Political Killings in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Political Killings in Colombia
Submitted by Stephen Lendman on Mon, 2010-08-23 09:42

Political Killings in Colombia - by Stephen Lendman

Colombia, America's closest South American ally, is a corrupted narco-state, a repressive death squad faux democracy, threatening regional neighbors, and reigning terror against trade unionists, human rights workers, campesinos, pro-democracy organizations, independent journalists, and legitimate resistance groups like the FARC-EP. Established in 1964, James Petras calls it the "longest standing, largest peasant-based guerrilla movement in the world," persisting valiantly for decades.

Thanks to Plan Colombia and other support, the state is heavily militarized, more than ever now serving as Washington's land-based aircraft carrier against regional targets, including neighboring Venezuela.

The Pentagon got expanded access, former President Alvaro Uribe agreeing to US forces on seven more military bases (three airfields, two naval installations, and two army facilities), as well as unrestricted use of the entire country as-needed for internal and external belligerency, including out-of-control violence and human rights abuses, the region's most extreme to keep two-thirds of Colombians impoverished, millions displaced, corruption endemic, wealth concentration growing, and corporate predators freed to exploit and plunder.

Also to facilitate record amounts of Colombian cocaine from government-controlled areas reaching US and world markets, new President Juan Manuel Santos embracing the "Uribe Doctrine," now his. It's extremist, hard right, corrupt, brutal, corporate-friendly, and militarized in lockstep with Washington.

More:
http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/54528

[Judi Lynn]

1. Anniversary of a Political Murder in Colombia

Anniversary of a Political Murder in Colombia
by COHA Senior Research Fellow W. John Green

The one thing that those living outside of Latin America are likely to know about Colombia, besides its association with the illegal drug trade, is its unremitting violence. The country evokes images of ruthless drug lords, merciless paramilitary killers, and militant guerrilla armies, piles of bloody corpses and despairing kidnapped hostages.

The Colombia of today is directly linked to these antecedents. Colombia is a “managed” democracy,—free, but not necessarily fair—with the far right government of Álvaro Uribe largely trusting its political future to the aid and goodwill of the Bush Administration, as well as acting as a bulwark against the Latin American left-leaning movement led by Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez.

Historians, however, can point out that this Andean template did not always exist. In the 1930s and early 1940s, during the so-called “Liberal Republic,” Colombia stood out as a relatively stable and democratic nation—one of the most respectable in the hemisphere. In fact, Colombia’s political culture spawned a massive populist movement led by prominent labor lawyer and politician on the Liberal left, Jorge Eliécer Gaitán.

Gaitánismo, as the movement came to be called, embodied a powerful call for social justice and increased democracy, and attracted large numbers of progressive Colombians to its banner. Though he was spurned by the Liberal party leadership in the 1946 presidential election (a decision that split its vote and cost the party the presidency), Gaitán outmaneuvered his rivals and became party leader in 1947. At the head of a reunited Liberal party, he would easily have been elected president in 1950.

Yet sixty years ago, three shots from a .38 caliber revolver helped create the chaotic Colombia, scenes of which can be witnessed daily. On April 9, 1948, an assassin murdered Gaitán outside his office in downtown Bogotá as he went to lunch. Over the following two decades, during the aptly-named period known as Violencia, thousands of his supporters and opponents were also killed as Colombia cycled through a vicious civil war pitting Liberal and Communist guerrillas against government forces and rightist partisans of the ruling Conservative party. The pattern of political murders established during the 1940s and 1950s has dominated Colombian politics ever since, and greatly influenced the region’s various other “dirty wars” in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. Political assassinations also blossomed elsewhere in the hemisphere through the indiscriminate employment of bargain basement hit men known in Colombia as sicarios.

The tradition of political murder which Colombia exemplifies to this day is a style of repression that targets all messengers of change—not just armed revolutionaries, but also popular civilian political leaders, labor organizers, intellectuals, journalists, activist lawyers, academics, students, church men and women, and even progressive military officers.

