"The war dehumanised us" - Colombia president

[Judi Lynn]

"The war dehumanised us" - Colombia president
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Thu, 25 Jul 2013 08:18 AM
Author: Anastasia Moloney

This story contains graphic accounts that readers may find disturbing.

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At least 220,000 Colombians have been killed - eight in every 10 of whom are civilians - during Colombia’s conflict since 1958, according to a landmark report by a local research centre.

The report published on Wednesday by Colombian researchers at the National Centre for Historical Memory in Bogota is based on dozens of testimonies collected over six years from victims of the conflict in villages and towns across the country. It is being billed as the most exhaustive study ever produced about the war crimes committed by armed groups during the country’s five decade-long conflict.

Fighting - between government troops, drug-running rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), other smaller guerrilla groups, and right-wing paramilitaries initially created to fight leftist rebels but later heavily involved in the cocaine trade - has left hundreds of thousands dead, 25,000 missing and more than 5 million Colombians uprooted or displaced, the report said.

The report examines the motivations of armed groups and the victims they left behind as a way to heal the wounds of war by giving a voice to victims, and to lay the groundwork for reconciliation as the government and top FARC commanders hold peace talks in Havana.

“So many Colombians have suffered violence. It’s a war, above all, that has claimed the lives of civilians. We have a moral and ethical responsibility towards the victims, to explain what happened in the war,” Gonzalo Sanchez, head of the National Centre for Historical Memory, told an audience of victims, community leaders, government officials and the Colombian president in Bogota on Wednesday.

More:
http://www.trust.org/item/20130725081822-3zbyo/?source=search

[bemildred]

1. War does that. Duh. What did he expect?

You commit atrocities, that's who you are. Get used to it.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Trust.org takes me to "the Thomas Reuters Foundation."

The Reuters news organization and the Reuters foundation have the same headquarters address: 3 Times Square, New York City. So we can presume that they are closely connected. I've felt compelled to rename the Reuters news organization as Rotters because of their egregiously biased coverage of the Latin American Left, including...

--Slander and demonization of popular, elected leaders of the FDR-type, i.e., those who advocate and implement economic fairness, social/political inclusiveness and Latin America sovereignty, independence and solidarity--especially solidarity against the vast and horrifying interference in Latin America by U.S. corporate/military rulers and their European allies, recently and for centuries. They slander and demonize the best leaders and the most progressive countries--relentlessly propagandizing against fairness and real democracy.

--Black-holing the significant accomplishments of the new Leftist leadership and their supporters--the civil activists and voters of Latin America--who are transforming the region on income equality, educational opportunity, public participation and democracy--NEVER mentioning these accomplishments, and, of course, NEVER acknowledging the very active hostility of U.S. corporate/military rulers and their European allies toward democracy in Latin America, which has included, in recent times, U.S. supported rightwing coup d'etats in Honduras and Paraguay, attempted rightwing coup d'etats in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, the spread of U.S. military bases wherever fascists gain power and the expenditure of at least $7 BILLION by the U.S. in Colombia alone, in aid of the brutal Colombian military and its closely tied rightwing paramilitary death squads.

Rotters is rightwing/corporate and anti-democratic. They are part of the problem. The region is advancing on social progress, democracy and peace in spite of their rightwing/corporate, anti-democratic propaganda.

So, now, consider this article which appears on the web site of Rotters' amorphous, "feel-good" foundation. The first thing I noticed about it is that the most horrifying brutalities that it mentions are attributed to "paramilitaries" when it fact they were committed by RIGHTWING paramilitaries with close ties to the U.S.-funded/trained Colombian military. Secondly, I don't know how or if the report itself is skewed, as to violence by the Colombia military/paramilitaries vs the FARC rebels, but this article about that report fails to mention other studies, including those of Amnesty International, which establish that the Colombian military and its closely tied paramilitaries (about half and half) are responsible for over 90% of the extrajudicial murders in Colombia. They are furthermore responsible for the brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers--THE worst human displacement crisis on earth--a crisis that includes hundreds of thousands of Colombian refugees fleeing into Venezuela and Ecuador mostly to escape the Colombia military and its death squads.

Consider the impression given by this paragraph in the Rotters "foundation" article:

Fighting - between government troops, drug-running rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), other smaller guerrilla groups, and right-wing paramilitaries initially created to fight leftist rebels but later heavily involved in the cocaine trade - has left hundreds of thousands dead, 25,000 missing and more than 5 million Colombians uprooted or displaced, the report said. --from the OP

Rebels are described as "drug-running rebels" while the drug-running of the rightwing paramilitaries is effectively buried in the paragraph as occurring "later" and the drug-running of the U.S.-supported mafia government of Alvaro Uribe is completely ignored. (Some one hundred of Uribe's closest political associates, including family members, are under investigation or already in jail in Colombia for drug trafficking, ties to the rightwing death squads and other crimes. Uribe remains a powerful and deeply threatening political figure in Colombia and there is considerable evidence that he is under CIA protection.) The paramilitaries are correctly described as "right-wing paramilitaries" in this paragraph but the correct appellation is dropped in the descriptions of the atrocities--including the horrendous atrocities against women--which are attributed merely to "paramilitaries." This creates confusion and blurring of the facts. It is U.S. and Rotters-supported monsters who have committed the vast majority of murders and other atrocities in Colombia!

