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Related: About this forumFake News and political establishment leading Colombia back to war
Fake News and political establishment leading Colombia back to war
Joe Cederwall Friday, 8 June 2018, 2:35 pm
Article: Joseph Cederwall
On June 17th Colombia votes in the final runoff round in one of its most pivotal and closely fought Presidential elections in decades. The two remaining candidates are starkly polarised, as are the potential outcomes for Colombia and the entire Latin American region. The candidates are charismatic, anti-establishment and anti-corruption, leftist candidate Gustavo Petro and Ivan Duque, ordained political heir of former hard-right President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (now under investigation by the Supreme Court over his alleged role in war crimes committed by a paramilitary death squad.
Petro has laid bare Colombia’s failed democracy in this campaign by agressively highlighting revelations over vote rigging, corruption, U.S. Clientelism and the massive extent of the State’s involvement in atrocities committed by the paramilitaries responsible for the vast majority of bloodshed the long running civil war. Meanwhile, the fragile peace accord between the Government and the FARC guerrilla group is on the verge of collapse amidst poor delivery on transitional justice promises and corruption allegations. Uribe, Duque and other right-wing politicians have perpetuated a concerted misinformation campaign around the perceived ‘leniency’ of the peace deal with the help of a compliant mainstream media to bolster support. The media has also helped their cause by portraying Petro as a communist and raising the spectre of Colombia becoming the next Venezuela.
This all masks the horrible truth that in fact, a victory for Duque will be catastrophic for the peace and progress of Colombia. This would effectively cease any further investigation into issues of corruption or Uribe and other leading politicians’ involvement in the paramilitary movement. It would also allow the continuation of the unchecked expansion of the use of paramilitaries as a tool of neoliberal economic exploitation in Colombia that occurred under Uribe’s rule. However, it is looking increasingly as if this is what will happen, as Centrist politicians (including current President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Juan Manuel Santos) have refused to support Petro’s bid, leaving him isolated and effectively gifting Duque the presidency.
A Fragile Peace
With 49 million people, Colombia is the third-most populous country in Latin America, after Brazil and Mexico. However, due to its central geographical position, and leading role in the ‘Bolivarian’ independence struggle against Spanish rule, Colombia has traditionally held a historical leadership position in Latin America. However, for the last century, the United States and a small Colombian elite have manipulated the course of politics through a long rein of militaristic right-wing government and a protracted low-intensity civil war. Colombia’s over half-century long civil war between various socialist guerilla groups and the government has claimed at least 220,000 lives, displaced nearly six million people, and resulted in 27,000 kidnappings and 25,000 disappearances.
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1806/S00016/fake-news-and-political-establishment-leading-colombia-back-to-war.htm
Editorials and other articles:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016208148
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GatoGordo
(2,412 posts)They are the ones insisting that rural Colombia is under attack by right-wing paramilitaries, when for the last 52 years, it has been the FARC and now their uber-violent offspring, the ELN. And the recent uptick in violence is ELN payback for the rural folk showing their displeasure during the last round of elections when FARC candidates (also the target of ELN ire) got pummeled by rotten fruits, veggies and stones.
ColombiaReports. THERE is your fake news source.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)RIGHTS-COLOMBIA:
By Constanza Vieira
http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=25838
~ ~ ~
But the paramilitaries have rarely engaged in combat against the guerrillas. Instead, often working closely with government forces, they've focused on unarmed social movements, assassinating thousands of trade unionists, peasant leaders, human rights advocates, and politicians. "They've destroyed the legal left," says Hector Mondragon, economic adviser to a coalition of rural, black, and indigenous groups.
Paramilitaries have also carried out most of the war's civilian massacres, a major factor convincing three million Colombians to flee their homes since 1985. Now 61 percent of the nation's arable acreage is in the hands of 0.4 percent of landholders, according to a study by the Agustin Codazzi Geographic Institute and the Colombian Agriculture Research Corporation. Paramilitary chiefs themselves acquired more than twelve million acres abandoned by peasants between 1997 and 2003, according to a December report by the Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement. Bolstering the land grabs, Uribe and his allies have removed teeth from agrarian reform laws, including a 1936 measure allowing public reallocation of parcels left idle.
Paramilitaries have played a key role in turning the narcotics trade into Colombia's largest export sector. The United States has requested extradition of at least seven paramilitary chiefs on drug-trafficking charges. They include Mancuso and AUC founder Carlos Castano, now missing. Both were indicted INDICTED, practice. When a man is accused by a bill of indictment preferred by a grand jury, he is said to be indicted. in 2002 for allegedly exporting more than seventeen tons of cocaine over the previous five years.
