Colombia shaken as paramilitary leaders testify

Source: S.P. Times

Colombia shaken as paramilitary leaders testify
They left a trail of death and had ties to the government. They talk under a peace deal.
By DAVID ADAMS
Published June 18, 2007



Former paramilitary leader Fredy Rendon (right) sits with his lawyer during testimony in the Palace of Justice. He once headed a force that terrorized northwest Colombia.



TURBO, Colombia - The men of Uraba began to disappear in 1996 just about the time El Aleman showed up.
His real name was Fredy Rendon, though the campesinos knew him only as "the German" because in this region of mostly dark-skinned farmers, he looked more like a northern European.

There was no mystery about his job: Rendon was one of the top commanders of an illegal paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC. At the head of an army of 1,500 ruthless soldiers, Rendon, 45, and his men terrorized a swath of northwestern Colombia for a decade.

He extorted money, drove families from their farms, and, under the guise of combating left-wing guerrillas, murdered men by the score. One morning a man would leave for the banana fields or to cut timber and that would be the last his family would ever see of him.
(snip)

One senior commander, Ramon Isaza, admitted to as many as 300 killings, but said he could not recall details. He blamed his poor memory on the early stages of Alzheimer's disease. He asked the relatives of his victims to come forward to help refresh his memory.




Read more: http://www.sptimes.com/2007/06/18/Worldandnation/Colombia_shaken_as_pa.shtml

like this guy and the bastards in the bush** administration? Where to they get this feeling of entitlement, of being able to decide who should live, who should die?

This is one really screwed up planet. It's nothing new, I understand that. It's been going on since Alley Oop picked up his club and whacked his neighbor for his bananas.

The Human Beings called him "Yellow Hair". He and his men butchered thousands of Native Americans to make way for the railroads and other commerial interests. Same schtick, different generation.

Yours is so excellent.

treating them with respect. It just doesn't make sense.

They are slaughtering them, stealing their lands, and going after entire villages, torturing, murdering them with CHAIN SAWS, sawing them while they are still living, trying to make statements which will terrify witnesses so badly the population will be intimidated into complete submission. Americans consider a chain saw movie to be the very worst kind of terror they can imagine in horror movies. It's every day life for people who get in the road of these monsters.

And we are obligated to support this evil with our taxes every day of our lives until Congress finally gets us the hell out of there.

:sarcasm:

Closing down opposition TV stations will never happen in Columbia, because there ARE no opposition TV stations.

and the ones who are left are doing obsessive self-censoring of all their stories.

Uribe made some ridiculous remark recently, referring to RCTV, and claimed he'd certainly never do that! Yeah, you betcha.

If any of the remaining nervous journalists wrote any oppositional stories they could of course expect to be visited by people with chainsaws! The paramilitaries (death squads) are very much in bidness, no matter what some propagandists have tried to claim here and elsewhere.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

COLOMBIA: Journalists threatened by paramilitaries

Bogotá, November 20, 2001—Four journalists have fled their homes in the southern Colombian department of Nariño after receiving death threats from a right-wing paramilitary faction that accused them of collaborating with rival leftist guerrillas.

The letter, signed by the Southern Liberators Front of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), accused three reporters and a cameraman of giving government information to the National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, and the larger Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC.

Several news organizations in Pasto, Nariño's capital, received the one-page letter on November 9.

The journalists include Cristina Castro, a reporter for RCN Televisión; Oscar Torres, managing editor of Diario del Sur newspaper; Alfonso Pardo, a reporter for the Communist Party newspaper Voz; and Germán Arcos, a cameraman for Caracol Televisión.

In the letter—a copy of which was obtained by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)—the paramilitaries wrote that they recognized the "important role" of journalists and said they would never attack the "real and honest press."

But the letter described the four journalists as "a danger to society" and declared that they would be executed if they did not quit their jobs and leave the area within 48 hours.

