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The latest news for the struggle for human rights for all in Colombia
National Indigenous Organization of Colombia (ONIC) on land rights
( Translated by Lina Herrera, a CSN volunteer translator)
ONIC: 25 years of struggle and resistance for a more inclusive society!Ê
NATIONAL INDIGENOUS ORGANIZATION OF COLOMBIA (Organización Nacional Indígena de Colombia) - ONIC -Ê
STATUTE OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT: DISMANTLING OF LAND RIGHTS, AUTONOMY AND SUBSISTENCE OF THEÊ
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE'S OF COLOMBIAÊ
"Statement of the Mamos from the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta: "Since the beginning our territory was given to us as our home, as our bodies, in which we should reside, of which we have to take care as a sacred being. Because of this, we have to live in balance and harmony with the water, the wind, the sun, the soil; in peace with nature which is our own nature, as well as with ourselves and our younger brethren."Ê
ORIGIN OF LAND OWNING IN AMERICAÊ
The Indigenous Reservations: their background, goal, political projections, and subsequent legal repercussions as to the private ownership of the soil and subsoil of the lands contained in said reservations.Ê
"...The control given by Pope Alexander VI to the Catholic Monarchs* and their successors cannot be understood as a certain control over the land, among other reasons, because the Pope was not the owner of those lands, and hence he could not have at his disposal something that was not his. It was, therefore, a political control of which the ultimate goal was to facilitate the spread of the Catholic religion in the recently discovered American territories.Ê
Therefore, the true genesis of the original "property deed" of SPAIN in AMERICA was limited to those lands that were abandoned by the indigenous people -its first occupants -when fleeing or when their race was obliterated. Among these ideas, the different rules set by the Spanish Monarchs, as to the distribution and awarding of the West Indies, have to be interpreted. This is why they promulgated special dispositions for the awarding of lands to the Spaniards, and very different ones to protect the rights of the lands still in hands of indigenous people... As it was already mentioned, SPAIN only had true deed of occupancy over the lands abandoned by the indigenous people in their escape, but not over those lands they managed to keep, whether because the natives fought the Conquistador or because the latter could not reach them. As to the lands abandoned by the natives, it is worth saying that SPAIN created a very lengthy legislation directed at determining the rules to beÊ
followed to award lands to individuals, process which ended by issuing the appropriate deed. The CÉDULA DE SAN LORENZO, promulgated by FERDINAND VI, referred to this type. For the second type, the lands still in hands of indigenous people, the Crown limited themselves to recognize their occupancy as "property deed", making the convenient arrangements for the lands to be appropriately delimited and known. Therefore, when dealing with individuals, ownership of the land in AMERICA could only be proven before SPAIN with the formal deed of award made, among others, through sale, agreement, gift, or occupancy with the subsequent economic exploitation, etc. As to the indigenous people that ownership was demonstrated with the sole occupancy, because the Crown, we repeat, recognized the natives occupancy of their lands as "property deed", same as the Crown did with the lands the Conquistadores seized by force.Ê
In the Recopilación de Leyes de los Reinos de las Indias, it was disposed, as to this matter, the following: "That the Indians be left lands, plenty, all those that belonged to them, in particular those containing communities and water; and the lands where they dug irrigation ditches or any other benefit, which because of their own enterprise have been fertilized. These should be reserved first and foremost, and in any case cannot be sold or expropriated, and that the Judges sent to this, specify the Indians they find in those lands, and leave them to each one of the taxpayers, elderly, Caciques, governors, absent ones, and communities" (Law 16, Title 12, Book IV)Ê
CHARLES V had already, in the Royal Order (Orden Real), given from BARCELONA on April the 4th, 1532, had ruled the following: "... and that the Indians be left THEIR LANDS, INHERITANCE AND PASTURES, so that they don't lack all what they need".Ê
And the Ley 5ª (Law V) of April 4th, 1532, established by Philip II ruled: "having to distribute the lands, water troughs, and pastures among the ones who will populate them, the Viceroys and Governors who had faculty, will distribute them, with approval of the councils of the cities or villages considering the regent ones should be preferred, if they don't have equivalent lands or plots; and that the Indians be left their lands, inheritance and pastures, so that they don't lack all what they need and have all the relief and rest possible to sustain their houses and families".Ê
From the excerpts from the Laws of the Indies that have been cited so far, we can clearly conclude that SPAIN only declared itself owner of the AMERICAN lands they really occupied and which were abandoned by the natives, but not the ones over which the natives still had control. The first type, that is to say the lands that had been abandoned, could be awarded to the Spaniards or to the very natives through a so-called deed of control, issued by the Crown by utilizing the different systems that were established for such goal. The second type, it is worth mentioning, the lands still owned by the natives, were not susceptible to being awarded by SPAIN because the natives' ownership was acknowledged, and they were ordered to respect it..."Ê
CURRENT CONTEXT IN THE INDIGENOUS TERRITORIESÊ
The "territory" has been one of the fundamental principles that identify our vision of the world and our construction of future, which have historically guided the struggles of resistance for the survival of the indigenous peoples of Colombia. This right is part of an integral whole which grants us identity. It is the base for demanding our specific collective rights and the establishment of organizational alternatives and structures typical of the indigenous peoples.Ê
Throughout our history, the indigenous peoples have been able to build in our territories cultural, social, administrative, and political spaces honoring and promoting biodiversity, protection of the natural resources, respect for others, and pacific coexistence. We have done this despite the armed forces which occupy our territories and intend to rule over them ignoring our legitimate, traditional authorities. Despite the State’s terrorism exercised by the national government to respond to our demands for rights. Despite the violence of the drug traffickers who bribe our brothers through intimidation and death threats. And despite the agricultural companies, the multinationals, and the very institutions of the State, which pretend, once again, to expropriate our lands.Ê
We, the indigenous peoples of Colombia, know about regions for life, biodiversity, the protection of the environment, the flow of nature's knowledge; we know about balanced, protective relationships with the natural resources. Regions where friendship and trust rest; where words and dreams respect each other, where a Colombia without crimes against humanity and with respect for human rights is being built. Social regions and scenarios where war is rejected and initiatives for peace and resistance against war arise. Regions with a diverse identity which demands truth, justice and healing. Natural regions and spaces where plans for life, permanence, and food sovereignty have been finalized. This is why we, the residents, say no to the free trade agreement and to the Colombian State's policy of exploitation of the natural resources. These regions are the territories of the indigenous people, where 92 peoples live, where we promote and feel proud of our cultural identity andÊ
our collective integrity.Ê
But also we, the indigenous people, know of the regions where terror and death prevail, where men, women, and children are confined to hopelessness and misery. Regions where fundamental rights are violated, where the paramilitary strengthen their positions following orders from drug traffickers and agricultural companies to force the inhabitants and legitimate land owners to displace. They do all this, in order to expropriate our lands, which they in turn give to the ones who have exterminated us or just declare vacant or without owner. We know of regions and territories where the government's military and police forces abuse and massacre the civil population to protect the interests of invading landowners, multinational companies, and paramilitary forces. We know of regions where nature's life and exuberance once prevailed, but which today are the tomb of hundreds of indigenous peoples exterminated during the last two centuries. These peoples opposed the progress ofÊ
those who violently exploit Mother Earth, all those who are protected by a permissive government, a government which works for the welfare and wealth of those who massacre and impoverish the Colombian people. Many of these situations, unfortunately and relentlessly, also happen in the territories of the 92 indigenous peoples of Colombia.Ê
Finally, we want to establish our position in front of the repeated, sinister discourse which the National Government has systematically disseminated before the national and international public opinion, saying that we, the indigenous people of Colombia, are the country's biggest landowners because they have given us more than 31 million hectares, which equal the third part of the country.Ê
Vis-a-vis this posing, we make the following clarifications:Ê
1. We, the indigenous peoples of Colombia, have KEPT approximately 29,800,000 hectares which correspond to our historical property right as the first occupants of America, where nowadays 70% of the country's biodiversity is preserved.Ê
2. The Government has only acquired around 200,000 hectares for the indigenous people through the former Colombian Institute for Agricultural Reform (INCORA) and the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) since 1961 to this day.Ê
3. From these 31,000,000 hectares officially declared indigenous reservations, 22 million are rainforest jungle (Amazon – Pacific regions), 1 million are desert (Guajira region); almost all of the country's National Natural Parks lands overlap with indigenous reservations; the snowy peaks, the wastelands, and the ecological reservations minimize even further the indigenous peoples' possibility of having fertile lands suitable for agricultural production.Ê
4. During the last National Dialogue Roundtable between the Indigenous Peoples and the National Government in 2006, the Ombudsman Office said at least 40% of the indigenous population of Colombia lacks of land resources.Ê
The previously explained reasons clearly demonstrate that we, the indigenous people, are not landowners, that our territories are sanctuaries of life for the world. Regions where rivers of life flow, where nature's most majestic, powerful places arise; where men and women watch over the water, the air, the biodiversity so that they can remain in time and space. Our mission since the beginning is no other but keeping the harmony and balance between nature and human beings. To that extent, phenomena like global warming have to lead society to guarantee the prevalence of life. To this end it is vital that the Government guarantees the indigenous people suitable lands for productive development.Ê
THE CONCRETE ISSUE OF THE STATUTE OF RURAL DEVELOPMENTÊ
From different points of view (conceptual, of historical acknowledgement of the territorial rights of the Indigenous Peoples, and legal-technical) this bill is regressive, excluding, and unconstitutional, besides the fact that it trims rights and is legally inconsistent because of the factual and legal reasons exposed in this document.Ê
This Statute of Rural Development, which is a legislative initiative, is an attempt against the collective rights of the indigenous peoples. Because of this, the National Government is responsible for providing effective, reasonable mechanisms of participation according to Convention No. 169 of the International Labor Organization (approved -in Colombia- through Act 21, 1991). According to the Convention, it is imperative to consult the indigenous people before implementing any legislative measure that directly affects the fundamental rights of the indigenous peoples, such as the rights to territory, autonomy, ethnic and cultural diversity, and inÊ
fewer words, the survival of the 92 indigenous peoples.Ê
To that extent, the Article 6 of the Convention establishes that:Ê
"1. In applying the provisions of this Convention, Governments shall:Ê
a) Consult the peoples concerned, through appropriate procedures and in particular through their representative institutions, whenever consideration is being given to legislative or administrative measures which may affect them directly; (...)".Ê
With the same perspective, Article 7 states:Ê
"1. The peoples concerned shall have the right to decide their own priorities for the process of development as it affects their lives, beliefs, institutions, and spiritual well-being and the lands they occupy or otherwise use, and to exercise control, to the extent possible, over their own economic, social and cultural development."Ê
Finally, it is necessary to indicate that this international tool, according to Article 93 of the (Colombia's) Political Constitution, is part of the Constitutional Block, and not guaranteeing the right to consultation of the indigenous peoples is a clear and blatant violation of international treaties and conventions, and therefore, of the Constitution. In other words, if there was not a wide and efficient consultation process, as established by international rulings, this project would be unconstitutional, and we would not other alternative but to resort to legal and other actions which before have been the base of the struggle and resistance of the Indigenous Peoples of Colombia.Ê
Next, we will present some necessary legal considerations about the Chapter in reference to the Indigenous Reservations.Ê
Article 99 of the Statute of Rural Development openly proposes the dismantling of Convention No. 169 of the International Labor Organization, whose fundamental goal is to effectively guarantee and protect the right to property and possession over the lands that we, the indigenous people, traditionally occupy. Under no excuses, providing lands to the indigenous communities can be dependent on the survival of interests of rural development. In concrete words, this means that the interests of the oil companies, palm farmers, agricultural businessmen and mercenaries, and multinational corporations which exploit renewable and non-renewable natural resources would be burying one of the strongest historical struggles of the Indigenous Peoples: access to land though the creation, reorganization, and expansion of the reservations, as well as providing lands for the indigenous settlements.Ê
Therefore, the expression "giving priority to criteria of regional development" is clearly unconstitutional and it violates Articles 7, 13, 63, 246; 329 section 2, paragraph 330 and transitory 56 of the Political Constitution, because through this legislation the Indigenous Peoples and other ethnic groups are recognized and protected by the Government, not depending on "regional development", but acknowledging our fundamental right to identity, survival, and reason of being and existing, independently from the regional development, as fundamental realities of our nationalities and cultures.Ê
It is appropriate to clarify that the territorial rights of the indigenous peoples are not exclusively established and recognized on Article 63 of the Constitution. There is a complete legal and jurisprudence frame that guarantees the effective protection of the right to possession, ownership, and access to land since Act 89, 1890 to the most advanced concepts of the current Constitutional Court. The intent of the Statute of Rural Development is to ignore a struggle of more than 100 years to recognize the rights to territory of the Indigenous Peoples. In the same manner, as it was said before, the international tool that is part of the Constitutional Block on this topic is Convention No. 169 of the International Labor Organization (Act 21, 1991) Articles 13 to 19, and not the American Convention as posed on Article 99.Ê
The administrative procedure to clarify the legal validity of property deeds has a duration of more than 10 years. Establishing this procedure as an administrative measure before the restructuring, reorganization, and expansion of the reservations of colonial origin constitutes a measure intended to deny, ignore, and not favor or guarantee the acknowledgment of our historical rights to territory, as we explained at the beginning of this document. As an attachment copies of Administrative Guideline 05, 2005, regarding the Prohibition against Authorizing and Registering Transfer Actions in Collective Territories and Indigenous Reservations (InstrucciónÊ
Administrativa 05 del 2005, sobre la Prohibición de Autorizar e Inscribir Actos de Enajenación en Territorios Colectivos y Resguardo Indígenas), are provided. This guideline ratifies Administrative Guideline 01-29 of June 8th, 2001 (Instrucción Administrativa 01-29 del 8 de junio de 2001), which recorded the prohibition against authorizing and registering title deeds entailing actions of landlord and owner over real estate belonging to the indigenous communities.Ê
The excerpt “…but without affecting those who possess equal right”, is legally anti-technical and it ignores, violates, and disrespects the territorial rights of the Indigenous Peoples. Because of law of origin, greater right or our own right, our original rights to property through historical occupation and property entitlement of our territories as indigenous reservations, are not comparable to or hierarchically dependent upon title deeds with false ownership history, and with support of or as a result of political violence, genocide, forced displacement and expropriation through actions in our territories by non-indigenous people.Ê
Finally, the paragraph or Article 99 constitutes a flag salutation, a rhetorical, non-enforceable guarantee. Without political will, resources availability, or the decisiveness to guarantee the exercise of the territorial rights of the indigenous peoples, it is impossible to move forward the dialogue between the Indigenous Peoples and the Colombian State.Ê
The right recorded on Article 100 is legal and fully recognized in the current valid legislation.Ê
Facing Article 101, the Indigenous Peoples, the Traditional Authorities and Town Councils, the Reservations and Territories are public institutions of special character according to Article 1 of the National Resolution of July 29th, 1923 (Artículo 1º de la Resolución Nacional del 29 de julio de 1923), and according to Decree 1088, 1993 (Decreto 1088 de 1993). Similarly, these institutions exercise administrative, legislative, and jurisdictional public functions, in accordance with Articles 7, 246, 286, 287, 329, and 330 of the Constitution.Ê
To that extent, the Constitutional Court has established that neither the National Government (…), nor other authority in general, is authorized by the Constitution to intervene in the governmental sphere of the indigenous jurisdiction (C-027/93; C-139/96).Ê
Therefore, proposing that the Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) guarantees the equal distribution of lands is a pretension which goes against the jurisprudence of the Constitutional Court and violates the administrative autonomy of the indigenous authorities to manage their territories.Ê
What is set out on Article 102 is unconstitutional because the expansion, reorganizing, and restructuring of the indigenous reservations is based on the acknowledgement and protection of the identity and survival of the ethnic and cultural diversity of the 92 indigenous peoples of Colombia, in accordance with Article 7 of the Constitution.Ê
However, if this is in reference to facilitate and guarantee the fulfillment of the social and ecological function of land ownership in Colombia, the legal rulings (related to legal rights and procedures) must regulate aspects related to latifundio (large landed estates), social inequality in the imposition of taxes, urban and rural ownership, and wages, as well as taxes on environmental pollution, etc.Ê
In reference to Article 103, it was the Colombian Institute for Agricultural Reform (INCORA) the organization responsible for establishing the nature of “indigenous reservations” of the territories historically occupied by indigenous populations. This innocuous disposition denies, ignores, and violates the territorial rights of the indigenous peoples, negatively affected by the legal determination of the nature of indigenous reservations of their territories. An example of this is the reservations of indigenous territories in the Putumayo region.Ê
In reference to Article 104, we wonder: is it possible to ask the Nuka Maku People to apply and comply with this disposition? This ruling is unconstitutional, ethnocentric, and inconvenient. It directly and clearly violates what is set out on Articles 7, 13, 63, 246, 329 section 2, paragraph 330 and transitory 56 of the Constitution. We, the Indigenous Peoples, have the right to cultural self-determination, autonomy, the freedom to choose a development model appropriate for our cultures, and expectations of cultural change freely adopted.Ê
In reference to what is set out on Article 105, this is an innocuous disposition because the Constitution includes and develops this right more in depth on Articles 286 and 329 respectively.Ê
Article 106 is unconstitutional and inconvenient because it confuses the territorial rights to access to collective property as indigenous reservations of our peoples with the processes and decisions of zoning related to the management of land and natural resources, typical of the zoning authorities. The creation, reorganizing, restructuring, and expansion of the indigenous reservations correspond to the fundamental rights to identity, territory, autonomy, participation, implementation of development models culturally appropriate and constitutionally recognized for the benefit of our peoples.Ê
Finally, Article 107 orders the Colombian Institute for Rural Development to refrain from acquiring lands “Intended” to be claimed through “Violence”. This disposition ignores the history of how the Indigenous Peoples have been exterminated through violence. In 514 years 90% of Colombia’s indigenous population was exterminated, and still in this decade hundreds of indigenous sisters and brothers have been murdered, displaced, and stigmatized. And now they come to talk about Violence? What violence? That of just demands agreed upon through agreements with the National Government? Or perhaps in Colombia demanding respect for one’s rights is being violent?Ê
We have no doubts that this disposition is an offence against the firm, irreversible decision of Colombia’s Indigenous Peoples to recover or set Mother Earth free, decision that our brothers, the indigenous peoples of the Cauca region, have already started to work on. Facing a hostile situation such as the one set out on this article, it is necessary to state the following:Ê
All the Indigenous Peoples of the country, with no exceptions, within their traditional vision of the universe, have been given some commands, from the law of origin or greater right, related to maintaining the order, harmony, and balance of the universe. In order to do this, the ancestral distribution of the territory is vital. In other words, all the indigenous people have the unmistakable goal of freeing our territories to guarantee the survival of our peoples and the universe in general. In this perspective, the discussed disposition punishes not only the recovery of lands in the Cauca region, but it also vilifies any possibility of action promoted by the indigenous people for the expansion and reorganizing of the indigenous reservations.Ê
This disposition will not promote dialogue and agreement; instead, of course, it will generate violence. If the National Government does not carry out the agreements they reached with the indigenous people because of acts of territorial violence and expropriation as a consequence of the exploitation of renewable and non-renewable natural resources, and if there is not budget availability so that the National Territory Commission can give priority to acquiring lands for the indigenous people, the uprising and liberation of Mother Earth will intensify more and more throughout the country.Ê
In short, this is an unconstitutional ruling which violates and ignores the historical right to ownership of the Indigenous Peoples, and its implementation can legitimate the excessive use of force by the State against the Indigenous Peoples.Ê
Finally, in 2004, the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on indigenous peoples, within the recommendations of the Colombian Government, stipulated: “Any draft legislation, draft constitutional reform or other initiative which introduces into the law provisions that violate indigenous peoples’ rights or the principle of diversity should be withdrawn.”Ê
And last week, the Office in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, in their Report on the Situation of Human Rights in Colombia, stated that “the ethnic rights of the Afro-Colombian and indigenous populations and the biodiversity of Chocó, Nariño and Putumayo Regions have been seriously affected by the private exploitation of collective lands. Some communities have stated that no previous consultation took place as required before the start of productive exploitation on their territories”.Ê
Published by ONIC March 2007
* An honorary name given by the Vatican to the Spanish Kings
Asking solidarity for the 600 gold miners in El Bagre
(Translated by Thomas Kolar, a CSN volunteer translator)
THE NATIONAL COORDINATOR OF ENERGY MINING
Integrated as the "USO", Sintramienergetica,
Sintraime, Sintracarbon, Sintrainquigas,
y Funtraenergetica
Email: coordinadoraminero@colombia.com
Endorsement and Solidarity with the Strike of the 600 workers of Mineros S.A. affiliated with
Sintramienergetica Seccional El Bagre.
