Kudos to Pacific New Service for picking up our recent commentary on the coordinated propaganda blitz against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Readers of WW4 REPORT are aware that within a week of each other, Otto Reich called in a National Review… Read moreJINSA, National Review in anti-Chavez blitz
by Weekly News Update on the Americas
SOLDIERS KILL MORE CIVILIANS
On March 27, relatives found the bodies of Colombian campesinos Javier Alexander Cubillos, Wilder Cubillos and Heriberto Delgado at the morgue in Fusagasuga, Cundinamarca department. The army had apparently taken their bodies there, claiming they were guerrillas killed in combat. The three men were Communist Party activists from the community of San Juan de Sumapaz, in the federal district of Bogota, just north of Fusagasuga. They had been missing since March 18, when they went to the community of La Hoya del Nevado to inspect some of their family’s livestock. Several days later, the media published reports that three guerrillas had been killed in combat in the area. The Neighborhood Association of San Juan de Sumapaz and the Union of Agricultural Workers insist that the three men were not guerrillas and did not die in combat, but were murdered by the Colombian army. (Red de Defensores no Institucionalizados, March 30)
A coalition of community groups and trade unions in the region released a public statement saying that the three men were well-known political and campesino activists in the region who were leading members of both their trade union, the National United Agricultural Union Federation (FENSUAGRO), and the local branch of the Colombian Communist Party. Messages of protest can be sent to Vice President Francisco Santos at fsantos@presidencia.gov.co; Defense Minister Jorge Alberto Uribe at siden@mindefensa.gov.co, infprotocol@mindefensa.gov.co; and Carlos Franco, head of the president’s human rights program, at cefranco@presidencia.gov.co. (Justice for Colombia, UK, March 30)
FENSUAGRO’s secretary of organization, Luz Perly Cordoba, was released on March 16 after spending more than a year in prison in Bogota. Cordoba, also president of the Campesino Association of Arauca (ACA), was arrested on Feb. 18, 2004, along with another ACA leader, Juan Gutierrez Ardila. Both are now out on bail; they are still facing charges for "rebellion," and their trial has been transferred to Arauca. A "drug trafficking" charge against Cordoba–for her outspoken opposition to the government’s policy of aerial spraying of herbicides on farmland–has been dropped. (Prensa Rural, Feb. 18, March 19; Movimiento Social de Catalunya y Valencia, Feb. 1, via Colombia Indymedia)
For more on Luz Perly Cordoba, see WW4 REPORT #97
U.S. SOLDIERS IN DRUG BUST
Five US Army soldiers were detained on March 29 for allegedly using a US military plane to smuggle 35 pounds of cocaine from Colombia into the US, the US Southern Command announced on March 31. The soldiers’ identities, hometowns and duties in Colombia were not released. Air Force Lt. Col. Eduardo Villavicencio, a spokesperson for the Southern Command, would not say whether the five had been officially charged or whether they are officers or enlisted personnel. The soldiers had been under surveillance by US and Colombian investigators for "some time," a Colombian defense ministry spokesperson told the Miami Herald. Officials waited for the soldiers to attempt to enter the US with the drugs before arresting them. The US has 500 soldiers in Colombia as part of a multibillion-dollar "anti-drug" and counterinsurgency effort. Many of these soldiers are Special Forces personnel who train Colombian military personnel in anti-narcotics operations. (Miami Herald, April 1)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, April 3
Weekly News Update on the Americas
See also WW4 REPORT #107
——————-
Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: PEASANT ACTIVISTS ASSASSINATED, U.S. TROOPS BUSTEDby Bill Weinberg
"Oilmen are like cats; you can never tell from the sound of them whether they are fighting or making love."
–Calouste Gulbenkian
The famous Armenian entrepreneur spoke these words when reflecting on the post-World War I carve-up of oil rights in Iraq and the Persian Gulf at the 1928 summit of top world oil companies and Western governments at Ostend, Belgium. Now, with the world’s eyes on Iraq, a similar carve-up may be underway in South America’s Orinoco Basin and La Guajira, which together hold the planet’s greatest proven reserves outside the Persian Gulf. These adjacent oil-rich regions are both dissected by the border between Colombia, Washington’s closest ally on the hemisphere’s southern continent, and Venezuela–ruled by a left-populist government sharply at odds with the White House.
