Colombia News From:
Weekly News Update #473
Week Ending 2/21/99

WEEKLY NEWS UPDATE ON THE AMERICAS
             ISSUE #473, FEBRUARY 21, 1999
  NICARAGUA SOLIDARITY NETWORK OF GREATER NEW YORK
339 LAFAYETTE ST., NEW YORK, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

1. Leftist Legislator Murdered in Ecuador
2. Did Colombian Paramilitaries Kill Ecuadoran Leftist?
3. Colombian Paramilitaries Release Two More Captives
4. Colombian Army Colonel Killed
...

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*1. LEFTIST LEGISLATOR MURDERED IN ECUADOR

On Feb. 17, Ecuadoran legislative deputy Jaime Hurtado Gonzalez,
a leader of the leftist Democratic Popular Movement (MDP), was
shot to death by three armed assailants who fired at him in broad
daylight on a Quito street, a block from the Congress building.
Pablo Tapia, an alternate deputy for the MPD, and Hurtado's
nephew and bodyguard Wellington Borja, were also killed in the
attack. President Jamil Mahuad declared three days of national
mourning. [Agencia Informativa Pulsar 2/17/99, 2/18/99]
 
Known as "the Champion of the Poor," Hurtado was an athlete-
turned lawyer who became "one of the most notable Ecuadoran
politicians in the last 15 years," said congressional leader Juan
Jose Pons. [Agence France Presse 2/20/99] He ran for president in
1988. [Pulsar 2/17/99] According to the Ecuador-based
international radio news service Pulsar, Hurtado founded the MPD,
which is the political arm of Ecuador's Communist Party, and
remained a strong opponent of rightwing governments and of the
neoliberal economic model. [Pulsar 2/18/99] 
 
Some 50 supporters staged a march in Hurtado's home city of
Guayaquil on Feb. 19 to protest his murder. Some of the
demonstrators painted walls with graffiti that read "Jaime lives"
and threw rocks at several buildings, including the US consulate.
Alleged protesters also threw a stick of dynamite at an army
vehicle parked in front of military administration offices, said
authorities, but it was removed before exploding and caused no
damage. [Cable News Network (CNN) en Espanol 2/18/99, with info
from Associated Press; Clarin (Buenos Aires) 2/19/99]
Demonstrators said those who caused violence in the protest were
government infiltrators. MPD leader Gustavo Teran showed the
press identity cards taken from the agents, and television showed
footage of activists attacking the infiltrators. [Clarin 2/19/99]
 
Just hours before his murder Hurtado had criticized Mahuad's
policies and announced a general strike to demand the repeal of
recent economic measures. [AFP 2/20/99]
 
*2. DID COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARIES KILL ECUADORAN LEFTIST?

Ecuador's interior minister Vladimiro Alvarez said on Feb. 19
that a Colombian sicario (hired killer) who calls himself
"Vitorino" [or "Victorino"] was the trigger person in the
murders. "Vitorino" apparently boarded a flight to Colombia after
the killings on Feb. 17, along with another Colombian suspect,
identified as Gerardo Martinez, or "Milanta." Alvarez said this
information came from an Ecuadoran suspect, Washington Fernando
Aguirre, who was arrested shortly after the killings. Alvarez
said police had arrested two other suspects, Cristian Ponce and
Sergei Merino. Another Ecuadoran suspect, Congress employee
Michel Stalin Ona, was presumed to have provided information on
Hurtado's activities to the Colombian killers. Ona is now dead:
according to the official report, he fired at police when they
went to his home to arrest him on Feb. 18; police fired back, and
Ona died from his wounds the next day in the hospital. [El Nuevo
Herald (Miami) 2/20/99 from AP; CNN en Espanol 2/20/99 from AP;
AFP 2/20/99; Pulsar 2/19/99; Hoy (Quito) 2/20/99]
 
According to Aguirre's testimony, which the government insisted
was obtained without pressures, Hurtado was killed because he had
helped Colombian leftist guerrillas obtain false documents and
legalize their situation in Ecuador. Aguirre apparently also said
Hurtado was accused of sending groups of young Ecuadorans from
the MPD to Colombia for military training by guerrillas, and that
Hurtado was targeted by paramilitaries who believed "he was
organizing a guerrilla force in Ecuador." [AFP 2/20/99; Pulsar
2/19/99; CNN en Espanol 2/20/99 from AP; ENH 2/20/99 from AP] 
 
MPD president Ciro Guzman called the government's story "a
setup." "They've invented this story which the Ecuadoran people
don't believe," he said. [CNN en Espanol 2/20/99 from AP]
Hurtado's son, Lenin Hurtado, also rejected the government's
accusations against his father, in comments to reporters after
the funeral, which was attended by thousands of friends,
supporters and political allies. [AFP 2/20/99] Lenin Hurtado said
his father was a strong proponent of peace, and had traveled to
Colombia recently because he was invited by Colombian authorities
to celebrate the opening of negotiations with the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). [CNN en Espanol 2/20/99 from AP]
Lenin Hurtado did not dismiss the idea that the Ecuadoran
government might be responsible for his father's death, but he
suggested it was also possible that perhaps certain other
elements "would have wanted to do a favor to the [Ecuadoran]
government [by] eliminating a leader like my father." [El
Comercio (Quito) 2/21/99] 
 
"This is a political crime," said Maria Eugenia Lima, a former
MPD presidential candidate. "We now know who killed [him] and
that the message is if we do not keep quiet, tomorrow it will be
one of us." [AFP 2/20/99]
 
Several press reports on Feb. 20 suggested that Jaime Hurtado's
murder was the work of Colombian paramilitary leader Carlos
Castano, who heads the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia
(AUC). The Guayaquil daily El Telegrafo reported on Feb. 20 that
Hurtado had recently asked Congress to investigate whether
Ecuadoran paramilitary groups were being established and "trained
by the Colombian Carlos Castano." [CNN en Espanol 2/20/99 from
AP] 
 
