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Friends,
I received the article below, and went to the referenced URL, only to discover it wasn't there. So I tried a search through Yahoo! News, still failed to find it, but in the process discovered numerous other related articles.
I have reproduced three of them for your convenience.
For those concerned with use of copyrighted material, I invite you to view a note on the subject. You may click on © Fair Use.
While you're at it, check out a report from Oberlin student Sarah Saunders who journeyed to Colombia and is now fasting at the WHISC (Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation.) Just click on Sarah
Just a week in the life....
–Daniel
By MICHAEL EASTERBROOK, Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA,
Colombia (AP) Suspected right-wing paramilitary gunmen
with machetes hacked to death 25 men in northern Colombia on
Wednesday before burning dozens of homes to the ground, police and
villagers said.
Survivors told police that about 50 heavily armed men dressed in
military uniforms converged on the town of Chengue at about 3 a.m.
Wednesday and rounded up 25 villagers they accused of working with
leftist guerrillas, Sucre state police Lt. Alexander Collazos told
the Associated Press.
The victims, all men between the ages of 22 and 65, were removed
from their homes, surrounded and killed with machete blows. The
attackers apparently accused the men of working with leftist
guerrilla groups.
The attackers then set fire to about 30 homes in the village and
carried off seven other men as hostages, police said.
Television news footage showed families fleeing with farm animals
and small children, and police said parts of the village of some
1,200 residents were deserted following the attack. Red Cross
workers were headed to the region to help.
Witnesses told police that the attackers were members of right-wing
paramilitary groups, but police couldn't confirm those reports.
The attack was the latest in a wave of terror blamed on paramilitary
groups that has left more than 20 dead in January alone. The violence
has increased pressured on President Andres Pastrana to reign in the
militias, believed to have killed most of the 1,226 civilians who
died in massacres last year.
Pastrana on Wednesday called for an end to ``the terrible events
(like those) that occurred today in Sucre.''
Paramilitaries are responsible for the majority of human rights
abuses committed in Colombia, according to human rights groups.
Severing links between the army and the paramilitaries and curbing
rightist violence are key conditions for Colombia to continue
receiving U.S. military aid and training under a $1.3 billion
counter-drug aid package.
The nation's largest leftist guerrilla group, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, blamed army-paramilitary ties
for its unilateral freeze of peace negotiations in November.
Peace envoy Camilo Gomez and about six government peace negotiators
were meeting with FARC commanders on Wednesday to find a solution to
the impasse.
By MICHAEL EASTERBROOK, Associated Press Writer
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - Gunmen killed at least 10 people and wounded five others in a northern town Sunday in Colombia's latest massacre, police said, as the military faced accusations its failed to protect villagers in an earlier killing.
The gunmen attacked the town of Hato Nuevo, 446 miles north of Bogota near the Venezuelan border, police spokesman Jacob Coneo told the Associated Press.
Details were sketchy, and it wasn't immediately clear who was responsible. The area in the state of La Guajira is swarming with paramilitary fighters and combatants from the nation's two main rebel armies.
The attack came as the military announced an investigation into its handling of a Jan. 17 massacre in the village of Chengue, where residents accused the army of failing to respond to their pleas for protection.
In Chengue, in northern Sucre state, a band of paramilitary fighters bludgeoned 26 men to death and set fire to some 20 homes. Nine other villagers were kidnapped.
The Associated Press reported Jan. 20 that residents of Chengue wrote the government in October warning of an attack and seeking protection from the paramilitaries of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, or AUC.
In a Dec. 1 written response, the 1st Marine Brigade said it did not have enough troops to protect all areas under threat from guerrillas and paramilitary groups.
The army and the state prosecutor's office now have opened separate investigations into the massacre, army spokesman Capt. Jorge Flores said Sunday.
``What we are looking into is whether there was negligence on their part, or whether they didn't act soon enough or do enough to prevent the massacre from happening,'' he told The Associated Press.
The scope of the civilian investigation was not clear. The state prosecutor's office was closed Sunday.
Authorities say the massacre was directed by an AUC commander known as Comandante Beatriz, who allegedly defected to the paramilitaries from the rival leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Colombia's main rebel army.
Critics claim Colombia's military uses the 8,000-strong AUC to wage war against leftist guerrillas. Some 35,000 people have been killed in warfare over the past decade.
Severing ties with paramilitary groups is a condition for a $1.3 billion aid package, most of it in military assistance, from Washington.
The military probe will not examine whether government troops
helped the paramilitary group carry out the Chengue massacre,
Flores said.
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BOGOTA (Reuters) - Gunmen killed at least 12 peasants on Friday in a mountainous region of northwestern Colombia where leftist guerrillas and far-right paramilitaries are fighting for territorial control, police said.