Again, I'll have to read the source report, by Colombia's National Centre for Historical Memory, to find out if the report itself is similarly skewed--if it is, it is the obligation of a reporter and a news organization to point that out--or it may be just Rotters skewing the facts, as their news agency has done, time and again, on numerous vital Latin American issues and events.

Rotters is a predatory capitalist and war-mongering news organization. Their general object in Colombia is no doubt the same as that of U.S. corporate/military rulers and their European allies: that is, to create a "U.S. free trade for the rich" bulkhead in Colombia, to further loot the country's resources, to further enslave its workers and to defeat the Left in Latin America by means of (among other things) economic warfare.

That brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers from their lands was no accident. It was the quite deliberate creation of a slave labor force--poverty-stricken labor with no rights and no choices, and no ability to feed their families. It was PREP for "U.S. free trade for the rich." It was PAID FOR by the U.S. government (um, U.S. taxpayers). And it furthermore paved the way for Monsanto, Pfeiffer and other creepy Big Pharma/Big Ag transnationals to take over the trillion+ dollar illicit drug trade through legalization. The current Colombian president, Manuel Santos, has called for legalization--a policy that is flabbergasting until we realize WHO wants in.

$7 BILLION U.S. military aid for "the war on drugs"--and now it's all going to be legalized. ???

Santos is a rightwinger but apparently not a criminal and mafia don like Uribe who reined during the Bush Junta. Santos is charged with the "clean-up"--that is, turning Colombia into a viable corporate state. That is what the peace talks with the FARC are about. That is what THIS is about (this report). That is what the alleged reparations to victims and the alleged return of lands to the peasant farmers (mentioned in this report) are about. It is "clean-up" time in Dodge City.

I am certainly not against peace or reparations, or the legalization of drugs. I favor all three very strongly. But we REALLY NEED to understand the world as it is, and vast, powerful organizations like Rotters for what they are. Their goal is VAST PROFIT FOR THE FEW. That is their ONLY goal. Everything else they claim as a goal--whether it's peace, victim restitution or women's rights (which they make much of, at their "foundation" site) is window-dressing. When war is profitable, and paid for by someone else, they are gung-ho. When peace in necessary for the "clean-up" and MORE PROFIT, they want that. And they are fully game for COVERING UP the REAL culprits in a disaster like Colombia (or Iraq, or Afghanistan, et al). They are not a news organization. They are a propaganda organization. We need to read their output with open eyes! And we need to understand these events in their FULL context--something that Rotters and similar information-monopoly corporations will NEVER provide.

I feel the need to add that I see both good and bad in Santos. For instance, his statement that, "The war dehumanised us," is inarguably true but rather limited. It is largely the inhumanity and greed of his own elite moneyed and landed class that has driven this long civil war, that has driven most of its atrocities, and that has colluded with the U.S. elite to exploit, murder, rape and displace the vast poor majority and assassinate its leaders by the thousands (including numerous labor leaders). It is a careful statement, calculated not to offend his own support base too much. And it is typical of him. But I have to say, at the same time, that it is no easy task being a peacemaker--especially in a civil war, and especially in one that has gone on for so long. Peace is good whatever the motives of those who are permitting it. Those motives MUST be scrutinized because, as we learned from WW I, an unjust "peace" can lead straight to another horrendous war. I think Santos' motives are mixed. I sense some genuineness in him--for peace, for better government, for at least some manner of fairness for the poor--but I can't ignore Colombia's U.S. client state status, which means that Santos has been vetted and approved by the ruling powers here (corporations, banksters, the military). He is in bed with those who FUNDED most of the atrocities in Colombia, and those who stand to PROFIT, hugely, from "free trade for the rich."

You might say that this brutalized elite class needs to have a representative in any peace negotiation or it will fail. True enough. Is Santos more than that--more than a tool of the brutal elite class, here and there, which now sees peace as the best profit-making move? He could be somewhat more than that (somewhat better than that) but it's hard to tell for sure at this point. He is being permitted to pursue peace and limited justice by the same powers that have Uribe and Jeb Bush waiting in the wings for what may be Oil War II: South America. If he fails to make peace profitable to the 1%, he will be replaced and this quite literal war on the poor will resume. (In fact, it hasn't yet ceased--more labor leaders slain, recently.) This means--as is true with Obama, in my opinion--very limited, confined powers--confined mostly to making the rich richer, no matter what the designated "leader" may wish to do.