Since 1650, when the conquistadors cut through the Bajo Cauca Antiqueno opening a tragic page of slavery, backwardness, and exploitation of mineral riches and gold; a metal extracted since then by a small group of national and foreign oligarchs with the help of unpatriotic governments, that have never worried about the poverty of the workers. The greed of the European and North American adventurers who took over from the local oligarchy, particularly Mineros S.A. that earned $38.330 million in 2006, prevents them from responding to the petition of its 600 workers presented on 16 March.
Colpatria and Grupo Empresarial Antioqueno (GEA) are not content with the profit produced by the exploitation of the alluvial gold in the River Nechi, now, using the international rise in prices, are trying to sell these gold deposits in Antioquia and Marmato to the trans-national Kadahda, subsidiary of Anglo Gold Ashanti,-company that controls the principal gold deposits of Colombia through Ingeominas.
Under these conditions, the workers declared the cessation of operations on 22 May to press for a positive response to their economic petitions for the benefit of their families and the social and cultural welfare of the community of Bagre and neighboring communities. A most serious demand is the adoption of real measures for the protection of the life and health of the workers, in as much as mining sickness and accidents occur everyday since they work in the river, unsheltered from the weather, with large dredges, and in exposure to toxic substances. Also the petitions call for help for the elderly of San Rafael de Bagre and the endowment of a chemical laboratory for the town's school.
One could wish that the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Social Protection, whose job it is, would step in to prevent the company from its scheming as evidenced by its shutting down of the sanitary baths which is especially harmful to the striking women workers; their decision to evict workers from their lodging forcing them into the streets and endangering their lives; and the cutting of electric power to the plant which provides light to the town of Liberia(Anori) in order to set the population against the strikers.
In spite of these adversities, the workers are standing firmly behind their petitions and strengthening their union organization. We should support this with full solidarity, both moral and economic,-in the face of their need to feed their families. The moral solidarity consists in statements of support for the strikers and demands to the company (Mineros S.A.Carrera 43 N* 14 - 109 Piso 6*, Edificio Nova Tempo. Telefax 074-2682858. Medellin, Email: gerencia@mineros.com.co) for a positive response to the petitions. Also to Ministerio de Proteccion Social that it intervene justly (Despacho del Ministerio Telefax: 0913305050). Economic assistance to Cuenta Corriente No. 392-07912-5 del Banco de Bogota, in name of
Sintramienergetica Nacional. Please send copies to the union: Fax: 074-8372528. El Bagre
sintramienergeticanacional@gmail.com
To offer greater solidarity, the Coordinator Sindical of Energy Mining commits itself to promote a movement that seeks adoption of a sovereign policy of:
nationalization of natural resources
industrialization of minerals in the country
generation of dignified employment for Colombians
social investment in mining communities
COORDINATOR
Barranquilla, 23 May, 2007
Network of Brotherhood and Solidarity. Colombia
redher@redcolombia.org
redeuropea@redcolombia.org
www.redcolombia.org <http://www.redcolombia.org>
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Memorials to Oppose Silence and Impunity. Never More Crimes of the State
(Translated by Steven Cagan, a CSN volunteer translator) Medellín, May 18, 2007 We are uniting to contribute to the recovery of the historical memory
of these crimes against humanity in Antioquia through the truth of
the victims, sensitizing society about the effects that the
paramilitary strategy of the State has had, and about the phase of
legitimizing the model of social, political and economic control that
benefits those responsible for grave and persistent violations of
human rights. The campaign, "Memorials to Oppose Silence and Impunity. Never More
Crimes of the State," makes known that during May 15, 16 and 17 of
this year, the "spontaneous declaration" of the paramilitary head
Salvatore Mancuso continued, in the face of which we communicate the
following: 1. The opening of the "spontaneous declaration" had as a fundamental
ingredient the explanation of the rise of state-supported
paramilitarism as a policy designed in high establishment circles as
an application of the theory of national security. The public
security forced were given the mission of developing it and
implementing it, especially through a set of regulations and
execution following different operations manuals issued since the
middle of the decade of the 60s. Since 1992, Mancuso was attached as a paramilitary to serve the
National Army, charged with putting together and commanding a
structure made up of approximately fifteen (15) men who would serve
and support in covert and counterinsurgency operations in the zones
in which the XI and XVII Brigades of the National Army were present
and maintained control; that is in the department of Córdoba and in
the Antioquian region of Urabá. He stated that he had a relationship
and direct contacts with the commanders of these brigades, among them
Generals Charri Lozano, Martín Orlando Carreño Sandoval and Rito
Alejo del Río, and indicated as well a large number of officers with
whom he carried out operations on the ground. He indicated that
thanks to the support provided by the First Division of the National
Army headed by General Iván Ramírez, they were able to expand and
consolidate paramilitary power in the north of the country, and with
the direct collaboration of General Rito Alejo del Río, when he
served as commander of the XVII Brigade, they managed to exercise
control and dominion over the Urabá region. Mancuso declared that he
is living proof of State paramilitarism. 2. The paramilitary leader was clear in his versión libre was clear
in indicating, in relation to the theme of "parapolitics," that that
some members of congress acted directly under the leadership of the
Bloque Norte (Northern Bloc) of the Autodefensas (paramilitaries) as
was the case of Senator Miguel Alfonso de la Espriella and
Representative Eleanora Pineda. He offered the names of other members
of congress like Zulema Jattín, Reinado Montes Álvarez, Julio Alberto
Manzur, Salomón Nader, Libardo López, Musa Besaile, among other, with
whom agreements were reached to receive direct support in their
political campaigns that would allow them to gain the necessary votes
so they could be elected to the Congress of the Republic. He made
known the details about how an agreement was reached with Senator
Mario Uribe consisting of the delivery of votes in given regions of
the department of Córdoba under the condition that he would support
the candidacy of Eleanora Pineda to the Chamber of Representatives
anddefend the interests of the paramilitaries in the Senate of the
Republic. He stated that in the entire zone in which the Bloque Norte of the
Autodefensas had a presence, it was not possible to carry out
political work without their consent. He was emphatic in pointing out
that the current Minister of Defense, Juan Manuel Santos, and the
current Vice President of the Republic, Francisco Santos, met with
him on different occasions. The latter had at least four (4) meetings
with the paramilitaries in two of which Mancuso participated directly
along with Carlos Castaño and two more in which the paramilitary
leader Jorge Cuarenta was presente. In all of them the theme was the
creation of a paramilitary bloc that would operate in the city of
Bogotá, an initiative proposed directly by Francisco Santos. 3. In his "spontaneous declaration", he pointed out the support of
cattle raisers and businessmen to obtain the necessary resources to
strengthen and expand the paramilitary project in some regions of the
country. He pointed out that they obstained the direct collaboration
of Javier Piedrahita, Joaquín García, Elías Vélez, Jaime Isaac,
Humberto Vergara, Gregorio Otero, Mauricio Aristizabal, Víctor Guerra
de la Espriella, José Guerra Tulena and Eduar Cobos, all of them
cattlemen and businessmen of the northern part of the country. He
also pointed out that he received direct economic support from
domestic and transnational businesses like: Postobón (which belongs
to the Ardila Lule group), Bavaria y Reforestadora Monterrey (which
belongs to the Santodomingo group), Expreso Brasilia, Copetran,
Ecopetrol, Uniban, Bielmonte, Proban, Triples Pizano, Chiquita
Brands, Vikingos fish company, Carbones del Caribe and Prodeco. 4. In the course of his testimony, he was emphatic in indicating that
he was in negotiations with the United States government and that he
had even accepted the charges of drug trafficking brought before a
federal court in Miami. He acknowledged that during the years between
1997 and 2004 his paramilitary structure was responsible for the
production and marketing of approximately 220,000 kilograms (approx
100,000 pounds) of cocaine hydrochloride, and that to develop this
company he had the support and participation of personnel of the
Armed Forces, the Air Force, the Marines, the DAS (security
directorate), and the Public Prosecutors. 5. The Justice and Peace Prosecutor charged with conducting the
"spontaneous declaration" implemented a work method that at some
points made impossible the delivery of all the information and the
witness intended to convey. We are concerned that this attitude might
have been the result of a deliberate interest in avoiding the
paramilitary leader Mancuso's conveying precise information related
to "parapolitics," as he had announced to various communication media
over the previous weekÑor that it might be owing to technical
failings on the part of the functionary in interrogating and
conducting the statement so as to get to the truth. 6. The threats of which the victims of the paramilitary structures
have been the objects have resulted in their no participating in the
"spontaneous declarations" brought forth within the framework of the
justice and peace law. In the testimony brought forward by the
paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso, their absence has been
notorious; in fact, some of those who came to the victims' room said
that they had been warned that they could not return to their native
soil. Another thing that has contributed to the victims' absence is
the ever more demanding requirements established by the Attorney
General of the Nation, submitting these persons to a rigorous process
in collecting information and documentation. Many of the victims want
to come, but without leaving a detailed registry of their presence,
with the goal of avoiding later reprisals as happened I the case of
the victims' leader Yolanda Izquierdo. 7. Despite the information provided by Salvatore Mancuso, the victims
are still waiting for the truth about the crimes committed against
their loved ones, for the true motives for their murder or
disappearance to be confessed, that the location of the mass graves
where their bodies rest be handed over as part of the process of
reparation. In the face of all this, the campaign, "Memorials to Oppose Silence
and Impunity. Never More Crimes of the State," points out its
concerns that: - The negotiation that has been started between the US
government and the paramilitary leader Salvatore Mancuso constitutes
a direct passport to impunity for crimes against humanity committed
by this person, who will manage to be safe from Colombian and
international penal jurisdiction - The lack of interest by the paramilitary Salvatore Mancuso in
confessing the crimes he committed against humanity in fulfillment of
one of the essential purposes indicated by the Constitutional Court
in their Sentence C-370 of 2006 in order to have access to the
judicial benefits. - The role that the current Vice President of the republic,
Francisco Santos, may have been carrying out to gain recognition and
legitimization of a project that has sown death and terror among the
Colombian nation, leaves doubts about the work that he is advancing
as the person responsible for the human rights policies of the Uribe
government. - The lack of guarantees that the victims might be recognized
as such in the processes moved forward under Justice and Peace, and
that they might be able to exercise their rights free of threats,
intimidations and attempts on their lives, as has been happening.
Signed,
Asamblea Regional de Derechos Humanos (Regional Human Rights Assembly),
Movimiento Nacional de Víctimas de Crímenes de Estado (National
Movement of Victims of State Crimes),
Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos desaparecidos (Asfaddes)
Association of Families of Detained and Dsappeared),
Asamblea Regional de Derechos Humanos de Antioquia (Regional Human
Rights Assembly of Antioquia),
Nodo Antioquia de la Coordinación Colombia Estados Unidos (Antioquia
Node of the Colombia-United States Coordination),
Colectivo de Derechos Humanos Semillas de Libertad (CODEHSEL) Seed of
Liberty Human Rights Collective,
Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) (United Workers Federation),
Asociación de Institutores de Antioquia (ADIDA) (Teachers Association
of Antioquia),
Asonal Judicial (National Association of Civil Servants and Employees
in the Judicial Branch),
Red Juvenil de Medellín (Medellín Youth Network),
Instituto Popular de Capacitación (IPC) (People's Training Institute),
Grupo Interdisciplinario por los Derechos Humanos (GIDH)
(Interdisciplinary Human Rights Group),
Capítulo de derechos humanos del Polo Democrático Alternativo (Human
rights chapter of the Polo Demócratico Alternativo, the Alternative
Democratic Pole, a progressive opposition party),
Corporación El Solar (El Solar legal firm),
FASOL (German Fund for Solidarity with the Victims of Violence),
Comité Permanente Héctor Abad Gómez (Héctor Abad Gómez Permanent
Committee),
Red Europea de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia (European Network
of Bortherhood and Solidarity),
Corporación Cultural La Aldaba La Aldaba Cultural Organization),
Asociación Campesina de Antioquia (Peasant Organization of Antioquia),
Comité de Derechos Humanos Gustavo Marulanda (Gustavo Marulanda Human
Rights Committee),
Campaña por la Vida y la Libertad, (Campaign for Life and Liberty)
Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos (Foundation
Committee of Solidarity with Political Prisoners),
Contracorriente ("Against the Current", a student human right working
group)
Fundación Sumapaz (Sumapaz Fundation),
Cristianos y Cristianas por la Justicia y la Paz (Men and Women
Christians for Justice and Peace),
Corporación Jurídica Libertad (Libertad legal firm).
International NGOs Threatened in Colombia: Anglo Gold Ashanti's Strategy Continues
National and International Organizations Accompanying Communities in South Bolivar have been Threatened, as have all Agro-mining Leaders.
(Translation by: Micheal O Tuathail, CSN volunteer translator)
1. On Saturday 12th of May, 2007, The European Network of Brotherhood and Solidarity with Colombia (Spanish acronym REHSC) received an email message threatening the lives, physical integrity, and accompaniment work of international organizations that support communities in South Bolivar.Ê
2. The same message also threatens the leaders of the Agro-mining Federation of South Bolivar, in particular, its president, TEOFILO MANUEL ACUNA, who in the past days was victim of being set-up by the New Granada Battalion, affiliated with the 5th Brigade of the National Army.Ê
3. The message was received in the mailbox of redeuropea@redcolombia.org and sent from an email account from the hotmail server, whose apparent correspondence name is 'Juan David Gonzalez Morales' with the email address juandavid1632893@hotmail.com. The text of the message is as follows:
"I worry a lot about the behaviour of the prosecutor of simiti plutarco, above all about the behaviour of the NGOs who were pressuring him to release this terrorist who only damages the mining population in south bolivar (sic). It is known that teofiloy (sic) was redirecting the resources of the mines to maintain and strengthen the narcoterrorist organizations, such as the ELN. But with God's will, this will end very soon, and these foreigners from the NGOs are going to very much miss their homelands because, one day, they will be found by the legally constituted army of God."Ê
4. This threat is not an isolated incident. It is only a part of the persecution declared against communities in South Bolivar and the national and international organizations accompanying their social processes in the defence of both territory and life.Ê
5. Since the multinational Anglo Gold Ashanti, through its affiliate Kedahda, has decided to appropriate the territory of small miners in South Bolivar, there has been a rise in human rights violations committed by Colombia's military forces, who have publicly stated that their presence in the region is as a security service of said multinational.
