The use of counter-intelligence as a method of persecution to achieve social and political control.

On June 9, 2009 Senator Gustavo Petro made a parliamentary speech before the Senate in the Republic of Colombia.
For the purpose of his speech, Senator Petro made use of a series of documents to which Radio Nizkor has had access and which detail the systematic persecution carried out by the Colombian intelligence service known as the Adminstrative Department of Security (DAS) which reports functionally to the Presidency of the Republic.
The importance of the documents which have been made public is that they are irrefutable evidence of the persecution and harassment endured by those who directly or indirectly came within the ambit of the counterintelligence operations run by specialists of the Colombian War Navy and financed by a foreign state. The state is not identified in the documents.

Publicado 24 June 2009

"We are tired of death": Letter to the special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions by the UN

Dear Philip Alston
Please receive a warm greeting from the peasant farmers of Catatumbo, Norte de Santander, Colombia. We would like to take the opportunity of your important visit to Colombia to show you the reality that we are presently living and explain our struggle for a more dignified life.
We do not wish to be displaced and we will return to our small farms and continue working the land. This can only happen when the government promises to honor our agreements and truly guarantee us our right to a dignified life, our right to healthcare, education, land and work. Our struggle is for our right to the land and the defense of our territory. It is a peaceful agrarian initiative, for production of chemically free foods, the rational exploitation of the land and resources, the protection of the environment, the defense of life, culture and territory.

Publicado 16 June 2009

Peasant-farmers in the Magdalena Medio march to demand their rights

Their demands were clear: “Freedom, freedom, freedom!” Hundreds of farmers marched yesterday in scorching 38 degree weather to demand that the state free two leaders of the Peasant-Farmer Association of the Cimitarra River Valley (ACVC), Miguel Angle Huepa and Andres Gil, detained by the authorities for the alleged crime of rebellion.

Publicado 23 February 2009

Displacement, Disappearances and Extrajudicial Executions Increase Under Uribe

While many supporters of Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe and proponents of free trade agreements between Colombia and the governments of the United States and Canada repeatedly point to a recent decline in killings and kidnappings to support their causes, they conveniently ignore startling increases in other human rights abuses. The US-sponsored Plan Colombia and Uribe’s so-called Democratic Security Strategy have improved security for many Colombians, particularly in urban areas. However, Colombia’s conflict continues to rage in rural regions and civilians continue to be the principal victims of the violence. The state’s escalating role in the rapidly growing number of forced displacements, disappearances and extrajudicial executions represents the human rights reality for many rural Colombians.

Full article at Colombia Journal

Publicado 6 October 2008

International Volunteer deported from Colombia

On 1st October 2008, at 5.30pm Christina Friederika Müller, a German citizen was walking in the Plaza de San Francisco, in the city of Cali with a member of the Cali branch of the Solidarity Committee with Political Prisoners and a member of the Yumbo branch of Sintrametal, Union of Workers in the Metal Industry.

As they were about the leave the plaza she was approached by five people, who without showing any identification claimed to be employees of the Colombian Security Service (D.A.S.). They interrogated her as to her reasons for her stay in our country. Immediately these people took her to the Security Services facilities…

Publicado 3 October 2008

The Real Operation to "Rescue" Ingrid Betancourt and US Mercenaries

In order to understand the “rescue operation” of Ingrid Betancourt and the Northrop Grumman Corporation mercenaries who were released with her, it is necessary to piece together articles published in the media, filter the content and out of this is formed a true understanding of the facts of what happened here.

Publicado 10 July 2008

Colombia Hostage Rescue Endangers Lives of Journalists and Aid Workers

by Garry Leech
Colombia Journal

Amidst all the joy and celebration resulting from the Colombian military’s successful rescue of 15 hostages last week, the fact that the tactics utilized in the mission will likely endanger the lives of journalists and aid workers in the future has been completely ignored. By having soldiers pose as journalists and aid workers in order to gain access to the hostages, the Colombian government has increased the already high risks faced by legitimate reporters and NGO workers. In a country that is already one of the most dangerous places in the world in which to work as a journalist or a defender of human rights, the armed actors will now be even more suspicious of anyone claiming to work in those fields.

Publicado 7 July 2008

Colombia: McCain’s Visit Should Focus on Democracy and Rights

www.hrw.org

(Washington, DC, June 30, 2008) – During his upcoming visit to Colombia, Senator John McCain should not be blinded by the government’s spin that human rights and democracy are on the right track, Human Rights Watch said in a letter to McCain made public today. According to press reports, McCain will visit Colombia on July 1.