[Judi Lynn]

3. The reason we have sources like Rotters is because the citizens might wonder

and get overly suspicious when they realize without them we'd NEVER hear a word about the Americas, or Europe, or Asia, since all the US major newspapers closed almost all their news bureaus outside this country long ago.

We wouldn't be hearing a WORD without them, so we are wildly dependent upon whatever yarn they decide to spin for us, unless we travel there enough to actually be at home with the actual situations in other countries. Most people simply don't have the time for alternate lives in addition to their own lives where they are. As we know, we also don't really have a deep grasp of another country's reality during the time spent on vacation, or bidness trips, it's superficial at best.

So corporations like Rotters get to tell US what reality is, unless we decide to keep looking for more information! Fortunately for progressives, we all tend to know life is far more complex, and important than the crap we read from cheap fascist organizations trying to push a great lie off where we expect to find the truth.

I read long ago that citizens in Russia learned to start sifting through their own domestic propaganda and acquired a fairly decent ability to pick out the real elements of stories well enough to get the hang of events even THROUGH THE PROPAGANDA. It just may turn out that way for us, too, as in learning to see past the smoke screen.

As we learned long ago, Uribe used right-wing paramilitaries to pursue citizens even right into their voting booths to help them choose the right candidates, all the while we were also reading from troll dribble that Uribe was unbelievably popular throughout the hills and dales of Colombia, hell, the people just LOVED him. They loved the hope of not being tortured to death, that's what. They loved the thought they would never experience the stories they were hearing of death squads, sometimes assisted in many different forms by the Colombian military either in cordoning off the villages they were terrorizing, as they cut arms, legs, heads off with chain saws in the centers of villages, or disemboweled them and stuffed their torsos with rocks so they would sink to the bottoms of the rivers, or in physically wading in, including officers, and assisting them in the slaughter, even of children they found hiding from them.

We're STILL not informed of these things from wire services like Rotters. We're still hearing about them from human rights groups, and articles written by journalists who have managed to get the word out, at great personal risk.

It's possible Presidents who would want to do good are strictly kept on short leashes, and the real freedom they could enjoy only comes if people get destroyed in the process, like rolling out new waves of violence, yet human rights progress will get them in trouble. Sure looks that way from here.

Thanks for your comments. People need to know that what they read from the wire services needs to be weighed seriously, and studied, compared to other information, and not swallowed whole.

[Bacchus4.0]

4. Uribe voted greatest Colombian

more than a million voters took part in the History channel poll.

http://colombiareports.com/alvaro-uribe-elected-greatest-colombian-in-history/

[Judi Lynn]

5. So you have posted before. Odd. Maybe it's the safe choice. n/t

[Bacchus4.0]

7. just wanted to point that out since it contradicts your post

about whether Colombians like Uribe or not. It wouldn't be the first time you posted something inaccurate.

[Judi Lynn]

6. We do know Uribe has all kinds of ways to track people's phone calls,

internet messages, god knows what. That's what the kerfuffle has been all these years since the subject came under investigation.

Better to act dumb. Much safer.

Even Supreme Court justices are not safe.

[bemildred]

8. What do you think of Santos?

Honest curiosity. I don't really know enough about him to have an opinion.

[Judi Lynn]

9. He was Uribe's Defense Secretary through some hideous years,

during which the military was involved in some joint operations with the paras, as they cordoned off villages and the death squads tortured, mutilated, beheaded citizens, even using some of them for instruction time, according to testimony by former paras, having kept many of them prisoner in a building, once, and after bringing them out one at a time to butcher while villagers were forced to witness, sometimes high-ranking military officers actually went in, themselves, and slaughtered villagers, all of this having come out in trials already.

The responsibility for this has to go somewhere, and it seems so unlikely all these abuses which kept recurring time after time, year after year have to be known all the way to the top, regardless of the image Alvaro Uribe struggles wildly to preserve for himself.

Clearly this is something they DON'T want traceable to them, but it seems so unlikely the people at the bottom would go so wild if they believed there would be repercussions for their grotesque atrocities. That would REALLY be taking things to extremes.

It's hard to know what good he might decide to do, or if he's genuinely interested in making things better for poor, defenseless, suffering people with absolutely no where to hide, having already been terrorized off their own small plots of lands, and forced to live with no house to call a home, nor no land upon which to sit or stand.

Only he knows what's in his heart, and what he might do at any moment.

The very idea he would pursue peace to this degree seems like a step in the right direction, unless it's only a sham to be followed by a relentless war upon their imagined "enemies" again after they claim the "enemy" has offended them, or lied, or was holding out, etc., etc.