Across the country, the paramilitary movement has infiltrated city halls, provincial governments, and federal agencies, most notably the health care program and the attorney general's office. The infiltration helps them control a range of illegal activity. "Here in Cucuta, not a single kilo Thousand (10 to the 3rd power). Abbreviated "K." For technical specifications, it refers to the precise value 1,024 since computer specifications are based on binary numbers. For example, 64K means 65,536 bytes when referring to memory or storage (64x1024), but a 64K salary means $64,000. of coca is sold without their authorization," says Wilfredo Canizares, executive director of the Progress Foundation, a human rights group in that city. "They'll kill you."
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/Along+for+the+ride:+how+Colombia/'s+paramilitaries+retain+power:+the+...-a0132674579
~ ~ ~
. . . .
"Disappearance is a monstrous crime," former Bogotá mayor Antanas Mockus told IPS. "That is why…we started this march at the Magdalena river," he said, after accompanying hundreds of mainly indigenous and black people displaced by the war on the three-day march from Flandes.
"We were inspired by an audiovisual testimony by the artist Clemencia Echeverri, who recently showed, in a sophisticated Bogotá art gallery, a night-time recording taken from the two shores of the Cauca river" in the northwestern province of Antioquia, said Mockus. (Antioquia is a paramilitary stronghold.)
"On the recording, you hear the sound of the water flowing, and above that you hear the screams of peasant farmers and chainsaws running, and you can see people with sticks, fishing pieces of clothing out of the river," he added.
According to testimony from numerous survivors and members of paramilitary groups, the latter frequently used chainsaws to cut their victims up alive.
Jusice and Peace also reported that 1,700 indigenous people, 2,550 trade unionists and 5,000 members of the now-defunct leftist political party Patriotic Union were murdered between 1982 and 2005.
"The paramilitaries have perpetrated more than 3,500 massacres and stolen more than six million hectares of land, and since their demobilisation they have killed 600 people a year. They also achieved control over 35 percent of the seats in Congress," said the Movement of Victims of Crimes of the State (MOVICE), which organised Thursday’s nationwide march.
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1170/61 /
~ ~ ~
By Constanza Vieira
Colombia is the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, who are frequent paramilitary targets. Although private armed groups have long existed in Colombia, today's paramilitary groups emerged in the early 1980s, financed by landowners to fight the leftist guerrillas, who were kidnapping and extorting wealthy ranchers. The collaboration between paramilitaries and the armed forces has been well documented by the United Nations, the US State Department, and Colombian government investigators, who hold the paramilitaries responsible for the lion's share of the atrocities committed in Colombia's four-decade civil war.
http://www.theglobalreport.org/print.php?news_id=561
~ ~ ~
April 26, 2008 By Eustaquio Polo
Eustaquio Polo Rivera is Vice President of the Major Leadership Council of the Curvaradó River Basin, Chocó, Colombia. He is an active leader in his community's struggle for justice and food security, as they fight to reclaim collectively-titled lands stolen and occupied by oil palm plantations since the 1997 displacement of the region's inhabitants at the hands of the US-funded Colombian military and affiliated paramilitary death squads. Colombia has the second-largest internally displaced population in the world; sixty percent of the roughly four million dispossessed Colombians have been driven from areas of "of mineral, agricultural or other economic importance," according to Amnesty International. For his advocacy and efforts to help his community reclaim what is rightfully theirs, Mr. Polo has received threats of assassination from paramilitaries reformed after the purported "demobilization" process.
....
Thank you for letting me address you tonight. Please receive a warm welcome from the Chocó county of Colombia and from myself, Eustaquio Polo Rivera. I am Vice President of the Major Council of the basin of the Curvaradó River, and legal representative of a smaller council.
I come here with the grace of God and the support of the church of Justicia y Paz and also with help from Molly and Jake. I have been asked to tell you a little bit about the human rights abuses that the people of the Chocó territories are suffering.
These lands are the lands where most of the Africans brought to Colombia as slaves have lived for a long time. Three groups of people share culture here—people of African descent, people of mixed descent, and people of indigenous descent. There has been a shared culture there for many years now.
This is land that is recognized by Law 70 as collectively owned by the three groups of Afro-Colombians, mixed race people, and indigenous people. We used to have farms in this territory. The land supported our families, and we also sold bananas to the United States.
Then, in October of 1996, an operation called Operation Genesis came in, led by the General Commander Rito Alejo Del Rio.
This military operation was in conjunction with a paramilitary group called AUC.
This military group came in and asked the peasants to move out. They said, "Move out, or people will come after us to kill people, to take your heads."
