COLOMBIA: US-FUNDED TROOPS BACK PARAMILITARY MASSACRES
A Weekly News Update on the Americas Supplement
March 22, 1998
Weekly News Update on the Americas is published weekly by the
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* Will US Withhold Aid?
On Jan. 8 of this year, Associated Press cited US Embassy officials--
speaking on condition of anonymity--saying that the US government
is withholding $10 million in "non-lethal" US military aid to Colombia
already approved by the US Congress, pending full details from
Colombia about collusion between the army and paramilitary death
squads. While the Colombian police and judiciary have received more
than $1 billion over the past decade in US aid--designated for anti-
drug efforts--some direct aid to the military has been held up over
human rights accusations.
According to AP, Washington began to reconsider military aid last
year because of the growing strength of Colombia's leftist guerrillas,
who are said to control 40% of the countryside. To be legally eligible
for the aid, Colombia signed an Aug. 1 Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) on "end use monitoring" in which it promised
to provide a list of all military units accused of rights violations;
detail the alleged abuses; and verify that the cases are being
investigated. The navy and air force have delivered their lists, but
the army's is still pending, US officials said. The "non-lethal" aid that
has been held up includes night vision goggles and flak jackets. [AP
1/8/98]
Aid to the police continues, as do subsidized military sales. Between
direct aid, regional aid, and defense draw-downs--all subject to
different regulations--the figures on total US aid to Colombia are
unclear. "I doubt anybody really knows how many different
programs result in the transfer of military equipment and assistance
to Colombia," says Carlos Salinas, Latin America program officer for
Amnesty International in Washington. [Christian Science Monitor
1/16/98] In a Dec. 29, 1997 letter sent to the Washington Post,
Salinas points out that "since 1989, Colombia has been the number
one recipient of US security assistance in the Western Hemisphere."
[Fax of letter to WP]
The latest charges focus on the army's role in allowing rightwing
paramilitary groups to fly into southern Colombia to commit
massacres. Last May, the paramilitary groups formed a national front
and began to move into the southeastern region, where the military
had taken over major towns and airstrips in 1996 as part of an anti-
drug strategy. This region is Colombia's main coca- growing area and
a traditional stronghold of its largest leftist guerrilla group,
Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
* Massacre in Mapirip n
On July 12, 1997, some 120 paramilitary fighters landed in two
chartered planes at a military-controlled airport in San Jos‚ de
Guaviare, according to judicial investigators and civil aviation
officials. Assault rifles and machine guns were boxed as cargo. No one
recorded their 2:30 pm arrival in the airport's log book, reported it
as suspicious or prevented the paramilitaries from setting out by
speedboat for the town of Mapirip n, in Meta department, where
they tortured and killed some 30 alleged guerrilla sympathizers over
a five-day period. The army denies any knowledge of the flight, as
do the antinarcotics police. Next to the airstrip is the police barracks
that houses a team of US advisers and pilots who are part of
Colombia's drug fumigation program. [AP 1/8/98; CSM 1/16/98]
Mapirip n's municipal judge, Iv n Cort‚s Novoa, told a Colombian
reporter that he made eight frantic telephone calls to an army
battalion commander 40 miles away in San Jos‚ del Guaviare,
pleading for help. But the regional military commander, Gen. Jaime
Umberto Uscategui, refused to send soldiers to stop the killings, said
Cort‚s. "Every night at dusk, they killed five or six defenseless
people, civilians cruelly and monstrously massacred, first tortured,"
Cort‚s wrote in a letter faxed on July 21 to his superior in the
regional capital of Villavicencio. Cort‚s, later forced by death threats
to flee the country, said that he witnessed 26 murders and that most
of the bodies were thrown into the Guaviare River. Some victims
were cut up alive with cleavers and several people who tried to pull
relatives' bodies from the river were themselves killed and tossed in,
said a representative of the government human rights office who
interviewed witnesses. The official said all the witnesses were too
terrified of reprisal to make formal complaints. [Dallas Morning News
1/10/98; AP 1/8/98]
* The Miraflores Murders
A second paramilitary killing spree, this time in the southern
garrison town of Miraflores, Guaviare department, began on Oct. 18--
the day before Barry McCaffrey, head of the White House Office of
Drug Control Policy, arrived in Colombia to show support for the
military and police, and to campaign for increased US military
support to combat the growing influence of the so-called "narco-
guerrillas" [see Updates #403, 404, & Update supplement "Colombia:
Rebel Offensive Continues," 3/1/97]. Control of Miraflores has been
considered crucial to the government's efforts to halt the cocaine
trade, antinarcotics police officials say. The US government routinely
dispatches antinarcotics advisers there. [DMN 1/10/98; AP 1/8/98]
The Miraflores case has attracted special attention because
antinarcotics police were present at the time of the murders. Local
residents say that the paramilitaries were taken directly to a joint
military and police base in Miraflores when they arrived. After
leaving the base on the morning of Oct. 18, the paramilitaries strolled
down the block and killed four people on a central street of
Miraflores--in broad daylight and in plain sight of the military and
police base, 100 yards away. [AP 1/8/98; CSM 1/16/98; DMN
1/10/98]
In a letter to the United Nations (UN) human rights representative in
Colombia, Almudena Mazarrasa, five Miraflores residents said that
the killers identified themselves as paramilitary fighters and carried
a list of the victims they were seeking. The paramilitaries moved
freely about the town, communicating with walkie-talkies, over a
three-day period. As this was going on, "the police, army and navy
did not make an appearance," the residents wrote in the letter. (The
Colombian navy has a small river patrol contingent in Miraflores.)
