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> Colombia Week (
www.colombiaweek.org)
Number 45: April 12, 2004
> (1) BRIEFS
> Leftist party leader killed in north
> Official: Troops won't go to Iraq
> Japan, European Union to aid refugees
> Hundreds flee homes in western provinces
> (2) TOP STORY (Julia Olmstead)
> Government scraps amnesty proposal
> (3) CULTURE (Yolanda Alvarez Sanchez in Bogota)
> Two theater series play distinct roles
> (4) LABOR (Jana Silverman)
> Government deems union activity a crime
> (5) CONTEXT (W. John Green)
> Land of impunity
> (6) SEVEN DAYS
> The week in review
> (7) FROM THE EDITORS
> Daily updates at
www.colombiaweek.org> (8) THE LAST WORD (Sens. Darmo Martmnez and Rafael Pardo)
> 'They're trying not to go to extremes'
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (1) BRIEFS
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> LEFTIST PARTY LEADER KILLED IN NORTH: Unidentified gunmen murdered a leftist
> party leader and his bodyguard April 1 in Czcuta, a city 250 miles northeast
> of Bogota. Carlos Bernal of the Independent Democratic Pole (PDI), which
> formed last year, and Camilo Jiminez were shot as they bought food at an
> outdoor stand. Police arrested one suspect while two others reportedly fled
> by motorcycle. Bernal, a lawyer, was a member of the Permanent Committee for
> the Defense of Human Rights and a former member of the Patriotic Union (UP),
> a party decimated by paramilitary assassinations in the late 1980s and early
> 1990s. In a statement before Congress the day after the assassination, Rep.
> Gustavo Petro Urrego of the PDI blamed paramilitary commander Miguel
> Arroyave and said he had turned over evidence to the police. The government
> reported earlier this year that paramilitaries had carried out more than 600
> murders since the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the
> country's main paramilitary federation, declared a ceasefire in December
> 2002. Paramilitaries are vying with guerrillas for control of Czcuta, the
> urban center of a coca-producing region. SOURCES: Associated Press, 4/2/04;
> Colombia Indymedia, 4/2/04; El Espectador, 4/3/04; El Tiempo, 4/2/04;
> National Public Radio, 2/24/04. (SA and SH)
>
> OFFICIAL: TROOPS WON'T GO TO IRAQ: Colombia will not send troops to Iraq,
> presidential spokesperson Ricardo Galan told reporters April 6, denying a
> newspaper report. "The government has not even considered the idea," he
> said. The Financial Times, citing an unnamed Colombian government source,
> had reported that President Alvaro Uribe Vilez is mulling sending hundreds
> of troops to assist the United States in Iraq. "Colombia has some of the
> finest troops in the world," an unnamed U.S. defense official said,
> according to the newspaper. "Whether or not such an offering is undertaken,
> there is no question that they have the capability to be of great service."
> Uribe met last month with President George W. Bush in Washington, D.C.
> SOURCES: Associated Press, 4/5/04; El Espectador, 4/5/04, 4/6/04; El Tiempo,
> 4/5/04; Financial Times, 4/1/04. (JO)
>
> JAPAN, EUROPEAN UNION TO AID REFUGEES: Japan and the European Union will
> give more than $10 million in aid for people displaced by Colombia's civil
> war. The European Commission on April 2 announced about $9.5 million in
> support for International Committee of the Red Cross efforts to aid and
> protect nearly 120,000 people who have fled their homes. The aid to the
> refugees will include food, cooking sets, hygiene products and funds. On
> March 31, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi announced his country
> would donate more than $1 million to the cause. Colombia has one of the
> world's largest internally displaced populations. More than 3 million
> Colombians have been uprooted since 1985, according to the Consultancy for
> Human Rights and Displacement (Codhes). Most live without access to clean
> water, proper sanitation or adequate food. The conditions have caused
> widespread gastrointestinal and respiratory disease, especially among
> children. Unlike Japan and the European Union, the United States focuses its
> Colombia aid on military efforts. SOURCES: Agence France Presse, 3/31/04;
> BBC, 3/31/04; El Tiempo, 4/2/04; European Report, 4/3/04; Japan Economic
> Newswire, 3/31/04; Kyodo New Service, 3/31/04; Reuters, 4/2/04. (TK and AR)
>
> HUNDREDS FLEE HOMES IN WESTERN PROVINCES: Fighting between guerrilla and
> paramilitary armies in the western province of Caldas has killed six farmers
> and forced more than 900 people to flee their homes, Gov. Emilio Echeverri
> Mejma said April 2, according to the Bogota daily El Tiempo. For five years,
> eastern Caldas has suffered fierce fighting for control of coca crops. In
> neighboring Antioquia Province, meanwhile, fighting in recent weeks has
> forced nearly 450 farmers from their homes in the municipality of San
> Francisco. The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (Codhes)
> reported April 1 that San Francisco has the nation's highest displacement
> rate. Nationwide, according to the group, more than 200,000 people fled
> their homes last year due to military and economic violence. SOURCES: Agence
> France Press, 4/3/04; El Colombiano, 4/2/04; El Tiempo, 4/2/04. (RM)
>
> ) 2004 Colombia Week. Research by Gregory Kipling and Suzanne Wilson.