In the same year, 1996, in a place called Brisas, they killed 6 people. They killed them and threw them into the river. That year half of the people who lived in the area left. The other half stayed, and we stayed resisting the displacement. But the incursions from the military and paramilitaries continued. They tied the peasants down. When the paramilitaries or military would get people, they would cut off their fingers, their ears, and their private parts. And they killed them with chainsaws. They would cut right through their chest cavity and take out their internal organs. In our river basin they killed 113 people just that way.
Then in 1997, the incursions from the military and paramilitaries increased. The military and paramilitary alliance came and said to us that we needed to leave, all of us. They threatened saying that if we didn't leave, they could not respond for their actions. They said that the reason we needed to leave is that they would be bombing that territory to take the guerrillas out. A lot of people left then. One part of the peasants left toward the hills, and other people fled to other places in Colombia.
In the year 2000, a group from the police collected signatures from members of paramilitaries and some peasants left in the area. They said they were collecting the signatures to get three military bases in the area, and they claimed that this was so peasants could return to their land. This was not the case. These signatures were used by businesses to take over the land and implement the planting of African palm plantations in the collectively-titled territory. They used them to prove that peasants were in agreement with the planting of the palm, but the peasants were actually outside the territory, fled to the hills.
More:
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/17339
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Wikipedia:
Human Rights Violations
. . .
Right-wing paramilitary groups have been blamed for the vast majority of human rights violations in Colombia. The United Nations has estimated that approximately 80% of all killings in Colombia's civil conflict have been committed by paramilitaries, 12% by leftist guerrillas, and the remaining 8% by government forces.[91] In 2005, Amnesty International stated that "the vast majority of non-combat politically-motivated killings, disappearances, and cases of torture have been carried out by army-backed paramilitaries".[11] In its 1999 report, Human Rights Watch cited estimates from Colombian human rights organizations CINEP and Justice and Peace, which indicated that paramilitary groups were responsible for about 73% of identifiable political murders during the first half of 1998, with guerrillas and state security forces being blamed for 17 and 10 percent respectively.[92] The Colombian Commission of Jurists reported that, in the year 2000, approximately 85% of political murders were committed by the paramilitaries and state forces.[93]
Paramilitary violence is overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists and leftist political activists.[95][96]
Paramilitary abuses in Colombia are often classified as atrocities due to the brutality of their methods, including the torture, rape, incineration, decapitation and mutilation with chainsaws or machetes of dozens of their victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children.[15][94][95]
Paramilitary forces in Colombia have additionally been charged with the illegal recruitment of children into the armed ranks. Though this is an offense punishable by national law, the prosecution rate for these crimes is less than 2% as of 2008.[97]
Many of these abuses have occurred with the knowledge and support of the Colombian security forces. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated:
... where paramilitaries have a pronounced presence, the army fails to move against them and tolerates their activity, including egregious violations of international humanitarian law; provides some paramilitary groups with intelligence used to carry out operations; and in other cases actively promotes and coordinates with paramilitary units, including joint maneuvers in which atrocities are the frequent result. ... In areas where paramilitaries are present, some police officers have been directly implicated in joint army-paramilitary actions or have supplied information to paramilitaries for their death lists. Police have also stood by while paramilitaries selected and killed their victims. On many occasions, police have publicly described whole communities as guerrillas or sympathetic to them and have withdrawn police protection, a violation of their responsibility under Colombian law to protect civilians from harm. Instead of reinforcing the police after guerrilla attacks, police commanders have withdrawn officers, thus encouraging or allowing paramilitaries to move in unimpeded and kill civilians.[35]
A 1999 human rights report from the U.S. State Department said:
At times the security forces collaborated with paramilitary groups that committed abuses; in some instances, individual members of the security forces actively collaborated with members of paramilitary groups by passing them through roadblocks, sharing intelligence, and providing them with ammunition. Paramilitary forces find a ready support base within the military and police, as well as local civilian elites in many areas.[98]
In 2006, Amnesty International reported that:
The security forces have tried to improve their human rights image by letting their paramilitary allies commit human rights violations and then denying that the paramilitaries are operating with their acquiescence, support or sometimes direct coordination.[72]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_Colombia
GatoGordo
(2,412 posts)"The lady doth protest too much, methinks" Hamlet, Act III, Scene II
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)Too many human rights groups have gone on record long ago identifying the paramilitaries, long connected to the Colombian military, and a horde of right-wing Colombian politicians, as well as various U.S.-based companies who use them to terrorize and sometimes kill union activists, as the bloody death squad operators responsible for a vast majority of ALL the atrocities.