[AP 1/8/98; DMN 1/10/98]
The paramilitaries remained in Miraflores for two days, living in a
motel adjacent to the army and police base. Just before leaving on
Oct. 20, they killed two more local residents, according to a formal
complaint filed by then-mayor Jos‚ Icardo P‚rez Castillo. On Oct. 20,
Colombian soldiers called from a public phone for a private plane to
collect the "paras," said H‚ctor Guaviata, a jeep driver who
witnessed the arrival of six paramilitary fighters in Miraflores. [CSM
1/16/98; DMN 1/10/98] Local residents also charged that soldiers
escorted two of the paramilitaries to the small plane that picked
them up at Miraflores' landing strip. [AP 1/8/98] Several days later
the paramilitaries returned, attempted to extort money from several
shop owners, and then departed. [DMN 1/10/98]
Access to Miraflores is primarily by air, and the antinarcotics police
register everyone who steps off a plane. Army and police officers in
Miraflores say that it would be impossible for anyone to enter the
town without the knowledge of the military. However, both the
police and the army in Miraflores denied knowledge of a
paramilitary attack. [CSM 1/16/98] Lt. William Donato, base
commander of the antinarcotics police, said he was not present
during the attack, which he dismissed as a "psychological operation"
by the guerrillas to intimidate local residents. He said the police do
not normally patrol the town or investigate killings, because of the
heavy presence of guerrillas. However, he confirmed that "no
airplane arrives without its passengers being registered and their
belongings searched by the police." [DMN 1/10/98]
After the allegations against the military were widely publicized,
armed forces commander Gen. Manuel Jos‚ Bonett transferred
Uscategui, the battalion commander, and his division commander,
Gen. Agust¡n Ardila, to desk jobs. Ardila then resigned. Four top
officers in military intelligence were denied promotions, forcing them
to retire. In a Dec. 29 interview with AP, Bonett said the men were
relieved of duty in connection with the massacres, but he refused to
discuss details of the case. Bonett denied that military units support
or ignore paramilitary operations. "I've publicly declared them
enemy No. 1," Bonett said of the paramilitaries. At the time Bonett
made this statement, not one of 180 leading paramilitary figures for
whom arrest warrants have been issued had been captured, noted
AP. [AP 1/8/98] Nor have any military officers been prosecuted in
connection with the Mapirip n or Miraflores massacres, despite
direct pressure from the Clinton administration [DMN 1/10/98; CSM
1/16/98], and despite Bonett's admission in a recent interview that
informal collaboration between soldiers and paramilitaries may take
place in "some isolated cases." [CSM 1/16/98]
* Police Involvement "Disturbing"
"At this point in time I don't think the US can safely fund the
Colombian military," Human Rights Watch/Americas (HRW/A)
research associate Robin Kirk told the Christian Science Monitor. [CSM
1/16/98] "This is not the case of rogue officers out of control," said
Kirk. "It's a practice that, at the very least, is tolerated at the highest
levels." She described the apparent involvement of antinarcotics
police in the incident as particularly troublesome because of their
normally strict compliance with international human rights
conventions. The killers' presence at a police checkpoint only minutes
before the attacks began "points to direct contact between the
paramilitaries and the antinarcotics police," said Kirk. "We regard this
as very disturbing." [DMN 1/10/98]
Kirk has particular reason to be troubled by the charges, which
emerged less than six months after she gave HRW/A's "Seal of
Approval" to US military aid to Colombia's antinarcotics police. On
July 16, 1997, Kirk sent a memo to John Mackey, an aide to Rep.
Benjamin Gilman (R-NY). The memo, which accompanied a statement
in Spanish from HRW/A, reads: "Dear John: This is a statement we
made today in Colombia regarding US military aid to fight drugs. In
it, we state very clearly that we are not opposing aid to the Anti-
Narcotics Police because of their good human rights record, but
continue to oppose aid to the Army.... (...) You're fully welcome to
refer to this as the HRW `Seal of Approval' for police aid, if you wish.
Hang onto it--it doesn't come often!" The memo was included in the
Congressional Record of July 30, 1997, as part of a discussion on
foreign appropriations. [Congressional Record 7/30/97 (House)]
According to Kirk, the Miraflores case marks the first time in years
that Colombia's antinarcotics police have been implicated in a major
human rights case. [DMN 1/10/98]
In fact, police agents have been linked to the murder of civilians in
anti-drug operations since at least 1992. In early February of this
year, two former agents of the National Police were arrested in
Medell¡n by the Attorney General's office after the office's Human
Rights Unit accused them of participating in a 1992 massacre in
Medell¡n's Villatina neighborhood. The massacre was one of many
that took place in Medell¡n and its neighboring municipalities
between 1989 and 1993, as police carried out a fierce pursuit of
members of the so-called Medell¡n drug cartel. [Peace Brigades
International (PBI) Colombia Team Catorce D¡as #94, 1/26-2/8/98,
from El Colombiano (Medell¡n) 2/5/98]
END
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