6. The methods of terror used to destroy the organizing processes of the region and to demand the ceding of land to Anglo Gold Ashanti have been innumerable; burning houses, petty thefts, robberies, rumours, threats, occupations of civic properties, arbitrary detentions, set ups, and extrajudicial executions, among others, are the methods used by those trying to displace mining communities in this region of the country, which constitutes a great threat to the defence of human rights in Colombia.Ê
7. In accordance with the commitment that international organizations have acquired with Colombian social organizations to defend the rights of peoples, international accompaniment will continue in South Bolivar through the REHSC. From now on, we will hold responsible both the Kedahda Company (Anglo Gold Ashanti) and the Colombian state for any possible actions taken against the lives and integrity of the internationals working in South Bolivar.Ê
Related Prior Events:
1. On 23rd September 2006, in the urban area of Santa Rosa municipality, the communities began a day of protest against the murder of their leader, ALEJANDRO URIBE CHACON. Meanwhile, members of the New Granada Batalion, linked to the National Army's 5th Brigade, in a clandestine and covert manner, filmed and photographed members of the REHSC, the legal representative from the Sembrar Corporation, the legal assessor from the Agro-mining Federation of South Bolivar, and several leaders from the region. One of those recording the events, upon being recognized as military personnel, disappeared into the office of the Presidential Program of Human Rights, Carlos Franco, in a truck with registration plate XVP 848. The incident was reported to the Regional Defender of the People, and it was immediately demanded that the commander of the New Granada Battalion identify the soldier and delete the photographs. This was refused to be done.Ê
2. On the 14th of December 2006, an article was published in the newspaper El Frente, originating from Bucaramanga but with regional circulation. The featured article is titled, "Perverse Campaign Against Military Forces in South Bolivar, Non-Governmental Organizations that Work With and Defend Terrorism in the Region Move Forward." the article claims that the guerrilla acts through the "NGOs present in the region," naming as such the Sembrar Corporation, the Agro-mining Federation of South Bolivar, and the REHSC. In the same way, it claims that the work of these NGOs is aimed at "defaming the New Granada Artillery Battalion and, by extension, the Fifth Brigade."Ê
3. The article contains quotes from an interview with Jose Cendales, a wealthy man in the region who is being put forth as a mayoral candidate for the municipality of Santa Rosa and who has indicated that "the people alone are not capable of holding those marches. This is because they are influenced by some group," referring to the marches held by the agro-miners of South Bolivar this past September of 2006.Ê
4. On Saturday the 28th of April 2007, at approximately 14:30, two internationals accompanying 3 regional leaders were arrested and detained by the New Granada Battalion in the outskirts of San Luquitas, San Pedro Frio, of the municipality of Santa Rosa.Ê
5. In the same way, on Sunday the 29th of April 2007, three members of the REHSC were detained by members of the New Granada Battalion in a room located in the military base of this Battalion, on the outskirts of San Luquitas, San Pedro.Ê
6. After the detention of the president of the Agro-mining Federation of South Bolivar, Captain Cruz, of the New Granada Battalion, has come forth in recent weeks, making statements against the Agro-mining Federation and its president:Ê
"We have captured the worst gangster in South Bolivar, who stole 500 billion pesos from Accion Social to give it to the guerrilla... We will pursue the rest of the gangsters who follow him."Ê
Also, Captain Cruz has been probing the communities insistently about the presence of members of the REHSC and other international organizations, asking about their finances, places of origin, functions, and identifications.Ê
Demands
To the National Government:
1.ÊÊThat the National Government take the necessary measures to ensure that the work of these international organizations accompanying communities and social and human rights organizations in Colombia be both respected and guaranteed.Ê
2. That the National Government, with the leadership of the Vice President of the Republic, publicly recognize the accompaniment work carried out by international NGOs in Colombia.
3. That the Colombian government fully comply with its signed agreements with the communities and guarantee the exercising of the rights of members and managers of the Agro-mining Federation of South Bolivar as well as the organizations they are affiliated with, ensuring the necessary protection of their lives and physical integrity.Ê
4. That the work of social and human rights organizations in Colombia be respected; and as a consequence, that the declarations made against them by the Public Forces cease.
To the Judiciary and Control Organisms:
5. That the origin of the aforementioned email be investigated and those responsible accordingly sanctioned.
6. That the members of the New Granada Battalion be investigated and sanctioned for their accusations and declarations made against the social organizations and community leaders of South Bolivar as well as for their irregular actions committed against the international accompaniment organizations in the region.Ê
7. That all the violations of human rights committed against the communities of South Bolivar, including those reported by social and accompaniment organizations in the region, be investigated and sanctioned.
RED DE HERMANDAD Y SOLIDARIDADÊ
International Organizations:
- KolumbienKampagne Berl’n (Germany)Ê - ComitŽ de solidaridad Carlos Fonseca (Italy) - Confederaci—n Cobas (Italy) - Cric (Italy) - Colombia Solidarity Campaign (Britain) - Espacio Bristol-Colombia, (England) - Grupo de Apoyo (Swiss-German)Ê - Colectivo SolidaritŽ Colombia (Swiss-French) - Colectivo Ginebrinos de Solidaridad con los Pueblos Colombianos ÐGinebra (Sweden) - Colectivo de Solidaridad Belgo-Andinoamericano- AYNI (Belgium) - Tribunal Internacional de Opini—n SB-Par’s (France)Ê - Colombia Solidarity Network (Ireland) - Association France AmŽrique Latine AFAL- ComitŽ Colombia-LyonÊÊ(France) - FRACTAL ColectivoÊÊParis (France) - Proyecto de Acompa–amiento y Solidaridad con Colombia -PASC (Canada)Ê
In the Spanish State:
- Komite Internazionalistak (Euskadi) - Coliche (Logro–o-La Rioja) - Coordinadora Aragonesa de Solidaridad con Colombia- CASCOLÊÊ(Zaragoza)Ê - Centro de Documentaci—n y Solidaridad con AmŽrica Latina y çfrica-CEDSALA (Valencia) - SODEPAU (Valencia) - Asociaci—n Paz con DignidadÊ - ComitŽ de SolidaridadÊÊcon AmŽrica Latina- COSAL - XIXîN (Gij—n-Asturias)Ê - Asociaci—n Internacionalista Paz y Solidaridad ÐAISPAZ (Le—n) - Confederaci—n General del Trabajo (CGT)Ê - Colectivo de Colombianos Refugiados en Espa–a COLREFE
Colombian Organizations:Ê
- Corporaci—n Sembrar (Bogot‡) - Federaci—n Agrominera del Sur de Bol’var -Fedeagromisbol (Bol’var) - ComitŽ de Integraci—n Social del Catatumbo ÐCISCA (Catatumbo) - Corporaci—n Social para el Asesoramiento y Capacitaci—n Comunitaria - COSPACC (Casanare, Boyac‡, Bogot‡)Ê - Organizaciones Sociales de Arauca (Arauca) - Coordinador Nacional Agrario ÐCNAÊ - Procesos de Comunidades Negras ÐPCN - ComitŽ de Integraci—n del Macizo Colombiano ÐCIMA (Cauca) - Fundaci—n ComitŽ de Solidaridad con los Presos Pol’ticos -FCSPP (Bogot‡, Barranquilla, Valle, Bucaramanga, Valledupar)Ê - Sindicato Nacional de los trabajadores de la Industria Alimentaria -Sinaltrainal (Bogot‡, Valle, Bucaramanga, Valledupar,ÊÊBarranquilla, Barrancabermeja,) - Instituto Nacional Sindical ÐINS (Bogot‡, Valle, Huila)Ê - Corporaci—n Jur’dica libertad (medell’n) - Colectivo de derechos Humanos Semillas de Libertad - CODHESELÊ
15 May, 2007
Send Letters of Protest to:Ê
Dr. çlvaro UribeVŽlez Presidente de la Republica Fax: 57 1 566 2071
Dr. Francisco Santos. Vicepresidente de Colombia
Dr. Carlos FrancoÊ Director del Programa de Derechos Humanos de Vicepresidencia
Dr. Edgardo Jose Maya Villaz—n Procurador General de la Nacion.
Dr. Volmar Antonio Perez OrtizÊ Defensor del Pueblo Fax: 57 1 6400491Ê
Oficina del Alto Comisionado de Naciones Unidas para los derechos humanos. Fax: 57 1 6293637
A Pilgrimage for Francisco
( Translated by Eunice Gibson, a volunteer CSN translator)
On this coming June 11, the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado will make a pilgrimage to the town of Miramar, in memory of Francisco. That day the whole community, the humanitarian zones, and the different communities in civil resistance will go to Miramar, the last location of Francisco’s civil resistance. That day is the beginning of a course in food production put on by the Farmers’ Resistance University and the group will pay homage to Francisco’s life. We invite all the people and organizations, national and international, to join in this pilgrimage for Francisco’s life, carrying out actions in his memory in different parts of the world.
We know that the Army is going around spreading vicious slander against Francisco. It doesn’t surprise us because they have always done that and they will continue to do that. That has always been their way of bringing death and destruction. Nevertheless, the truth of the victimizers is always different from the truth of the victims. That is clear. For example, with the massacre of February 21, 2005, where the Army murdered eight people, the top government (ministers, governor, prosecutors, Army commanders) said the FARC did it, that our massacred comrades were guerrillas. They found witnesses for their fabrications. We speak our truth, the truth of the victims. History has shown that we victims do not lie. That’s why we aren’t surprised that they are trying to identify Francisco as a guerrilla, as if common criminals had murdered him. We have lived with these fabrications, these lies, for ten years.
And that’s why this pilgrimage is to remind us of Francisco, his memory, his teachings, and his commitment to the community, his people. The pilgrimage is to keep his teachings alive, and so that some day humanity will judge this government that has spilled the blood of so many ordinary farmers, and judge how, conspiring with the paramilitaries, it has permitted this barbarism of death and horror.
With the pilgrimage to Miramar in honor of Francisco’s life, we want to remember his journey and his commitment in these ten years. Francisco was part of the beginning of the community in 1997. He shared that with many of us, and he was the coordinator of that part of the community that lived in the town of La Cristalina. He had to leave there because of all the attacks carried out by the Army and the paramilitaries. He left in 1999 and went to Saisa. There he had to start over, but always with his commitment to the people. Nevertheless, in 2000, because of an attack by the paramilitaries, acting together with the Army, where they burned people’s houses in Saiza and carried out selective killings, he returned to La Cristalina. In 2003 he was La Cristalina’s delegate to take part in the national and international meeting of the community. Around the middle of 2004 he decided to take part in the proposal planned by the Peace Community of San Jose to create the humanitarian zones. They were to be an answer to the attacks that were being carried out in various towns in order to displace the people. He worked with Luis Eduardo Guerra in the town of Miramar and moved there to live. There he was chosen by the town as the coordinator of the Miramar humanitarian zone.
In March and April of 2005, being the coordinator of the Miramar humanitarian zone, he was chosen by the communities to represent the Peace Community at the food production course put on by the Farmers’ Resistance University. It was being carried out in the parish of Remolinos del Caguan in Caqueta. He returned from there and took part in the displacement of San Jose to Jan Josesito, which he decided to support completely, along with the town of Miramar. He took an active part in the visit of the international commissions of Italy and Germany in November of 2005. In 2006, he decided to retire as coordinator of Miramar because of family problems, but he continued to work as a leader in the Miramar humanitarian zone and in the defense of the farmers in the area, in spite of threats that were made against him.
Because of his great eloquence in speaking, his simplicity, his frank and pleasant style of leadership, and his life committed to the people of the communities, they will remember him as a great leader. For your candid smile, and for that joyful endurance, thank you Francisco. The paramilitaries have not taken your life, because it is still in our midst.
PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO
May 22, 2007
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
"We had no hostages ; the detainees were mostly eliminated " ( Salvatore Mancuso)
( Translated by Peter Lenny, a CSN volunteer translator )
Friday, 11 May 2007
First hand
[Editorial]
Un Pasquín columnist Natalia Springer, Austrian-Colombian specialist consultant in justice and security, has first-hand experience of conflicts in several countries and has worked for international organizations including the UN and NATO. Part of her experience is described in the book Desactivar la guerra; propuestas audaces para construir la paz (Santillana, 2005), longer versions of which have appeared in English (Deactivating War) and German.
In the course of her work in Colombia, Natalia has come to know the parties in conflict there. Two days ago, after several months and numerous obstacles, she interviewed Salvatore Mancuso, leader of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC, Colombian United Self-defense Militia). Her main interest was to talk about the child soldiers recruited by the militias.
However, their wide-ranging, eight-hour conversation yielded abundant material, part of it published here in this special edition, on which Mancuso will elaborate in his statement to the Prosecutor-General next Tuesday.
“We had no hostages; the detainees were mostly eliminated” Mancuso
Less than a week from his questioning by the Prosecutor-General’s Office, Salvatore Mancuso confesses.
Report by Natalia Springer*
Exclusive for Un Pasquín
* International consultant; expert in justice and security.
Salvatore Mancuso, Commander of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) and one of the world’s highest-profile culprits of crimes against humanity facing trail, agreed to meet me at Itagüí maximum security prison where he is detained, knowing that our conversation and the information involved could well end up incriminating him.
Mancuso spoke as the political representative of the AUC movement, although independent sources revealed that his team of lawyers had demanded that he cancel the meeting, which he did not confirm. He was speaking, he said, so as to send a message to the more radical factions that are harassing the action of the justice system: they are “ready to tell the whole truth”.
His early declarations during the meeting revealed that the negotiators [both the government and AUC representatives] were completely indifferent to humanitarian considerations.
Mancuso confirmed that the situation of the more than 550 individuals recorded as ‘kidnapped’ by the militias, the ‘disappeared’, the ill and the prisoners of war was never ascertained; nor was there any special handover of child solders recruited by these groups; nor did they address the issue of what treatment their support communities will receive. He also said that regular procedures were not followed, nor was there any prior survey of the situation before the combatants surrendered, nor were parameters established for overseeing the results of the process.
In his own words, “that was never mentioned”. He claims, “We never resorted to kidnapping” and “most of the detainees were eliminated”.
Meanwhile, he also revealed the existence of “plain clothes militia, a kind of support commandos, a ratio of 2 civilians per combatant”, which leaves pending the issue of how they are to be demobilized. He also said that their zones of influence “were left unprotected, although the government’s commitments included ‘re-institutionalizing’ these regions. Today they are under strong pressure from the insurgency”.
On this point, as ascertained by the public prosecutor’s office, the lands in Bolivar that Mancuso handed over to the Justice and Peace Unit (UJP) were considered high risk areas, dotted with mines and controlled by the guerrilla, making them useless for reparation purposes.
In relation to the work of Commissioner Luis Carlos Restrepo, Mancuso stated that they have in fact vetoed him “because he has lied to us throughout the whole process”.
‘Para-politics’. Asked about politicians and businessmen implicated in the formation of the militias, Mancuso replied that “the senators, mayors, governors and representatives who have been summoned by the courts are lying when they claim they were forced to attend these meetings”. He even revealed a long list of politicians from several governments – with names, affiliation and reasons – “many of them still in power all over Colombia”.
[Un Pasquín is withholding those names so as not to hinder the public prosecutor’s investigation].
Mancuso status that “it was they [the politicians] who prompted the meetings and insinuated the content” and that “the agreements were reached to mutual benefit”. “Plans of operation were drawn up jointly and took root, and it was even they who approached us to help them get elected […] We were a model of State”.
“We affected several presidential elections”, he adds, reaffirming that his electoral influence has spanned decades.
“We all paid”. On the relationship between the AUC and Colombian and foreign businessmen, he declared that “all the banana companies paid us (nine cents per box)”, but that was not the only industry implicated. He also stated that, as president of Fenalco, “Sabas Pretelt came to see us on behalf this country’s industrialists”. He also said that “the banks took part in laundering money from the drug traffic”. All the strategic sectors were implicated, “including the transport union”.
On supposed links between the AUC and the armed forces, Mancuso stated that the relationship was not limited solely to passive complicity, nor a simple strategic alliance, “but rather, in some cases, joint operations were undertaken”.
Complete version. Mancuso assured that he will tell everything, in all detail, in the deposition he is to make next Tuesday, in spite of the security problems he says he faces. “They want to silence us”, he said, adding that the AUC commanders have constantly received threats, some in the form of letter-bombs, to prevent them from talking, confessing their crimes and implicating third parties.
---
Betrayals in a meeting between bitterest enemies
Opinion by Natalia Springer
Exclusive for Un Pasquín
“Remember one thing: I am not a journalist. You know that my area is justice and security and that I work in the human rights field. I have not come for you to tell me secrets nor to spread scandals. My concern is to bring criminals against humanity, like yourself, to justice and ensure that they pay for what they have done. I want it to be quite clear: if you go on refusing to cooperate with justice, I assure you that the next time we meet will be in the International Court”. Those words were the first warning I gave to Salvatore Mancuso at the start of this interview.
For that reason, that morning as we flew through the skies of Antioquia in search of a clearing to land in, I put my life in order, as I always do, and went over the purposes of the meeting.
This interview grew out of the obligation to explore the responsibilities of paramilitary groups in recruiting and using children in the conflict. That exploration forms part of an investigative effort that I direct from abroad for the Maya Nasa Foundation, and is intended to promote a policy that will have a decisive effect on how this phenomenon evolves. The use of children for purposes of war is more alarming today than at the worst moments of the war. The guerrillas have resorted to using children on a massive scale for all kinds of war operations, and it is known that child recruitment to form the new self-defense groups has occurred on a massive scale in regions like Los Montes de María, historically controlled by Mancuso.
However, that was not the only purpose. I also went to ask him what the prosecutors of the Justice and Peace Unit have not been able to. Mancuso has deliberately tried to avoid making a statement and has resorted to all kinds of tricks to delay the hearings and sabotage a legal process that is excessively generous precisely because it is based on cooperation.
My third and final purpose was to learn the real status of these negotiations. Exactly what has been negotiated; what they have been promised and why; whether the negotiations are ongoing; and what the undertakings and rules of play were in arranging those meetings. However, I was also clear that – very much despite my strong opposition to the way this process has been handled – I had not gone there to discredit the Peace Commission nor the government representatives.
That meeting was just the most recent episode in a long and difficult personal history. More than 15 years ago I understood that I could not shut my eyes and pretend that nothing was going on in Colombia. It happened precisely during a trip through the Chocó: I knew then that I would devote my life to serving those who suffer most. On that conviction I have served in several countries for all these years. The costs of that decision are many. In particular, advocating for a transparent peace process with justice, truth and reparation in Colombia has greatly affected my personal safety. The threats from all the stakeholders are constant, and for just over a year now not a week has gone by without my getting one or two letters with strongly worded messages and explicit threats.