[Bacchus4.0]

10. I'd like to hear more about the joint operations with the paras

cordoning offf villages. I think you are confusing the military with the FARC. Odd that you would say that you don't think people at the bottom would would go wild if there would be repercussions yet at least weekly post a story about a Colombian military officer or soldier who is being prosecuted or sentenced for murder.

Not a very clear answer which is par for the course for you. I mean you just agreed with another poster on Reuters alleged malfeance and then immediately afterward post a news story from Reuters.

Don't you have some chores to do? Maybe take a walk outside once in awhile.

[Judi Lynn]

16. Here's one reference to roads to massacre sites being guarded by military:

~snip~
The El Salado massacre was one of the most recent massacres in Colombia, and one of the most violent and disturbing in the country's history. Dozens of innocent civilians were killed by paramilitaries over a 2-day period. Human Rights Watch and other groups have meticulously documented the overt and covert connections between the paramilitary death squads of Colombia and the now U.S.-funded, trained, and supplied Colombian Military. In the case of the El Salado massacre, the connection between the paramilitaries and the military was clear:[font size=3] the Colombian Army blocked the roads leading into El Salado and prevented human rights workers from intervening.[/font] Dozens of innocent civilians were beheaded and dismembered on a basketball court, while the murderers drank, listened to rock music, and abused women from the village. (Please contact Colombia Support Network for more information on this massacre and the situation in Colombia. www.colombiasupport.net, [e-mail])

http://www.soaw.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=174

Following, just a few looks at Colombian military mixing with the right-wing paramilitary death squad zombies to murder people they wanted out of the way.

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Page last updated at 08:10 GMT, Thursday, 26 November 2009
Colombia jails death squad general over massacre

A Colombian court has sentenced a former general to 40 years in jail for his role in the killing of dozens of civilians by right-wing death squads.

Jaime Humberto Uscategui's sentence is the longest ever for an army officer in Colombia.

The court was told the general had knowingly let far-right paramilitary death squads use his army base.

Some 50 unarmed peasants were killed by the militia in 1997, and their corpses cut open and thrown in a river.

The killings happened during a five-day period in the remote village of Mapiripan in the eastern province of Meta.

Pleas for assistance from the villagers and local officials were reportedly ignored by Gen Uscategui.

The court found him guilty of murder, kidnapping and falsifying public documents.

More:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8380025.stm

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Colombian authorities ordered to apologize for massacre .
Monday, 30 April 2012 10:24
Rosemary Westwood

A court on Monday ordered Colombia's security forces to apologize for failing to apologize for failing to stop the execution-style slaughter of fisherman in the northeastern department of Magdalena in 2000.

The Administrative Tribunal of Magdalena's Office ordered an official apology from the department for the Nueva Venecia Massacre, when 60 right-wing paramilitaries systematically shot dead 39 fishermen in the town of Nueva Venecia, and killed others in Buenavista and Bocas de Aracataca, for allegedly having ties to left-wing guerrillas, newspaper El Espectador reported.

The court criticized the army for not entering the towns until December 24, four days after the murders began, the newspaper reported.
Former paramilitary leader Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias "Jorge 40," was sentenced to 47 years in prison for the massacre, according daily El Tiempo. Jorge 40 never did time for the massacre as he was extradited in 2008 to face drug charges in the U.S.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/23778-officials-must-apologise-for-nueva-vencia-massacre.html

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The Colombian Prosecutor General's Office of Human Rights issued an arrest warrant Friday June 15 against an army captain accused by former paramilitaries of participating in a 2001 massacre against civilians, wrote the NGO Verdad Abierta on Friday.

The office said that recent testimonies given by former members of the far-right paramilitary group, the AUC, implicated captain Mauricio Zambrano in the planning of the El Naya massacre, which took place in April 2001 between the southwestern Valle del Cauca and Cauca departments.

~snip~

On April 21 2001, some 220 AUC paramilitaries arrived at the village of El Naya and killed between 24 and 200 villagers, according to various estimates. More than 3,000 residents were subsequently displaced under the pretext of the AUC fighting left-wing FARC guerrillas and their sympathizers.

~snip~

The AUC member Armando Lugo, alias “El Cabezon,” one of the paramilitaries on trial for the massacre, said in 2010 that Captain Zambrano had allowed him access to a military base near El Naya, where war material used by the paramilitaries was allegedly obtained.

Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/24734-arrest-warrant-for-captain-implicated-in-paramilitary-massacre.html stm

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Paramilitaries said 1997 massacre was 'well coordinated' with army: US cable .
Wednesday, 18 July 2012 09:31 Adriaan Alsema

Members of paramilitary organization AUC told the U.S. embassy that the 1997 Mapiripan massacre in central Colombia was "well coordinated in advance" with (elements of) the army, according to a released diplomatic cable.

The State Department document was declassified and published Tuesday by the National Security Archive, a non-profit organization dedicated to declassifying U.S. government documents.

