Dreadful toll of assassinations mounts in Colombia

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Education International

2010-03-18
Dreadful toll of assassinations mounts in Colombia

Colombian teacher Duvian Dario Rojo Cadavid and his wife were enjoying an early evening walk together in the municipal park of their home town of Puerto Berrío when they were shot dead by unknown assailants on 13 March, the day before senatorial elections. Their deaths bring the total number of teachers killed in Colombia in 2010 to six.

According to his local union ADIDA, Rojo Cavidad was targeted generally for his union activism and specifically because last week he openly spoke to the media about the fact that at least 30 local teachers had been subjected to extortion by illegal armed groups.

The Federación Colombiana de Educadores (FECODE) has publicly denounced these latest killings to a broad range of officials in the Ministries of Education, Justice, Social Protection, the Interior, the Public Defender and the President of the Republic, demanding that Colombian authorities guarantee free exercise of trade union activities and that they undertake all necessary investigations to break the chain of impunity that typically characterises the murder of teachers and trade unionists.

Education International joins FECODE in denouncing in the strongest terms this latest atrocious killing, and expressing its deepest sympathy with the family of Duvian Dario Rojo Cadavid and his wife, colleagues and students, along with the leaders and members of ADIDA, and the education community in Puerto Berrío.

Read more: http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=1216&theme=rights&country=colombia

[Judi Lynn]

1. Body count of slain journos

Body count of slain journos
By Ignacio Gomez

From 1978 to 2001, major newspapers of Bogota reported the assassination of 164 journalists.

On February 16, while addressing representatives of the the Foundation for the Freedom of the Press of Colombia and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists (CPJ) of New York, Colombian President Alvaro Uribe cited his own government as the only one that had succeeded in reducing to near zero the number of journalists assassinated per year and concluded that this feat made him one of the leading defenders of the freedom of the press in his nation’s history.

The premise is less questionable than the conclusion: in the previous year, the ‘only’ killing was of Jose Everardo Aguilar, for doing his job; in 2002, the first year of Uribe’s presidency, six colleagues met the same fate.
But the murder of journalists, as dramatic as it may be, is not a good measure of the freedom of the press. As put by ‘New York Daily News’ columnist Juan Gonzalez, the reason for the lack of journalist killings may be that enemies of the public interest no longer need to kill them to intimidate them.

A good start
The ability to work as a journalist without fear of being assassinated is a good starting point. Colombians look with envy at the record of Argentina. In 1997, when Alfredo Yabran, a corrupt businessman and influence peddler, felt that his connections in government would allow him to murder a journalist with impunity, journalists began to wear buttons of the immolated photographer, Jose Luis Cabezas, and the word justice. Four months after the first anniversary of the journalist’s death, Yabran shot himself after being charged with the crime.

In Argentina, which underwent decades of military repression, today civil society and journalists are engaged in an ongoing discussion of the meaning of freedom of the press: guarantees of its independence, free access to information of public interest, the unrestricted distribution of official government statements and releases, etcetera. In Colombia, these are secondary issues.

Between 1978 and 2001, the major newspapers of Bogota reported the assassination of 164 journalists. This number raised the average recorded by the CPJ since it began keeping statistics in 1992, when there were 72. The question is whether these 200-plus killings were enough to create the situation that Gonzalez describes, or whether Colombia is capable of restoring an atmosphere of peace in which journalism can be freely practised — without the deaths (obviously) but also with a government that encourages criticism and understands that it is a tool for overcoming for the eventual errors of politicians.

More:
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/58559/body-count-slain-journos.html

[OnlinePoker]

2. Sounds like the bad old days of the 70's and 80's is returning to the banana belt. n/t

[corpseratemedia]

3. who is subsidizing the death squads (again??)

http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-68/2016-obama-administration-shifts-us-focus-in-colombia-from-counternarcotics-to-counterinsurgency

Written by Gary Leech   
Monday, 27 July 2009
Source: Colombia Journal


snip<..The Obama administration's proposed 2010 aid package for Colombia appears to be sailing through the Democrat-controlled Congress with little opposition and few amendments. As a result, the administration is poised to achieve a shift in U.S. policy in Colombia that will see an even greater portion of the aid under the counternarcotics initiative known as Plan Colombia used for counterinsurgency operations. The Obama administration's aid package indicates that the new government in Washington is not only continuing the militaristic policies of the Bush administration in Colombia, but actually intensifying them by developing even closer ties to the worst human rights-abusing military in the Western Hemisphere.

The $518 million in Colombia aid requested by the Obama administration for next year is only marginally less than the final aid package—$545 million—delivered by the Bush administration. Furthermore, for those who were hoping that the new administration would reduce funding for the Colombian military in favor of increased social and economic aid, the new package is particularly disheartening. The Obama administration's proposal has 57 percent of U.S. aid going to the Colombian military compared to 56 percent last year under the Bush administration. The final package will most likely see a small reduction in the amount earmarked for the military thanks to amendments made to the House bill (54 percent of aid to the military) and by the Senate Appropriations Committee (53 percent).

It is not only the amount of U.S. aid earmarked for the Colombian military that is troubling, but also the distribution of that funding. The Obama administration is seeking to reduce funding for counternarcotics and law enforcement programs by 13 percent (from $247.5 million to $216 million) while increasing aid to the Colombian military that is not specifically tied to the war on drugs by 30 percent (from $57.6 million to $74.6 million). The House and Senate versions of the foreign assistance bill have slightly reduced the amounts requested by the administration for both the military and counternarcotics portions, but they have retained the percentage increases and decreases....>snip