I have never kept silent. On the contrary, I am just increasingly convinced that justice is the only path to peace in Colombia. Nor have I followed the recommendations not to return to Colombia. I was born free. I am a free woman and will die that way.
Those were exactly the purposes of the visit and that was my state of mind when I arrived at the Itagüi maximum security prison accompanied by an assistant to meet Salvatore Mancuso, also accompanied by one of his advisors and a relative, in the intimacy of his prison cell, last Tuesday, 7 May, 2007.
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Ten unionists killed this year already
President Álvaro Uribe Vélez Keeps Distorting Figures Prepared and translated by :
José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective
Colectivo de Abogados “José Alvear Restrepo”
Bogotá, Colombia
May 9, 2007
“When this presidential administration began, there were years in Colombia in which 126, 168, or even 200 members of workers organizations were murdered in a year. We have yet to reach zero, as we would like to say to the world, however this year one worker belonging to INPEC [National Penitentiary and Prison Institute] was murdered. By all accounts, his murder was not related to his union activity.”
This was repeatedly stated by President Álvaro Uribe Vélez over the last few months in each one of the speeches and pronouncements he made before the national and international media and as a part of his public activities, which were basically done to respond to the oppositions’ accusations against his administration as well as to achieve the passage of the Free Trade Agreement in the U.S. Congress (which seems to be on thin ice due to the scandal concerning the ties between politicians and paramilitary organizations, among other issues).
Nevertheless, reality is distinct. According to figures from the database at the National Labor School (Escuela Nacional Sindical – ENS), nine unionists have been murdered from January to April 2007. Additionally, Luís Miguel Gómez Porto, member of the Small and Medium Farmers Union from the Department of Sucre (Sindicato de Pequeños y Medianos Agricultores del Departamento de Sucre - SINDAGRICULTORES), was murdered last May 3 in the region of the Montes de María, apparently by the Colombian marines, who later presented his body as being killed in combat.
The question, then, is why President Uribe reveals other statistics. Evidently, he is interested in demonstrating progress in his “democratic security” policy through manipulating the real figures. According to José Luciano Sanín Vásquez, general director of ENS, in order to do this president Uribe presents teachers and peasants organized in unions as a category of victims distinct to that of the union sector, thus disregarding that teachers alone make up 30% of the unionized workers in Colombia.
But there is more: at a press conference on April 19, 2007, Uribe Vélez asserted that only 25 unionists had been murdered the previous year, and in so doing ignored the other 55 unionists murdered in 2006.
Consequently, president Uribe denied the anti-union violence that year after year murders, tortures, forcibly disappears, internally displaces, threatens, and exiles many leaders and members of unions, which weakens the union movement and keeps persons from joining unions due to the absence of guarantees to exercise these activities as well as the fear of reprisals against them and their families.
According to the ENS, more unionists were murdered last year than in 2005. Specifically, from January 1, 2006, to November 20, 2006, 72 unionists were murdered in Colombia, which implies a 6% increase in the murder of unionists (compared to the 67 murdered unionists the year before).
It should be stressed that most of these homicides are registered as common crimes and often presented as a consequence of personal or romantic disputes. In this way, investigative agencies try to distort the true reasons for which these crimes occur as well as contribute to the government’s attempt at manipulating and denying the systematic violence committed against the unionized sector.
In this regard, it is also useful to remember the lack of operativeness of the judicial system in terms of the murders committed by paramilitary groups of such union leaders as professor Alfredo Correa de Andreis. Additionally, attention should be drawn to the obvious smokescreens used against the statements made by Rafael García that relate to the responsibility of Jorge Noguera, former director of the Administrative Department of Security (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad - DAS), in turning over a list to the paramilitaries –and specifically to Jorge 40- with the names of different unionists and left-wing leaders in order to have them murdered.
Paradoxically, up to now Uribe Vélez has not admitted to his responsibility in appointing Noguera to the DAS. He has also not assumed any responsibility for Noguera’s actions with or ties to paramilitarism. To the contrary, Uribe has publicly defended Noguera on several occasions. At the same time, the president continues to present irrelevant data concerning figures on demobilized paramilitaries, when it is well known that these groups continue to commit crimes.
Specifically, according to ENS, supposedly demobilized paramilitary groups murdered nine unionists from January 1, 2006, to November 20, 2006. Furthermore, human rights organizations have repeatedly spoken out against the ongoing paramilitary persecution and threats, which now include new persons –many of them unionists- that are declared military objectives.
In this respect, on June 16, 2006, union leaders from the National Association of Hospital Workers (Asociación Nacional de Trabajadores Hospitalarios – ANTHOC) received a death threat signed by “armed wing of the former AUC [United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia].” In the threat, they also indicated their intent to support president Uribe and asserted that a genuine demobilization would not occur until all unionists and communists had been killed.
As can be seen, this is only one example that Uribe Vélez forgot to mention, when he spoke publicly on the progress of the “democratic security” policy and his responsibility in terms of the State protection of hundreds of union leaders and human rights defenders.
Likewise, another factor contributing to the grave human rights situation of unionists is the framework of impunity for most of the cases where the victims are union leaders and members. In general, the investigations have been either suspended or closed due to lack of evidence. Only 5% of the cases go to trial and have the authors convicted. In cases concerning death threats, most of the unionists do not inform the police on their situation out of fear of reprisals. In the cases that are denounced, the investigations undertaken produce no results and are closed.
Insofar as the criminal processes concerning human rights violations against unionists undertaken by the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective as the civil party, 46. 51% of the cases are still in the evidentiary phase and 11.62% have requested for information on the state of the process and have yet to receive a response. Additionally, in 11.62% of the cases the investigations is still in the preliminary phase, 9.3% have been discontinued, 7% have been dismissed by the Office of the Attorney General, and 4.65% of the processes have charges lodged and an equal percentage a conviction. Only 2.32% of the cases have reached a public hearing and an equal amount a preparatory hearing. Lastly, the charged persons have only been detained in 9.3% of the cases.
In the case of the National Food and Beverage Workers Union (Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Industria de Alimentos – SINALTRAINAL), as far as the Office of the Attorney General, 62% of the investigations concerning the murder of the union leaders and members have been suspended; 12.5% have not initiated committal proceedings; 12.5% have no criminal investigation; and the same percentage have gone to trial and reached a conviction.
These figures demonstrate that, as far as cases concerning human rights violations against unionists, a genuine and effective justice has yet to be applied that responds to the open and apparent violation of their rights by the Colombian State. In this regard, a grave case of impunity has been created in which the different State institutions –that handle cases concerning the murders, massacres, forced disappearances, death threats, harassment, and persecution against unions and unionists- have not undertaken any serious or effective investigative work that contributes to overcoming the grave human rights situation faced by unionism in Colombia. Additionally, it has been shown that the favorable results presented by President Uribe before the country and the international community are nothing more than a distortion of the genuine figures and mean to justify the security policy as well as improve the president’s image internationally. Meanwhile, union members continue to be subjected to undue persecution and human rights violations and the investigative processes remain in total impunity.
Colombia Support Network
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PARAMILITARIES MURDER A MEMBER OF THE PEACE COMMUNITY
THE PARAMILITARIES HAVE MURDERED FRANCISCO PUERTA
Ê(Translated by Eunice Gibson, a CSN volunteer translator) Ê The continual killings, attacks and threats against our operation have not stopped.Ê Every manner of destruction is used against us.Ê They are using social investment as a war weapon, along with pressure, killing and threats of the paramilitaries, acting in conjunction with the armed forces.Ê Our historic obligation, considering our alternative search for respect for the civilian population in the midst of the armed conflict, is to report all of their deeds, so that humanity may one day judge these terrorist actions.Ê Once again we have to report a new murder in contravention of the humanitarian zones and against our community:
Ê
--Today, Monday, May 14 at 7 a.m., in front of the bus terminal in Apartado, FRANCISCO PUERTA was murdered by the paramilitaries.Ê He was a farm leader and the ex-coordinator of the humanitarian zone in the town of Miramar.Ê Two paramilitaries came up to the store that’s in front of the terminal.Ê He was sitting there and they shot him several times.Ê Then they just walked off as if nothing had happened, in the midst of the police that were all around.
Ê
In the same way, today at 7:30 a.m., there was a group of six paramilitaries, dressed in civilian clothes and carrying long guns, in El Mangolo, along with another four paramilitaries, also dressed in civilian clothes and carrying pistols.Ê There were soldiers and police within two minutes of this paramilitary presence.
Ê
--On May 13, a businessman from Apartado came to San Josesito at about 10:40 a.m., looking to buy some pigs.Ê He told several people in the community that the paramilitaries are talking in the neighborhoods of Apartado and saying that they are going to carry out a massacre in the Peace Community.
Ê
--On May 9 at 7:10 a.m., three farmwomen who belong to the community were detained by three paramilitaries in El Mangolo.Ê El Mangolo is located as you are leaving Apartado heading for San Jose.Ê The three men were dressed in civilian clothes and carried pistols and radios for communication.Ê They said they were “Aguilas Negras” (a new organization of paramilitaries).Ê They told the women they had been looking for them and they were going to kill them.Ê They took them to where the road leads away from Apartado, a place where the police have a checkpoint.
Ê
There the police asked for their identification and started calling by radio, giving the information on the three of them.Ê The answer on the radio was that these women were not the ones they were looking for and that the police should note it down and let them go.Ê Immediately the three paramilitaries took photos of them told them that if they said anything about what happened, they would kill them; that they were going to continue to be around the area because the orders are to start killing the people in that son-of-a-bitching peace community.
Ê
The paramilitaries continued to ridicule them and told them that they had a list, that they had gotten away this time but that they shouldn’t claim any triumph because the paramilitaries had already been ordered to go into San Josesito, la Union and the other towns and carry out a massacre.
Ê
The women told the paramilitaries that they ought not to do that and the paramilitaries answered angrily that it had already been coordinated and the order had been given and that you don’t fool with the police and with the Army.Ê You have to respect them, they said, and they said the Army and the police had already given them the names of those who were to be killed.
Ê
The paramilitaries asked the women about some of the leaders of the community and their wives or partners.Ê They said that those sons of bitches would not get away, that all the area of San Jose was entirely guerrilla, and that after two years of having the police there, there were only a few that would work with them.Ê The others all were pimps and collaborators with the guerrillas.
Ê
After keeping them there for half an hour and continuing to insult and threaten them, they let them go, repeating that they would be killed if they said anything about what happened.
Ê
These facts are proof of the murderous paramilitary actions that the government is trying to hide.Ê A new wave of killings of leaders of the humanitarian zones is starting, with new deadly acts against the community, as we have reported before.
Ê
This plan of extermination by the government against our community has failed again, as we do not intend to back down on our principles.Ê We continue more firmly than ever.Ê We are encouraged to continue openly with our search and we have the solidarity of many people at the national and international level—people who believe in a different and just world.Ê The work of FRANCISCO and his memory give us the strength to continue in even greater solidarity with his children and his family.
Ê
Ê PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO
May 14, 2007
CSN recommends that you send messages to your Members of Congress expressing outrage for this killing and question if the paramilitary demobilization really took place in that region of Apartado . Call for a full and impartial investigation into the killing of Francisco Puerta and into the reported paramilitary threats against the Peace Community. Request from the following Colombian authorities to take a decisive action to confront and dismantle paramilitaries operating in this region and to break their relations with the security forces.
APPEALS TO:
President of the Republic
Señor Presidente Álvaro Uribe Vélez
Presidente de la República, Palacio de Nariño, Carrera 8 No.7-2, Bogotá, Colombia
Fax: +57 1 337 5890 / 342 0592
Salutation: Dear President Uribe
Minister of the Interior and Justice
Dr. Carlos Holguín Sardi
Ministro del Interior y Justicia
Ministerio Del Interior Y De Justicia, Carrera 9a. No. 14-10, Bogotá D.C. Colombia
Fax: +57 1 560 46 30
Salutation: Dear Sir
Attorney General
Dr. Mario Germán Iguarán Arana
Fiscal General de la Nación, Fiscalía General de la Nación
Diagonal 22B (Av. Luis Carlos Galán No. 52-01) Bloque C, Piso 4
Bogotá, Colombia
Fax: + 57 1 570 2000 (a message in Spanish will ask you to enter extension 2017)
Salutation: Dear Mr Iguarán
COPIES TO:
Human Rights Ombudsman
Sr. Volmar Antonio Pérez Ortiz, Defensor del Pueblo, Defensoría del Pueblo
Calle 55, No. 10-32/46 oficina 301, Bogotá, Colombia
Ê
Colombia Support Network
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CUTS OF RESOURCES TO THE REGIONS IS AN IMPOSITION BY THE WORLD MONETARY FUND
EXCERPTS FROM SPEECH BY SENATOR JORGE ROBLEDO (Translated by David Brown, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Press Office, Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, Polo Democrático Alternativo[1] Speaker in the Senate. Bogotá, May 10, 2007.
The Polo Democrático Alternativo (PDA)* went on record with a negative vote in the senate against the Legislative Act , Transferencia, a proceeding during which uribism (those that support President Alvaro Uribe) did not permit the list of senators who wanted to speak to be exhausted, and did not even permit the spokesperson of Polo Democratico Alternativo to voice his opinion before the vote.
This negative vote has, as its principal basis, the fact that the law seeks to reduce resources for health, education, and basic sanitation to the regions by 49.8 trillion pesos, which represents 19.4 trillion[2] (pesos, approx. 9.7 billion** US$) in cuts to the departments and 30.4 trillion in cuts to the municipalities. The following are some of the sums that will be lost: Caldas: $503,841 million, Tolima: $786,069 million, Chocó: $590,000 million, Bogotá: $4.6 trillion, Barranquilla: $863 billion, Antioquia: $2.09 trillion, Bolívar: $924 billion, Nariño: 789 billion, Boyacá: $1.01 trillion and Risaralda: $260 billion pesos.
The debate also proved that the government is providing inflated statistics, such as when the health of 5 million Colombians is counted as covered when, even if they are affiliated with social security have their rights suspended because they lost their jobs or because their bosses did not pay the monthly fee, and also when it reports 3.8 million children that have ceased attending school as matriculated students..
Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo denounced the basis of the decision to hit the poor of Colombia the hardest. He explained that the cuts began when they were so ordered by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), through the Stand By accord of December 3rd, 1999 which they ratified on December 20, 2001 with an annex titled “IMF embraces Plan Colombia” and which was followed with another pact with the same bankers on May 23rd, 2006.
Whoever reads the last part of the text, explained the Polo spokes-person, will prove to themselves that the statements of the Uribe wing, that there will no be cuts or that these would be made because these expenditures are no longer necessary, are false. The paragraph says
“Transfers. According to the norms in effect beginning in 2009 the transfer scheme of resources for territories must reestablish that which existed until 2001 which require that the transfers grow in the same proportion as those of the current incomes of the central administration. In truth, to make the said change effective, would constitute an attack on the sustainability of central administration finances, the government will present a proposal of constitutional reform to the congress that, in broad strokes, will seek to make the current scheme permanent, whereas it is currently of a transitory nature.” DEVELOPMENT PLAN 2006-2010: SERIOUS ATTACK AGAINST PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES
Declaration by The Polo Democrático Alternativo wing in the congress, May 10, 2007.
Faithful as ever to neo-liberal politics since taking office in August of 2002, Alvaro Uribe Velez has placed all his efforts into delivering more blows to the already injured public finance system of the state universities. By decrees and measures, through the actions of the Secretary of the Treasury and the irresponsibility of the Minister of Education to the public institutions of higher education he (Uribe) ended the payment of $360 billion pesos between 2003 and 2007, three times the budget of Colciencias***[3] in one year.
With the National Development Plan of 2006-2007, will come the biggest assault against public resources provided to the Universities. Articles 34 and 38 approved by the uribista majorities in the congress deepened the financial adjustments over those to which various universities have already been submitted, taking them even to the point of closure, such as the case with the University of the Atlantic. The government, moreover, in a veiled form and with a selfish document, divests itself of responsibility for the universities´ pension liability. In the case of the National University, for example, the official aggression will have disastrous consequences because this will cause an accumulated a pension debt of four trillion pesos, with which the government pushes them to finance this debt with scandalous raises in tuition, cuts to student welfare and a brutal decline in academic quality.
The official politics regarding educational material is none other than that of deepening privatization. Academic quality, national development and the access of the poor to higher education will be the losers. The continuing of the current educational policies being applied in Colombia today will make it impossible to escape from the scientific and technological backwardness to which the minorities that hold power today have condemned us.
The PDA wing in the congress expresses its emphatic rejection of the Development Plan and especially of the aggression against the public universities. Accordingly, it offers solidarity it’s with the democratic demands that the university community is expressing and calls upon all Colombians to support them as well.
Jorge Enrique Robledo
Senate PDA Speaker
Germán Reyes Forero
PDA Speaker in the house
[1] * Alternative Democratic Pole a political party in Colombia, referred to by the acronym PDA, the result of a merger of seven parties of the Alternativa Democrática and Polo Democrático
[2] ** In Spanish, billón means a million millions (trillion in English), while in English a billion is a thousand million., http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=84699
[3] <***Colciencias: Colombian Institute for the Development of Science and Technology “Francisco José de Caldas”
Colombia Support Network
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phone: (608) 257-8753
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Senator Robledo demands to suspend the FTA until changes are known
( Translated by Stacey Schlau, a volunteer CSN translator)
Senator Robledo demands that the matter of the TLC should be suspended until such time as the government and Congress of the United States make known what changes will be made to the text
Speech by Senator Jorge Enrique Robledo, spokesperson for the PDA, plenary session of the Senate, May 10, 2007
The warning that we the Alternative Democratic Pole (PDA), the Liberal Party, the MIRA, and the indigenous people gave, that the TLC would not be approved in the United States in the form agreed upon by the two governments last November 22, today has been confirmed. It is already clear that there will be modifications, and as far as is known, they will not be by means of adding a supplementary letter, but by changing the text itself, at least in the articles on the environment, labor, and medicine. It is still not known whether the agreement that Democrats and Republicans appear to have arrived at was approved by President Bush. Neither do we know if it was with the support of the unions. There is only the clear certainty that there will be changes and that they will be profound ones.