According to the embassy's anonymous sources, the army provided "travel, logistics, intelligence and security" to the paramilitary who killed dozens of civilians in the five days after their July 15 incursion of the town.

~snip~
The identification of the victims has been complicated as the paramilitaries cut up the majority of their remains and threw them in a nearby river.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/25133-paramilitaries-said-1997-massacre-was-well-coordinated-with-army-us-cable.html

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Mapiripán Massacre: Paras told U.S. Operation “well-coordinated in advance” with Colombian Army
July 16, 2012
by Michael Evans



The massacre was “well-coordinated in advance” with the Colombian Army.

Colombia’s Mapiripán massacre was “well-coordinated in advance” with the Colombian Army, according to confidential paramilitary sources, one of which the U.S. Embassy believed had “participated directly in the planning” of the killings. The new disclosures are the first from a fresh set of declassified diplomatic cables on the Mapiripán case released at the end of last week by the State Department’s Appeals Review Panel on the15th anniversary of the massacre.

If this “blunt admission” of Army complicity in the Mapiripán massacre was correct, an Embassy official observed, “then both of the key paramilitary operations which most directly affected U.S.-assisted counter-narcotics operations in the Guaviare region in 1997 had been conducted with the foreknowledge and facilitation by members of the Colombian Army.” The other “operation” was the October 1997 massacre at Miraflores, which, like Mapiripán, was then an important narcotics trafficking hub in Colombia’s eastern plains.

It’s taken the State Department 15 years to declassify what it knew only 18 months after those dark days: that the Mapiripán massacre was likely the result of an Army-paramilitary conspiracy that went “well beyond” the units and individuals that have been implicated so far. The document suggests that the previous convictions in the case—which mostly involve junior officers and crimes of omission—are merely the tip of the iceberg.

A few days ago, we published a 2003 letter in which the State Department claimed—six years after the fact—that the Colombian military had tried to “cover up” the massacre, in which dozens were brutally killed by illegal paramilitary forces brought in from northern Colombia. These new documents, most of which are from 1997-1999, go a long way toward explaining how they arrived at that conclusion.

More:
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/mapiripan-massacre-paras-told-u-s-operation-well-coordinated-in-advance-with-colombian-army/

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Dan Gardner • Chainsaws in Colombia

The victims were dragged into the town slaughterhouse. Amid chains and meat hooks, they were bound, suspended and interrogated. Where are the guerrillas? Are you a guerrilla? The men had machetes and chainsaws. Whatever the victims said, however they pleaded, they lost a hand. An arm. A leg. Finally, almost mercifully, they were decapitated.

By The Ottawa Citizen
July 20, 2007

The victims were dragged into the town slaughterhouse. Amid chains and meat hooks, they were bound, suspended and interrogated. Where are the guerrillas? Are you a guerrilla? The men had machetes and chainsaws. Whatever the victims said, however they pleaded, they lost a hand. An arm. A leg. Finally, almost mercifully, they were decapitated.

When Stephen Harper flew to Bogota earlier this week, the news stories mentioned "human rights concerns." They didn't say much more than that, which is a pity because in Colombia "human rights concerns" are not vague abstractions. They involve men who torture and murder with chainsaws: A few have been caught and punished; some have walked away whistling; and many are still at it.

Mr. Harper acknowledged that all is not well in Colombia, but he defended his decision to launch free trade talks. "We are not going to say fix all your social, political and human rights problems and only then will we engage in trade relations with you," the prime minister said. "That's ridiculous." That sounds pretty reasonable. But things get a little murkier when you know that growing evidence suggests the president whose hand Mr. Harper shook leads a government with deep connections to men who torture and murder with chainsaws.

The timing of Mr. Harper's trip was strangely apt. Almost precisely 10 years earlier -- on July 15, 1997 -- paramilitary thugs entered a village in the southeastern jungles of Colombia. What followed was a four-day orgy of rape, torture and murder that came to be known as the Mapiripan massacre. It is believed that 49 people died, although only three, headless, bodies were found. All the others were dismembered in the slaughterhouse and the body parts dumped in the Guaviare River.

Colombian history is riddled with massacres. But two things set Mapiripan apart.

One was the use of chainsaws. After Mapiripan, it became the paramilitaries' signature.

More:
http://www.canada.com/topics/news/politics/story.html?id=f746a53a-adee-4953-9199-3e8f6a65f0d2

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The Massacre at Mapiripán
By Jo-Marie Burt · April 3, 2000 ·

In July 1997, the paramilitary group known as the United Self-Defense Units of Colombia (AUC) went on a grisly killing spree in Mapiripán, a small coca-growing town in southeastern Colombia. According to eyewitness accounts, the paramilitaries hacked their victims to death with machetes, decapitated many with chainsaws and dumped the bodies–some still alive–into the Guaviare River. At least 30 people were killed, though the true number of dead may never be known. Carlos Castaño, the self-anointed leader of the AUC, immediately and unabashedly took credit for the massacre.

