Colombia: Medellín exposes fatal flaws in government's paramilitary demobi

[Judi Lynn]

Colombia: Medellín exposes fatal flaws in government's paramilitary demobilization strategy


Press release, 09/01/2005

A new report from Amnesty international shows how Colombia's demobilization strategy threatens to consolidate paramilitarism and ensure that those responsible for some of the worst human rights atrocities continue to kill, “disappear”, and torture with almost complete impunity.

The report documents how the “demobilization” of Medellín’s feared Bloque Cacique Nutibara (BCN) in November 2003 has exposed the government’s paramilitary demobilization strategy as a dangerous sham.

Rather than representing a showcase for the government’s national demobilization strategy, the demobilization of the BCN has proved to be a deadly illusion according to the report: Colombia: the Paramilitaries in Medellín: Demobilization or Legalization?

In Medellín, paramilitaries continue to operate as a military force, to kill and threaten human rights defenders and local community activists, to recruit and to act jointly with the security forces. However, rather than operating in large, heavily-armed and uniformed groups as they did in the past, they are now increasingly cloaking their activities by posing as members of private security firms or by acting as informants for the security forces.
(snip/...)

http://news.amnesty.org/index/ENGAMR230252005

[wli]

1. sounds like Blackwater et al n/t