It also appears to be a fact that, even when the trade part of the Treaty is agreed upon, to clear a path for the agreements with Peru, Colombia, and Panamá, Colombia’s will continue to be on hold depending on questions of violence, human rights, and guarantees to union constituencies that go beyond whatever norms are established in the TLC. Then it could happen that a TLC would go into effect for Peru and Panamá, and not for Colombia, at least in the short term.
What does this mean? Nothing less than breaking the agreement to which both governments subscribed on November 22, when they decided that the text would not be modified. It is also a betrayal of the fast-track mechanism established by the United States and accepted by the Colombian government. I think it is very serious that the national government would see both facts as unimportant. A commitment agreed to by both governments is being broken and President Uribe Vélez says nothing.
I am inclined to think that these will be changes made to favor the United States. I very much doubt that the Democratic Party will want to introduce new clauses that would harm the interests of the United States. But the changes, even supposing that they were positive for Colombia, would not fix the TLC. The Treaty has 23 articles and we are speaking about modifications in only three of them. For example, regarding intellectual property, the damages will not only affect medicines but also many other issues. Nor will the territorial reduction by any means be fixed. The agricultural and fishing losses would be maintained, unchanged. The chapter on investments and the one on buying would continue generating disastrous effects for Colombia. So no one can be under the illusion that the nature of the Treaty will be changed because a few clauses might be modified.
I want to call attention to the changes in articles 17 and 18, pertaining to environmental and labor issues. Articles 17.2 and 18.2, which are identical, authorize Colombia to approve any environmental or labor damage that it deems necessary to win business in the United States. If both articles are modified, it might be considered positive, because there would be less environmental and labor damage. But the million-dollar question is, and here I call attention to Uribe’s politics, how does Colombia become competitive? How does Colombia export if it does not lower working and environmental standards, as the Central American and all other countries who have signed Free Trade Agreements with the United States have done? Therefore, what we are talking about here is that these changes could be exactly the quadrature of the circle.
When the text of the TLC was being discussed with the Secondary Commissions, indigenous groups, MIRA, Liberal Party, and Democratic Pole, we told Minister Plata that this was a spurious debate, because we knew that the text would not be dealt with in the same way in the United States. Minister Plata responded that he did not know if the text would be modified or not in Washington. I answered the Minister: “Careful, Dr. Plata, because if it happens that the text changes from day to night, there are only two possibilities. Either you are the only Colombian who did not know, and so you acted inappropriately, not knowing what was going on with issues related to your department, or you did indeed know what was going to happen and tried to deceive us.” It is up to Dr. Plata to decide now in which of the two situations he found himself.
It would be the last straw if the government insisted on continuing to discuss next week the text of the TLC in the full Senate. Because it is absolutely clear that this will not be the definitive text. I therefore demand of the national government that it desist from this spurious negotiation, respect the Colombian Congress, and not deceive the Colombian people, and that it suspend negotiations about the Treaty until such time as it is known what the changes will be, and if the government will accept them as if they were nothing, without even studying them or permitting the Colombian people to evaluate them.
Colombia Support Network
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TEOFILO ACUNA was freed from jail
( Translated by Amy Rose Pekol, a volunteer CSN translator)
May 5, 2007
NEWS REPORT TEOFILO ACUÑA WAS FREED NUEVA GRANADA BATALLION, ANGLO GOLD ASHANTI AND KEDAHDA INC. FABRICATED FALSE EVIDENCE
Due to a lack of evidence to keep him detained, the Public Prosecutor’s Office 28, of the municipality of Simití, abstained from applying security measures against the president of the Agro-Mining Federation of Southern Bolivar, TEOFILO ACUÑA, who was illegally deprived of his liberty for 10 days for defending the natural resources of his region and for demanding clarity from the government regarding projects given to large multinational corporations that control the riches of the area.
Many different social and human rights organizations are insistent that the agro-mining leader’s detention occurred within the framework of a strategy of persecution unleashed upon the communities of Southern Bolivar that oppose the multinational company, Anglo Gold Ashanti’s entrance into the region. Anglo Gold Ashanti is affiliated with the company, Kedahda Inc., which intends to exploit the large mining areas in Southern Bolivar.
The president of the Agro-mining Federation of Southern Bolivar, Teofilo Manuel Acuña Ribon, was detained on April 26, 2007 in the urban center of the Santa Rosa municipality of Southern Bolivar. He was detained by members of the Nueva Granada Batallion of the Colombian Army, who violently burst into the Agro-mining Federation’s headquarters and beat the secretary and a visiting lawyer from the Ombudsman’s Office of the Magdalena Medio region.
Teofilo Manuel Acuña is an agro-mining leader recognized in Colombia and around the world for the strong defense that he has exercised from his communities and for his constant denunciations of serious human rights violations committed in the southern Bolivar region.
This illegal detention adds to the chain of incidents against Agro-Mining Federation leaders. Several fatalities have been committed, such as the murder of agro-mining leader, ALEJANDRO URIBE CHACON, on behalf of the Nueva Granada Batallion on September 19, 2006 in the rural area of Montecristo Municipality--Southern Bolivar.
Teofilo Acuña was freed today, May 5th by 5:30pm. The order for his freedom was expedited at 10:41am by the Public Prosecutor’s Office 28, of the municipality of Simití It was made effective and TEOFILO ACUÑA arrived at the Bogotá airport at 8:45pm.
FEDERACION AGROMINERA DEL SUR DE BOLIVAR, CORPORACION SEMBRAR, COORDINADOR NACIONAL AGRARIO, RED EUROPERA DE HERMANDAD Y SOLIDARIDAD, FUNDACION COMITÉ DE SOLIDARIDAD CON LOS PRESOS POLITICOS, ASOCIACION MINGA, SINTRAMINERCOL, CAMPAÑA PROHIBIDO OLVIDAR, ASOCIACIÓN NOMADESC, DH COLOMBIA, ASAMBLEA PERMANENTE DE LA SOCIEDAD CIVIL POR LA PAZ.
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
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phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Message from American captive by FARC , to his mother on mother's day
Josephine Rosano generously shares with us this message (third paragraph) from her son in captivity by the FARC. The message was sent by a Colombian captive to his family and includes a message to Jo. She authorized CSN to post it in our web.
Received this e-mail on Friday the 11th. The third paragraph is my son talking to me. All I could do is cry and cry. I just keep reading over and over. What a great Mother's day gift. Jo
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 4:49 PM
Subject: message from Colombia
Cali-Colombia, 27 April 2007.
TO:
Mrs. Josephine Rosano.
Thomas Howes´s Family
Keith Stansell´s Family
Painful fact for the one which also we as family are crossing, when having our dear EDISON PEREZ NUÑEZ suffering the drama of the kidnapping, the is one of the 12 deputies of the Valley of the Cauca that remain in captivity from April since 11 of 2002 and that next to 58 people but included their son Marc Gonsalves, their partners Thomas Howes, Keith Stansell, Political, military and policemen that make part of the call "exchange" or what we denominate an Agreement Humanitarian fact this that facilitated their liberation. This message by video to send the guerrilla of the Farc to Family's Deputies since the captivity the 27 April 2007.
One of the Colombians who undergo in own meet the tragedy of the kidnapping, in the beginning marked in a wood piece every day of captivity, today the captivity marks in my life agony lustrums. He is that they are, five years, five years of pain, five years hoping that the government and the Farc demonstrate their political and historical stature deciding our freedom, of another part I am sure that if the three North Americans that also is kidnapped like hostages, had this possibility would request specially to his people and to the Congress of the United States, to demand President Bush, the unconditional and decided support to a Humanitarian Agreement.
Of another part, I must say to my family, that are they the reason to resist, for that reason you loved family also they must be strong, specially your mother mine, adored mother prettiest of the world, your the one that you gave the being me, the one that me to inculcate principles and values that I will take by always with me, tomorrow you will turn years and you will feel all the love, of a thanked for son and proud to have a so brave mother, layers, so worthy but so mainly so respectable, you have the complete adored Mom security what in any moment we are going away to reunite, for that reason you must to take care of oneself, meanwhile receives thousand little kisses and many hugs.
Vicente brother beloved, thanks to have done everything what I requested to you, not you worry if some things not leave as we wanted, interests me if, that is one who helps you to take care of our mother permanently, I reiterate my unrestricted support to you, as brother is proud your aspiration to me to the Council and like Tulueño that you will do it very well; the one of my glasses already this solved, to update to me on the neighbors, the friends, the relatives; to Rogert Nick I send to salute specially. I want that he knows that the forgetfulness of some friends hurts, but who the one of him, hurts the double, that please speaks with Claudia Castellanos so that next to Roy Barreras, friend to whom also I love and stranger, they lead the declaration of Pradera and Florida as zone of encounter asking to him the President decrees it urgently.
Vicente to send immediately by Internet my message to the relatives from the three North Americans so that they make it know the press, Office of the judge advocate general and of the Congress of that country.
Juan Sebastian. Son, you leaves being a single boy of seven years, today you must be a strong youngster and very handsome, able to understand that in spite of the circumstances you are a very lucky being, you have a father whom I love to you, and with who you will share many projects and a family of whom you can be proud, for that reason when you talk about my mother you must do it with the respect and the which had consideration, like that in your messages you tell me of your life, the school, of your friends, your diversions, your aspirations, the talk about the problems personally in freedom, not through the radio, I want that you know that always these in my mind, in my heart, God blesses to you, God blesses them to all.
I am Edison's Brother, my name is Vicente Peréz I reiterate my solidarity and I would like that we maintained a correspondence, it stops this way to exchange ideas and actions that take in relation to the topic of those kidnapped, here so much in Colombia as their experiences in the USA, if it is that somehow you advance with the authorities of their Country, so that they intervene in the best way in the healthy liberation and all our relatives' alive, I also request to you the favor of contacting the families of the other Americans.
EDISON PEREZ NUÑEZ.
Truth, Justice and Reparations from Multinationals
Truth, Justice, and Comprehensive Reparations for the Victims of Crimes Committed by Multinationals in Colombia ( Translated by Kevin Funk, a CSN volunteer translator)
At the beginning of March 2007, the multinational Chiquita Brands found itself obligated by judicial agreement to pay $25 million USD for having financed paramilitary groups in Colombia, and having sponsored arms trafficking in support of these criminal organizations. This week, a US tribunal decided to hear the testimony of Edwin Manuel Guzmán, a former sergeant in the national army who affirms that the multinational Drummond ordered homicides against Colombian union members. The subsidiaries of Coca-Cola in Colombia face various judicial processes for having ordered killings and kidnappings against the members of the National Union of Food Industry Workers, known in Spanish as "Sinaltrainal." Oil, mining, and agribusiness multinationals have been accused of serious human rights violations in Colombia which have involved paramilitary groups.
The union organizations in multinational corporations have publicly denounced the work conditions that prevail in these businesses. In many of them there are temporary employees who earn less than the minimum wage in exchange for 16-hour workdays, and do not have the right to form a union. They have also condemned the persecution and harassment at work that union leaders are subjected to when they have undertaken actions aimed at organizing workers, and demanding decent conditions. To this it must be added that the transnational corporations exploit strategic natural resources for the country's development, and carry out large-scale economic projects that are destroying biodiversity and ecological systems.
As the legal actions which are in process demonstrate, on some occasions the response of multinational companies to organized action by workers has included the hiring of paramilitary groups to carry out crimes against humanity. The actions of these groups, which have acted with the backing of state agencies, have seriously affected the inhabitants of the lands in which these transnational enclaves are found. Communities of campesinos, the indigenous, and peoples of African descent have been subjected to massacres, massive forced disappearances - whose victims have been buried in thousands of common graves and hidden cemeteries - and forced displacements which have had as their purpose the clearing of lands and paramilitary control over extensive territorial areas.
As a result, it is not certain that these criminal actions, and support for paramilitaries, have been practiced principally to protect businesses from guerrilla attacks or organized crime. The justification that they seek to make the leaders of these multinationals give their backing to paramilitaries and crimes against humanity committed in Colombia, is an additional affront to the victims and to national sovereignty.
In relation to the atrocities perpetuated by multinationals in the national territory, the Colombian state is responsible for having promoted the presence of these companies in the country, without any type of control. In the same way, for having created the legal framework so that security groupings known as "Convivir" have served as intermediaries for the organization in campaigns to wipe out union members. The fact that foreign tribunals are the ones that are producing results in the investigation of these crimes demonstrates the degree of impunity and the inefficiency of justice nationally, that it has been permitted for them to continue committing these atrocious crimes, that those who are responsible enjoy freedom and multimillions in earnings that the terrible working conditions in their businesses yield for them. Likewise, the Colombian state has responsibility for the intervention or negligence of members of the security forces in the creation and strengthening of paramilitary groups.
In light of these facts, the National Movement of Victims of State Crimes supports the following positions and demands:
- The criminal actions of the multinational companies that have hired paramilitary groups in Colombia, and the fact that their actions have been generated in total impunity, is another argument against ratifying the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.
- In relation to the crimes perpetrated by multinationals in Colombia in accord with paramilitaries and agents of the state, the whole truth must be clarified by national and international judicial bodies concerning the material and intellectual authors, the circumstances in which crimes have been committed, and the earnings that have been obtained through criminal methods.
- The directors of the multinational companies who are involved must face legal responsibility, and the national government is obligated to process the extradition of those who have planned and benefited from these crimes.
- The multinational companies must comprehensively make amends not only to the direct victims of these crimes. They must also make comprehensive reparations to the communities to which they have caused immense damage through their financing and sponsorship of paramilitary groups.
- As a means to fulfill this, the multinationals must publicly apologize to the victims and to the country for the damage caused through the methods that they have used in order to obtain substantial economic gains in the country.
- As a means to ensure that this is not repeated, the multinational corporations which are proven to have ordered killings and forced disappearances, as well as having supported paramilitary groups and arms trafficking in Colombia, will permanently lose their license to operate in Colombia, and will not be able to return to establish themselves in the national territory.
The National Movement of Victims of State Crimes expresses its solidarity with workers, the relatives of the victims of multinationals, the labor organizations that fight for the rights of workers vis-à-vis transnational capital in Colombia, and with communities of campesinos, the indigenous, and peoples of African descent, who defend the country's natural resources and biodiversity while faced with the exploitation of large, foreign companies.
The National Movement of Victims of State Crimes
Bogotá, May 2, 2007.
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Demanding a response from Occidental Petroleum
( Translated by Thomas Kolar, a CSN volunteer translator)
WE DEMAND A POSITIVE RESPONSE TO THE LETTER OF PETITIONS FROM THE WORKERS OF OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM
The legal phase of negotiations having been finished with the company, Occidental de Colombia SA, that exploits the oil fields of Arauca, and with the Pipeline Cano Limon-Covenas, the members of the Union Sindical Obrera, faced with the intransigence of the companies, approves in general assembly a call to strike in order to demand a favorable response to their letter of petitions.
Occidental (OXY) operates one of the largest and most profitable oil fields of the country, and recently benefited from an extension by 18 years of its contract of with ECOPETROL, even though the field and its installations should revert to
Colombia in 2008.
This multinational claims the right to impose rules abrogating its obligations in its labor relations with the businesses contracted and subcontracted and the Cooperativas de Trabajo Asociado. Of 1,500 active workers, only 60 are on the traditional payroll with an indefinite contract, only 250 brother workers from firms affiliated by contract to the union benefit from the Convention and the rest are either decreed to be excluded by administration directive or they are simply blackmailed to force them to form cooperatives.
Qualified workers of the region are excluded in a campaign of “MacCarthyism” against the people of Arauca. It is not acceptable that, apart from the taking of our oil, the workers are subjected to conditions of work and pay that fail to meet international standards and seriously violate the most basic democratic rights.
We demand an immediate response to the Letter of Petitions from Occidental, we support USO-Arauca in its adopted decision and we invite the people of Arauca and the union movement to toast to solidarity in this conflict.
CARLOS RODRIGUEZ DIAZ
President
BORIS MONTES DE OCA
Secretary General
GUSTAVO RUBEN TRIANA SUAREZ
Secretary of Energy & Mining Sector
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado awarded the Aachen Peace Prize in Germany
THANK YOU FOR THIS RECOGNITION
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, a CSN volunteer translator)
We want to express our gratitude at receiving the Aachener Friedenspreis, (Aachen Peace Prize). It is an expression of solidarity with our operation by many international organizations, political platforms, labor unions, and civic movements, but especially with the effort by many communities to create an alternative space in the midst of the armed conflict that our country is experiencing.
This prize makes us very happy, because it shows that the crimes that the government is committing against our community will not remain unpunished; that the more than 170 deaths in our operation will not be forgotten; and that the killers will be judged some day by all of humanity.
We believe that this prize is recognition of the resistance of civilians in our country, who refuse the paramilitary logic imposed by the Colombian government. A number of communities right now are suffering, as we have suffered, displacement and seizure of their land by the government, for the benefit of the paramilitaries. Along with that, we should not forget the civil resistance of the indigenous people whose lands are being snatched away by giant mega projects, and of the people of African descent who, with the African palm plantations, are also having their land taken away. All of them refuse that logic of death and, just like us, are working for the construction of an alternative world; one that we believe will be respected some day.
This prize motivates us even more to follow our principles, even though they are violated every day by the Colombian government, using deception and lies to prop up their deadly actions. Along with that, even though we continue to be displaced in San Josesito, the government infamously talks about a return of more than 2000 families to the area, something totally false and fostered by the agencies of control that join in this stream of lies.
