Paraguay's new president replaces military command

[Judi Lynn]

Paraguay's new president replaces military command
August 21st, 2008 @ 10:11am

ASUNCION, Paraguay (AP) - Paraguay's new president is replacing most of the country's top military leaders.

Presidential spokesman Augusto Dos Santos says newly inaugurated President Fernando Lugo has signed 30 decrees naming new heads of the impoverished country's army, air force and navy.

~snip~
The left-leaning leader pledged last week to reform the nation's military, saying soldiers would now perform humanitarian tasks for the poor.

In a speech, Lugo said the military will "never again ... be used to repress or harass" the people.

More:
http://www.620ktar.com/?nid=46&sid=940892

I suppose this means he won't be allowing any death squads, either.....

[Bacchus39]

1. "allowing death squads"

making them illegal doesn't mean they go away. see Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Guatemala, Mexico

[Judi Lynn]

2. Apparently I should have stressed the direct connection between government and death squads

in Colombia, as a contrast. Here are two links I just posted to another thread in the Latin America forum which I imagine you didn't see:

The “Sixth Division”: Military-paramilitary Ties and U.S. Policy in Colombia


I. Summary and Recommendations
The "Sixth Division" is a phrase used in Colombia to refer to paramilitary groups. Colombia's Army has five divisions, but many Colombians told Human Rights Watch that paramilitaries are so fully integrated into the army's battle strategy, coordinated with its soldiers in the field, and linked to government units via intelligence, supplies, radios, weapons, cash, and common purpose that they effectively constitute a sixth division of the army.

Clearly, Colombia is more complex than this perception implies. President Andrés Pastrana, his vice president, Colombian government ministers, diplomats, and top generals alike publicly denounce paramilitary groups. Increasingly, paramilitary fighters are arrested. This is a stark contrast to years past, when military commanders denied that paramilitaries even existed and government officials were largely silent about their activities. Today, Colombian officials routinely describe paramilitaries as criminals, an advance Human Rights Watch acknowledges.

Nevertheless, the reference to the "sixth division" reflects a reality that is in plain view. Human Rights Watch has documented abundant, detailed, and compelling evidence that certain Colombian army brigades and police detachments continue to promote, work with, support, profit from, and tolerate paramilitary groups, treating them as a force allied to and compatible with their own.

At their most brazen, the relationships described in this report involve active coordination during military operations between government and paramilitary units; communication via radios, cellular telephones, and beepers; the sharing of intelligence, including the names of suspected guerrilla collaborators; the sharing of fighters, including active-duty soldiers serving in paramilitary units and paramilitary commanders lodging on military bases; the sharing of vehicles, including army trucks used to transport paramilitary fighters; coordination of army roadblocks, which routinely let heavily-armed paramilitary fighters pass; and payments made from paramilitaries to military officers for their support.

In the words of one Colombian municipal official, the relationship between Colombian military units, particularly the army, and paramilitaries is a "marriage."

More:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2001/colombia/1.htm


~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Wednesday 23 July 2008, San José, Costa Rica / SPECIAL REPORTS

COLOMBIA:
Torture as a ‘Side Effect’ of Forced Disappearance, Killings
By Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA (IPS) - The body of trade unionist Guillermo Rivera, who was missing since April, was finally found after 84 days of desperate searching by his family and friends.

The forensic experts reported that the body showed "clear signs of torture," Jorge Gómez, the widow's lawyer, told IPS.

The 52-year-old Rivera was last seen when he took his daughter to her bus stop on the morning of Apr. 22. A witness said she saw him arguing with the police as they handcuffed him and shoved him into a police car. "Why are you taking me?" she heard him ask the officers.

Security cameras located near Rivera’s home on the south side of Bogotá "showed that several police cars were present at the time and place where the gentleman disappeared," a source at the Attorney General’s Office told IPS.

IPS was able to confirm that there were four police cars and several motorcycles.

The day after he went missing, Rivera's wife, Sonia Betancur, received a call from the cell-phone of her husband, who worked for the city government, was the president of a Bogotá trade union and was a member of the Communist Party.

"The phone call was very confusing, she didn't understand a thing," said Gómez.

A week later, the Attorney General’s Office reported that the call had been made from San Martín, 159 km south of Bogotá, a town that is a centre of operations of the far-right paramilitaries in the province of Meta.