Hurtado's request was apparently prompted by the death in
December of leftist union leader Saul Filormo Canar Pauta, who
was abducted on Nov. 24; on Dec. 3, Canar's corpse was found at a
trash dump bearing signs of torture and mutilation. Canar's
collegues reportedly charge that he was executed by Ecuadoran
paramilitaries trained by Colombians and working for local large
landowners. [CNN en Espanol 2/20/99 from AP; Pulsar 2/18/99] 
 
Authorities had claimed Canar's murder was motivated by personal
revenge, and had denied that he might have been killed by
paramilitaries. However, eyewitnesses said Canar was abducted by
eight individuals in vehicles which are only used by the army,
and that one of the assailants called another "my colonel."
[Pulsar 12/21/98]
 
According to the Ecumenical Human Rights Commission (CEDHU) and
the Ecuadoran Confederation of United Class Organizations of
Workers (CEDOCUT), Canar's abduction coincided with the launching
of joint anti-crime operations by the police and the military.
According to the police, these operations stepped up during the
days before Canar's disappearance, due to the alleged presence of
new subversive groups in the country. Several people were
reportedly detained in connection with this operation. [Human
Rights Actions Network - Derechos Human Rights Urgent Action -
Observatory 12/11/98] After Canar's murder, leftist deputy Kaiser
Arevalo of the Pachakutik Movement got a phone call at his office
warning him he would be next. [Pulsar 2/18/99]
 
Some 500 representatives of Ecuador's labor and grassroots
organizations held an assembly on Feb. 20 in Quito. Participants
rejected the government's Feb. 19 report on Hurtado's death, and
classified the murders of Hurtado and Canar as premeditated
crimes of the state. They noted the suspicious death of a suspect
in the Hurtado case--the congressional staffer Ona--and the fact
that Hurtado's alleged killers were able to return to Colombia.
The assembly also agreed to support a national teachers' strike,
and to stage a march on Mar. 3 and a 48-hour general strike on
Mar. 10 and 11 to protest the government's economic policies. [El
Comercio (Quito) 2/21/99] The National Teachers Union (UNE) has
been out on strike since Feb. 4 over wage issues [see Update
#471]. [El Comercio (Quito) 2/13/99] 
 
*3. COLOMBIAN PARAMILITARIES RELEASE TWO MORE CAPTIVES

On Feb. 18, Colombian human rights workers Jairo Bedoya and Jorge
Salazar were set free by the paramilitary group United Self-
Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) in a rural area of the northern
department of Cordoba. Bedoya and Salazar are the director and
chief human rights investigator, respectively, of the Popular
Training Institute (IPC); they were abducted from IPC's offices
in Medellin on Jan. 28, along with IPC office manager Olga Ruth
Rodas and planning and development coordinator Claudia Tamayo.
Rodas and Tamayo were freed by the AUC on Feb. 8, after the
abduction of the four prompted an international outcry. But AUC
leader Carlos Castano had said he would continue to hold Bedoya
and Salazar, whom he accused of being linked to leftist rebels
[see Updates #470-472]. 
 
Bedoya and Salazar spoke to reporters in Monteria, the capital of
Cordoba department, after being released to Defender of the
People Jose Fernando Castro. Bedoya read an unsigned communique
from the AUC, calling the liberation of the hostages a gesture
attesting to the paramilitary group's "firm desire for peace and
to contribute to seeking a negotiated solution" to Colombia's
internal conflict. The communique insisted that Bedoya and
Salazar were rebel collaborators. The 17-year-old IPC, which
receives funding from the European Union and the British charity
group Oxfam, continues to assert that its staff members have no
links to the rebels. [AP 2/18/99]
 
Vice President Gustavo Bell has pledged to request a budget
increase for a special program offering protection for activists
who work at nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and labor
unions. Bell said the program's budget for 1999 is currently 500
million pesos (some $320,000), while at least 10 billion pesos
($6.4 million) are needed to protect activists around the
country. According to Gloria Ines Florez of the nongovernmental
Association for Alternative Social Promotion, the money would go
primarily to finance reinforced doors and windows, security
cameras, weapons detectors, and alarm systems linked to police
stations, for NGO and union offices. Money would also go for
bodyguards and armored cars for some activists and union leaders.
[Hoy (NJ) 2/18/99]
 
According to the office of the Defender of the People, more than
1,200 people were killed in politically motivated massacres last
year, and more than 300,000 people were forced to flee their
homes and land because of violence. [AP 2/18/99; Hoy (NJ) 2/18/99
from AP]
 
*4. COLOMBIAN ARMY COLONEL KILLED

Retired Colombian army colonel Luis Felipe Becerra Bohorquez died
on Feb. 14 in the city of Cali, after being shot the night before
while at a restaurant with his family by someone who allegedly
tried to rob his wife. Officials are calling the killing a common
crime, and have denied that it is related to investigations into
Becerra's links to rightwing paramilitary groups, or his
conviction in absentia for ordering the 1994 massacre of 13
campesinos in RioFrio, Valle department. Becerra had been a
fugitive from justice for three years. [El Diario-La Prensa (NY)
2/15/99; El Colombiano 2/15/99] The US Army School of the
Americas (SOA) claims that Becerra was never "formally enrolled"
there, but Colombian records indicate that Becerra attended SOA
in the early 1990s to avoid arrest for having ordered a 1988
massacre of banana workers in the Uraba region. Becerra was
acquitted of charges in connection with the Uraba massacre; in
November 1993, under intense international pressure, he was
dismissed from the military. [SOA Watch list of graduates, 7/95;
EC 2/15/99]