83 human rights activists killed in Colombia since 2010: El Tiempo .
Source: Colombia Reports
83 human rights activists killed in Colombia since 2010: El Tiempo .
Tuesday, 02 October 2012 10:50 Esteban Manriquez
As many as 83 human rights defenders have been assassinated in Colombia's northwestern department of Antioquia from 2010 to September 2012, reported newspaper El Tiempo Tuesday.
During the same period 111 human rights defenders reported threats against their lives and work, while 37 were the victims of displacement.
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The continued threats to human rights defenders have not been confined to Antioquia. In July, the U.S. Office on Colombia and the Latin America Working Group Education Fund issued a report on the matter, which concluded that the national situation was critical.
“Defenders continue to suffer attacks, aggressions, threats, assassinations, systematic stigmatization, spying and wiretapping, and unfounded criminal proceedings,” said the report.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombia-news/news/26299-83-human-rights-activists-killed-in-colombia-since-2010-el-tiempo.html
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as well as over 11,000 politicians, have testified that during their massacres, including ones in which even children were slaughtered, or villages forced to watch as members were cut apart with chainsaws while living, were in many cases done in conjunction, in coordinated efforts with the country's military personel. Both enlisted and officers have testified, been sentenced, along with paramilitary witnesses, and with one horrendous case of a para (death squad member) who testified, and was murdered immediately after his testimony in court.
This doesn't include the many individual, or small group murders they committed on hapless citizens who were then counted as "enemy dead" in order to fluff out their kill stats. Mass graves, even crematoria have been used to hide the tell-tale piles of bodies, as well as tearing them apart, throwing them into rivers, or ripping open their torsoes and loading them with stones so they'll sink to the bottom of the water, etc.
One Colombian lady and her husband have spent years going to a river and snagging bodies floating along, and attempted to find their loved ones, or at least give them a respectful burial.
Indigenous, African-Colombian, clergy, teachers, union workers, human rights workers, community leaders, people they see as drunks, or prostitutes, even street vendors get swept away, many only after horrendous suffering first through torture.
And, of course, this country continued to support their government lavishly, the 3rd largest recipient of US foreign aid for years, while our own corporate media NEVER BREATHED A WORD about these events.
NOT ONE #$%@#&*?! WORD.
However, should President Chavez, next door, break wind somewhere in Venezuela, there will be articles flashed around the world on Propaganda Wire Service, picked up and trumpeted in all our news sources as the greatest infamy known to mankind, at this point.
And, of course, the same with all the other Latin American countries. Our corporate media, at some point decided we shouldn't have to worry our pretty little heads about this stuff. So if we want to find out about things we have to read as much as time allows us, search, search, and search.
Or we can continue to listen to tv "news" and read wire service articles. (our newspapers decided they'd just cut back, withdraw their foreign correspondants in the hemisphere (who wants to know what happens outside the US in this hemisphere, anyway?) and let the several wire service writers handle ALL the news from the Americas, instead. And we know we can trust them! 
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Murder Training: Colombian Death Squad Used Live Hostages
April 29, 2007 By El Tiempo
El Tiempo, Bogota -- "Proof of courage": that is how the how the paramilitaries would term the training they imparted to their recruits so that they learnt how to carve up people while they were still alive.
Initially, the authorities rejected this version of the farmers who reported the practice... but when the combatants themselves started to admit to it in their testimonies before the prosecutors, the myth became a harsh crime against humanity.
Francisco Enrique Villalba Hernández (alias Cristian Barreto), one of the perpetrators of the massacre at El Aro in Ituango, Antioquia, received this type of training in the same place where he learnt to handle arms and manufacture home-made bombs. Today, a prisoner at La Picota in Bogota, Villalba has described in details during lengthy testimonies how he applied the learning.
"Towards the middle of 1994, I was ordered to a course... in El Tomate, Antioquia, where the training camp was located," he says in his testimony. There, his working day started at 5 in the morning and the instructions were received directly from the top commanders such as 'Double Zero' (Carlos Garcia, since assassinated by another paramilitary group).
Villalba claims that in order to learn how to dismember people they would use farmers they gathered together in the course of taking neighbouring settlements. As he describes it, "they were aged people whom we brought in trucks, alive and bound up". The victims arrived at the ranch in covered trucks. They were lowered from the vehicle with their hands tied and taken to a room. There they were locked up for days in the hope that the training would start.
More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/murder-training-colombian-death-squad-used-live-hostages-by-el-tiempo
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Former AUC, Francisco Enrique Villalba.[/center]