> Writing by Sandra Alvarez (SA), Stacey Hunt (SH), Thomas Kolar (TK), Riley
> Merline (RM), Julia Olmstead (JO) and Annalise Romoser (AR).
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (2) TOP STORY: Government scraps amnesty proposal
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> BY JULIA OLMSTEAD
> Colombia Week
>
> President Alvaro Uribe Vilez's administration on April 6 discarded
> legislation that would have granted amnesty to illegal armed actors found
> guilty of crimes against humanity. A replacement bill drafted by the
> administration omits some controversial points of the earlier legislation.
>
> The new measure grants the combatants reduced jail terms of 5-10 years but
> does not specify whether offenders would go to ordinary prisons, mentioning
> only unspecified "detention centers" (see LAST WORD below). The
> administration plans to introduce the bill in Congress later this month.
>
> The earlier legislation, introduced last August, would have rewarded
> combatants who negotiate with the government by replacing their prison terms
> with fines, paroles and house arrests. It would have covered crimes against
> humanity, including massacres, torture and civilian kidnapping. The United
> Nations and human rights groups said the bill violated international law and
> guaranteed impunity.
>
> Under the new bill, a truth commission would investigate alleged crimes
> against humanity and recommend punishment to the president, who would decide
> whether the defendant receives the 5-10 year sentence or a civilian trial
> that could result in a longer jail term.
>
> Uribe says lightened sentences are necessary to lure combatants to the
> negotiating table. Last July, he opened formal talks with the 13,000-strong
> United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), the nation's main paramilitary
> federation. The AUC consists of private militias that formed in the 1980s
> and 1990s in the name of combating guerrilla extortion and kidnapping. Often
> aided by units of the nation's U.S.-backed security forces, the
> paramilitaries carry out most of the killings in Colombia's war. The
> violence usually targets peasants and has continued under a ceasefire the
> AUC declared in December 2002.
>
> AUC leaders Carlos Castaqo Gil and Salvatore Mancuso are wanted in the
> United States on drug trafficking charges. In the government talks, they are
> demanding protection from extradition.
>
> ) 2004 Colombia Week. SOURCES: Cambio, 4/5/04; El Colombiano, 4/7/04; El
> Espectador, 4/7/04; El Tiempo, 4/5/04, 4/7/04; Reuters, 4/6/04; Semana,
> 4/5/04.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (3) CULTURE: Two theater series play distinct roles
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> BY YOLANDA ALVAREZ SANCHEZ
> Colombia Week
>
> BOGOTA--In Colombia, there are two worlds. One includes the countryside and
> the rapidly expanding slums that girdle the nation's cities. The other, much
> smaller, consists of the wealthy parts of those cities. The smaller world
> communicates with the bigger world in myriad ways, including huge billboards
> in which models fashion expensive clothing that resembles underwear. To
> inhabitants of the bigger world, the billboards amount to mooning.
>
> This social function also characterized "A World to See," the ninth
> Iberoamerican Theater Festival, which featured 185 troupes from 33 countries
> over two weeks ending April 11. The event, held biennially here in the
> capital, is touted as Latin America's premiere stage series.
>
> The headline performances included "Songs of the Travelers" by Taiwan's
> Cloud Gate Dance Theater, "Tomaz Pandur" by Slovenia's Mladinsko Theater and
> "Waterwall" by Italy's Materiali Resistenti Dance Factory, all held in
> downtown Bogota's posh Jorge Eliicer Gaitan Theater. As spectacular as they
> were, these and most other festival performances lacked any social
> consciousness or Colombian relevance.
>
> The handful of exceptions included "The Silence" by the Cali Theater, a
> troupe founded by Alvaro Arcos in that southwestern Colombian city. Written
> and directed by Diego Fernando Montoya, the play addressed the absurdity of
> Colombian reality, which is impossible to distinguish from fiction. A
> brilliant monologue in the piece notes there is no such thing in this
> country as metaphor. Everything is truth.