We believe that this prize at least for a time will allow us to reveal the difficult reality that we are living in this area, where the threats and the connivance of the Army with the paramilitaries are constant. They have displayed their lies as truth, supported by the media who go along with their game. In Uraba they have talked about demobilization, while paramilitarism continues intact. On the contrary, it is advancing in the seizure of land, in killing, and driving, along with the government, the economic mega projects that have the effect of involving the farmers in the armed conflict through the creation of a web of informants.
In Uraba, reality is being distorted and hidden, just as in the whole country. They don’t talk about the number of killings that the paramilitaries are carrying out every day. The communications media are silent along with the government control agencies, so that they can tell the tale that paramilitarism is over. The Army’s actions against the community have not stopped. They brazenly continue to threaten us, as on May 6 between 2 and 5 pm, when there were four masked men walking along with Army troops between La Union and San Jose. They were threatening a new massacre.
This prize will allow us once again to demonstrate the deadly reality that the communities in our country are experiencing. In addition, it is a way of giving us the hope that we are not alone in this search for dignity, for respect for life, and for the peace that is built every day by making space for real solidarity, the kind that we try to live with our community work, our group work, our cooperative economy, and justice without impunity.
Once more, our heartfelt thanks to those who have awarded us this prize, to the German people, and especially to the City Council of Aachen and to all of the international organizations that support this search for peace through building every day a world with dignity.
PEACE COMMUNITY OF SAN JOSE DE APARTADO
May 9, 2007
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
RULING BY THE PERMANENT PEOPLE'S TRIBUNAL : COLOMBIA 'S BIODIVERSITY SESSION
PERMANENT PEOPLES' TRIBUNAL
COLOMBIA SESSION
HEARING ABOUT BIODIVERSITY
RULING
(Translated by Kevin Funk, a volunteer CSN translator)
In continuation with past hearings that have examined the problem of multinational corporations in Colombia, in their activities of natural resource extraction with the support of the Colombian security forces and paramilitary groups, the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal was in session in the humanitarian zone of Nueva Esperanza in Dios in the Cacarica river basin, bajo Atrato chocoano on February 25 and 26, 2007. The hearing was presided over by the Argentine jurist Marcelo Ferreira – Chair of the Human Rights Program in the School of Philosophy and Arts at the University of Buenos Aires – delegated by the president of the Tribunal in the presence of the judges Richard Carrere, international coordinator of the World Rainforest Movement, and João Ricardo dos Santos Costa, member of the Judges’ Association for Democracy in Brazil and World Judges Forum. Acting as co-judges were the Chadian Andebeng Labeu Madeleine Alingue, president of the corporation the Pan-African Alliance for Colombia, and expert in South-South cooperation; the Colombian journalist and writer Alfredo Molano, the lawyer Francine Damasceno Pinheiro, member of the Landless Workers’ Movement in Brazil and social sciences teacher, and Lorenzo Loncon, indigenous Chilean delegate from the Mapuche people.
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, in continuation with the Russel tribunals backed by the Foundation Leslio Basso, has as its goal to give visibility to and describe in legal terms situations of massive violations of fundamental rights, for which institutional responses are not being found.
In the previous days, some of the judges traveled across the region accompanied by a large group of national and international observers, to verify the impacts of the presence of some national and multinational corporations on the environment and society in the region. These aforementioned judges wish to hereby expressly state that they saw with their own eyes the suffering of the people of this land and the degradation of nature.
The hearing took place in the same week in which the 10 year anniversary was being commemorated of a violent and massive expulsion which destroyed numerous communities in the region, forcing inhabitants to abandon their lands, which were then occupied for the activities of transnational corporations. The above-mentioned operative was designated by the Colombian army as “Operation Genesis,” and brought with it many killings. Amongst them we must highlight the decapitation of Marino López Mena; soon after cutting off his head the victimizers played soccer with it in front of the community in an act of punishment typical of state terrorism. The closure was carried out precisely on the tenth anniversary of his death.
The hearing was carried out in a settlement that was set up as a humanitarian zone after the return of some of those who were violently displaced in 1997 and who have exercised heroic resistance during various years, deciding to remain in the territory in spite of the continuous harassment and threats from the Colombian armed forces and paramilitary groups. Close to three hundred people attended the hearing from different regions of the country, where these and other multinational corporations have caused similar damage to the environment, relying on paramilitary groups for the achievement of their objectives.
Delegates also participated from solidarity organizations from 17 countries in Europe, and North and South America.
The sessions of the hearing were developed on different conceptual levels, such as: expositions of the context about biodiversity and biopiracy, palm trees and biofuels, environmental and agrarian policies, and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) in Colombia
On another level charges were presented against various transnational corporations, some of which have subsidiaries in Colombia. Each charge was backed by the testimonies of people who have directly suffered the impact of their activities and by documentary evidence presented by the accusers and witnesses. The Tribunal proceeded to incorporate the documentary and testimonial evidence for its presentation at the final hearing of the Colombia session of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal, which will be held in July 2008.
Likewise, and prior to the hearing, a pre-hearing was held in Medellín on February 22 concerning fumigations and the militarization of Colombia, the conclusions of which were presented to this hearing and were added to the charges.
The company Smurfit Kapa – Cartón de Colombia was accused of the violation of human, environmental, social, and cultural rights. Specifically for: destruction of tropical rainforests, Andean forests, and other ecosystems, and for destroying the social fabric, the traditional and cultural means of production of the communities; eliminating and polluting water sources; influencing the formulation of governmental policies in the country and pressuring state officials in favor of the interests of the multinational; hiding information related to the business and manipulating the media as much on a regional scale as a national one; using false propositions, information, and publicity to justify its activities and disguise the resulting impacts; accusing and criminalizing with false arguments those who denounce its misconduct.
The business MULTIFRUITS Inc., subsidiary of the North American transnational DELMONTE, is accused of the practice of an illegal banana agribusiness planned on 22,000 hectares, in which rubber and palm trees will be included on the country house areas of La Balsa, San José, Varsova and Bendito Bocachica; profiting from the settlement of the paramilitary structures in the Balsa since February 26, 1997, which generated the displacement of more than 2500 Afro-Colombians, the ransacking and destruction of their means of survival, and the crime of MARINO LOPEZ as well as the utilization of this site as a center of paramilitary operations, amongst which they tortured, disappeared, and executed civilians, among them several of the 85 victims from this community; in which they maintain control through pressure tactics with the denomination of the "Black Eagles" in spite of the announcement of their demobilization in 2005; they are also accused of irreparable environmental damage to the ecosystem, as well as the taking away of lands for agribusiness, and in regards to the common graves of the victims of crimes against humanity.
The business PIZANO Inc., and its subsidiary MADERAS DEL DARIÉN, is accused of destructive use, in a mechanized way, of the wood resources of the Cacarica; having caused profound damage in the land, the forest resources, and in the living conditions of the Afro-Colombian communities that inhabit the extraction areas; profiting from the extensive exploitation of wood, affecting principally the formation of forests in the municipalities of Riosucio and Carmen del Darién in the department of Chocó; the indiscriminate exploitation of the "catival" species (Priora copaifera), which is classified as endangered, and the generation of an acute impact on the tropical rainforest, as well as the forced displacement of more than 2500 Afro-Colombians and mestizos and a third of the indigenous population of the region after Operation Genesis, in which the collusion of the paramilitaries of the Autodefensas Campesinas de Córdoba y Urabá (today the Bloque elmer Cárdenas) was evident, and in which mass killings were carried out against the population, their lands and crops were burnt, and extrajudicial executions, sexual violence, and other serious human rights violations occurred. Responsibility was attributed to the Colombian state for its action and omission in crimes against humanity, genocide and terrorism, in all of the demonstrations that noted that they were committed by members of the 17th Brigade of the national army in collaboration with paramilitary groups that are located in this zone as well as for maintaining the impunity for every crime committed against the victims and for not having investigated, judged, or sanctioned in due form the members of the security forces and the paramilitaries which act in collusion with them.
The business URAPALMA Inc. was accused of having acted in conjunction with other palm tree companies and the Colombian state in the illegal growing of between 4000 and 7000 hectares of palms with a projection of 22,000 inside the collective lands of Afro-Colombian communities; operations that were possible thanks to the carrying out of and impunity for more than 113 crimes against humanity, 13 forced displacements, 15 cases of torture, 17 arbitrary detentions, 19 lootings of country houses, 14 paramilitary incursions, aggression into the humanitarian zone, 4 killings or extrajudicial executions, and the so-called "demobilization," which has made possible the development of new death threats and control over the population. The company is accused of having favored and promoted violence, and having intended to legalize property in favor of its interests through mechanisms such as: entering into land-use contracts, the buying and selling of improvements to owners, subscription to forged certificates for usage agreements, the forming of front groups of campesinos, developing figures such as the so-called Strategic Alliances in order to obtain public resources, the falsification of public and private documents, the alteration of sales resolutions of vacant lots, and the terms of agreement, amongst others.
The transnational corporation Monsanto is accused of supplying the component Roundup Ultra, without any sense of consciousness or legal responsibility, to be sprayed in the air in the eradication of crops of illicit usage with glyphosate, used since 1984 and converted into the principal strategy of Plan Colombia, implemented jointly by the governments of Colombia and the United States; for flagrant and knowing complicity in violating Article 14 of Protocol 1 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits making civilians suffer from hunger as a method of combat and attacking the civilian population's necessary means of subsistence, such as food items, crops, livestock, reserves of potable water and irrigation systems; for selling to the Colombian government with the support of the U.S. government toxic substances frequently utilized as a weapon of war, thus becoming an accomplice in the chemical warfare being waged against the civilian population; for violating international norms which mandate that state bodies and their private consortia protect and respect biodiversity and the environment, such as the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, and Convention 169 of the International Labor Organization concerning the rights of indigenous peoples and ethnic communities; for its neglect of the humanitarian, social, and land-related consequences of its massive and indiscriminate aerial fumigations, which utilize substances produced by this transnational.
The Dyncorp company is accused of fomenting war and political instability, and of profiting from the incitement of conflicts, and of maintaining them through its provision of services; benefiting from mercenaries which instigate and promote a deterioration in the living conditions of a population suffering from this militarization, the loss of thousands of lives and with them the delicate social fabric to which they belong; the destruction of natural resources; the amounts lost to humanity in cultural and ecological terms; supporting serious humanitarian crises, and shameless food crises; the loss of public goods, the violating of human dignity, the destruction and the pain. They are held responsible for human rights violations against Colombian and also Ecuadorian communities, which suffer the impacts of its business activities, all of which are serious affronts to humanity; carrying out a deliberate policy in violation of human rights, formulated by the U.S. government and accepted by the Colombian government.
About Biodiversity:
In the tests provided to the Tribunal it is clear that the policies promoted and imposed by the Colombian state are a serious attack against biodiversity in farms and forests, areas which were used in a sustainable manner for centuries by indigenous, Afro-Colombian and campesino communities.
- The displacement of the indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesino populations imply the loss of species and varieties, as well as the traditional knowledge of them.
- The expulsion of traditional communities and the substitution of subsistence agriculture with industrial monoculture, affecting food sovereignty locally and nationally.
- The massive and indiscriminate application of herbicides results in the destruction of forests and groups as well as related fauna.
- The introduction of moncultivation of bananas, pineapples, eucalyptus, cypress, and palm oil substitutes ecosystems of enormous biodiversity for green deserts of a lone specie. The massive use of pesticides in monocultures affects the few species of fauna that manage to survive in monocultures. The set of agrochemicals used also effects water resources, which also impacts the health of local populations, as well as the flora and fauna associated with rivers, streams, lakes, and wetlands.
The testimony of one witness clearly summarizes the situation, saying that: "palm oil is being paid for by the blood of our brothers and sisters, friends, and family members..." "we don't have anywhere to work because the land is covered with palm trees."
The industrial monoculture of palm trees and other species presents itself likewise as a very effective method for controlling land, and indirectly of social control, at the mercy of being implemented by a globalized model on a grand scale.
About sovereignty and people's right to self-determination:
Monsanto's business practice of imposing a monopoly of its genetically modified products entails the extinction of seeds used ancestrally by the indigenous, Afro-Colombian, and campesino populations. The cultivation of corn forms a part of the cultural complex of traditional populations, and the knowledge of production techniques is one of the expressions of their identity as a people, in addition to being a factor that guarantees their autonomy.
The extermination of creole seeds is an attack against the autonomy of traditional peoples because it generates dependence in relation to economically dominant cultures, causing these peoples' social exclusion.
The autonomy of the people is a guarantee consecrated in accord with international norms regarding human rights; therefore it is considered as a part of Colombian law, in which it is ratified. Accordingly, the government is obligated to take necessary measures to keep the population of the region from losing its land, and the gradual extinction of its cultural diversity.
About the Afro-Colombian and indigenous peoples, and campesino communities:
At the sources of the tributaries and rivers that flow into the Atrato, there are primarily indigenous and Afro-Colombian peoples, and campesino communities.
Historically, the inhabitants of this region are the Afro-Colombian peoples that escaped from the system of slavery, and as free former slaves they started to live amongst the Kunas, Katios, Emberas, and Wuanan peoples, whose ancestors have inhabited this region.
During the 1950s, campesinos arrived, having been displaced by violence in the Andean departments and along the coast.
The use of the land by these communities has allowed the development of knowledge, customs, ancestral practices that support the perfecting of sustainable agricultural techniques, preserving a broadening of the local biodiversity. Likewise, the production system generated the necessary balance to establish some decent ways of life and coexistence.
Then, in the 60s, livestock farmers from Antioquia came in, with the opening of the highway between Medellín and Turbo.
In the 90s, a convergence of geo-strategic attention came into existence in the region, determined by: the Pan-American Highway project, the armed conflicts between the guerrilla forces and the paramilitaries and government, and the return of the Canal Zone to Panama. Likewise, this change coincided with an increase in international demand for wood and bananas.
These facts gave way to a new security model and regional development policy, which came into conflict with the traditional ways of the communities. And in particular with the legal ways of association: indigenous shelters, ancestral Afro-Colombian communities, and campesino reserves.
In 1997, the Colombian army, in collaboration with paramilitaries, carried out Operation Genesis. There they bombarded and occupied by water and land the towns of the Salaquí and Cacarica river basins.
The witnesses put forward to the tribunal horrendous crimes used against them: mutilations, executions, shootings, torture, rape, forced disappearances. A power saw was used as a weapon of war against human beings.
The population fled towards the mountains, abandoning their lands, homes, livestock, and properties. Then they gathered in the City of Turbo and some sought refuge in Panama. The breaking of families, the uprooting, the hunger, social discrimination, the lack of health care, the lack of available work, led to social and familial disintegration with the complete indifference of the government.
The defenders and protectors of nature and biodiversity ended piled up in Turbo's stadium.
The displaced keep maintaining their hopes of returning, of preserving biodiversity. Supported by national and international human rights organizations, they returned to their lands, founding humanitarian zones of resistance.
Now, as communities of resistance, they demand the right to exist as a people, to practice their culture, preserve their cultural identity, their ancestral lands, guaranteeing food sovereignty, education, health, and medical exams, amongst other fundamental rights.
Evaluating the facts:
From the tests provided to the tribunal it is clear that the policies promoted and imposed by the Colombian state give evidence to a general and systematic picture of a violation of fundamental human rights, in the framework of the process of a brutal reorganization of Colombian society, at the mercy of the destruction of the social fabric, in support of a project of economic and social design for the benefit of transnational corporations.
In this sense, the facts described to this tribunal, such as assassinations, torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, mutilations, and especially the forced displacement of thousands of people, constitute crimes against humanity, as defined in international conventions.
In effect, crimes against humanity are those which are committed in the framework of a generalized and systematic attack against the civilian population, and this is precisely what is occurring in the region. Accordingly, witnessed declare that "they came in cutting off heads, torturing so that they can take the lands and put into practice their big project". "They were telling us to leave, that they need to clear the land to fight the guerrillas, but the guerrillas weren't there."
The relevance in this qualification rests in that crimes against humanity are repugnant to the conscious of humanity as a whole; they are inalienable, inexcusable, and untransferrable, and they can be judged by any tribunal in any part of the world, no matter in what time period they were committed. No criminal can plea immunity before them, and any criminal can be followed until the end of their days and the ends of the Earth.
Likewise, the defining characteristics are verified of an actual case of genocide, understood as acts intended to eliminate a group of people. Such characteristics are: the method of disappearing people, then hiding the bodies as a form of creating doubts about their fates and whereabouts, and cultivating a definitive state of terror as a method of social control. What has been exposed is verified eloquently in the statements of a witness who moved the tribunal when she said, referring to the campesinos: "they don't kill them with bullets, but they kill them another way, because the campesino only knows how to live off the land."
Also characteristic of genocide is the usage of "cleansing" when applied to human beings: a surgical toilet where the dirty and infected are people. One witness says: "the paramilitaries were saying that they were going carry out cleansing"..."their job was to kill." It is fitting to emphasize that the responsibility for this dirty work (of cleansing) falls with the Colombian state for allowing and supporting these actions.
In this sense the paramilitary phenomenon has meant the imposition of the logic of global capital, and the process of negotiation that is currently being developed is a concealed legalization for crimes against humanity and a legitimization of the counter agrarian reform imposed by them, a path towards impunity.
The so-called reorganizing genocide operates towards the interior of a society already constituted, a preexisting nation-state, and it seeks to refound social relations, the links, codes, daily life, political mediations, and in sum the concrete exercising of power in said society. The forced displacement of people, the submission of groups to conditions that cause their destruction, are acts typical of the crime of genocide (the crime of all crimes).
In a paradoxical and brutal way, the Colombian state has left a recording for posterity of the genocidal character of its macabre plan, with the operative denomination Genesis: a project of death and fear is given a Biblical name. In effect, Genesis means creation - in this case, the creation of something new after the destruction by the state of preexisting things. The violent reorganization of society on top of a new foundation.