More:
http://insidecostarica.com/special_reports/2008-07/colombia_torture.htm

[Bacchus39]

3. perhaps I wasn't clear enough either

death squads with government connections Venezuela and Brazil respectively. I know I posted the first link at least twice before and you just ignore it.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR53/006/2002/en/dom-AMR530062002en.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/amnesty-demands-crackdown-on-police-death-squads-in-brazil-517886.html


Venezuela

Police officers have reportedly attempted to kill a senior officer who is giving evidence to an inquiry into the activities of police death squads in Portuguesa state. Miguel Angel Zambrano Heredia began receiving death threats in December 2001. Amnesty International believe that he and his family are in grave danger, as are other witnesses involved in the investigation.

In December 2001 and January 2002 Inspector Miguel Angel Zambrano reportedly received repeated telephone calls threatening to kill him and his family unless he stopped helping the inquiry into police involvement into a death squad known as the "Grupo Exterminio". On 9 February a group of police officers reportedly attacked and beat him in the town of Acarigua in Portuguesa state. On 7 March two men believed to be Portuguesa state police officers came into his wife's office and reportedly threatened to rape and kill her if her husband would not leave the investigation into "Grupo Exterminio". Miguel Angel Zambrano was attacked in the street on 20 March, in city of Barquisimeto, in the neighbouring state of Lara. His attackers also fired at him from a car.

Official investigations into repeated reports of death squad killings in Portueguesa began in 2000. Twelve police officers have since been arrested, but none have so far been brought to trial and the killings are continuing. The investigation has been repeatedly hampered by threats against judges and investigating attorneys (fiscales).

BACKGROUND INFORMATION
The Venezuelan Office of the Human Rights Ombudsman (Defensoria del Pueblo) documented 392 reports of extrajudicial executions in Venezuela in 2001, many of which appeared to involve state and municipal police officers.

The human rights organization Provea (Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos) documented at least 68 such cases in the state of Portuguesa alone from October 2000 to September 2001.

Death squads have operated in Venezuela for many years, but their activities appear to have increased with the rise of violent crime in much of the country. They are often made up of serving police officers and other state employees, which means they can often act with impunity. They target suspected criminals, but are frequently involved in extortion and other criminal activities themselves.

The Venezuelan authorities' failure to provide effective witness protection has consistently undermined attempts to investigate and prosecute state officials accused of human rights violations, and deters potential witnesses from providing crucial evidence in such cases.



Brazil

Amnesty demands crackdown on police death squads in Brazil

Brazil's police force needs urgent reform to tackle endemic human rights abuses that potentially constitute thousands of executions in the country's poorest communities every year, Amnesty International says.


A report released yesterday claims that "death squads" - groups of rogue military police who have been accused of the mass murder of people living in favelas (slums) - are on the rise across the country.

It includes accounts from victims and relatives of routine extortion, theft and police brutality that sometimes results in death. According to official figures, more than 2,000 people were killed in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in 2003 in cases labelled "resistance followed by death". Amnesty believes the true figures are far higher.

[Judi Lynn]

4. How are these police death squads connected to the leftist leaders?

They have always been associated with right-wing idiots. Brazil has a tradition going back decades to the military dictatorship 1964 to 1985 during which time tons of people were swept up for being "leftists" and tortured, and slaughtered. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that various elements in that country seem to have a whole life and world of their own. They have been making sweeps of the ghetto areas forever, seemingly. I remember reading about them decades ago, when it was a common, ordinary occurrance. They said in those articles the police were "moonlighting" and doing dirty work for the businessmen in those areas who didn't want the poor around their stores, and they would blow away crowds of little kids. It got a whole lot worse when they started doing it large scale for the Brazilian rightist military government and went after leftists.

Lula won't be able to whip that problem entirely in a few years, as anyone could grasp. It's "HUGH," in Freepspeak.

Maybe the death squad problem has roots in Colombia:

The Granda Kidnapping Explodes
The US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
By JAMES PETRAS

A major diplomatic and political conflict has exploded between Colombia and Venezuela after the revelation of a Colombian government covert operation in Venezuela, involving the recruitment of Venezuelan military and security officers in the kidnapping of a Colombian leftist leader. Following an investigation by the Venezuelan Ministry of Interior and reports and testimony from journalists and other knowledgeable political observers it was determined that the highest echelons of the Colombian government, including President Uribe, planned and executed this onslaught on Venezuelan sovereignty.

