DEATH SQUAD DEMOCRACY IN COLUMBIA

[this came to me recently; thought I'd pass it on]

  • SOLDIERS MURDER HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVISTS
  • 18 CAMPESINOS WERE MASSACRED BY THE PARAMILITARIES IN 24 HOURS
  • THE UNITED STATES DONATED HELICOPTERS TO GOVERNMENT WORTH 20 MILLION DOLLARS

    (STOCKHOLM/SWEDEN/ANNCOL) The Jesuit [ex-]priest Mario Calderón, 42, and his wife Elsa Alvarado, 36, were assasinated during the night between Monday and Tuesday, while they were sleeping. [Other media say that he was 50. This is more probable, since his hair was quite grey. -- David]

  • The killers were in uniform and identified themselves to the doorman as employees of the office of the Public Prosecutor. The body of Mr. Calderón was hit with 42 bullets. [The agency is called Technical Investigations Corps of the Office of the Public Prosecutor (something like a secret judicial police). -- David]

  • All reports accuse the paramilitaries of responsibility for the murders.

  • In the same massacre, the parents of Elsa Alvarado, Carlos Alvarado, 76, and Elvira Alvarado, 60, were killed and gravely wounded, respectively.

  • The massacre appears to be a strong warning to the Office of the UN High Commissioner, recently opened in the Colombian capital.

    The death of the couple was a heavy blow against the NGO, CINEP (Centro de Investigación y Educación Popular/Center for Research and Popular Education), one of the most prestigious Colombian organizations, directed by Jesuit priests and dedicated to work on behalf of human rights in Colombia. The university professor Calderón had worked in the CINEP for 15 years, and Elsa Alvarado had acted as press director of the same institution. At the time of his murder, Calderón was carrying out tasks in relationship to the environment in the "red zone" of the municipality of Sumapaz, a totally militarized region. [This region is in the rural part of Bogota, to the south of the city. It is not a municipality, but a place within the Bogota district. -- David] The guerrilla movement of the FARC-EP has a great deal of support among the civilian population. Many of those who work closely with the civilian population are labelled by the military as auxiliaries of the guerrilla.

    Jesús Alcalá, leader of the Swedish organization, Foundation for Human Rights, had returned recently from a trip to Colombia. He believes that what is occurring in Colombia has no comparison internationally at this time.

    "Colombia is worse than before. The government has successes in the 'lobby' in order to avoid an international condemnation, including that of the Swedish government. At the same time it does nothing about the paramilitary offensives. Colombian society has been militarized still more, given that the government has, in practice, legalized the paramilitary groups through the so-called CONVIVIR (COEXISTENCE), a kind of security cooperative."

    These organizations are financed by ranchers and businessmen who buy the arms, vehicles and communications equipment, and contract those who work there. They aren't really cooperatives, although the government calls them that.

    THE LEGALIZED DEATH SQUADS

    These groups were constituted in November, 1994 during the government of Samper and with the then Defense Minister, Fernando Botero. The latter was removed from office a year after having been accused of being responsible for the measures of financing of Samper's electoral campaign, which was financed in the second round to a great degree by the Cali Cartel, which contributed 7 million dollars. [In fact Fernando Botero was the financial head of Samper's campaign. -- David] CONVIVIR has been accused by the human rights organizations of being the author of assassinations of the unarmed civil opposition, above all in the countryside.

    The Human Rights organizations as well as the U.S. State Department in the recent period have gathered concrete proof that these paramilitary groups are directly linked to the military and principally to the Colombian Army. They are trained and organized mainly by ex-officers and soldiers, but also by active military personnel. In spite of all these accusations, the Colombian government maintains that it is aware of the crimes and that it has a great interest in resolving the problem, to which Jesús Alcalá responds:

    "The government really does very little to resolve the problem. There is not a single country in the world where impunity for assassins is as complete as in Colombia! What we are seeing is a silent military Coup d'Etat."

    DAILY MASSACRES

    The deaths of the humanist leaders have made great headlines within and outside of Colombia, but about the almost daily assassinations of the civil population nothing is said. At the same time that the Calderón couple were assassinated, the same fate befell 8 campesinos in a community in the department of Cesár, when vehicles of the paramilitaries arrived in the district of San Diego. The campesinos were riddled with bullets one by one in front of their families.

    Last Tuesday, 6 campesinos, including two children, were murdered by the paramilitaries in a small village that belongs to the city of Montería, capital of the Department of Córdoba. It is located in the department in which the Swedish transnational Skanska is building the Urra 1 dam.The responsibility for the two massacres is borne by ACCU [Autodefensas Campesinas de Cordoba y Uraba/Campesino Self-defense of Cordoba and Uraba], a paramilitary group that spreads terror and blood among the civil population, politicians and labor unions of the left opposition in the north of Colombia. There the legal left, through the Colombian Communist Party (PCC) and the left alliance, The Patriotic Union, had politically controlled the important banana region of the Urabá. Nowadays these parties have been practically liquidated by the Army and its "civil" armed wing in the form of paramilitaries.

    THEY PLAYED BALL WITH A HEAD

    Three weeks ago, the paramilitaries gathered the inhabitants of a little village in the Department of Cesár and beat them, accusing them of collaborating with the guerrilla. One of the inhabitants was decapitated. The paramilitaries played football with the head in order to warn the villagers that they would risk the same fate if they didn't obey the paramilitary groups.

    These massacres have caused a wave of depopulation, considered to be the largest displacement in the world, even exceeding that of the African countries. According to UNESCO, a total of 900,000 Colombians are displaced within their own country, the majority within the poor zones of the great cities.

    In the city of Apartadó, those who want to denounce military abuses to the State Prosecutor are obliged to seek the Prosecutor in his office, which is located inside the 17th Army Battalion in the city.

    It is to these Armed Forces that the United States has provided a quantity of military helicopters, with a capacity of 12 persons, that, supposedly, are for use against illegal cultivation in the south of Colombia. According to Human Rights organizations in both Colombia and the U.S., these have been used by the Colombian Army in the bombardment of the civilian population that is found in the zone controlled by the guerrillas.

    For more information, contact: Columbia Support Network