"It is preposterous and outrageous that paramilitary groups are making any distinction between ‘good' journalists and ‘bad' journalists and then threatening to murder those whose coverage they don't like," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper.
(snip/...)

http://www.cpj.org/news/2001/Colombia20nov01na.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Trade and Terror in Colombia
By Benjamin Melançon,
Posted on Sun Jun 17th, 2007 at 10:23:34 PM EST

"Paramilitarism has not been dismantled, it has simply been 're-engineered.'" (Amnesty International)

Imagine that you work bundling cut flowers in Colombia. After years of working 10- and 12-hour days for very little pay, you and your fellow workers finally form a union to fight for better conditions and better pay and you are elected president. Your manager calls you into his office and tells you that unions only bring trouble and that you should really consider your family's safety.

Three days later you wake up to find the words "military target" spray-painted across the front of your house. Later that day, while you're at work, your 10-year-old daughter is playing in the street and a strange man comes up to her and tells her to tell her mom to make sure she doesn't get hurt.

The next night a teenager drives by on a motorcycle and opens fire on your house with an Uzi. He just barely misses you and your daughter and your walls are riddled with bullets.

Over 400 union organizers have been murdered in Colombia since Alvaro Uribe became president in August 2002. The majority of them were killed by right-wing paramilitary groups with a long history of close ties to the Colombian military — and to cocaine and heroin traffickers. Despite the fact that the killers made threatening public death threats, stalked their victims and their families and published public death lists, there have only been convictions in 10 of those murders.
(snip/...)

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2007/6/17/222334/305

Nicaraguan media and regional context
Wednesday, 20 June 2007, 10:39 am
Column: Toni Solo

Americanism abroad: Nicaraguan media and regional context
by Toni Solo

The perception management of foreign politics for imperialist propaganda purposes works across countries as a self-fuelling, one-sided Moebius-strip production line. Re-selling by corporate US media of the propaganda spin retailed as "news" by television channels in Venezuela is the best known example. An unusually flagrant exposé of this degenerative international media symbiosis occurred on Fox News recently when New York councillor Charles Barron was called a "son-of-a-bitch" by Adam Housley, Fox's correspondent in Caracas, during an exchange in which Barron contradicted Housley's mendacious reporting on Venezuela.

Disinformation and outright falsehoods broadcast in countries like Venezuela, Colombia and Mexico become fake virtual news that is then broadcast as if it were real in the imperial centres of North America, Europe and the Pacific. This in turn is made to produce a re-confected virtual reality that is then retailed back as the basic premise of news analysis by international corporate news outlets to media in the original source countries. The process not only validates the original propaganda but itself tends to generate yet more fake virtual news to feed the cycle.

Self-perpetuating and vicious, thoroughly disingenuous and totally political, this cycle is probably the single most important perception management mechanism for promoting Americanism. The cycle's purpose is to subordinate the interests of all the peoples of the Americas, and beyond, to the aims of the United States' plutocrat corporate elite and their allies. This all-pervasive perception management production line is at work constantly, almost everywhere in Latin America, but is especially noticeable in countries where governments develop strategies contrary to the policies of the US government, its European and Pacific allies and their respective multinational corporations.

The aggressive politicization of corporate media outlets and their disinformation output is an established fact throughout Latin America. Freedom of speech is regularly hijacked, given a brutal working over in corporate editorial conference rooms and then thrown back out onto the airwaves and the printed page. The corporate media make-over varies from country to country. In Venezuela, corporate editorial-brutalized freedom of speech gets dressed up as a victim of State repression. In Mexico and Colombia, it appears as the endlessly harrassed public good under threat from popular movements exercising basic rights but branded as vicious terrorists. The same corporate gangsterism is at work in Ecuador, Bolivia and Nicaragua. It both serves and feeds dominant local corporate political options. Currently, Nicaragua is an especially good example of this phenomenon.

More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0706/S00258.htm

seems like a Worldwide phenomenon.