In this sense the Tribunal found particularly illustrative the testimony of an economist who eloquently described the process of destroying social networks in Colombia through the killing of 3,000 trade unionists, in the framework of a general process of re-primarization of the economy as a form of integrating it into the world economy.
This witness described the failure of the Colombian project of industrialization and its substitution with a new and evil project. The return to a primary economy and one based on the destruction of agrodiversity, the fomenting of the energy sector and a model completely oriented towards exports, with the calculated consequence of reducing the rural population.
About Responsibility:
From the evidence provided to the tribunal it is clear in convincing form that the responsibility for each of the accused companies is applicable to their headquarters and to those of the Colombian state.
In this last sense the Inter-American Court of Human Rights left settled or established the responsibility of states for human rights violations committed by third parties. The state has the obligation to protect all the people who find themselves within its jurisdiction, including before armed irregular groups of any nature.
In regards to the responsibility of corporations for crimes against humanity the same basis is found in the drafts of international law, wherein such crimes can be committed by organizations, with the support or connivance of the state. In this sense the trials of Germany, derived from the Nuremberg Trials, have to do with the responsibility of complicit businesses with the Nazi regime - this idea is perfectly applicable to the Colombian case and must be taken up again by international law. The discussion about the responsibility of businesses is not a new creation but rather has its basis in the past.
Likewise, the conservation of biological diversity also exceeds the framework of justice of only states and also involves all of humanity. Accordingly, the agreement on biological diversity ratified by Colombia establishes in its introduction that "the conservation of biological diversity is in the common interest of all of humanity," and in Article 10, Section 10, establishes that the state will protect the use of biological resources in accordance with traditional cultural practices.
For these prior reasons, invoking the Argel letter on the Rights of People, after affirming the veracity and forcefulness of the given testimony, with the support of abundant documentary evidence, considering as proven the totality of the accusations against each and every one of the corporations and likewise the Colombian state, and in the belief that the violation of rights constitutes an attack against the collective conscience of humanity and is of concern to all peoples, the tribunal resolves:
1. To raise the accusations and the evidence produced to the highest deliberating court of the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, session on Colombia.
2. To communicate the present ruling to indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, as well as campesino communities that have suffered the impacts of the destructive actions of transnational corporations, and to organizations in solidarity with these impacted groups, and also to the workers, academic and student organizations, to the National District Attorney's Office, to the high courts and controlling bodies of Colombia, alternative communication networks, mainstream media, the African Union, Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN High Commissioner for Refugees, International Criminal Court, the accused companies, their headquarters, and the states where they are based.
3. To express its solidarity with and recognition of the pain of the victims.
4. To actively support their struggle for truth, justice, reparations, the reestablishment of the violated rights, and the guarantee that these crimes will not be repeated.
With the hope that the people of Colombia will finally have the peace and social justice that they deserve.
Produced in the humanitarian zone of Nueva Esperanza in Dios in the Cacarica river basin, bajo Atrato chocoano, on February 26, 2007.
Marcelo Ferreira
President
Ricardo Carrere
João Ricardo dos Santos Costa
Andebeng Labeu Madeleine Alingue
Alfredo Molano
Francine Damasceno Pinheiro
Lorenzo Loncon.
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Anglo Gold Ashanti's new strategy
(Translated by Amy Rose Pekol, a CSN volunteer translator)
From Colombia we are re-sending the following announcement, sent by the Agro-mining Federation of the South of Bolivar and other social and human rights organizations, on the arbitrary detention of a local leader, TEOFILO MANUEL ACUÑA. We reiterate a call for solidarity, not just for Manuel and his organization, but also for all social movements that fight on a daily basis to build peace with justice and dignity in Colombia, and for which are being systematically assaulted and persecuted by paramilitary structures or, as in this case, by government security organizations.
Sincerely,
Movimiento Continental de Cristianos por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad -Colombia-
(Continental Movement of Christians for Peace with Justice and Dignity—Colombia)
PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT
JUDICIAL FALSE CHARGES
ANGLO GOLD ASHANTI’S NEW STRATEGY
The Case of Teofilo Manuel Acuña
The social and human rights organizations, signed below, denounce to the national and international community the arbitrary detention of TEOFILO MANUEL ACUÑA, president of the Agro-Mining Federation of the South of Bolivar.
1. As is nationally and internationally known, the Antiaéreo Nueva Granada Batallion, with its headquarters in the city of Barrancabermeja, has been committing serious attacks against the communities and leaders of the South of Bolivar. These attacks vary from threats and stigmatizations to extra-judicial executions such as that which occurred on September 19, 2006 against ALEJANDRO URIBE CHACON, an agro-mining leader of the region.
2. In the last month, members of the Antiaéreo Nueva Granada Batallion have been interrogated in the current trial on the assassination of Alejandro Uribe Chacón, in which TEOFILO ACUÑA is a witness of this FALSE POSITIVE of the Colombian Army.
3. On April 12, 2007, the Public Prosecutor’s Office 28, of the municipality of Simití, South of Bolivar, ordered opened the investigation against TEOFILO ACUÑA, basing its decision on an intelligence report done by the Antiaéreo Nueva Granada Battallion and on the statement of a few supposedly demobilized guerillas. This decision was not signed by the prosecutor in charge, meaning it does not exist legally or materially and is therefore nothing more than a project of determination.
4. On April 14, 2007, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, on the basis of opening the non-existent investigation, ordered the capture of TEOFILO ACUÑA. This violent and arbitrary operation was carried out by the Nueva Granada Battallion at the Agro-Mining Federation Headquarters in the South of Bolivar, located in the urban center of the Santa Rosa municipality.
The order of Teofilo Acuña’s capture is absolutely illegal since it was based upon the opening of an investigation that is really, materially and legally non-existent.
5. Miltary intelligence of the Nueva Granada Batallion considers that ALEJANDRO URIBE CHACON and TEOFILO MANUEL ACUÑA acted outside the law in opposing the expulsion of more than 30,000 miners from their territories—land intended to be turned over to the company, Kedahda Inc., a subsidiary of Anglo Gold Ashanti.
Teofilo Acuña has been developing a strong accusation against these companies in the last few years. International human rights organizations have pointed out how this South African company financed paramilitary groups. Today this company is requesting that more than 4 million hectares of land in Colombia be turned over to them. In 99% of the municipalities where this company intends to advance exploitation, its inhabitants have suffered forced displacement and the appropriation of their goods. In 72% of these municipalities, inhabitants have been victims of serious human rights violations committed by paramilitary groups.
REQUESTS
1. Order the immediate release of the president of the Agro-Mining Federation of the South of Bolivar, TEOFILO MANUEL ACUNA RIBON.
2. Investigate the arbitrary acts that led to TEOFILO ACUNA’s capture, as well as those which occurred during his detention. Guarantee the development of an independent and impartial investigation to inform the National Human Rights Unit of the National Public Prosecutor’s Office.
3. Investigate the role of the company, Anglo Gold Ashanti—Kedahda Inc., in these human rights violations.
4. Guarantee the life, liberty and physical integrity of the inhabitants of the South of Bolivar’s mining area.
April 27, 2007
Signed,
Federación Agrominera del Sur de Bolívar
Corporación Sembrar
Coordinador Nacional Agrario
Proceso de Comunidades Negras – PCN
Fundación Comité de Solidaridad con los Presos Políticos
Sinaltrainal
Red Europea de Hermandad y Solidaridad con Colombia
Red de Hermandad Colombia
Instituto Nacional Sindical
Campaña Prohibido Olvidar
Asociación Nomadesc
DhColombia
Movimiento Continental de Cristianos por la Paz con Justicia y Dignidad -Colombia-
(Against militarism and the free market) (Continental Movement of Christians for Peace with Justice and Dignity)
www.cristianosporlapaz.info <http://www.cristianosporlapaz.info>
incidencia@ cristianosporlapaz.info
mcppjd@netscape.net
cristianosporlapaz@riseup.net
SECURITY FOR WHAT AND FOR WHOM?
(Translated by Stacey Schlau, a CSN volunteer translator)
SECURITY, FOR WHAT AND FOR WHOM?
The Joel Sierra Human Rights Foundation DENOUNCES to national and international public opinion, through the network of national and international human rights NGOs, the following facts:
- On March 29, 2007, at about 8 pm, in the township of El Charo, municipality of Saravena, Mr. MILCIADES SANCHEZ was assassinated.
- That same day, March 25, JUDITH NAVARRO DITTA, 24 years old, from Fonseca-Guajira, and FRANCISCO GAMA VILLAMIZAR, 41 years old and from Puerto Wilches-Santander, were assassinated. These events occurred in the township of Los Pájaros, in the municipality of Arauquita. This foundation also has knowledge of the existence of a cadaver listed as N. N., also the result of a violent death, which is in the morgue of the San Ricardo Pampuri Hospital in Saravena.
- On April 8, 2007, at about 6 pm, Mr. LISANDRO BAUTISTA TIRADO, 23 years old, was assassinated by unknown persons in the José Vicente neighborhood, in the urban part of the municipality of Saravena, Arauca state
- That same day, in the township of Guaimaral, in the municipality of Arauquita, Arauca state, three members of the same family were wounded when an anti-personnel mine was activated. Among the wounded is the young DUMAR FUQUENE.
- On April 9, 2007, at about 3 pm, JHONNY JOSE CASELLES MENECES, 39 years old, construction technician, was assassinated.
- With this canvas of violence, in which the dead in the department are counted by the dozens, terror is taking hold of the region, accentuated by the complicit silence of the national and departmental governments, and the mass media. The organisms of justice and law do not offer concrete results of their own investigations. The communities continue to denounce and ask for truth, justice, and reparation, demanding as well that this absurd violence cease. But they continue to be stigmatized, jailed, persecuted, and intimidated for their social involvement.
- We call upon the offices of justice and law of the State to move forward the investigations of these facts, including the possible omissions and gaps that these investigations may have incurred, and that they immediately adopt measures designed to protect the civil population, preserve their fundamental rights, and guarantee peace. We demand of the national government that it take charge of this situation and ensure that it is visible and done in the open, and that they stop their efforts to cover up the reality that we the Araucan people are living.
Sonia Milena López
Legal Representative
FOR THE DEFENSE OF LIFE, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND RESIDENCY ON THE LAND
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
------ End of Forwarded Message
A CALL FOR JUSTICE ON THE ALTO NAYA MASSACRE
( Translated by Thomas Kolar, a CSN volunteer translator)
Comunique 032
Communications ONIC
Wednesday April 11, 2007
www.ONIC.org.co
"a massacre announced"...we the dead call for justice so that there be no repeat of the history that we live.
Six years ago on a day like today, 11 April 2001, a paramilitary group of more than one hundred men committed an atrocity in the region of Alto Rio Naya...because of the territorial dispute of the armed actors the result was more than one hundred dead in a massacre which also left more than a thousand displaced and more than sixty disappeared and unaccounted for.
As we prepare for the regional assembly in Cauca leading to the National Assembly of Victims belonging to Social Organizations that will occur at the end of April (with the presence of more than sixty conflict victims from varying parts of Cauca that was convoked by the social organizations that are engaged with the assembly and with the national process) the Archbishop of Popayan and the University of Cauca will accompany a caravan of victims to the community of Naya situated by Lake Timbro to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the massacre.
"The community of Lake Timbro has prepared a place designated as a memorial for the victims of the conflict in Cauca" -indicated indigenous authorities of the CRIC.
Six years after the atrocity that moved the whole country, the population of campesinos, indigenous, and Afro-Colombians of the Naya River continues renewing its peaceful living with hope intact.
Although it seems there remains nothing but death, threats, and destruction, that is not the case. Still the collective well-being is threatened from outside by forces whose strategy of war silently uses the hand of terror to silence the voices that speak for the people.
FOR JUSTICE AND TO NOT FORGET, WE COMMEMORATE NAYA!!!
The valley of the river Naya, better known as the Region of Naya, is located between the departments of Cauca and Valle, bordered on the east by the hills of San Vicente(3,000 m.s.n.m.) and Naya(2,650 m.s.n.m.) upon the Occidental Range; on the west by the Pacific Ocean; to the north by the rivers Naya and San Juan de Micay. It comprises an area of 170,000 hectars under the jurisdiction of the Municipalities of Buenaventura in the Department of Valle and Lopez de Micay and Buenos Aires in the Department of Cauca.
Naya is a region where one finds all the problems that characterize the country. It is populated by three different socio-cultural groups (tenant farmers, blacks, and indigenous) who for various economic reasons have lost much of their land in recent decades. Many Afro-Colombian and indigenous farmers have no legal title to the lands that they have ancestrally held. In the last decade the upper reaches of the Naya has seen an influx of persons coming to grow coca.
Because of its geographic location and enormous biodiversity in all temperature levels,-the western crest of the Occidental Range to the Pacific-explains the richness of minerals and the potential for agriculture and the growth of ilicit crops, this has become a strategic territory for Colombians and foreigners, for guerrillas (FARC and ELN) aand for paramilitaries (AUC). Thus, territorial disputes of paramilitary groups led to the massacre in 2001 that cost the life of more than one hundred and the displacement of more than a thousand.
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
Hundreds of public servants implicated with paramilitaries in Colombia
( Produced and Translated by the Lawyers Collective “Jose Alvear Restrepo )
TELL ME WHO YOUR FRIENDS ARE, AND I’LL KNOW
WHO YOU ARE
Corporación Colectivo De Abogados “José Alvear Restrepo”
José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective
Bogotá D.C., Colombia
April 15, 2007
More than 30 thirty political leaders have been detained, including 9 members of congress, 2 governors, 5 mayors, the former director of the Administrative Department of Security, DAS, Jorge Noguera Cote, his information technology specialist, Rafael García Torres, as well as a considerable number of former members of congress, councilmembers, departmental deputies, former mayors and governors, and public servants investigated or with current warrants for their arrest. This is just the beginning of the evident links with paramilitary organizations of all the institutions pertaining to the Colombian State.
These links, endlessly denounced by human rights organizations, began to be revealed in 2005 when paramilitary boss Vicente Castaño asserted that paramilitary organizations had control of 35% of the national congress. Since then and after the detention of Rafael García Torres and the discovery of a personal computer belonging to paramilitary boss Jorge 40 –which included information concerning meetings between paramilitary bosses and hundreds of public servants-, the mass media began to speak of a “pact with the devil.” A jigsaw puzzle was fitting together and links came out into the open concerning the national congress as well as most other regional and national institutions. In particular, an inseparable relationship began to be established between paramilitarism and the national government.
Even though most of the public servants tainted by links with paramilitarism belong or belonged to the governing coalition, which supported Álvaro Uribe Vélez’s presidential campaigns, as well as his first two terms of office, the President has yet to offer a political explanation that deciphers this crisis, has not facilitated the clarification of truth, and to the contrary has provided multiple smokescreens to divert the public’s attention.
It unbelievable that, in the middle of a political negotiation with paramilitary organizations, one of the implicated officials was the then director of the DAS, Jorge Noguera, detained due to his close ties with paramilitary organizations and for providing these organizations with information on unionists, human rights defenders, and other social leaders, many of whom were later murdered. However, it is even more unbelievable that, in spite of the gravity of the situation, the President, instead of holding his subordinate politically responsible for his actions, appointed him consul in Italy, when the investigation had just initiated.
This is just one example of President Uribe’s responses to the accusations implicating officials he directly appointed as well as the leaders of political parties belonging to the governing coalition and the closest advisors to his presidential campaigns.
In this regard, it is not strange that most of the investigated and detained congress members also voted in favor of the Justice and Peace Law, the legal framework for the paramilitary demobilization process, which favors these perpetrators of the thousands of massacres, selective murders, and crimes against humanity.
Additionally, even though the national government claims that these scandals are the result of the truth process achieved through the application of the Justice and Peace Law, this is not certain. All of these truths have come out in spite of the government’s attempts to hide them. These truths have also not come out in the demobilized persons’ spontaneous declarations in the National Prosecutorial Units for Justice and Peace. Instead they have been revealed by the Supreme Court of Justice, through the ordinary courts and prosecutorial units not involved in the application of the Justice and Peace Law.
In this respect, the José Alvear Restrepo Lawyers’ Collective urges President Álvaro Uribe Vélez to give a clear political response to the previously described situation, especially since this crisis directly involves persons that belong or belonged to his political movement. Likewise, we ask the international community to provide ongoing accompaniment, solidarity, and follow-up to this situation in Colombia.
The present document includes a compilation of information concerning some of the implicated public servants. This compilation is a part of a close follow-up –as of yet unfinished- of the information published by national media concerning this scandal over the last year, in spite of the clear censorship and self-censorship and the multiple distractions that have attempted to “obscure” the truth of these publications.
For more information, please consult: <www.colectivodeabogados.org <http://www.colectivodeabogados.org> >.
“[T]he atypical political consolidation in 2002 and 2003 in the departments along the Caribbean coast (especially in César, Magdalena, Córdoba and Sucre, in addition to Santander, Norte de Santander, Antioquia, and parts of Boyacá) was preceded by a wave of killings and intimidation occurring between 1998 and 2001.”[1] <#_ftn1> “[C]ertain congressmembers have credentials that are built upon the blood of innocent citizens […]. In Magdalena, circumstances still do not exist for the next elections to be free. It also must be said clearly and directly that democracy has been kidnapped in the department and remains kidnapped through a relationship created between certain political groups and the self-defense forces.”
- Representative José Joaquín Vives[2] <#_ftn2>
“If they come for me, they’ll come for ‘La Conchi’, and for President Uribe
and the Inspector General.”
- Former Senator of the Republic Álvaro Araújo Castro [Prisoner][3] <#_ftn3>
“If we talked about what happened every day [in the DAS], people wouldn’t be able to go to sleep.”
- Jorge Noguera, former Director of the DAS[4] <#_ftn4>
“I want to close the DAS.”