More:
http://www.coha.org/anniversary-of-a-political-murder-in-colombia/

http://www.cambio.com.co.nyud.net:8090/portadacambio/769/IMAGEN/IMAGEN-4038327-2.jpg http://es.comunicas.org.nyud.net:8090/files/2010/04/gaitan.jpg

Jorge Eliécer Gaitán

[Peace Patriot]

2. Lendman certainly rips through the democracy cosmetics that the CIA and...

...the U.S. State Department are trying to paste on Colombia's brutal, bloody face, with the inauguration of former Defense Minister Manuel Santos as president of Colombia.

It is so easy to be enticed by hope that change is occurring in Colombia. I have felt the tug of that hope. Lendman demolishes it, and of course he is right. Santos rises on a mountain of bodies--of murdered leftists and teachers and humanitarians and trade unionists and peasant farmers. As with our own president's statement, "We need to look forward not backward," the heinous crimes upon which current profit for the super-rich are built must be forgotten, in Colombia, and here. We must forget that tens of thousands of people are dead, in Colombia, murdered for their political views, and that 5 MILLION peasant farmers have been displaced from their lands by state terror, and that the U.S. slaughtered a hundred thousand innocent people in the bombing of Baghdad alone, to steal their oil, and terrorized and tortured survivors.

To continue with "free trade for the rich," we must forget the bloody ground on which it is built. It's good to give up false hope. A just and peaceful future, for our own country, and for countries and peoples whom our government has grievously harmed, must be built on the truth and on real democracy--not this paltry thing that Hillary Clinton has peddled about Honduras, and will be peddling about Colombia, to get her long-desired "free trade for the rich" bill past Congress' labor Democrats (who object to the short life spans of trade unionists in Colombia). Santos is a mirage. He was in charge of the Colombian military during some of its worst abuses. They may have sent him to "Smile School" but his purposes have not changed. He means the rich to benefit from the deaths and terrorization of the poor.

And if we do not face truths like this--about our own government and its engineering of "allies" in Latin America--we will end up entirely engulfed in an "Alice in Wonderland" world, where everything is upside down, backwards and inside out. Down the "rabbit hole" into a completely delusionary society and country.

[rabs]

3. The nightmare continues; Norma Irene Pérez's body was identifed today

Norma Irene Pérez was one of the organizers of the visit by Euro-deputies and a U.S. delegation of labor leaders to La Macarena, the largest common grave in Latin America, on 22 July. She was a leading human rights activists in the Meta region where La Macarena is located.

Today her body was identified after she was kidnapped on Aug. 7 (the day JM Santos was inaugurated). She had been shot to death. Her body was found Aug. 13 but not identifed until today.

On July 25, three days later after the Euro-U.S. delegations visit, alvaro uribito visited the military base bordering the common grave and said that "spokespersons for terrorism" were trying to discredit the armed forces.

It amounted to a death sentence for Norma Irene; on Aug. 7 during the Santos inauguration media hoopla she was kidnapped and killed. She leaves behind three daughter, ages 14, 6, 4 and a boy, 9.

There is a climate of intense fear among the people who talked to the Euro and U.S. delegations at the public meeting in La Macarena.

http://www.elespectador.com/articulo-220608-hallan-muerta-defensora-de-derechos-humanos-el-meta

[Judi Lynn]

5. Vicious, heartless murder. She was the mother of 5 young children who need her, too.

This is revenge, and it's also meant to stand as a warning to everyone who hears the story not to make trouble for the CURRENT government, too. They mean to use her death to terrify and paralyze others with fear.

It was just last March J. Hurtado was murdered, not so long before Norma Irene Pérez:

Page last updated at 18:20 GMT, Friday, 19 March 2010
Colombia campaigner's death sparks investigation call

The killing of a Colombian human rights activist has sparked calls for an urgent investigation into his death.

Reports say Jhonny Hurtado, 59, was shot dead on Monday at his farm near La Catalina, in Colombia's Meta region.

The farmer had recently spoken to a British delegation of union activists and labour campaigners about alleged rights abuses in the area.

The delegation said it is "deeply saddened" and has urged the government to bring those responsible to justice.

"We were deeply concerned to learn that soldiers of the Colombian Army were allegedly present in the area at the time that this killing occurred," the delegation said in a letter to Colombia's President Alvaro Uribe Velez.