>
> Another exception was "The Teacher" by the Barco Ebrio Group, also based in
> Cali. Directed by Beatriz Monsalve, the piece commemorated Enrique
> Buenaventura, the father of Colombian theater, who died December 31 after a
> long career of examining Colombia's violence and injustice, criticizing
> government indifference to that social reality, and questioning dominant
> ideologies. "The Teacher," one of 11 plays in his collection "Papers of
> Devil," addresses the plight of Colombian peasants. Like the people in
> Mexican novelist Juan Rulfo's "Pedro Paramo," the play's characters are all
> dead.
>
> In the shadow of every Iberoamerican festival is a concurrent series whose
> social role is altogether different. Most plays in the fifth biennial
> Alternative Theater Festival--which included 50 troupes, all
> Colombian--explored the country's reality and promoted peace and justice.
>
> One of the best was "Nayra: Memory," written collectively by members of
> Candelaria Theater, a Bogota troupe directed by Santiago Garcma. The play's
> title means at least two things--eye and beginning--in the Paraguayan
> indigenous language Aimara. The work focuses on assassination, kidnapping,
> displacement and other Colombian processes generally ignored by the larger
> festival.
>
> Another excellent piece in the alternative series was "Guinaru," performed
> by Cali Experimental Theater (TEC), a company founded by Buenaventura and
> directed by his widow, Jacqueline Vidal. The play highlights the African
> roots of Colombian culture. In a forum following an April 2 performance,
> Vidal criticized President Alvaro Uribe Vilez's administration: "The
> Colombia people don't want any more war or indifference. We won't accept
> marginalization and we demand that the president serve all Colombians, not
> just the elite."
>
> Complementing the social roles of the two festivals were their ticket
> prices. Seats for an Iberoamerican show ran as high as $33, excluding all
> but the elite. The alternative plays ranged from $2 to $4, allowing students
> and many working-class Colombians to attend.
>
> Like the billboards that taunt Colombia's impoverished majority, the
> Iberoamerican festival reinforced Colombia's social reality. The alternative
> series sought to change it.
>
> ) 2004 Colombia Week. Yolanda Alvarez Sanchez is a humanities professor at
> the University of America in Bogota. Find previous installments of
> "Culture," her biweekly Colombia Week column, at
>
www.colombiaweek.org/series.html#culture. Link to this one at
>
www.colombiaweek.org/20040412.html#culture.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (4) LABOR: Government deems union activity a crime
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> BY JANA SILVERMAN
> Colombia Week
>
> A March 29 ruling that freed a former Petroleum Industry Workers Union (USO)
> president from house arrest has shed light on a government strategy of
> arbitrarily detaining union leaders.
>
> A Bogota court absolved Hernando Hernandez Pardo, now a USO vice president,
> of rebellion charges and said testimonies against him had been altered,
> taken out of context and motivated by financial incentives. Police arrested
> him January 17, 2003, after the attorney general's office issued the charges
> and alleged he belonged to the National Liberation Army (ELN), Colombia's
> second largest guerilla group. He had served on a commission that initiated
> peace talks between the government and the ELN.
>
> Hernandez is one of dozens of union leaders arrested under bogus charges of
> rebellion and terrorism since President Alvaro Uribe Vilez took office
> August 7, 2002. The Medellmn-based National Union School (ENS) reports 42
> detentions of Colombian union members last year, up from 11 in 2002 and 7 in
> 2001. Of those arrested last year, 20 are members of local or national union
> executive committees.
>
> The detentions have targeted unions that fight hardest for their members.
> Since 1987, at least 33 USO members have been detained and charges against
> five are still pending, the union reports.
>
> Also under the gun is the National Food Industry Workers Union
> (Sinaltrainal), which represents Coca-Cola bottling plant employees. In
> 1996, five leaders of the union's chapter in the northern city of
> Bucaramanga went to jail on suspicion of planting a bomb in the city's Coke
> plant. The arrests came just days after the unionists led a strike to
> protest health-care cuts. The charges, eventually proven to be fabrications,
> kept the five in a maximum security prison for six months. In 2002,
> Sinaltrainal member Alfredo Porras Rueda was detained in Bucaramanga on
> rebellion charges and spent five months in prison before allegations of ELN
> links were shown to be false.
>
> The Colombian Teachers Federation (Fecode), the nation's largest union, has
> fared similarly. Last year at least 10 members of its national executive
> committee went to jail on charges of terrorism and rebellion. And Blanca
> Segura, president of the union's chapter in Saravena, a town in the
> northeastern province of Arauca, was among 11 unionists jailed in an August
> 21 raid by the Administrative Security Department (DAS) and the attorney
> general's Technical Investigation Corps (CTI). She was released months later
> after the authorities could find no evidence linking her to illegal
> activity.