Publicado 30 June 2008

Aid for peace in the midst of war: The case of the ACVC - The Campesino Association of the Cimitarra River Valley. Hearing in the European Parliament

The hearing called by parliamentary socialists, greens and left looking to publicize in the European legislative grave humanitarian situation prevailing in the Magdalena Medio, characterized by extra judicial killings of peasants by the Colombian army, the activity of the squads death in the region, indiscriminate fumigations with glyphosate and the criminalization of political activity of the ACVC.

Publicado 6 June 2008

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International Slam UK Military Aid to Colombia

In testimony before the Foregin Affairs Select Committee of the British Parliament, Kate Allen, the Director of Amnesty International, and Tom Porteous, the London Director of Human Rights Watch, told MPs that the UK should freeze military assistance to Colombia. They also pointed out that “the military aid the British Government grant to Colombia is unconditional with regard to any kind of human rights improvements.”

Publicado 4 June 2008

BLACKLIST TO THE A LIST

The declassified defense Department intelligence report, dated September 1991, reads like a Who’s Who of Colombia’s cocaine trade. The list includes the Medellin cartel’s kingpin, Pablo Escobar, and more than 100 other thugs, assassins, traffickers and shady lawyers in his alleged employ. Then there’s entry 82: “Alvaro Uribe Velez—a Colombian politician and senator dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels. Uribe was linked to a business involved in narcotics activities in the U.S…. Uribe has worked for the Medellin cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria.”

Publicado 4 June 2008

Humanitarian Refugee Camp Declared in Catatumbo

by Eva Lewis
International Peace Observatory

In an act of peaceful resistance, over 200 farmers in the Catatumbo region of Colombia have gathered in a humanitarian refugee camp. This action, organized by the Farmers Association of Catatumbo (ASCAMCAT) is an act of protest against continuing and myriad government abuses such as the recent aerial fumigations in the region with the venomous and internationally prohibited chemical glyphosate. The camp, which was set up on April 29th in the small village of Caño Tomás, is continually growing in size as more men, women and children from the entire Catatumbo region filter in. They say they will stay as long as it takes for the government to negotiate with them.

Publicado 13 June 2009

Resisting forced displacement in Colombia

Colombian lawyers’ defense of land rights brings them into the line of fire

In early February, the Colombian human rights lawyers’ collective “Yira Castro Legal Consortium,” a group that often works closely with IPO, found yet another unwelcome email in their inbox:

“Members of the Yira Castro Consortium Irene Lopez and Claudia H, in 2008 we were following you and watching what you do every day, and we have found that you still support the National Coordination of Internally Displaced People, and specifically the FARC guerrilla Rigoberto Jimenez… We have express orders from the Capital Block of the Aguilas Negras to kill him as soon as possible… and if Yira Castro keeps supporting that Guerrilla we won’t be responsible [for what could happen].

Sincerely,
Aguilas Negras AUC Capital Block” ¹

When four young lawyers got together in 2001 to form the Yira Castro Legal Consortium, named after the late Colombian Communist Party leader Yira Castro, they knew that their work might put them in danger. Thousands of human rights lawyers and others who have struggled for social justice have been killed in Colombia’s US-financed dirty war. But in the past two years, persecution by the state and by pro-government paramilitary groups has become an inescapable daily reality for the lawyers of Yira Castro, as well as for social leader Rigoberto Jimenez.

Publicado 1 April 2009

"In Colombia, Every Week They Say That We Students Are Terrorists"

Interview: David Flores, General Secretary of the University Students Federation (FEU) of Colombia and student representative of the National University

Only 21-years old, David, a law student, has turned into a student leader, persecuted and threatened for defending a good public education and a negotiated solution to the armed conflict in Colombia, so that his fellow countrymen stop killing each other. For security purposes, he left Colombia in December and for two months now he has been conducting a tour through Europe to bring attention to the persecution of the student movement. This interview was done while he was in Barcelona.

Publicado 11 March 2009

National Security Doctrine in Colombia

Like most Latin American countries during the cold war, Colombia suffered the effects of the Pentagon´s National Security doctrine. The goal was to put an end to social mobilizations and squash expectations for political and economic change.
The repressive strategy of the Colombian state can be analyzed through a series of counterinsurgency manuals published between 1962 and 1987. A primary axis of the manuals is the maintenance of paramilitary structures.

Publicado 24 February 2009

Backyard Battlefields in Filipinas, Arauca

A firsthand report on the relentless violence in this war-weary town

By Dan Feder
International Peace Observatory

The village of Filipinas, Arauca must be one of the few places in the world where one can hear children’s laughter and machine-gun fire in the same instant. The giggling little girls running about around us had lived in a war zone long enough to know the sounds of combat are too far away to pose any real danger, and the looks of terror on the faces the adults visiting from far away are just hilarious to them.