Must be from drinking all that Kool-Aide.

*sigh*

I wish this would be all over with.

I want to be happy too.

I tie making positive changes to my being happy, though. I can't pretend that ignoring the problems somehow magically makes them all go away. Sometimes, though... I admit... sometimes I wish I knew how to do that...

to another place and time.

which allows real understanding of what the hell has been happening there! The administration appears to have it all locked up TIGHTLY. We're really not an informed country, are we? (If we don't include shabby gossip about celebrities...)

Some items taken from a report published covering ONE WEEK last year, in August, in Colombia This Week:

Fri 28 –Sister of Liberal Party leader killed; 1,400 people forced to flee in Nariño

· More than 1,400 people have been forced to flee their homes in Nariño department and take refuge in the small village of Sanchez, after heavy fighting between the army and an armed group developed last Friday. Josep Zapater, head of the UNHCR’s local office, expressed serious concerns for the health of the displaced, who had been staying in overcrowded shelters with little food available. More than 90% of the people arriving in Sanchez are Afro-Colombians with no identification documents, which makes it difficult for them to access social services for displaced people, the UNHCR reports.

· The humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) published a new report on the effects of the conflict in Colombia on its population’s mental health, especially the internally displaced. The report, entitled Living with Fear, suggests that the psychological effects of the conflict are the biggest public health issue in Colombia, but that this does not receive the required attention and financial resources, El Tiempo reports.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sat 29– ELN and government to meet after elections; critical situation in Arauca

· The Third Departmental Assembly of the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CPDH) expressed its concern over the situation in Arauca department. The department is experiencing an increase in forced displacement, a resurgence of paramilitaries under the name of Black Eagles, aerial fumigations, and arbitrary and illegal detentions, CPDH reports.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sun 30 – Son of congressman kidnapped ; Elmer Cardenas block demobilises

· The presidential candidates have expressed their concern over the increasingly rarefied political climate, after the recent spate of killings and kidnappings. They agreed that sufficient guarantees are not in place for the presidential campaign, El Colombiano reports.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mon 01 – Venezuela is main transit in drug traffic ; two generals resign over Gaviria death

· Generals Mauricio Gomez Guzman and Mario Gutierrez Jimenez resigned following the murder of Liliana Gaviria. The two police generals were responsible for security in the Risaralda department, where Gavira was found dead, and where the homicide rate is more than double the national average, the BBC reports.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tues 02 – Demobilising paramilitaries stealing land ; trade unions split over support to Uribe

· Members of the Elmer Cardenas paramilitary block, which is in the process of demobilising, have been recently reported stealing land from peasants. There is concern that they will use the stolen land as reparation to the victims, as required by the Justice and Peace Law, while at the same time keeping the assets that they have illegally acquired in decades of conflict, El Tiempo reports.

· The US Republican senator Charles Grassley, who chairs the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control, called on President Bush to fire the nation’s drug czar John Walters. Grassley accused Walters of ‘spinning the numbers’ and publishing misleading data when he suggested Plan Colombia was successful, AP reports.

· The Human Rights Ombudsman Volmar Perez Ortiz published a report on the state of Colombian children. According to the report, 4,500 children are abandoned every year, while in 2004 1,267 children died in violent circumstances, El Colombiano reports.

· Raul Reyes, spokesman for the FARC, condemned the negotiations between the government and the ELN, during an interview with Telesur. He said that any progress in the negotiations would be a victory for President Uribe, and not for the Colombian people, AP reports.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Weds 03 – Entire council resigns for fear of FARC; women are significant part of work force

· The Colombian organisation Reiniciar and the Colombian Commission of Jurists (CCJ) condemned President Uribe’s behaviour in relation to the murders and attacks on members of the Patriotic Union and the Communist Party. The President never implemented the security measures recommended by the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and allowed accusations against the parties to be aired on his electoral campaign radio messages, Reiniciar and the CCJ report.

