Colombia begins to investigate massacre at `peace community' (3rd highest US foreign aid)

Source: Chicago Tribune

Posted on Mon, Apr. 02, 2007
Colombia begins to investigate massacre at `peace community'
By Gary Marx

Chicago Tribune

(MCT)

LA UNION, Colombia - Two years ago, 17-year-old Bellanira Areiza and seven other peasants were hacked to death with machetes in the lush hills outside this picturesque hamlet in northwest Colombia.

Community leaders say five residents saw men in Colombian army uniforms take away the victims, and nine others later heard soldiers bragging about the killings. But, until now, the Colombian government's investigation into the massacre went nowhere.
(snip)

"If anyone in the military was involved in this massacre . . . they should be punished with all the severity of the law," Santos said in an interview.

The investigations also could have an impact on the $700 million in proposed U.S. assistance to Colombia for next year. As one of Washington's closest allies in Latin America, Colombia has received more than $5 billion in U.S. aid since 2000. Most of it has been used to fight drug trafficking and Marxist rebels.




Read more: http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/news/world/17013779.htm

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IV. PARAMILITARY VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW
http://www.hrw.org/reports98/colombia/Colom989-04.htm

Never any convictions, what a surprise.

Who started this war? Richard Nixon? It's been forever, this US war on democracy but what they call the war on drugs in Colombia is like that war on terror. It just never ends. Will I ever see it in my lifetime? How many more decades, how many more billions, how many more peasants hacked to death with machetes.

The price must be worth it, our rulers must surely think, because it's the price they always seem willing to make everybody but themselves have to pay.

And so this latest revelation of more machete attacks could now jeopardize US "aid" could it? If that's what you want to call aid, the best hope would be that Colombia would start to move in the direction of the rest of the continent and start to refuse it.

US taxpayers ought to start refusing to give any more of this kind of "aid" too. I think we've paid quite enough down through the decades. I want to spend my money on something else.