More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8577320.stm

If Norma Irene Pérez was kidnapped, it seems likely the monsters probably tortured this woman, too, before executing her.

Horrible beyond enduring.

[rabs]

4. The nightmare continues II -- Beto Ufo Pineda hacked to death

Ufo Pineda, 48, was the leader of a human-rights organization named New Florida that helps the displaced. He died of machete and knife wounds. He had been missing since Aug. 17 in a rural area near the city of Popayan, southwestern Colombia.

He is the 38th leader for the displaced killed since 2002, when alvarito uribe was elected. Now that uribito is out of office, the killings continue.


---------------

TeleSUR _ Hace: 03 horas
El representante de una organización de desplazados en el Cauca fue hallado asesinado en la zona rural de Popayán, la capital de este departamento del suroeste colombiano, informaron este martes en Bogotá fuentes humanitarias.

El dirigente Beto Ufo Pineda, de 48 años, que encabezaba la Organización Nueva Florida, murió como consecuencia de varias heridas de machete y cuchillo, y su caso es el número 38 de líderes de desplazados que han sido asesinados desde 2002 en el país.

La Consultoría para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento (Codhes, privada) precisó en un comunicado que el paradero de Pineda era desconocido desde el pasado 17 de agosto.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Doesn't looks as if they have missed a beat, does it?

I found an article searching for his name, put it through google translate:

LEADER OF DISPLACED PEOPLE KILLED SOUTH OF COLOMBIA .
Wednesday, August 25, 2010 1:09 Colombia



TeleSUR .- The body of the Colombian leader of the Organization New Florida, Ufo Beto Pineda , was found in rural Popayán , capital of Cauca ( southeast of Colombia). This is the second human rights defender who kill in less than 24 hours in the South American country .

The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement ( CODHES) , said yesterday through a statement nothing was known of the Colombian leader since 17 August.

Codhes indicated in the document Pineda out ( on 17 August) "too early to do farm labor "in an estate that is occupied by 10 families displaced. The land was given by the Colombian government in 2007 .

Later , the corpse of the leader was found two days later in Popayan. The case was in the hands of the Attorney General in the same city , later identified as being fully implemented.

Pineda explained that Codhes "Had security measures "and denounced the leader Olga Castaño, displaced in Popayan, " was physically attacked " Tuesday by a motor , who did not have identification on the streets of the city.

Ufo Pineda died from multiple stabbing wounds and your case is number 38 of displaced leaders , who since 2002 have been murdered in Colombia.

On Monday, the Colombian lawmaker Ivan Cepeda reported the killing of a human rights delegations that participated in the hearing on the grave of La Macarena (southeast ), considered the largest in Latin America .

The victim was identified as Norma Irene Perez a mother of four children who worked as a farmer and was working in favor of the defense of human rights in his country. His body was found in La Union , Municipality of the Macarena with several shots , six days after reporting her missing.

According to statistics from CODHES and the Catholic Church, since 1985 more than four million Colombians have left their lands due to the internal armed conflict. However, according to a report released Tuesday by the United Nations Organization ( UN) This year has seen more than 7 000 500 people displaced.

Protection for more than 500 refugees

The only indigenous council of Bogota ( Bogota ), lto Arhuaco Ati Quigua called on Tuesday to protect more than 500 of the Embera Indians living as refugees in the locality.

Quigua reported that Indians are discriminated against , threatened and assaulted , also said that at least two of them have been stabbed in the streets of the city center .

" They are victims of displacement and , also , about conduct contrary to good treatment , while public administration ( for them) is very slow, " Colombian mayor insisted .

He argued that Embera those affected are 506 , belonging to the most troubled areas of the departments of Antioquia , Chocó and Risaralda, all in northwestern Colombia. Of the total , 53 percent are children and 30 percent are widowed mothers .

"They are displaced because their lands are of armed conflict and are in the crossfire , and authorities can not make complaints because the murder along with their families, " lamented the local authority .

When fleeing the armed conflict , Colombians are displaced by developers of large projects , he added Quigua .

Finally , he noted that it is not possible to return to their lands because of lack of security.

http://www.ojopelao.com/mundo/20074-asesinado-lider-de-desplazados-al-sur-de-colombia.html