Reports of illegal Colombian army killings up - UN

[Judi Lynn]

Reports of illegal Colombian army killings up - UN
15 Mar 2007 18:11:22 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Hugh Bronstein

BOGOTA, March 15 (Reuters) - Colombia's army is increasingly being accused of killing civilians and passing the bodies off as dead leftist rebels to cover it up, according to an annual U.N. human rights report released on Thursday.

U.N. investigators heard more allegations last year than they did in 2005 of extrajudicial executions attributed to soldiers who reported such incidents as deaths of guerrillas or members of other armed groups in combat, the report said.

"In many cases, three common elements were identified," it said. "The presentation of civilian victims as dead in combat, the alteration of the scene of the crime by its authors, and investigation of the facts by the military criminal justice system."

Human rights groups say such crimes would be better investigated by the independent civil justice system.
(snip/...)

http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N15416016.htm

[Judi Lynn]

1. This peculiar filthy murderous tactic is described once more in this article:

Plan Obsolescence In Colombia
Adam Isacson
March 13, 2007

~snip~
Colombia's U.S.-aided army was battered by a series of damaging revelations. Young recruits were viciously tortured. An army patrol, apparently working at the service of drug lords, massacred an elite police anti-drug unit. Civilians were killed in dozens of incidents, their bodies dressed in camouflage and presented as guerrillas killed in combat. A series of car-bombs—all but one heroically "discovered" and defused in time—were planted in Bogotá by soldiers and blamed on guerrillas.

Then, in late 2006, reports in Colombia's media began to snowball into a huge scandal. A steady trickle of information—including a laptop computer that ended up in investigators' hands—has revealed the shocking degree to which drug-running right-wing paramilitary death squads have infiltrated Colombia's government, at all levels. Those currently in custody or on the run include 10 members of Colombia's congress—all of them supporters of President Uribe—and other officials close to the president, including the head of the presidential intelligence service. The scandal has badly tarnished Uribe's international image.

In the United States, the arrival of a new Congress in November's midterm elections, with a Democratic Party majority in both houses, added to the momentum. Suddenly, long-term critics of the U.S. strategy in Colombia—among them Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Rep. David Obey, D-Wisc., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.—were in control of both aid and trade policy.

This new Congress has two important Colombia initiatives before it. The first is a free-trade agreement, reached by both governments in February 2006, but whose ratification is far from assured. In July 2005, a similar trade pact with Central America passed the Republican-run House of Representatives by the narrow margin of 217-215, with only 15 Democrats voting in favor. This year, the House has over 30 more Democrats than it did before, and many are concerned about Colmbia's human-rights violations, including the frequent killing with impunity of Colombian trade unionists.
(snip/...)

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/13/plan_obsolescence_in_colombia.php

[Judi Lynn]

2. U.N. report blames Colombia's military for killing civilians falsely labeled rebels

Friday, March 16, 2007
U.N. report blames Colombia's military for killing civilians falsely labeled rebels

BOGOTA, Colombia -- Colombian security forces have killed civilians in several states and falsely labeled many as leftist rebels slain in combat, the United Nations said a report released Thursday.

Colombia's government also has at times ignored links between security forces and illegal armed groups, the U.N. High Commissioner of Human Rights said in its annual report on Colombia.

The report said leftist rebels, right-wing paramilitary groups and, to a lesser extent, government forces were all behind frequent human rights abuses, including torture, executions and disappearances. The three sides have been pitted against each other in a half-century-old civil conflict.

The U.N. found that Colombia's army -- the largest recipient of $700 million in annual anti-narcotics and counterinsurgency aid from the United States -- had participated in killing civilians in 21 of Colombia's 32 states.

In many cases, the victims were falsely presented as leftist rebels killed in combat, crime scene evidence was tampered with and the investigation was led by the military's questioned criminal justice system.
(snip/...)

http://www1.whdh.com/news/articles/world/BO46075/

[Judi Lynn]

3. Finally, an actual chart to simplify the picture of Colombian Army/paramilitary atrocities.

The author's findings have demonstrated that the state-sponsored far-right paramilitary are the leading architects of violence, torture, rape, and murder throughout the country.17 This is not difficult to deduce in the simple fact that those assaulted -- unionists, left-of-center political elements, and large portions of the campesino population -- maintain a more communal-based practice of social interaction, which does not align with the right-wing ideology of the paramilitary and the existing Uribe administration. As a result, numerous popular-media outlets, journalists, and academics have failed to report that the majority perpetrators of abuses against non-combatants in Colombia is essentially the Colombian government.

Under the paramilitary pretense, the state has co-perpetuated violence, intimidation, and acts of murder to prolong political stability and economic influence. The Colombian state and military, in collaboration with the so-called United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), have perpetuated the preponderance of human rights violations against the civilian population (see graph). The state and paramilitary have exemplified on numerous occasions their tremendous ferocity against the Colombian rural and urban population (see fn.17). In spite of this, the domestic and international popular-media alongside many learned institutions have made a conscious decision to under-examine or more blatantly silence analyses that present the state's role in committing violence against the people they are delegated to protect. This misinformation provides a misrepresentation of the reality of human rights abuses in Colombia and who is committing them.
(snip/...)

http://www.wpunj.edu/newpol/issue40/Brittain40.htm#r6

[gorbal]

4. That chart is really eye opening.

I knew we were getting the wool dragged over our eyes ever since I read that NG article on a reporter who thought he was kidnapped by Farc only to discover they were right wing paramilitaries. It made me wonder how often the paramilitaries commiteed atrocities pretending to be Farc in order to get international aid...wouldn't put it past those murdering bastards.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Leftists picket Colombia’s President in the Dominican capital

March, 16 - 1:49 PM

Leftists picket Colombia’s President in the Dominican capital

SANTO DOMINGO.- Calling the President of Colombia Alvaro Uribe a “narco-leader,” and a promoter of this country’s rightist paramilitary groups, leaders of the Dominican leftist organizations headed a picket at noon today in front of the Foreign Ministry, where the Summit Drugs on Security, and Cooperation is being held.

The leftist leaders Narciso Isa Conde and Fernando Peña said that the event “is nothing more than a narco-summit, in which the most famous figure in drug-trafficking and the murderous paramilitary organizations is Uribe Velez,” they said in reference to Colombia’s president.

An unidentified Police official persuaded the picketers to abandon the area, not before unfolding a huge banner depicting Uribe in paramilitary garb and brandishing a weapon.
(snip/)

http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=23139