The shots came from far away," recalled Caroline Corpus de Dicuè in a court testimony just days later. "We could not see who was firing because it was already dark ... another group nearby were boiling beans ... they were the ones who were killed. We were … running uphill towards our house ... later they burned our house and clothes ... they burned the belongings of all the Nasa living in El Nilo." On the following morning, the blood of twenty Nasa—men, women and children—stained the green grass.
Today, many believe that drug traffickers purchased the El Nilo estate and, with the compliance of local police, orchestrated the 1991 massacre that left behind eight widows and 40 orphans. Despite warnings from armed groups and local authorities that they could be risking their lives by remaining in El Nilo, the Nasa who inhabited the ranch sought to resolve the matter through a legal agreement between themselves, the new landowners, and the Colombian Institute of Agrarian Reform. Because of these prior admonishments, many Nasa now refer to the El Nilo massacre as Another Chronicle of a Death Foretold, a play on words of the novella written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Colombia's Nobel Laureate of Literature.
Following the 1991 massacre, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights conducted an investigation into the El Nilo killings. The Colombian government agreed to abide by the Commission's recommendation that the surviving Nasa be awarded 15,600 hectares of land as recompense. Nearly two decades later, the Nasa have only received a little more than 11,000 hectares.
Tragically, the consequences of violent acts like the El Nilo killings are often forgotten in Colombia. Walking through Popayán, Cauca's Departmental capital, to investigate the effects of El Nilo 17 years later, distracted by the ways in which the morning sunlight enchantingly plays against the shadows of the white-washed colonial buildings, I can almost forget the grim reality of the massacre. Inhaling the rich aromas of the ubiquitous cafes which dot this bustling university town, I make my way to the Regional Indigenous Council of Cauca (CRIC). Inside Feliciano Valencia, leader and member of the CRIC's Council of Chiefs, greets me with a warm smile. But when asked how life for indigenous people in Cauca has changed, a furrowed brow representative of deep worry erases his bright-eyed demeanor.
"The situation is worse now than ever," says Valencia concernedly. "I feel like we are being exterminated." Valencia's opinion stands in stark contrast to that presented by President Alvaro Uribe's conservative government, which insists its military crackdown on the FARC and paramilitary groups has brought peace to Colombia. Valencia instead explains how fighting has displaced indigenous people, while the paramilitary presence in Cauca has increased. "In 2002, we saw more paramilitary presence of privately funded armed groups in Cauca," he admits. "At first, we believed they had come to combat the FARC, but we have since realized they are here to open up economic zones."
The conflict Valencia describes initially began because Cauca is home to more indigenous people than any other department in Colombia and is a major agricultural center for valuable crops like sugarcane. Today, increasingly large scale mono-agricultural production in the region chokes the supply of locally produced goods, increasing food prices while consuming land which could be used by rural people. "The government insists that we do not need more land to earn a living because we can find work on large farms in the area," says Valencia. "But we want to grow food in the same sustainable agricultural methods as our ancestors."
By 2005, after the Colombian government had repeatedly failed to fulfill the El Nilo agreement, Valencia and others organized a movement called The Liberation of the Mother Earth, which aimed to retrieve their ancestral lands by holding protests where participants often use machetes to chop down sugarcane planted on the land they were promised in the El Nilo massacre settlement. "In our first attempt to liberate our mother earth, we ended up in a confrontation with the military, national police and ESMAD [specialized riot police] and 62 people were wounded," Valencia explains. Since 2005, the Nasa have organized 30 protests, confrontations that have resulted in three Nasa deaths and countless injuries.
In June 2008, Valencia led me into northern Cauca to observe a three day protest organized by local cabildos (indigenous councils). En route, we boarded a bus together and I asked Valencia if he might answer some questions. Valencia, who like other activists in Cauca, has received death threats from local armed groups, raised a finger to his lips. "Later," he said lowering his voice. "It isn't safe for me to talk about this with you in public."
On the way to the Nasa's Las Huellas resguardo, we passed through verdant countryside; on our left lay interminable swaths of sugarcane and to the right steep sides of distant mountains. Valencia pointed toward the mountains. "That is our land," he said. At the resguardo, we stopped at a small farm where we were greeted by an amiable woman named Dora Alicia Villaquiran, planning coordinator of the Association of Indigenous Councils of Northern Cauca (ACIN). "The government has to give us what they promised," she said. "They can't bring back those that were lost in El Nilo, but they can return land to the living."