But Castaño did not act alone. Human rights observers immediately noted the complicity of the Colombian armed forces in the Mapiripán massacre. The paramilitaries used an army-guarded airstrip to land from their stronghold in northern Colombia and from which to launch their attack. Nor did the authorities respond to repeated calls by a local judge to stop the attack, which lasted six consecutive days.

Evidence later emerged suggesting that the role of the Colombian military in the massacre was in fact much deeper, and in March 1999 Colombian prosecutors indicted Colonel Lino Sánchez, operations chief of the Colombian Army’s 12th Brigade, for planning, with Castaño, the Mapiripán massacre. This is not surprising, given that the links between paramilitaries and the Colombian army have been well established. According to a February Human Rights Watch report, half of the Colombian Army’s 18 brigades have clear links to paramilitary groups.

In recent weeks, new evidence obtained by Ignacio Gómez of the Bogotá daily El Espectador, suggests that weeks, if not days, before the Mapiripán massacre, Colonel Sánchez received “special training” by U.S. Army Green Berets on Barrancón Island, on the Guaviare River. While it cannot be said that U.S. forces were directly involved in the massacre, or even knew that it was being planned, the events offer compelling evidence that U.S. equipment, training and money can be easily turned to vile purposes in what Human Rights Watch has called a “war without quarter.”

More:
http://colombiajournal.org/colombia6.htm

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Colombian Air Force aided 2001 massacre: AUC leader .
Monday, 25 June 2012 09:33 Brandon Barrett

A former AUC leader claimed Colombia's Air Force lent air support to a paramilitary operation against FARC guerrillas that killed at least 24 people in 2001.

Elkin Casarrollo Posada, a high-ranking member of the AUC's Calima Bloc, said that during an AUC raid known as the El Naya massacre, he was in radio contact with Freddy Antonio Cadavid Acevedo, a Colombian solider who agreed to provide a fighter plane to ward off FARC guerrillas in the border region between the southwestern departments of Cauca and Valle del Cauca.

The 15-day paramilitary operation took place in April 2001 in the village of El Naya and resulted in the death of between 24 and 200 civilians, according to various estimates.

Similarly, the Prosecutor General's Office received information from Eladio Vivero, who was kidnapped by the AUC, that a commander called for air support from Colombia's Air Force in June 2001 and received two helicopters to help fight guerrilla soliders. He also alleged that after the helicopters fired on FARC rebels, the paramilitary leader was told to withdraw from the area by an army officer before another nearby military company advanced on their position.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/24753-former-paramilitary-claimxs-the-air-force-lent-fighter-jet-to-auc-in-2001-massacre.html

[Bacchus4.0]

20. Wrong!! Not a single one of those atrocities you cite occured under Santos as defense minister

Santos was not appointed until 2006. In fact, not a single one occured under the administration of Uribe either. 2002 to 2010. Every single one of your references relate to events that occured prior to 2002. Every single one.

here is your inaccurate deceptive statement from a prievious post:

"He was Uribe's Defense Secretary through some hideous years,

during which the military was involved in some joint operations with the paras, as they cordoned off villages and the death squads tortured, mutilated, beheaded citizens, even using some of them for instruction time, according to testimony by former paras, having kept many of them prisoner in a building, once, and after bringing them out one at a time to butcher while villagers were forced to witness, sometimes high-ranking military officers actually went in, themselves, and slaughtered villagers, all of this having come out in trials already. "


You couldn't even prove your very own assertion.

[Zorro]

22. Oops!!!

[Bacchus4.0]

23. yeah, perhaps after synchronizing events with their appropriate administrations

she can reassess her views of recent Colombian administrations.

I mean no-one has to like Santos or Uribe but its really not asking too much to at least develop the intellectural capacity to associate presidents with events that occurred during their administrations.

Hubert Hoover may have been a terrible president but WWI wasn't his fault.

[bemildred]

11. Maybe he sees that they are on a road to nowhere?

One could make parallels with Obama's situation, but better not. It's not an uncommon situation, the need for reform and the people who like things fine the way they are.

Thanks.

[Bacchus4.0]

12. road to nowhere? What do you mean by that?

Colombia has emerged from the abyss over the past 12 years.

[bemildred]

13. And if they do not "emerge from the abyss" they are still in the abyss.

What do you think we are talking about? A fifty year long civil war is what we are talking about. THAT is a road to nowhere.

And Uncle Sugar is not going to be there to help much longer, either. Bet on it. We have bigger problems.

And Latin America is moving left. You come out better in the end if you get with the program than fight to the end. You get to keep more.