To anyone in the dark, please spend the time to do a little research on your own, as any one can. You will discover what the right-wing had always attempted to conceal in no time at all.
By the way, where on earth did you get the idea of claiming I "protest too much"? Is it because I've got the links which prove the paras are the monsters?
GatoGordo
(2,412 posts)Your links are not exactly the source of actual "real" news. ColombiaReports and CounterPunch are right up there with Granma and Pravda when it comes to neutrality.
Anyone with an inkling of what has been going on in Colombia in the last 50+ doesn't believe the hoof-beats they are hearing belong to zebras. They have seen and heard it thousands of times. If the rural poor in Colombia (and now Venezuela) are being harassed, tortured and murdered AGAIN, it is because the same culprit is at it AGAIN.
THAT is what Democrats would discover if they were inclined to research the subject from objective news sources. Not fake ones.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)and think about what they are finding, and they will come to their own conclusions.
All that's missing between knowing and not knowing, is the exposure to the truth, the concern to learn the difference, and the intelligence to grasp what they are finding, after a good hard look. There are too many people now who have found out, who are starting to find out, and who will find out to buy what the fascists have been pushing in place of the truth.
Calling my sources worthless indicates you are afraid someone might believe them. I encourage any readers to keep on reading, and not stop until they know they have found the truth.
GatoGordo
(2,412 posts)Its quite problematic. Even more so when promulgated in the DU forums.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)In time the propagandists are going to have no one who will believe them other than other right-wingers.
The time is coming. Probably closer than we think.
GatoGordo
(2,412 posts)When your center is Marxist-Leninist fanaticism, everyone is a right winger compared to that.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)― Mark Twain
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)Colombia’s Elections: Assassinations, presidential death squads, fraud and a fragile peace process under threat
Joe Cederwall Friday, 25 May 2018, 1:46 pm
Article: Joseph Cederwall
Next week Colombia, goes to the polls in one of the most pivotal and closely fought elections in decades. This election will now take place under the watch of EU monitors as an escalating fraud scandal develops surrounding the recent congressional elections. The two frontrunners are starkly contrasted, as are the potential outcomes for Colombia and the entire Latin American region. The election has been notable for the massive popularity of (and an assassination attempt on) leftist anti-establishment and charismatic anti-corruption candidate Gustavo Petro. It has also seen the opening of a Supreme Court murder investigation against former hard-right President Álvaro Uribe Vélez over his alleged role in war crimes committed by paramilitary death squads. It has seen major revelations over corruption and the extent of the state and military involvement in atrocities in Colombia’s long running civil war and in Cocaine trafficking. Meanwhile, the fragile year-old peace process is on the verge of collapse. However, despite all this, the right-wing candidate Ivan Duque, close ally and ordained political heir of Uribe, leads in the polls one week out. The results of a victory for Duque could be catastrophic, not only for the continued progress of this nation and the peace process, but for the wider geopolitical stability of Latin America.
Why Colombia’s Elections Matter
With 49 million people, Colombia is the third-most populous country in Latin America, after Brazil and Mexico. However, due to its central geographical position, and central role in the ‘Bolivarian’ Latin American independence movement, Colombia has always held a historical leadership role in the region. The 30 year long civil war that claimed at least 220,000 lives, displaced nearly six million people, and resulted in 27,000 kidnappings and 25,000 disappearances has slowly started to wind down. This is largely due to the more stable rule and more amenable attitude towards the legitimate calls for justice by the communist insurgency of FARC since Uribe left office. The historic peace accord between the FARC guerillas and the government in 2016 was brokered by centre-right president (since 2010) and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Juan Manuel Santos. This deal promised great things for stability and peace in the region and the war was significantly de-escalated as a result. Business confidence was finally growing again in Colombia, and the nation was on track to becoming a regional powerhouse once again.
A Fragile Peace
However, with the increasing influence of the USA over the years and decades of neoliberal rule, the prosperity of Colombia has not reached far outside the wealthy upper echelons, mostly in the main cities of Bogota and Medellin. Furthermore, the Peace process is now near to falling apart. Santos’ government has been accused of failing to deliver on its end of the bargain to rejuvenate rural areas with upgrades to infrastructure, health, education and agriculture and create real transitional opportunities for ex-combatants.
In the first year of the process, the government executed less than 20% of the agreements made with the guerrillas and there have been allegations of corruption and missing funds within the project. The media and right-wing politicians, meanwhile have seized on this faltering of the peace process to fuel the fire of opposition to the peace process and garner votes for their more hard-line approach towards FARC. The reality is, that Colombia’s institutions and state was never up to the undertaking of delivering this ambitious programme. However, ironically, this failure was also likely created or at least exacerbated by these same right-wing political and media players’ opposition to any real steps to enable more investment in the regions and in transitional initiatives.