>
> And the National United Farmworkers Union (Fensuagro) suffered a blow when
> its human rights secretary, Luz Perly Csrdoba Mosquera, was arrested
> February 18.
>
> The detentions block the accused from fulfilling their union
> responsibilities and further weaken a labor movement under sustained attack
> since the country's main union federation, United Workers Central (CUT),
> formed in 1986. In the past 12 years, according to the ENS, the movement has
> lost 2,028 members to assassination.
>
> And the detentions violate treaties signed and ratified by Colombia. The
> accords include the American Convention on Human Rights and the
> International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
>
> But union leaders are vowing to keep up their fight. "Tenacity and
> perseverance," Hernandez Pardo said in a written statement after his
> release, "will lead us to achieve victories for our cause, which is none
> other than that of the oppressed who seek more equality, justice and
> democracy."
>
> ) 2004 Colombia Week. Jana Silverman is a master's candidate in Human Rights
> at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and the
> coordinator and co-founder of the New York-based Committee for Social
> Justice in Colombia. Find previous installments of "Labor," her biweekly
> Colombia Week column, at
www.colombiaweek.org/series.html#labor. Link to
> this one at
www.colombiaweek.org/20040412.html#labor.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (5) CONTEXT: Land of impunity
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> BY W. JOHN GREEN
> Colombia Week
>
> In a March 29 cover story, the weekly magazine Cambio reported that former
> army Gen. Jaime Alberto Uscategui has threatened to reveal some paramilitary
> ties of Colombia's official security forces. Uscategui, awaiting trial for
> his role in a 1997 massacre, reportedly warned that his disclosures would
> jeopardize the country's U.S. military aid.
>
> The news, appropriately, came just a few days before the most significant
> anniversary in modern Colombian history. On April 9, 1948, a gunman shot
> populist leader Jorge Eliicer Gaitan at point-blank range on a downtown
> Bogota street. Gaitan fell to the sidewalk and never regained consciousness.
>
> A few yards away, a Bogota policeman captured the killer, an obscure
> character named Juan Roa Sierra, and pulled him into a drugstore. As
> historian Herbert Braun recounts, an angry crowd gathered as the officer
> pleaded with Roa Sierra: "Tell me who ordered you to kill, for you are going
> to be lynched."
>
> Roa Sierra answered only that there were "powerful things" he couldn't
> reveal. "Virgin of Carmen, save me!" he cried before the crowd broke into
> the store, pummeled him to death and dragged his body down busy Carrera
> Siptima.
>
> It's widely assumed Roa Sierra was working for interests dismayed by the
> rise of Gaitan's movement, a left-leaning current of the Liberal Party. But
> authorities never revealed or arrested the assassination's intellectual
> authors.
>
> Such impunity is a prominent theme of Colombian history over the last half
> century. And it's reflected in Gabriel Garcma Marquez's "One Hundred Years
> of Solitude," the 1967 novel that earned him a Nobel Prize in literature.
> All 17 sons of Col. Aureliano Buendma, the book's symbol of popular
> rebellion, were mercilessly slaughtered, the last one gunned down by
> government-linked forces that "had tracked him like bloodhounds across half
> the world."
>
> Almost six decades after Gaitan's murder, political violence and impunity
> still reign. As in Gaitan's day, the targets are seen as threats to a social
> system dominated by what he identified as the nation's "oligarchy."
>
> Today, however, there's less mystery about who's ordering the hits. Human
> rights groups have documented that most of Colombia's political murders are
> carried out by paramilitary groups aligned with government forces.
>
> The mystery, rather, is why this alliance doesn't seem to bother most U.S.
> Congress members, even with a former general threatening to blow the
> whistle.
>
> ) 2004 Colombia Week. W. John Green is a senior research fellow at the
> Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, D.C., a Colombia country
> specialist for Amnesty International USA, and author of "Gaitanismo, Left
> Liberalism, and Popular Mobilization in Colombia" (University of Florida,
> 2003). Find previous installments of "Context," his biweekly Colombia Week
> column, at
www.colombiaweek.org/series.html#labor. Link to this one at
>
www.colombiaweek.org/20040412.html#labor.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (6) SEVEN DAYS: The week in review
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> MONDAY, APRIL 5: Colombia got the better of Argentina and Brazil in trade
> negotiations, Colombia's trade minister says (Reuters, 4/5/04). Colombia has
> awarded a $350 million natural-gas contract to a consortium led by
> London-based BP (Business News Americas, 4/5/04). The Senate peace
> commission's president proposes new requirements for paramilitary amnesty
> (El Tiempo, 4/5/04). The European Union classifies Colombia's second largest
> guerrilla group as "terrorist" (El Tiempo, 4/5/04).