[Bacchus4.0]

14. oh, I'm ok with that. Colombia should be self sustaining

it should be the aspiration of every country. It should be the aspiration of the US actually. They should hopefully reach a point in their evolution that they no longer need or desire US "assistance".

Yeah, the war should end soon hopefully. The FARC isn't making it easy as they just killed 19 soldiers. Very odd that peace negotiations happening while the fighting continues.

[bemildred]

15. It is quite normal for negotiations and war to run in parallel.

The thing about FARC is it's been 50 years. You would think somebody would have won by now? Esp. with all the outside help? If they were ever going to? What is happening now is the negotiation of a new status quo. That's what all the haggling over the reconciliation law is about.

[Peace Patriot]

18. The FARC asked for a ceasefire during the talks. The government refused!

You imply that the FARC are the ones responsible for the violence continuing.

"Yeah, the war should end soon hopefully. The FARC isn't making it easy as they just killed 19 soldiers. Very odd that peace negotiations happening while the fighting continues." --you

That is a damned lie. It was the rightwing government's choice to continue shooting at the FARC in Colombia while meeting in Havanna for peace talks.

YOU are the one who is constantly pushing disinformation and "inaccuracy" here at DU--not Judi Lynn, who backs up her views with vast research. You never do. You just pull things out of a hat--bits and pieces that support your rightwing/corporate views--almost never sourced, almost never in any context, and almost always wrong. You do "hit pieces." You don't do THOUGHT.

One other appalling thing that your rightwing pals did during the Bush Junta was to designate every conflict on earth as a fight against "terrorism," and specifically to designate THIS one as a fight against "terrorism."

It is a CIVIL WAR. The FARC believe that they are defending Colombia--the real Colombia of the vast dirt poor majority--and that these U.S. funded/trained fascist monsters in the military and its paramilitaries, and U.S.-supported mafia dons like Uribe, are traitors. Whether we agree with their taking up arms to defeat those whom they consider to be traitors, or not, that is what they believe and who they are. They are COLOMBIANS who took up arms against OTHER Colombians in the time-honored tradition of revolutionary war.

So, when a Santos comes along and wants to sue for peace but keeps shooting at them, you expect them to do what? Lay down their arms and get shot anyway (as happened in the last peace process--some 5,000 demobilized FARC assassinated by the military and its death squads)?

$7 BILLION (visible) of our tax dollars have gone to murdering these rebel Colombians and ANYBODY THAT THE GOVERNMENT CALLED A "TERRORIST" (labor leaders, teachers, peasant farmers) because Bush Jr. gave them leave to call ANYBODY a "terrorist" (which is exactly what Uribe did). A civil war was turned into a war on the poor and their advocates, a war on the Left, a war on judges and prosecutors and anybody else who got in Uribe's way.

I don't care how many Colombians with access to "the History Channel" think Uribe is wonderful. He is a monster just like his mentor, Bush Jr. And those who support him are as airbrained as Bush Jr. supporters (or worse--are venal and greedy, and/or deliberately blind themselves to the horrors committed in their name). Furthermore, knowing how Uribe rose to power and stayed in power--by death squad, by spying, by threat and intimidation, by drug money and by U.S. and corporate media support--how can we trust ANY poll that says he is "popular"? It's kind of like believing that Bush Jr. won either of his elections. You have to be blind or a fool to believe it.

If you can get your head blown off in Colombia for speaking against Uribe, or even just advocating for the poor, what good is a poll?

Not to mention a "History Channel poll." How many of the poorest people in Latin America--Colombia's vast peasantry--have a TV? How many, if they have or had a TV, could take it with them when FIVE MILLION of them were brutally driven from their farms? Certainly the dead ones--thousands--could not cart away their TV and tune into the "History Channel." Colombia is a place where intimidation and lack of access are huge factors in polling and we cannot trust polls in Colombia without the details on how these critical matters have been handled. How was the poll conducted? Who had access to it? What were the controls for intimidation, poverty, fear and access in blood-soaked Colombia?

But, hey, you don't do details. You don't do sources. You don't do analysis. You don't do thought.

[Peace Patriot]

19. My post, above, is in response to Bacchus comment no. 14.

DU keeps moving it, so that it seems to be a reply to "bemildred." Probably DU has a limit on reply placement? Anyway, that's why I deleted and re-posted it (with only slight editings). But it's still has no indentation as a reply to Bacchus.

[Bacchus4.0]

21. most poor people have tv

you are so ignorant about life in latin america that you are unable to make an informed opinion. It doesn't stop you from posting. I think you said that yesterday that the displaced people who were forced out of their homes were living on the street. Wrong!! They moved away. They are living in other cities and towns. There are no huge refugee camps in Colombia. You simply are not worth talking to since you are completely clueless.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Ridiculous. Photos of these refugee camps have been published. n/t

[Bacchus4.0]

25. lets see those photos then. Colombian "refugees" flee to other cities

and towns within country and neighboring countries. That is what is meant by internal displacement. They move away.