· The Swiss NGOs Bread for All and Fastenopfer rejected statements from Vice President Santos that they support the FARC with state money. They also said that their work would be in danger, if they were seen as linked to the guerrilla group, Spero News reports.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thurs 04 – Bogota transport strike ends; $15.4m US aid to demobilisation process....

· The US Congress approved $15.4million to the government of Colombia to be earmarked for support to the Attorney General’s office in the demobilisation process. This is the first time that aid has been granted by the US for this specific purpose; in 2004, the money had been destined to support the OAS mission and for the reinsertion of child soldiers, El Tiempo reports.

· The US senator Arlen Specter announced that, during a trip to Bogota, President Uribe suggested that Colombian migrant workers could have a microchip implanted so that they can be monitored and forced to return to Colombia after their work permit expires. Uribe is strongly denying having made such a proposal, El Tiempo reports.
(snip)

http://www.abcolombia.org.uk/previews_weeks.asp?id=180

Video links Colombia militia boss, Uribe
By FRANK BAJAK Associated Press Writer
Article Last Updated: 06/17/2007 05:10:16 PM PDT



1»BARRANCABERMEJA, Colombia—In his five years as president, Alvaro Uribe has repeatedly denied accusations that he's been cozy with Colombia's murderous right-wing militias, whose thousands of victims include suspected rebel sympathizers and union activists.
Yet newly uncovered video of his 2001 campaign shows him shaking hands with a militia leader who was arrested only weeks later on suspicion of involvement in multiple murders, and is now a fugitive with a price on his head. It's the latest headache for the law-and-order president, who has seen one ally after another jailed for allegedly colluding with the outlawed militias.

"I haven't known the paramilitaries, haven't been friends with them, haven't had contact with them," Uribe declared on national television on April 19.

The militia chief in the video, which bears an Oct. 31, 2001, time stamp, was identified by three people familiar with him—including human rights activists—as Fremio Sanchez Carreno. Sanchez, better known as "Comandante Esteban," had just finished spearheading the bloody militia takeover of this steamy oil-refining city on Colombia's main river when Uribe met with him and about a dozen other people.

The Associated Press obtained the video independently and to confirm its authenticity, traveled to Barrancabermeja, where human rights activists identified the person standing behind Uribe as Comandante Esteban—the same militia leader who had signed letters threatening local human rights and labor leaders with death in the months before the meeting. The activists asked not to be identified for their own safety because militias remain active in the area.
(snip)

One of the rights activists said a person who attended the meeting confirmed Saturday that it took place in Puerto Berrio and said Sanchez had all but obliged the participants to go.

More:
http://www.montereyherald.com/news/ci_6164832?nclick_check=1

I know you can't do it in "Latest Breaking News," but you could re-post in other forums, something like this:

Instead of...

"Colombia shaken as paramilitary leaders testify"

Re-frame as...

"Bush-funded death squads shake Colombia."

(--a little extreme, in terms of provable facts, but you get the idea.) (--and it's actually very close to the truth; it only lacks the "smoking gun," as in so many things.)

Another try...

"Bush's buds in Colombia take chain saws to union organizer."

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

I know the Democrats (most of them) are not innocent on this and other horror and oppression in Latin America. But Bush has been in charge for six years, and has gone out of his way to lard Colombia with billions of our tax dollars for death squads, torture training, development of mercenary armies (and torturers for Iraq), lethal pesticide spraying of small peasant farms, and large scale drug trafficking.

It IS his brand. And the more we can pressure Democratic Party leaders to avoid that brand--even if many of them are, in their hearts, racist, genocidal and anti-democratic, and hog-tied to military spending and fascist "war on drugs" policy--the safer Latin Americans will be from death and dismemberment at the hands of Bushite agents. We need to use the Democratic Party leadership's desire to put a nicer face on oppression as a tool for protecting Latin American leftists, union organizers, peasant farmers and other targets of the Bush Junta.

