Colombia's paramilitaries freeze cooperation with authorities

Source: International Herald Tribune/Associated Press

Colombia's paramilitaries freeze cooperation with authorities
The Associated Press
Published: July 24, 2007

BOGOTA, Colombia: Colombia's peace process with far-right paramilitaries plunged into a new crisis Tuesday after warlords vowed to stop cooperating with prosecutors investigating their role in some of the country's worst civilian massacres.

The decision was made to protest the Supreme Court's recent ruling that a demobilized paramilitary fighter in Antioquia state is not entitled to special benefits as a former subversive.

The reversal is the latest blow to a fragile 2003 peace accord that has led some 31,000 right-wing fighters to disarm but has been so far unable to provide reparations to their victims or wrest major confessions from some 60 jailed paramilitary warlords.

"With this decision the reconstruction of the historical truth, the handing over of mass graves and other legal obligations assumed under the peace pact are frozen," said Antonio Lopez, a spokesman for the jailed paramilitary bosses. "We can't allow our fighters to be treated like common criminals."



Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/07/25/america/LA-GEN-Colombia-Paramilitary-Peace.php

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He's right, by god. A common criminal doesn't torture, and massacre people.

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: 'Parapolitics' Immunity Loophole Closing
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTÁ, Jul 24 (IPS) - Colombia's Attorney General has asked that all cases against politicians for alleged links with rightwing paramilitaries commanded by drug traffickers be tried in the capital city. Human rights lawyers are applauding the move.

Attorney General Mario Iguarán's petition to the Supreme Court aims to prevent governing party legislators from resigning their seats in Congress in order for their cases to be dealt with in their own regions, where they tend to be well connected and wield great influence.
(snip)

The criminal section of the Supreme Court has already imprisoned 13 members of Congress, six former members of Congress and two former governors as a result of its "Paragate" investigations, the scandal that broke out in early 2006 over apparent links between the civil, military and economic powers-that-be with ultra-rightwing paramilitaries.

Civil society researchers believe there are many more trials to come in the "Parapolitics" scandal, as it is also known in Colombia.
(snip)

According to the local newspaper El Tiempo, the Court will call on President Uribe to give his opinion about the so-called Ralito Pact, signed by 30 politicians of his following and by paramilitary chiefs, which calls for "refounding the country" and "writing a new social contract."

This has been interpreted as an agreement to take over power in the country.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=38651

MONTERIA, Colombia

~snip~
Such hands-off treatment is pervasive in Colombia, a Committee to Protect Journalists investigation has found. Interviews with three dozen news professionals show that media outlets and journalists across the country routinely censor themselves in fear of physical retaliation from all sides in the nation’s conflict.

At least 30 Colombian journalists have been murdered over the past decade for their work. “We love our profession, but we’re human,” says Carmen Rosa Pabón, news director of Voz de Cinaruco, the Caracol Radio affiliate in the northeastern city of Arauca. “Threats and killings make us afraid. To survive, we have to limit ourselves.”

On some occasions, verified news is suppressed shortly before broadcast or publication. In other cases, probing journalists are killed, detained, or forced to flee. More often, investigations never even get started. The issues shortchanged are human rights abuses, armed conflict, political corruption, drug trafficking, and links from officials to illegal armed groups. Journalists end up focusing instead on “pleasant topics like fauna and flora,” says Angel María León, news chief of Arauca’s RCN Radio affiliate.

Communities pay a high price. “Any region without investigative journalism is going to have impunity,” says Jaime Vides Feria of Radio Caracolí in Sincelejo, a provincial capital near the Caribbean coast.

And the self-censorship has international dimensions. The Uribe administration, for example, is pushing for U.S. and European funding of a $130 million plan to reintegrate the demobilized paramilitaries into society. But foreign taxpayers can hardly judge whether the plan might bring peace if the press doesn’t dare investigate drug trafficking by paramilitaries or their civilian attacks.

“We’re talking about serial massacres—extremely cruel deaths with torture,” notes reporter Beatriz Diegó Solano of El Universal, a daily newspaper that curtailed its investigation of scores of unmarked graves discovered near Sincelejo this year. “Do you think these people are going to become corn farmers? They’re psychopaths.”

More:
http://www.cpj.org/Briefings/2005/DA_fall05/colombia/colombia_DA_fall_05.html