Is there any subject you are actually qualified to speak on?

[Judi Lynn]

26. UN, UK Say Colombia Has Over 4 Million Refugees

UN, UK Say Colombia Has Over 4 Million Refugees
News from Colombia | on: Tuesday, 9 November 2010


[font size=1]
A camp for displaced people in the Colombian capital Bogota[/font]

The British Government yesterday announced that they believe it is likely that Colombia has around 4.5 million [font size=6]internally displaced people,[/font] whilst reports in today’s press suggest that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) now believe that Colombia has more displaced than any other country in the world.

The new British estimate was announced by Foreign Office Minister Jeremy Browne in Parliament yesterday who said that whilst the official figure was only 3.3 million “the real figure is more likely to be around 4.5 million.” Meanwhile, Colombian press is today reporting that the UNHCHR believes Colombia has more people forced from their homes and land by violence than any other country in the world.

However, Colombia’s leading NGO working with displaced people, the Consultancy on Human Rights and Development (CODHES), which publishes detailed research on the issues, says that the true figure is likely closer to 5 million. CODHES director Jorge Rojas yesterday told the press that the country now has more displaced that Afghanistan, the Congo and Iraq – historically some of the countries with the highest number of refugees.

The Colombian authorities have attempted to play down the problem but still admit to just over 3 million displaced people. International organisations have repeatedly accused the Government of not doing enough to prevent people being forced from their homes and not providing sufficient assistance to those who have been displaced.

http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/news/article/832/un-uk-say-colombia-has-over-4-million-refugees

Don't you ever even take the time to THINK, Bacchus? My God.

[Bacchus4.0]

27. that is a temporary camp for about a thousand people

subsequently they moved out. Something you would see after a storm. You simply fail to understand the situation in Colombia versus say Haiti or Sudan. THe displaced people in Colombia are those that have fled and moved elsewhere including neighboring countries.

http://lh5.googleusercontent.com/v0oxH5qJAy_0XxOn8a14guhbD_pcAiSgktSGbeNpYM86ClYsqeMdu0QPVjEyVg99z6_lDpeiFRIvm3239YHg8XNs8tnYKWcfhtP8L7XOUzvuGs_jDY4

Venezuelan refuees

[Judi Lynn]

28. “A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City”

“A Refugee Camp in the Heart of the City”
Fact Sheet: COLOMBIA
Internally Displaced People (IDPs)
Up to 4 million (second highest in the world) 1
Refugees
552,000 (fourth highest in the world)2
Refugees fled to
Venezuela, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Panama
Conflict began in
1960s
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) began working there in
1985
MSF staff on the ground
267
MSF activities
•
Primary health care
•
Mental health care
•
HIV/AIDS treatment
•
Treatment of sexual violence
•
Water-and-sanitation programs
MSF concerns
•
Violence against civilians
•
Lack of access for IDPs to government health-care services
•
Massive mental trauma among population
•
Hundreds of thousands of Colombians are displaced, trapped, isolated and impoverished by the conflict among guerrilla groups, government forces and paramilitary groups that has ravaged their country for the past 45 years.
•
Violence has caused widespread physical and psychological distress, yet health-care access is difficult and dangerous for those in rural conflict zones and those forced to seek refuge in urban slums.
•
Tens of thousands have sought safety in shantytowns located outside of major Colombian cities. In these semi-urban slums, the displaced endure squalid living conditions and very limited access to medical and counseling services.
•
MSF works in fixed and mobile medical clinics in both urban and rural areas.
•
The Colombian government provides free health care for internally displaced persons (IDPs) who are registered, but only a tiny minority is registered as revealing personal information may be too risky.
•
Colombia has been listed on MSF’s annual “Top Ten Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories” every year since 1999.


For more information visit www.doctorswithoutborders.org/colombia

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/events/refugeecamp/press/MSF%20Fact%20Sheet%20-%20Colombia.pdf

[center]
[font size=1]
A Colombian family has lunch at a refugee camp set up in a park in Bogota, July 18, 2006.
Around 2.5 million people were displaced in Colombia as a result of the internal armed conflict.
(ALEJANDRA VEGA - AFP/Getty Images)[/font][/center]
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Elizabeth Ferris | June 10, 2013 12:02pm

Colombia: Displacement and Peace

~snip~
Colombia has the world’s largest population of internally displaced persons, representing over ten percent of the country’s population.
The Brookings Project on Internal Displacement has followed developments in Colombia for almost 20 years and has been involved in various research initiatives. However, this is the first time that the Project has participated in a conference on solutions to Colombian displacement.

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2013/06/04-colombia-displacement-farc-ferris

[Bacchus4.0]

29. parque tercer milenio refugee camp Bogota