>
> TUESDAY, APRIL 6: President Alvaro Uribe Vilez's administration unveils
> legislation that would make it easier for the government and guerrillas to
> exchange prisoners and that scraps some points of a controversial plan to
> grant disarmed illegal combatants "alternative sentences" for their crimes
> (see TOP STORY above). An administration spokesperson denies a Financial
> Times report that Colombia is considering sending hundreds of troops to Iraq
> (see BRIEFS above). The Uribe administration prepares to negotiate budget
> reforms with an International Monetary Fund team (El Tiempo, 4/6/04).
> Paramilitaries are winning a turf war against guerrillas in poor Bogota
> neighborhoods, the government's human rights ombudsperson says (Cambio,
> 4/6/04). An oil installation bombing Sunday in the northeastern province of
> Arauca reveals guerrilla infiltration of the national oil company, army
> officials say (El Tiempo, 4/6/04).
>
> WEDNESDAY, APRIL 7: More than 300 of the world's rarest creatures, including
> yellow-eared parrots in Colombia, are completely unprotected, scientists say
> (Reuters, 4/7/04). Colombia's attorney general says FBI agents gave
> lie-detector tests to his employees and 20 percent failed (El Tiempo,
> 4/7/04).
>
> THURSDAY, APRIL 8: Israel's defense ministry is investigating how
> helicopters the United States gave Israel ended up for sale in Colombia
> (Haaretz Daily, 4/8/04). The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees is opening
> a Panama office (El Colombiano, 4/8/04).
>
> FRIDAY, APRIL 9: An Easter message from Colombia's Roman Catholic bishops
> calls for a prisoner exchange between the government and guerrillas and for
> an end to social inequality (El Tiempo, 4/9/04). Investigations into an army
> platoon's March 19 massacre of police agents and informants have yielded
> conflicting stories, putting the defense minister's job in jeopardy
> (Associated Press, 4/9/04).
>
> SATURDAY, APRIL 10: Army soldiers in the western province of Tolima
> "accidentally" kill five civilians, including four children (El Tiempo,
> 4/11/04). Families of 12 provincial lawmakers held by the country's largest
> guerrilla group march in the southwestern city of Cali on the kidnapping's
> second anniversary (El Tiempo, 4/11/04).
>
> SUNDAY, APRIL 11: Amazonian indigenous people oppose a base that the army is
> building on their territory (Semana, 4/12/04).
>
> ) 2004 Colombia Week. Compiled by Phillip Cryan and Chip Mitchell.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (7) FROM THE EDITORS
> -------------------------------------------------
>
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>
> -------------------------------------------------
> (8) THE LAST WORD: 'They're trying not to go to extremes'
> -------------------------------------------------
>
> President Alvaro Uribe Vilez's administration on April 6 released a draft of
> legislation that would reward illegal combatants who lay down their weapons
> by reducing their jail sentences, even for crimes against humanity (see TOP
> STORY above). The legislation does not specify whether offenders would be
> sent to ordinary prisons and mentions only "detention centers." In an April
> 7 report, the Bogota daily El Tiempo quoted Sens. Darmo Martmnez and Rafael
> Pardo describing the centers:
>
> MARTINEZ: I heard President Alvaro Uribe say, when he explained the project,
> that they won't be in La Modelo or in La Picota [maximum-security prisons],
> but rather in an open jail that could be an agricultural colony or somewhere
> outside the country.
>
> PARDO: The government told us there wouldn't be house detention or
> imprisonment in those maximum security places that exist right now. They're
> trying not to go to those extremes.
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> Colombia Week publishes this bulletin on Mondays and provides daily updates
> at
www.colombiaweek.org. Editors: Marjorie Childress, Chip Mitchell, Julia
> Olmstead and Suzanne Wilson. Contributors: Sandra Alvarez, Yolanda Alvarez
> Sanchez (Culture), Phillip Cryan (Media), W. John Green (Context), Stacey
> Hunt, Anne Holzman, Gregory Kipling, Thomas Kolar, Cynthia Mellon, Riley
> Merline, Annalise Romoser, Jana Silverman (Labor), Jim Trutor (Foreigners)
> and Lucma Vasquez Celis (First Nations). Copyright 2004 Colombia Week. To
> seek republication permission, to respond with a correction or a letter for
> publication, or to propose any content, write to
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