As we spoke, Valencia sat atop a wooden fence, his long black hair flowing over his shoulders, a machete strapped along his back. Behind him lay a corn field, communally grown for families on the resguardo, an example of how the Nasa would use small portions of the good farmland monopolized by sugarcane growers. Suddenly, a large bus stopped by the roadside and torrents of excited Nasa poured out from inside and even off the rooftop. In minutes, hundreds of Nasa shattered the serenity of early morning, many brandishing machetes, some wearing masks or voluminous scarves draped on their shoulders to shield themselves from tear gas assaults. Through the milieu, I watched men sharpen machetes while a 14-year-old boy showed off a makeshift crossbow to a crowd of attentive young men. "If they fire at me, I could use this to shoot rocks and shrapnel 150 meters," he boasts.
Despite the almost warlike scene, the protests are meant to be non-violent, the machetes to be used for chopping down sugarcane in order to "liberate the Mother Earth." And many Nasa carry sling shots to defend themselves from police who fire rocks at them, which, unlike shooting guns, is not illegal. As the protest began, a young boy named Orlando Baicue approached me. "This is my first time here, and I'm a bit scared," he admitted. "But this land is rightfully ours and we have to reclaim it from large corporations," he said with a wisdom beyond his years. I follow Baicue with a group of boys off the road into deep patches of sugarcane. Suddenly, materializing out of a line of people ahead of me like the bow of a familiar ship from impenetrable fog, Valencia appeared, urging me to observe from a safer point behind the army. When I returned to the road, Colombian soldiers who had gathered to hold back the protesters questioned me. "Our government has to come to an agreement with the Indians," a burly commander explained while lazily thumbing through my passport. "But we have to protect private property."
Young Nasa boys walking up the road approach the soldiers, who cupped hands over their mouths whooping to imitate the stereotypical and degrading image of Indians from the American West. The Nasa youth advance step by step, bravely staring men over twice their size holding M-16's in the eye. The tension in the air is palpable. As the children hold back the army, Nasa men wearing masks steal through the infinite sugarcane stalks and begin fiercely chopping down the cane while others set sections of the field on fire. To hold back encroaching bands of riot police, daring young boys round the field's edge and I watched for over an hour as riot police behind shields and children slung rocks at each other with sling shots. In an effort to deter the Nasa, the riot police launched smoke grenades into the field, shrouding the area in clouds of acrid smoke. Through the haze, I observed recalcitrant Nasa continually launch rocks back at their adversaries, the haze from the heat of the flames causing their bodies to appear as though they had stepped from the fuzzy scene of a Monet canvas.
Sadly, many Colombians fail to understand why the Nasa are protesting. "They have enough land," said Adolfo Leon, a journalist with Colombia's RCN television station who stood with me on the sidelines. "I won't even interview them," Leon said, "because they work with the FARC." Leon's words echo those of many in the Colombian government who claim that indigenous people receive support from guerrillas. Sadly, mainstream Colombian media outlets, which have rarely explained the historical reasons which sparked the protests, instead portray the protestors as violent aggressors. This false representation misleads public opinion, and allows the government to strike back heavily against non-violent protests with little public scrutiny while protecting the interests of multinational corporations and large landowners who control extensive tracts of profitable land in Cauca.
Yet government officials in Bogotá like Rocio Gallego Salas, director of indigenous issues for the Department of the Interior and Justice, claim the Nasa themselves are the cause of the conflict. "We have tried to give the Nasa more land, but they have refused our offers because they only want specific areas in Cauca," says Salas. "The price of that land has tripled since the sugarcane plantations bought it," she explains. "And our budget does not allow us to purchase it."
Instead, the government has offered the Nasa land in far away and dangerous departments like Putumayo and Meta. Rocio claims this should not be a problem because statistically many indigenous Colombians move away from their place of birth. Her argument is troublesome, however, because many rural Colombians leave their homes because they have been displaced by violence, not by choice. The Nasa want the remaining 4,282 hectares of land owed to them to be near their resguardos in Cauca—where nearly 70 percent of the area has now been consumed by sugarcane plantations that grow the plant for biofuel production. "Sugarcane cultivation in northern Cauca has displaced people and agriculture," argues Giovanni Yule, former director of the ACIN. "The market is no longer ours; we are growing food to feed automobiles, when we should grow food to feed our towns."
I was speaking with Yule inside the ACIN office in Caloto on the third day of the protests when, suddenly, a young Nasa man who had been to the hospital entered the office. His right eye was bandaged, covering a wound from a projectile fired from an ESMAD slingshot. I left the office and hitched a ride to the center of the protests where the roadside, covered with trash, tree branches, and large rocks used to form an impromptu vehicle barricade, represented the mayhem.