Most problematic of all, the demobilisation of FARC the failure of the government to provide new opportunities or security has simply created a power vacuum. This has allowed right-wing paramilitaries, drug cartels and splinter communist groups outside of the peace process to consolidate their grip over the lucrative drug growing and smuggling operations. This has all led to a dramatic spike in violence in many areas. For all their faults, the FARC and other communist groups, did in many cases actually protect poor indigenous rural communities from exploitation and violence. Disturbingly, their demobilisation has also seen a rise in neoliberal land and resource grabs and in murders of human rights and environmental activists who oppose the new groups. New research by NGOs suggests that the killing of human rights activists doubled this year.
More:
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL1805/S00168/colombias-elections-assassinations-presidential-death-squads-fraud-and-a-fragile-peace-process-under-threat.htm
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)and has presiding over the increase in violence by criminal groups that your source states.
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)FEBRUARY 9, 2001
New York Times Covering for Colombian Death Squads
BY FAIR
According to a joint report from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), “political violence has markedly increased” since the first installment of the U.S.’s $1.3 billion Plan Colombia aid package was dispersed in August, with the average number of deaths from combat and political violence rising to 14 per day (“Colombia Human Rights Certification II”, 1/01).
There were at least 27 massacres in the month of January alone, claiming the lives of as many as 200 civilians. The killings are overwhelmingly the work of right-wing paramilitaries with close ties to the Colombian military, such as the Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).
Despite the dramatic nature of the attacks and the U.S.’s heavy financial involvement in the war, the New York Times did not report on a single massacre during the month of January. The findings of the human rights groups’ “Certification” report, including its recommendation that the U.S. cease military funding to Colombia, also went unmentioned.
https://fair.org/take-action/action-alerts/new-york-times-covering-for-colombian-death-squads/
Judi Lynn
(160,530 posts)Human Rights Violations
" mutilated bodies with chainsaws. They chained people to burning vehicles. They decapitated and rolled heads like soccer balls. They killed dozens at one time, including women and children. They buried people alive or hung them on meat hooks, carving them ... the victims ... were civilians accused of supporting the guerrillas by supplying them with food, medical supplies, or transportation."
Robin Kirk, Human Rights Watch investigator in Colombia
Paramilitary violence is overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists and leftist political activists.
Paramilitary abuses in Colombia are often classified as atrocities due to the brutality of their methods, including the torture, rape, incineration, decapitation and mutilation with chainsaws or machetes of dozens of their victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children.
http://www.liquisearch.com/colombian_paramilitary_groups/human_rights_violations
GatoGordo
(2,412 posts)Published 11 June 2018 (10 hours 12 minutes ago)
Colombia's largest guerrilla, the National Liberation Army (ELN), Monday announced a unilateral five-day truce
Colombia's largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN), Monday announced a unilateral five-day truce to facilitate the development of the second round of presidential elections, a decision it described as a sign of the group’s will for peace.
The announcement from the rebel group will help to carry out a quiet election day without threats of attacks. Colombians will go to the polls Sunday to choose the successor of Juan Manuel Santos between right-winger Ivan Duque and leftist Gustavo Petro.
"This unilateral measure shows again the will of the ELN in the construction of a true democracy in which the voice of the people can be expressed massively and freely at the polls," said a statement from the rebel group, which stated that the suspension will take place between Friday, June 15 and midnight, June 19.
-snip-
https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Colombia-ELN-Announces-Unilateral-Ceasefire-During-Elections-20180611-0010.html
The Spin?
The unilateral truce... against who? There are no ongoing gun battles between right-wing paramilitary groups and the ELN... ONLY the ELNs use of terrorism against the poor rural folk of Colombia and Venezuela. Even government forces are at best scattered around Colombia trying to keep the peace. The only group waging war is the ELN. (formerly FARC)
And how far "right" is "right winger" Ivan Duque? Hillary would have him as a running mate. Because in the REAL WORLD, the vast majority of "right wing" groups in Latin America are VERY SOCIALIST.
But, with spin from TeleSewer and VenezuelaAnalysis and ColombiaReports, everyone who isn't a Marxist extremist is a "right winger". Below is a link to the opposition in Venezuela... please find the "right wing group" in the top 15 political parties that isn't PSUV. Laborism? Progressivism? Socialism? Social Democracy? Which one is even REMOTELY right wing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Unity_Roundtable