The killing, the second in the area in two days, happened between the towns of El Penol and Guatape in the department of Antioquia, regional police commander Col. Guillermo Aranda told reporters.
Police blamed paramilitaries for killing 11 people on Wednesday near the town of Yolombo but did not know who was responsible for Friday's attack.
Several shotgun-toting men in combat uniforms went from house to house killing suspected collaborators with rival groups, Aranda said.
``We don't know who is to blame for this massacre -- we don't know if it was paramilitaries or guerrillas,'' he said.
``They came murdering peasants ... these people did not have anything to do with the conflict in which these outlawed groups are engaged,'' he added.
Colombia, an Andean nation with 40 million inhabitants, is mired in a four decades-old conflict involving leftist rebels the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and National Liberation Army (ELN), paramilitary forces that rights groups allege have links to the military and the state security forces. Colombia's army denies paramilitary links.
The conflict, which has claimed more than 35,000 civilian lives and displaced 2 million people in the last decade alone, has intensified in recent months despite President Andres Pastrana's peace efforts with leftist rebels.
Police recorded 205 massacres in Colombia in 2000 in which
1,226 people were killed. Most were attributed to
paramilitaries, whom rights organizations allege commit the
worst human rights violations in a ``dirty war'' against
guerrillas.
Wednesday January 17 4:52 PM ET
|
By Luis Jaime Acosta
BOGOTA, Colombia (Reuters) - The Colombian government's top negotiator arrived in rebel-held territory to revive peace talks to end a four-decade civil war which claimed another 25 victims in a machete massacre on Wednesday.
Peace Commissioner Camilo Gomez wants to reestablish a dialogue broken off since last November when the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) walked out of two-year-old peace negotiations.
But, as Gomez sought peace in the FARC's Switzerland-sized demilitarized zone in southern Colombia, news broke of the massacre of much of the male population of a remote village.
Right-wing paramilitary fighters entered the village of Chengue in northern Colombia before dawn and herded the population into the square. They killed at least 25 men with machetes and guns, as their families watched, before setting fire to houses and shops, said survivor Noris Merino Lopez.
``They took the men. They said they wanted to put their details in a computer, but it was a lie and they killed them, one by one, right there,'' Merino Lopez, the village nurse, told Reuters by telephone.
The men of Chengue were just the latest casualties in a merciless conflict which pits leftist guerrillas against the army and the illegal death squads.
Paramilitaries often target suspected guerrilla collaborators, and have been responsible for many of the 35,000 civilian deaths in the last 10 years of war alone.
The FARC broke off formal peace talks accusing the government of not doing enough to combat the death squads, which human rights groups say have links to the armed forces.
Paramilitary ranks have grown in recent years as the army has failed to defeat the guerrillas.
Gomez said he hoped to get the peace train moving: ``We're working to get the dialogue going again. Together with the FARC we're looking for ways to relaunch the process.''
Veteran FARC leader Manuel ``Sureshot'' Marulanda, a poor farmer who took up arms in 1964 and has been fighting in Colombia's mountains and jungles ever since, told the communist magazine Voz he was optimistic the peace process would resume.
``There are initiatives and meetings under way. Something will come of it,'' Marulanda said in the rare declaration.
January Deadline Looms For Farc
President Andres Pastrana will decide by Jan. 31 if he will continue to allow the FARC to use the massive swathe of jungle territory he granted them to get peace talks going two years ago. He has been under pressure to get tough with the 17,000-member rebel group since the assassination of a top congressional peace official in December.
Marulanda denied the FARC had anything to do with the killings of congressional peace official Diego Turbay, his mother and five others just outside the rebel enclave.
``We shouldn't have to deny all the accusations that enemies of peace make against us,'' added Marulanda, referring to army claims of evidence against the FARC for Turbay's murder.
He confirmed the FARC's intention to soon unilaterally release some of its 500-odd military and police prisoners, but said he had not decided how many to free.
As the Jan. 31 deadline looms, U.S.-trained Colombian forces are preparing to launch a helicopter-borne anti-drug offensive in the country's south at the end of the month.
Many analysts fear the $1 billion in mainly military U.S. aid funding the crackdown in the world's largest cocaine producing area could aggravate the war. Major rebel and paramilitary groups draw funding from the drug trade.
The government is also trying to convince local residents from the south of the province of Bolivar to accept a deal which would establish a demilitarized zone for the country's second-largest leftist rebel group.
The government is offering the Cuban-inspired National Liberation Army (ELN) its own enclave to start peace talks. Pastrana's critics say the FARC has used its territory for recruitment and to keep civilian hostages for ransom.
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