Stepping over the scorched earth of the sugarcane fields with a group of school children who were waiting for the conflict to resolve so they could return home through the roadblock, I watched a line of Nasa attempt to make a break past the army into the next field as riot police descended upon several young men and attacked them with clubs. Moments later, three days of protest suddenly ended as the police dispersed the protestors with heavy amounts of tear gas.
As the fading daylight of late afternoon drew long shadows away from the trees which dot the hillsides of the Las Huellas resguardo, the remaining protestors—men, women, and children—lay in a circle enjoying a hard earned meal of soup and arepas prepared in a steaming communal pot. Four Nasa had been severely wounded during the protest and although it seemed that the gains of the last three days were minimal, the crowd remained energized as Valencia spoke. "We are not just trying to reclaim land, but defend our rights over something we lost historically," he said. "And we will keep fighting for what is ours, stepping over the same footprints as our ancestors, so our children can again walk freely over our ancestral lands."
In the months since, the Nasa and other organizations have staged numerous other acts of civil disobedience and town hall-style educational meetings throughout Colombia to bring attention to human rights issues in the country. Despite the fact that their voices are finally being heard, the Nasa recently suffered a major setback. On December 16, 2008, the anniversary of the El Nilo massacre, the Colombian army opened fire on an official car of the CRIC, killing the driver Edwin Legarda Vázquez, who was husband of Aida Quilcué, chief counsel of the CRIC. In an official statement, President Uribe insisted that soldiers opened fire on the vehicle because it had failed to stop at an unmarked military checkpoint. Many, however, believe the gunshots were meant for Quilcué in an attempt by the government to stop the progressive indigenous movement.
When I left the Las Huellas resguardo last June, I was walking down a dirt road chatting with several affable mothers carrying machetes as the bitter smell of tear gas lingered in the air. Suddenly, Orlando, the boy I had met on the first day, ran up beside me appearing tired and excited after three days of confrontations with the armed public security forces. "I fell down and couldn't see when they sprayed the tear gas," he explained. "But I got back up and ran with my friends."
"Are you still afraid of getting hurt?" I ask.
"Not anymore," he replied with a bright smile. "Because we are going to achieve what we came here to do; we are finally going to liberate our Mother Earth."
The 4th Humanitarian Action for Northeastern Antioquia
Cahucopana
Friday 1 May 2009
From its birth, the Humanitarian Action Co-operative for Co-Existence and Peace in Northeastern Antioquia (CAHUCOPANA) has been putting forward a constant struggle to defend and promote the rights of the peasants (campesinos) in the region through denouncements, development zones, and humanitarian refuges as a mechanism to prevent the displacement of communities. It has also brought about three humanitarian actions that have looked for a way to break the military and paramilitary blockade that has been imposed in the zone.
To continue these tasks, CAHUCOPANA convenes the 4th Humanitarian Action for Northeastern Antioquia, that will take place from the 15th to the 19th of May in the rural region (vereda) of Puerto Nuevo Ité, jurisdiction in the municipality of Remedios (Department of Antioquia), to reject extrajudicial executions and the stigmatization and persecution of peasant organizations (organizaciones campesinas) in the area. To this end, we hope to rely with the support and solidarity of regional, national and international organizations, and thus continue with the defense and struggle for the dignity of the campesinos of the region.
The 4th Humanitarian Action for Northeastern Antioquia is born from the necessity to make known the humanitarian crisis in which we, the peasant communities of Northeastern Antioquia, find ourselves in. And that has for several years endured the militarization, persecution, false accusations, and judicial farces against peasant organizations (organizaciones campesinas) and their leaders by the Colombian state, which not only generate fear and displacement among the communities, but also tear apart the existing social fabric of the region.
A sample of this are the multiple cases of extrajudicial killings in which the peasants (campesinos) of our rural areas (veredas) are assassinated and then identified as guerrillas fallen in combat, as happened with our brothers Heriberto Correa, Sigilfredo Castaño, Pablo Emilio Agudelo, León Benitez, William Hernán Sánchez, Carlos Mario García David, Miguel Ángel Gonzáles Gutiérrez and Luis Horacio Ladino Guarumo; these crimes were committed by troops of the Colombian army, attached to the Batalla de Calibío Battalion of the 14th Brigade, and remain unpunished.
This is in addition to state abandonment, low social investment, a lack of schools and health clinics and other rights that make possible conditions to enjoy a life with dignity. This entire attack has been the only response to the insatiable struggle of our peasant communities to demand respect for our rights, which have now just become promises that have never been honored by the national government.