But the laughter masks a real fear and sadness. Filipinas and its surrounding villages and hamlets have been the scene of the worst fighting in the northeastern department of Arauca this year. I was in Filipinas from June 1-7, and saw firsthand a glimpse of what the unending war in this part of Colombia looks, feels and sounds like.

A small number of local residents and leaders had gathered from June 1-7 on a farm in Filipinas for a workshop put on by the Peasant Farmer Association of Arauca (ACA). ACA had invited a lawyer from the Humanidad Vigente legal collective and a group of social science students to speak on human rights and territory issues, an expert on organic agriculture from the national farmers’ union FENSUAGRO, and IPO to observe and provide accompaniment. It is through workshops like these and other organizing activities that ACA hopes to rebuild a social fabric torn apart by the years of conflict, and above all to encourage and help what remains of the rural population of Arauca to hold on to its land and resist being driven off.

Publicado 27 June 2008

Yes, Guamocó exists

By Ana Basanta
International Peace Observatory

The miners of Guamocó, in the San Lucas mountains (between Bolívar and Antioquia departments) are uniting forces against the expect entry of multinational corporations in search of gold, and to demand schools, health clinics and better infrastructure in one of the country’s most forgotten areas.

With the goal of defending land and human rights, and to educate the people on recent reforms to the mining code and improve areas such as healthcare, education and culture, the Association of Agro-Ecological and Mining Brotherhoods of Guamocó (AHERAMIGUA) was recently created.

Publicado 21 June 2008

Captain admitted the Colombian Army partecipation to the San Jose Apartado massacre.

Alessandro Boafede
IPO – International Peace Observatory.

Captain Guillermo Armando Gordillo Sánchez admitted the participation of Colombian Army in the 2005 massacre that took place in the peace community of San Jose Apartado. On the 21st February 2005 eight civilians including three children were murdered and dismembered in San José de Apartadó. Their bodies were found later dumped in shallow graves. Official government sources alleged that it was the fault of the FARC, however it has now come to light that it was in fact the consequence of a joint military – paramilitary opperation.

Publicado 4 June 2008

Smoke and Mirrors - British Military Aid to Colombia

By Joanne Crouch
IPO – International Peace Observatory

With the British government so reluctant to disclose the real amount of military aid it sends to Colombia let alone to disclose where this money is spent, we have to question whether Britain is helping to bankroll the continuing human rights crisis here in Colombia and prioritising money over the lives of the Colombians who live here.

I am far from the first person to seek clarification regarding Britain’s involvement in the ongoing civil conflict taking place here in Colombia. People, politicians and organizations with far greater political weight than me have attempted to secure the truth and the realities of British financing. They have all come up against brick walls. As recently as July 2007, Foreign Office minister Kim Howells refused to disclose financial details of this assistance and critically, who ultimately receives it, on the grounds that it could damage international relations. (Guardian August 29 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2007/aug/29/foreignpolicy.uk)

Publicado 4 June 2008

Meta: Resistance, strength and courage in the face of violence.

The three days recently spent in the central Colombian department of Meta were emotionally intense and gave an insight into the horrors perpetrated by the Colombian government. A state is supposed to act on behalf of its citizens and to maintain order within society protecting human rights. Supposedly democratically elected, the Colombian state should represent its constituents. I doubt however that many of the people of Meta would believe they were being represented when they were forcibly displaced, tortured or killed.

Publicado 28 May 2008

Army helecopters fire on the village of Filipinas, Arauca

By Alessandro Bonafede
IPO

On the afternoon of Sunday, May 11, Colombian Army helicopters strafed the small village of Filipinas – in the municipality of Tame, Arauca department – with machine-gun fire. The military operation caused panic among the civilian population. Seventy-five families fled their homes and slept in the street. Although there had been clashes between the army and guerrillas in the jungles around the village in the previous days, the townspeople claim that when the shooting occurred no military operation was taking place.

Publicado 26 May 2008

Rural leader from Arauquita, Arauca unjustly arrested

Yesterday, May 24, 2008, the Colombian National Police arrested campesino leader Juan Manuel Pedrozo, president of the Communal Action Committee (local government) of the village of San Miguel (Arauquita municipality, Arauca department) and a coordinator of the local chapter of the Peasant-Farmer Association of Arauca.

According to the information currently available, our comrade Juan Manuel was delivered to the prosecutor’s office with after a fabricated arrest warrant was issued for him — another case of persecution and legal harassment of community leaders both in the region and the entire country.

We demand respect for the life of Juan Manuel Pedrozo as well as the protection of his right to due process.

Peasant-Farmer Association of Arauca
Saturday, May 24, 2008

Publicado 26 May 2008