Colombia government asks forgiveness for 1988 paramilitary massacre
Source: Colombia Reports
Colombia government asks forgiveness for 1988 paramilitary massacre
Posted by Adriaan Alsema on Dec 21, 2015
In a ceremony similar to one held by FARC rebels in western Colombia, government officials formally admitted responsibility and asked forgiveness to the town of Segovia where paramilitaries massacred 44 in 1988.
The ceremony is the first of many acts of repentance that seeks the healing of deep wounds caused by Colombia’s 51-year-long conflict the government and the FARC are trying to end.
The president’s Human Rights adviser, Guillermo Rivera, formally asked forgiveness for the massacre ordered by a Liberal Party politician that sought the extermination of local supporters of the communist Patriotic Union party.
The massacre was the first of many carried out by paramilitary forces paid at the order of former House Representative Cesar Perez who saw the leftists threatening his political ambitions.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/160585-2/
= new reply since forum marked as read
then showed up in Panama.
How decent it was of the Panamanian police to pick him up there, instead of looking the other way. So glad to see this article!
[center]
In his "glory" days, in Colombia.
In his "not so much glory" days in Panama. [/center]
There's an especially stark comment made in your second link by a former AUC:
"If I am killed by a victim, I think, well, if that's how I have to pay for what I've done, I'll pay. What I'm really afraid of is that people I have informed on will come after me," he says. "Because I know what they are capable of."
AUC have publically taken various members of villages and cut them to pieces alive with chainsaws in front of their neighbors, to terrorize the survivors, and spread fear in order to neutralize the population in an area. There are photos of them giving lessons in how to hack bodies up after murdering them. They have trained new members to cut upon some bodies' stomachs, rip out their intestines and stuff them with rocks so they will sink to the bottom of rivers.
Or, they simply will occasionally throw them into rivers to float off. I have posted an article written upon a woman who goes to the river daily to look for bodies coming down, and to pull them out, and try to find their relatives so they can be properly buried. Her husband assists her. That was posted years ago.
They have also used crematoria to try to get rid of bodies. There have been articles written on this, as well. Colombian crematoria. There is a town, La Macarena, which discovered its people were getting ill and located the source: the drinking water had gone very bad. Then, following it to its source, they discovered it was filtering through a mass grave dug fairly close to a military base. A man tried to lead an international investigative committee to this mass grave, to show them where to look, only to be murdered, himself, a little later.
Relentless, astonishing, sadistic, ultra violent cruelty. It still continues in a port town, Buenaventura, where they run "chop-houses" to kill Colombians the neo-paramilitary gangs want out of the road after torturing them, and terrorizing the community with their screaming.
Your third link reminds us of the direct link between Uribe's spy agency, D.A.S., whose directors used to keep hit lists of people they wanted out of the road, and that list was handed off to paramilitary leaders whose people would assassinate them. There is a very long line of unfortunate, and desperately sinned against union leaders who had worked hard to get better than hell working conditions for the poor of Colombia.
Thank you for these valuable links.
While the FARC voluntarily plead for forgiveness for the 2002 massacre in Bojaya, the government was forced to do the same by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, something not forgotten by the locals.
“The state came to ask for forgiveness because the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered them. This chapter will never close… I do not forgive. God, our Lord, forgives,” Virgilio Gomez, whose son was murdered in the massacre, told Caracol Radio.
The massacre occurred in the evening of November 11, 1988 when paramilitary group ‘Death to Northeastern Revolutionaries’ (MRD) entered the town of 20,000 and committed the massacre, leaving “rivers of blood running down the street,” according to a survivor.
[center]~ ~ ~
Vicente and Carlos Castaño, two of three brothers (Fidel, the other) who ran the narco-trafficking death squad, A.U.C.
which was tied directly to right-wing politicians in the Colombian government and did tandem massacres with the Army.
Commonly believed Vicente had his
brother, Carlos, murdered by his own
body guards.
Carlos
Fidel, Carlos, Vicente, Teresa [/center]