Once direct Colombian involvement was established, the Venezuelan government demanded a public apology from the Colombian government while seeking a diplomatic solution by blaming Colombian Presidential advisers. The Colombian regime took the offensive, launching an aggressive defense of its involvement in the violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and, beyond that, seeking to establish in advance, under the rationale of "national security" the legitimacy of future acts of aggression. As a result President Chavez has recalled the Venezuelan Ambassador from Bogota, suspended all state-to-state commercial and political agreements pending an official state apology. In response the US Government gave unconditional support to Colombian violation of Venezuelan sovereignty and urged the Uribe regime to push the conflict further. What began as a diplomatic conflict over a specific incident has turned into a major, defining crises in US and Latin American political relations with potentially explosive military, economic and political consequences for the entire region.

In justifying the kidnapping of Rodrigo Granda, the Colombian leftist leader, the Uribe regime has promulgated a new foreign policy doctrine which echoes that of the Bush Administration: the right of unilateral intervention in any country in which the Colombian government perceives or claims is harboring or providing refuge to political adversaries (which the regime labels as "terrorists") which might threaten the security of the state. The Uribe doctrine of unilateral intervention echoes the preventive war speech, enunciated in late 2001 by President Bush. Clearly Uribe's action and pronouncement is profoundly influenced by the dominance that Washington exercises over the Uribe regime's policies through its extended $3 billion dollar military aid program and deep penetration of the entire political-defense apparatus.
Uribe's offensive military doctrine involves several major policy propositions:

1.) The right to violate any country's sovereignty, including the use of force and violence, directly or in cooperation with local mercenaries.

2.) The right to recruit and subvert military and security officials to serve the interests of the Colombian state.

3.) The right to allocate funds to bounty hunters or "third parties" to engage in illegal violent acts within a target country.

4.) The assertion of the supremacy of Colombian laws, decrees and policies over and against the sovereign laws of the intervened country.

The Uribe doctrine clearly echoes Washington's global pronouncements. While the immediate point of aggression involves Colombia's relations to Venezuela, the Uribe doctrine lays the basis for unilateral military intervention anywhere in the hemisphere. Uribe's doctrine is a threat to sovereignty of any country in the hemisphere: its intervention in Venezuela and the justification provides a precedent for future aggression.

Colombia's adoption and implementation of the extraterritorial policy as part of its strategy of unilateral intervention is not coincidental, as the Colombian security forces have been trained and advised by US and Israeli secret agencies. More directly, through its $3 billion dollar military aid program Washington is in a command-and-control position within all sectors of the Colombian state and thus able to determine the security doctrine of the Uribe regime. More important Uribe has been a long-time, large-scale practitioner of death squad politics prior to his ascendancy to the Presidency and prior to receiving large scale US aid. By borrowing the Bush Doctrine from his patron-state, Uribe has internationalized the terror practices which he has pursued for the past 20 years within Colombia.

Prior to the recent spate of high profile trans-border kidnapping (Trinidad in Ecuador, Granda in Venezuela), the Uribe regime has engaged in frequent interventions, kidnapping and assassinating popular leaders and soldiers from bordering countries, and providing material and political support to would-be 'golpistas', especially in Venezuela. Dozens of Colombian refugees fleeing marauding death squads have been pursued into Venezuela and killed or kidnapped over the past three years by Colombian paramilitary and security forces. Six Venezuelan soldiers were killed by Colombian security forces in an "unexplained" incident. More recently, in 2004, over 130 Colombian paramilitary forces and other irregulars were infiltrated into Venezuela to engage in terrorist violence ­ to trigger action by Venezuelan-US coup-makers. Shortly thereafter Colombian security forces and the US CIA intervened in Ecuador to kidnap a former peace negotiator of the FARC, Colombia's major guerrilla group.

What is new and more ominous is that the Uribe regime's de facto policy of extra-territoriality has been converted into a de jure strategic doctrine of unilateral military intervention. Colombia no longer pretends to be engaged in a "covert" selective policy of violating other countries sovereignty but has publicly declared the supremacy of its laws and the right to apply them anywhere in the world where it unilaterally declares its case for national security. Colombia's gross violations of Venezuelan and Ecuadorian sovereignty is a policy clearly endorsed and dictated at the highest levels of the Colombian state ­ exclusively the prerogative of President Uribe ­ and endorsed at the highest level of the US government by its principal diplomatic spokesperson in Colombia, Ambassador Woods ("We endorse Uribe's action 100%"). The 'Granda incident' is not simply an isolated diplomatic incident which can be resolved through good faith bilateral negotiations. The kidnapping is part of a larger strategy involving preparations ­ ideological, political and military ­ for a large-scale, political-military confrontation with Venezuela.

More:
http://www.counterpunch.org/petras01252005.html