Colombia crime gangs spur more massacres in '10: U.N.

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Reuters

Colombia crime gangs spur more massacres in '10: U.N.
Reuters
1:33 p.m. EST, February 24, 2011

BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombian criminal bands linked to former paramilitary groups drove a 40 percent rise in massacres in 2010, slaughtering human rights activists, public officials and civilians, the United Nations said on Thursday.

The Andean nation is the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, and multiple illegal armed groups are all engaged in the drug trade -- including demobilized, former members of Colombia's right-wing paramilitary groups.

New criminal bands, known by their Spanish acronym "Bacrim," are widely seen as the new, emerging threat in Colombia, and sprung up to fill the void left by the traditional cartels dismantled by a U.S.-backed drug war.

"There was a rise in massacres by 40 percent last year although (the criminal gangs) weren't the only ones, they had a lot to do with it," said Christian Salazar, representative for the U.N. human rights office in Colombia.

Read more: http://www.courant.com/news/nation-world/sns-rt-international-us-coltre71n60a-20110224,0,1569240.story

[naaman fletcher]

1. terrible.

I hope crime doesn't get to be as bad as it is in venezuela.

[Judi Lynn]

2. UN warns of neo-paramilitary threat

UN warns of neo-paramilitary threat
Thursday, 24 February 2011 14:09
Tom Heyden

The U.N. says that links between politicians and paramilitaries are still a cause for concern in Colombia, while "emerging bands" linked to the paramilitaries are responsible for a 40% rise in massacres in 2010, Caracol Radio reported Thursday.

The U.N. High Comissioner for Human Rights' representative in Colombia, Christian Salazar, presented his report on human rights in Colombia in 2010, and said that the "so-called criminal groups" pose the greatest threat to security in the country.

The report found that the situation in Colombia "was exacerbated by the violence generated by illegal armed groups that emerged from the process of demobilization of paramilitary organizations," reports El Tiempo.

These neo-paramilitary groups emerged from the flawed demobilization process, in which many middle-ranking paramilitaries simply replaced their demobilized and sometimes extradited leaders.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/14583-un-warns-of-neo-paramilitary-threat.html

[Judi Lynn]

3. A look at Colombian paramilitary massacres, for anyone unaware of their nature:

The Washington Post
April 21, 2001
Colombian Massacre Large, Brutal

Chain Saws Used By Paramilitaries In Village Killing

By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service

TIMBA, Colombia -- They brought out the victims using a helicopter with a cargo net dangling beneath. Soldiers wearing rubber gloves and masks unloaded body
bags and laid them in the broad shade of an acacia tree. Forensic investigators began to work.

By the end of Thursday, the bodies of 12 farmers had been pulled from a war zone near the village of Naya, a daylong walk to the west of Timba in this embattled
region 220 miles southwest of Bogota. Ten had been killed by machete; two had been shot. At least one was decapitated, the head still missing.

The grim business of preparing the bodies for burial, watched from across a soccer field by the mostly black residents of Timba and clusters of refugees from Naya,
followed one of Colombia's largest civilian massacres in years. Beginning the Wednesday before Easter, a squad from Colombia's right-wing paramilitary force
entered Naya and its surrounding hamlets. For three days, as the government army tried to reach the jungle town amid fierce fighting, Colombian officials say,
paramilitary troops used machetes, guns and chain saws to kill at least 40 civilians.

In interviews with some of the 160 Naya families sheltered in the town school, survivors said the number of dead might be twice that amount. Colombian officials,
who are continuing recovery efforts, agreed. The only recent killing of comparable size came four months ago in the village of Chengue, where paramilitary fighters
killed 26 farmers with stones and a sledgehammer.

More:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/colombia/chain-saw.htm

~~~~~
Published on Thursday, April 19, 2001 by Agence France Presse
"The Chainsaw Massacre" Is Not a Movie in Colombia: Witness
by Jacques Thomet

BOGOTÁ -- "The Chainsaw Massacre is not a film in Colombia," said government ombudsman Eduardo Cifuentes, referring to the April 12 paramilitary massacre in Alto Naya, 650 kilometers (404 miles) southeast of here. He was revealing details of the massacres of civilians which occurred during Easter week in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country in a wave of right-wing paramilitary and leftist guerrilla violence. It left some 128 people dead, including 40 in Alto Naya, according to official reports quoted by Cifuentes in an interview with AFP.

The former Constitutional Tribunal president visited the massacre sites Monday at a remote jungle area in the Western Andes mountains, in the Cauca department. Around 400 paramilitaries took part in this "caravan of death" against civilians accused of supporting leftist guerrillas, Cifuentes said in his Bogota office.

"The remains of a woman were exhumed. Her abdomen was cut open with a chainsaw. A 17-year-old girl had her throat cut and both hands also amputated," said the ombudsman, providing details of "the cruelty and extreme abuse of the paramilitaries."

"They carried a list of names around. The would kill many for insignificant reasons, like not explaining where they got their cellular phone," he said.

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0419-04.htm

~~~~~
Colombian paramilitaries admits to killing 21,000
AFP
Tuesday, July 14, 2009

BOGOTA, Colombia (AFP) - Colombian right-wing paramilitaries have admitted to killing 21,000 people, prosecutors said yesterday.

"We are up to 21,000 murders that have been confessed to," Luis Gonzalez, of the public prosecutor's office, told local radio.

The confessions by the former fighters spanned a three-year period and are part of a peace deal that includes a drive to demobilise 31,000 former fighters, know as the United Colombian Self-Defence Forces, or Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).

Gonzalez told Radio Caracol that the full extent of the "horrors" may be unknown "because there are still many murders to confess to".

"We have documented around 246,000 cases that occurred in the regions that had the Autodefensa forces," he said.

More:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/155331_Colombian-paramilitaries-admits-to-killing-21-000