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Another Twenty-five Colombians Massacred by Paramilitaries |
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by DEnnis Grammenos
Email: clm (nospam) prairienet.org (unverified!) |
18 Jan 2001
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Death-squads are able to operate with near total impunity because of their strong ties with the Colombian security forces. |
COLOMBIAN LABOR MONITOR
Monday, 15 January 2001
Another twenty-five Colombians
massacred by paramilitaries
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By Dennis Grammenos
Even as Colombia\'s newly appointed attorney general, Edgardo Maya
Villazon, was pledging that his office would tirelessly work to protect
human rights, paramilitaries were at it again, executing twenty-five
unarmed civilians on Monday.
Fifteen victims perished in two massacres committed by death-squad units
affiliated with Carlos Castano\'s Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC).
The first massacre occurred in Valledupar, capital of the department of
Cesar, in northern Colombia.
In that incident, a number of explosive devises were set off in the
northern part of the city as a distraction, while a group of forty heavily
armed paramilitaries invaded the working-class neighborhoods of Bello
Horizonte and El Futuro de los Ninos, in the west side of Valledupar.
Eight victims, one of them a woman, were rounded up, beaten, and executed
in front of their terrified families. Two more people managed to evade
death, although they were wounded.
Another attack took place in the municipality of San Juan del Cesar, in
the northern department of Guajira.
There, a group of well-armed men belonging to an AUC death-squad entered
the hamlet of Corral de Piedra and dragged seven people out of their homes
and summarily executed them.
In another massacre on Monday, twenty paramilitaries stopped a bus in a
village near Popayan, the capital of the department of Cauca.
There, they forced ten people off the bus and executed them point-blank.
Incidents of paramilitary violence have escalated lately as a new phase of
Colombia\'s three-decades-long civil war takes shape.
The introduction into the field of three U.S.-trained battalions, the
increased commitment of U.S. resources to the Colombian military, and
calls from Colombia\'s military leadership to scrap the on-again-of-again
peace talks with the largest guerrilla group have set the stage for an
explosive escalation of the violence that has traumatized the country.
The paramilitaries are an integral part of a strategy that aims to deny
the guerrillas of any support in Colombia\'s countryside and working-class
neighborhoods.
Death-squads often target their victims randomly and commit gruesome
massacres in an attempt to terrorize the population.
Generally, the hapless victims of death-squad terror are labeled guerrilla
\"sympathizers\" and their deaths serve as warnings against any potential
support for the guerrilla groups.
Over three thousand unarmed civilians were killed in massacres last year
in Colombia and the paramilitaries were responsible for the vast majority
of those deaths.
Death-squads are able to operate with near total impunity because of their
strong ties with the Colombian security forces.
Recently, the country\'s largest guerrilla group, the Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), demanded that the government rein-in
the death-squads as a pre-condition to further peace talks.
The government, on its part, has repeatedly promised to confront the
paramilitaries.
Such promises, however, seem to be aimed more at placating international
critics that might endanger the huge military and financial aid channeled
to Colombia by various foreign governments, most prominently from the U.S.
under the pretext of the mythical \"war on drugs.\"
Copyright 2001 Colombian Labor Monitor
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