- President Álvaro Uribe Vélez[5] <#_ftn5>
1. FORMER DIRECTOR OF THE DAS[6] <#_ftn6> Noguera Cotes, Jorge Aurelio
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; wrongful formalization of contracts and inappropriate corrupt practices; aiding and providing information to paramilitary organizations.
Source: Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; open criminal process for electoral fraud committed while managing Álvaro Uribe’s presidential campaign in the Department of Magdalena and for having provided paramilitary organizations with a list including 24 union leaders, several of whom were later murdered; also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General; detained on February 22, 2007, while providing testimony and released on March 22 (due to supposed procedural defects).
2. FORMER DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AT THE DAS García Torres, Rafael, CONVICTED
Grounds: Unlawful source of income; assets laundering; aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; misrepresentation and fraud; aiding and providing information to paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Detained since January 2005; currently serving a twenty-one-year prison sentence; confessed to being an active member of paramilitary organizations; also attests that the then director of the DAS, Jorge Noguera Cote, maintained a close relationship with paramilitary boss Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias Jorge 40, and revealed that 10% of the most lucrative contracts of the agency ended up in the coffers of said paramilitary boss. Furthermore, he denounced that fraud was committed in some departments along the Caribbean coast in the 2002 congressional and presidential elections, that the DAS filtered information to paramilitaries to murder unionists, and that DAS personnel were conspiring to destabilize the Venezuelan government.
3. FORMER SENATOR Araújo Castro, Álvaro, PRISONER [César, Alas Equipo Colombia, pro-Uribe][7] <#_ftn7>
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime and aggravated kidnapping with extortion;[8] <#_ftn8> presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Rafael García Torres; Jorge 40’s computer;[9] <#_ftn9> Jaime Alberto Pérez Charry.[10] <#_ftn10>
State of Process: Detained on February 15, 2007, by order of the Supreme Court of Justice; resigned from seat on March 27, 2007, in order to be investigated by ordinary justice.[11] <#_ftn11>
4. FORMER MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE AND FORMER SENATOR Araújo Noguera, Álvaro, FUGITIVE [César, Father of Álvaro Araújo Castro]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime and aggravated kidnapping with extortion; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jaime Alberto Pérez Charry.
State of Process: Fugitive since a warrant for his arrest was issued on March 2, 2007.
5. FORMER CHANCELLOR OF FOREIGN RELATIONS Araújo Castro, Consuela ‘Conchi’ [César, Sister of Álvaro Araújo Castro]
State of Process: Resigned from post due to the presumed links of her brother and father with paramilitary organizations and the grave crime of kidnapping with extortion.
6. FORMER GOVERNOR Molina, Hernando [César, Liberal, First Cousin of Álvaro Araújo Castro]
Grounds: Belonging to a paramilitary structure and using his membership to facilitate reaching the governors’ office; accused of being the intellectual author of a massacre; managing paramilitary financial resources.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony.
7. SENATOR García Romero, Álvaro, PRISONER [Sucre, Colombia Democrática, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; aggravated homicide; embezzlement; promoting, arming, and financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Communication intercepted by police; Jorge 40’s computer; Jairo Antonio Castillo Peralta (Pitirri).[12] <#_ftn12>
State of Process: Surrendered to the Supreme Court of Justice on November 16, 2006 (fugitive since a warrant for his arrest was issued on September 25, 2006); also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General.
8. FORMER SENATOR Merlano Fernández, Jairo, PRISONER [Sucre, Partido de la U, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Belonging to a paramilitary structure and using his membership to facilitate reaching the Senate.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer; Jairo Castillo Peralta (Pitirri).
State of Process: Surrendered to the Supreme Court of Justice on November 17 (fugitive since a warrant for his arrest was issued on November 8, 2006); resigned from seat on March 27, 2007, in order to be investigated by ordinary justice.
9. REPRESENTATIVE Morris Taboada, Erick, PRISONER [Sucre, Colombia Democrática, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime in association with paramilitary organizations; presumed paramilitary financial support for election campaign; promoting, arming, and financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer; Jairo Castillo Peralta (Pitirri).
State of Process: Surrendered to the Supreme Court of Justice on November 16, 2006 (fugitive since a warrant for his arrest was issued on September 26, 2006).
10. FORMER GOVERNOR Arana Sus, Salvador, FUGITIVE [Sucre, Colombia Democrática]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed paramilitary financial support for election campaign; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations; homicide.
Source: Pact of Ralito; Jaime Alberto Pérez Charry.
State of process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; fugitive since a warrant for his arrest was issued; additionally the DAS offers a rewards of 50 million pesos for information leading to his capture; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
Senators of the Republic
11. Aguirre, Germán [Risaralda, Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jhon Mario Salazar, alias El Pecoso.[13] <#_ftn13>
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General.
12. Cáceres Leal, Javier Enrique [Bolívar, Cambio Radical, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: No known investigations.
13. Char Navas, David [Atlántico, Cambio Radical, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed paramilitary financial support for election campaign.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
14. Díaz Mateus, Iván [Santander, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jhon Mario Salazar, alias El Pecoso.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General.
15. Jattin Corrales, Zulema [Córdoba, Partido de la U, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed paramilitary financial support for election campaign.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
16. López Cabrales, Juan Manuel [Córdoba, Liberal - Opposition]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.[14] <#_ftn14>
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
17. Maloof Cuse, Dieb Nicolas, PRISONER [Atlántico, Colombia Viva, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed paramilitary financial support for election campaign; presumed contract irregularities.
Source: Rafael García Torres; Jaime Alberto Pérez Charry; Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Detained on February 15, 2007, by order of the Supreme Court of Justice.
18. Merheg Marún, Habib [Risaralda, Colombia Viva, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
Source: Senator Piedad Córdoba.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General.
19. Montes Alvarez, Reginaldo [Córdoba, Cambio Radical, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito; Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito; asked to be suspended from party while investigations pending.
20. Montes Medina, William [Bolívar, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito; Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
21. Pimiento Barrera, Mauricio, PRISONER [César, Partido de la U, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; aggravated conspiracy to commit crime.
Source: Rafael García Torres; Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Detained on February 15, 2007 by order of the Supreme Court of Justice.
22. Quintero, Rubén Darío [Antioquia, Cambio Radical, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
23. Ramírez Pinzón, Ciro [Boyacá, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
24. Suárez Mira, Óscar de Jesús [Antioquia, Alas Equipo Colombia, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony.
25. Vives Lacouture, Luis, PRISONER [Magdalena, Convergencia Ciudadana, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed electoral fraud; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: Detained on February 15, 2007 by order of the Supreme Court of Justice; also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General.
Representatives to the Chamber
26. Alfonso López, Héctor Julio [Bolívar, Apertura Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: No known investigations.
27. Caballero, Jorge Luis, FUGITIVE [Magdalena, Apertura Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud; homicide.
Source: Rafael García Torres; Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; fugitive since a warrant for his arrest was issued; also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General for irregularities in the exercise of his duties.
28. Campo Escobar, Alfonso, PRISONER [Magdalena, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
Source: Rafael García Torres; Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Detained on February 15, 2007, by order of the Supreme Court of Justice.
29. de la Espriella, Miguel [Córdoba, Colombia Democrática, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
30. de los Santos Negrete, José [Córdoba, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito; Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
31. García Turbay, Lidio [Bolívar, Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
32. Parodi Díaz, Mauricio [Antioquia, Partido Liberal – Opposition]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed electoral fraud.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; called to provide testimony.
33. Wilchez Carreño, Oscar [Casanare, Cambio Radical, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice.
Former Senators of the Republic
34. Blel Saad, Vicente [Atlántico, MIPOL, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General.
35. Burgos de la Espriella, Rodrigo [Córdoba, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
36. Gnecco Cerchar, José "Pepe" Eduardo [César, Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
37. Saade Abdala, Salomón [Magdalena, Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General.
38. Sánchez Arteaga, Freddy Ignacio [Córdoba, Liberal, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
Former Representatives to the Chamber
39. Benito-Revollo Balsiero, Muriel, PRISONER [Sucre, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito; Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Detained on November 16, 2006 by order of the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
40. Castro, Jorge Luis [Magdalena, Colombia Viva – Uribista]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General.
41. Feris Chadid, Jorge Luis [Sucre, Colombia Democrática, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
42. Gamarra Sierra, José [Magdalena, Cambio Radical, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General.
43. Imbett Bermúdez, José María [Bolívar, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
44. Montes, Remberto [Córdoba, MIPOL, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
45. Ordosgoitia, Luis Carlos [Córdoba, Conservative, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
46. Pineda Arcia, Eleonora [Córdoba, Convergencia Ciudadana, pro-Uribe]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
Public Servants of the Executive Branch
47. Cuello Baute, Manuel [Former Superintendent of Notary and Registration[15] <#_ftn15> ]
Grounds: Unlawful source of income.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Inspector General for unlawful source of income; resigned after being accused of using post to seek contributions for the congressional campaign of his brother, Alfredo Cuello, current president of the Chamber of Representatives.
48. Ortiz López, Luis [Former Director del INCODER[16] <#_ftn16> ]
Grounds: Unlawful source of income; aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Inspector General for irregularities in the adjudication of land.
49. Narváez, José Miguel [Former Deputy Director of the DAS]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: No known investigations; dismissed by President Uribe in October 2005 after it was revealed that he had provided paramilitary boss Jorge 40 with the president’s armored car in the area of concentration of Ralito.
50. Obdulio Gaviria, José [Presidential Advisor to Álvaro Uribe Vélez]
Grounds: Conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: No known investigations; first cousin with Pablo Escobar Gaviria; his two brothers, Luis Mario and Jorge Fernando Gaviria Vélez, served prison sentences in the United States for drug trafficking.
51. Plazas Vega, Alfonso, Colonel ® [Former General Director of the DNE][17] <#_ftn17>
Grounds: Forced disappearance; unlawful source of income; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice for the forced disappearance of 11 persons who were in the cafeteria of the Palace of Justice (commanded the military operation to regain control of the Palace of Justice on November 6 and 7, 1985); resigned from current post after being accused in Congress of inappropriately handling the assets confiscated from drug traffickers.
52. Segura Aranzazu, Fernando [Former Superintendent of Security and Surveillance][18] <#_ftn18>
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Resigned from post in March 2006, after a police report revealed he had consulted Enilce López, who is currently investigated for assets laundering and supporting paramilitary organizations. Ms. López was also one of the most important individual donors to Álvaro Uribe’s first presidential campaign.
53. Taboada, Roger [Former Director of the Fund for Financing the Agricultural and Livestock Sector][19] <#_ftn19>
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Andrés Felipe Arias, Minister of Agriculture
State of Process: No known investigations; resigned from post after being accused of having granted credit irregularly to alleged drug traffickers.
54. Vives Menotti, Juan Carlos [Former Director of the DNE]
Grounds: Presumed electoral fraud; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Rafael García Torres.
State of Process: No known investigations; implicated in electoral fraud committed in the presidential campaign for Álvaro Uribe along the Caribbean coast.
Officers of the Armed Forces
55. González Medina, Rodrigo, Colonel ®, Former Commander of the Colombia Battalion
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; aggravated conspiracy to commit crime.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; warrant for arrest.
56. Mejía, Hernán, Colonel, Former Commander of the La Popa Battalion [Valledupar, César]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; also investigated by the Office of the Inspector General; while investigation is pending, reassigned to a post with no command over troops.
57. Montoya, Mario, General, Commander of the National Army of Colombia
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), according to the Los Angeles Times on March 25, 2007.
State of Process: According to a CIA document, General Mario Montoya collaborated with paramilitary organizations in order jointly plan and take action to eliminate 14 alleged guerrilla members in Medellín in 2002.
Governors of Departments
58. López, Jose María [Former Governor of Córdoba, Liberal]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; organizing, promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
Source: Pact of Ralito.
State of Process: Currently investigated by the Office of the Attorney General; called to provide testimony on his presence at Ralito.
59. Luna Correa, Trino, PRISONER [Magdalena, Liberal]
Grounds: Aggravated conspiracy to commit crime; presumed ties with paramilitary organizations.
Source: Jorge 40’s computer.
State of Process: Dismissed and currently detained (surrendered to authorities on March 13, 2007).
60. Pérez Espinal, William [Casanare, Liberal]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; homicide; promoting, arming, or financing paramilitary organizations.
State of Process: Investigated by the Office of the Attorney General for presumed contract irregularities; currently faces 28 criminal processes.
61. Pérez Suárez, Miguel Angel, CONVICTED [Casanare, Liberal]
Grounds: Presumed ties with paramilitary organizations; presumed paramilitary financial support for election campaign.
State of Process: Investigated by the Supreme Court of Justice; dismissed and detained on September 22, 2007; condemned to a six-year prison sentence for unlawful source of income.
[1] <#_ftnref1> According to Claudia López in her article: “Del control territorial a la acción política”, published by the Corporación Nuevo Arco Iris in its magazine Arcanos on December 11, 2005, “statistics from the Human Rights Observatory of the Vicepresident’s Office demonstrate that from between 1998 to 2001, in the very departments where atypical voting occurred for congressional and municipal offices (for example, a candidate would overwhelmingly win with 70% of the vote in one municipality), massacres had also increased by 140%, and those presumably committed by paramilitaries had increased by 664%. Additionally, homicides had increased by 33% and selective homicides were also registered. This was double the national average in 52 municipalities in 1998 and in 63 municipalities in 2002. In other words, the atypical political consolidation in 2002 and 2003 in the departments along the Caribbean coast (especially in César, Magdalena, Córdoba and Sucre, in addition to Santander, Norte de Santander, Antioquia, and parts of Boyacá) was preceded by a wave of killings and intimidation occurring between 1998 and 2001.”
[2] <#_ftnref2> Mas allá del control territorial. El Espectador, Bogotá, Colombia, January 22, 2006.
[3] <#_ftnref3> El senador Álvaro Araújo confiesa que estuvo en una fiesta con 'Jorge 40' antes de su desmovilización. Magazine Semana, Bogotá, Colombia, November 16, 2006.
[4] <#_ftnref4> La Pesadilla del DAS. Observatorio de Derechos Humanos y Derecho Humanitario (Coordinación Colombia-Europa-Estados Unidos), 2006.
[5] <#_ftnref5> Crisis en el servicio secreto de Colombia. Miami Herald, EEUU, November 1, 2005.
[6] <#_ftnref6> The Administrative Department of Security (DAS) is the principal Colombian intelligence agency and also functions as the secret police. The DAS undertakes strategic intelligence, criminal investigation, migratory control, and the protection of senior leaders and persons under threat to contribute to national and foreign security concerns, preserve the integrity of the constitutional regime and defend national interests.
[7] <#_ftnref7> The information presented appears in the following order: 1. post; 2. name; 3. administrative region; 4. political party; 5. if he or she belongs to the governing coalition.
[8] <#_ftnref8> This refers to the kidnapping of the politician and businessman Víctor Ochoa Daza, which, according to the Court, favored the electoral interests of Álvaro Araújo.
[9] <#_ftnref9> On March 11, 2006, personnel from the Technical Investigation Unit (CTI) of the Office of the Attorney General detained Édgar Ignacio Fierro Flórez, alias Don Antonio, second in command to paramilitary chief Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, alias Jorge 40, who had in his possession two computers, two USB devices, several compact discs, and a large amount of hand written documents.
[10] <#_ftnref10> On November 23, 2006, Jaime Alberto Pérez Charry, member of paramilitary chief Rodrigo Tovar Pupo’s organization and who was a key witness for the case concerning the police officers that confiscated three tons of cocaine in Barranquilla in August 2002 and later returned it to paramilitary organizations. He also provided testimony before the Supreme Court of Justice on the case of the agreements between paramilitary organizations and members of congress.
[11] <#_ftnref11> In cases involving members of the legislative branch the Supreme Court of Justice has the jurisdiction to investigate and try.
[12] <#_ftnref12> Jairo Antonio Castillo Peralta (Pitirri) was a bodyguard for Joaquín García, a rancher from Sucre, and former governor Salvador Arana. Castillo was a witness to several meetings in which dozens of crimes were planned and several murders implicating politicians, prosecutors and members of the public force.
[13] <#_ftnref13> According to testimony by paramilitary Jhon Mario Salazar, alias El Pecoso, he and Jesús Ignacio Roldan, alias Monoleche, committed a homicide as a favor for the mayor of the Bucaramanga, Santander.
[14] <#_ftnref14> The Pact of Ralito was signed in 2001 <http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001> between the chiefs of Colombian paramilitary organizations and more than fifty politicians from different regions of the country (senators, representatives, council members, and mayors, among others) as a part of a political project meant to "re-found the county". In November 2006, the existence of this pact was revealed by representative Miguel de la Espriella <http://es.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Miguel_de_la_Espriella_%28pol%C3%ADtico%29&action=edit> .
[15] <#_ftnref15> The Superintendency of Notary and Registration watches over, inspects and controls the rendering of public services of notarization and registration.
[16] <#_ftnref16> The Colombian Institute for Rural Development (INCODER) implements agricultural and livestock policy, agrarian reform and the turning over of land to the internally displaced population.
[17] <#_ftnref17> The National Anti-Narcotics Office (DNE) assesses and supports the National Anti- Narcotics Council and the national government on the formulation of policies and programs concerning the fight against the production, trafficking and use of addictive drugs, as well as the administration of the confiscated assets.
[18] <#_ftnref18> The Superintendency of Security and Surveillance issues licenses to bear any kind of weapon to persons or private enterprises in Colombia, which also includes security enterprises and cooperatives.
[19] <#_ftnref19> The Fund for Financing the Agricultural and Livestock Sector (FINAGRO) is dedicated to promoting the agricultural and livestock sector through the granting of credit and loans.
Colombia Support Network
P.O. Box 1505
Madison, WI 53701-1505
phone: (608) 257-8753
fax: (608) 255-6621
e-mail: csn@igc.org
http://www.colombiasupport.net
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