Brand Bush. What's been going on in Colombia is HIS doing. It couldn't be clearer. And his demonization of democratic leaders like Chavez, Morales and Correa, who oppose the murderous U.S. "war on drugs," and are also the TARGETS of these rightwing paramilitary hit squads (who are operating on the Colombian borders with Venezuela and Ecuador, and in rural big rich landowner areas of Bolivia) needs to be exposed for the utter tripe that it is, in order to stop Democratic Party leaders from echoing Bush on this issues.

Brand Bush. People see a thread title like "Colombia shaken as paramilitary leaders testify" and they think it has nothing to do with them or with politics in the U.S. How does this help us prevent stolen elections here? How does this help us elect good Democrats to office? They need the dots connected for them in the subject line.

"Bush ignores rightwing chainsaw murders in Colombia."

"Bush's buds in Colombia tied to fascist killers and drug traffickers."

"New disclosures on Colombia's rightwing death squads--Bush's favorite country."

"Democracy in Venezuela, death squads in Colombia--which does Bush favor?"

Like that.

wouldn't write like that. But I do it for free, with unfettered, uncorporatized, un-bought-and-paid for mind.

I mean, I HOPE I couldn't be bought, but who knows? If I ever tried it (writing for corporate news monopolies), I would probably quickly become an alcoholic and drop out to some beatnik dive in Costa Rica, my integrity in tact, but my blood sugar level off the charts and my liver near death. But even these kinds of reporters and editors--the kind that don't survive well in the toxic atmosphere of corporate disinformation, and get sick in the head, or leave--are becoming rare. We have a new breed, parallel to the 'christian' airhead, Regents U. attorneys that Karl Rove has been hiring to run our justice system. They are so stupid they don't even know when they are being set up.

Just haven't had the focus, and the skill. Doesn't mean I shouldn't try, however!

I've noticed that very, very few people seem to understand what is happening, has BEEN happening there, and how it connects to the U.S. Usually it takes something HUGE to get people's attention. Unfortunately, the corporate media follow the _Bush administration's influence on how to handle this information, so people remain undisturbed by the hell on earth happening there, with the financial support of all our tax dollars to the world's THIRD LARGEST FOREIGN AID RECIPIENT as it underwrites chain-sawing, machete wielding death squads who have anihilated entire villages and sent millions of Colombians fleeing for their lives in what the U.N. calls a humanitarian disaster.

Have really wondered what it takes...

I'll be working on this. Appreciate any advice you can offer, BELIEVE me.

Your examples are wonderful, and certainly truthful.

Colombia: Murder Victims’ Families Sue Chiquita
Written by April Howard
Tuesday, 19 June 2007

Fifty relatives of 22 people murdered by Colombian paramilitary groups have filed a suit against Chiquita Brands International for helping to finance the groups. The murders were committed between 1997 and 2004 in the north-west banana-growing region of Uraba, near the Panamanian border.

The case is being handled by Colombian lawyers and Conrad & Scherer LLP of Fort Lauderdale, and was filed in U.S. District Court under the Alien Tort Claims Act. The Act, created in 1789, states that "he district courts shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action by an alien for a tort only, committed in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States." This act, while probably originally created to protect US ambassadors and combat piracy, has been increasingly invoked in legal battles over Human Rights abuses committed outside the United States.

As William J. Wichmann, a partner at Conrad & Scherer LLP, said "We will be asking for significant compensatory and punitive damages for these tragic deaths caused by a terrorist group that Chiquita has admitted it financed."

Chiquita has maintained that it was "forced" to pay the AUC to protect its property and workers in Colombia. "Chiquita was a victim of extortion in Colombia and we will not allow ourselves to become extortion victims in the United States. We'll vigorously defend ourselves against preposterous suits such as these," Michael Mitchell, a Chiquita spokesman said.
(snip/...)

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/780/1/