One man who would do well to heed Gulbenkian’s warning is Venezuela’s charismatic President Hugo Chavez, who has just entered an agreement with ChevronTexaco for a natural gas project that will span the Colombian border. Not only may the project cost Chavez the support of the indigenous peoples who inhabit the region, but Colombian trade unionists warn that U.S. oil companies operating in the Orinoco are deeply complicit in a plan by Washington and Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe to prepare aggression against Venezuela across this militarized border.
Oil Field Becomes Military Base
The Colombian department of Arauca, heartland of that country’s oil industry, is one the most violent. It lies just across the Rio Arauca, an Orinoco tributary, from Venezuela’s own Orinoco Basin oil heartland of Apure-Barinas states.
The latest in a wave of recent massacres in Arauca came on March 6, when a group of local peasants were stopped at a roadblock set up by the 10th Front of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) near Cososito village in Tame municipality. An army detachment arrived in an armored vehicle, and immediately opened fire, killing three civilians on the spot. Among the dead was a member of the local Guahibo indigenous people; and a child of six was among the injured, according to an account by the Bogota human rights group Humanidad Vigente. (A month later, the 10th Front boasted in a press release it had wiped out a detachment of 17 government troops in ambush near Tame in retaliation for the attack.)
The main oil field in Arauca is at Cano-Limon, run by California-based Occidental Petroleum in a joint partnership with the Colombia state company Ecopetrol. Many of the 800 U.S. military advisors in Colombia are assigned to Arauca, and since last year they have been overseeing a new Colombian army unit specially created to police Cano-Limon against guerilla attack. This project, which Occidental lobbied for heavily, marks a departure from the erstwhile U.S. policy of only assisting ostensible narcotics enforcement operations in Colombia. As the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) noted in a report last October: "In early 2003, US personnel embarked on their first major non-drug initiative, a plan to help Colombia’s army protect an oil pipeline and re-take territory in the conflictive department of Arauca, near the Venezuelan border." Over this same period, Humanidad Vigente has reported a huge upsurge in paramilitary activity in Arauca.
Now, a leader of Colombia’s oil workers union claims that the U.S. military is actually transforming Cano-Limon into a base intended for launching attacks against Venezuela. Oscar Canas Fajardo, advisor to Colombia’s Central Workers Union, or CUT, speaking with Venezuelan journalist Alfredo Carquez Saavedra of Quantum magazine in November, said: "There is a military build-up going on in Cano-Limon with the excuse of protecting the oil pipelines against constant sabotage explosions… They are transforming the Cano-Limon facilities into a small military fort." He claims U.S. advisors and military surveillance planes are now based at the oil field. Noting proximity to the border and recent reports of Colombian paramilitary attacks on the Venezuelan side of the line, he asks rhetorically, "Who is to guarantee that all this [is] not being used against Venezuela?
Axis of Propaganda
U.S. training of Colombian military personnel is rapidly escalating. According to the WOLA report, the U.S. trained 12,947 Colombian troops in 2003–more than the total 12,930 for all Latin America in 1999. (The total for Latin America in ’03 was 22,855.) And Washington is launching a major propaganda push against Venezuela at the moment.
A March statement from the well-connected Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), "South America–the Next Swamp?," warns that even as the U.S. is "draining the swamp" in Afghanistan, "ideological killers are regrouping with the aid of leftist governments and drug lords" in the western hemisphere. The principal "leftist government" in question is, of course, that of Hugo Chavez.
Writes JINSA: "A British newspaper reports that the IRA is conducting mortar training in the Venezuelan jungle for the Marxist Colombian FARC. Photographs show the jungle training camp of three IRA terrorists who fled Colombia where they had been sentenced to 17 years in jail for terrorist training… The Chavez government in Venezuela has pursued close relations with Fidel Castro… Chavez has ordered MIG-29s from Russia and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. Who are they planning to shoot? Or to whom are they going to give them?"
JINSA was, of course, a top advocate and architect for Washington’s Iraq adventure. One prominent JINSA advisor is Richard Perle, head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board at the time of the Iraq invasion. Former JINSA advisory board members include Pentagon policy advisor Douglas Feith and current nominee for ambassador to the UN, John Bolton.
The British newspaper account JINSA cites is from the London Sunday Times of March 13. It concerns three accused Irish Republican Army militants who jumped bail and disappeared following their conviction in Colombia last year on charges of providing the FARC with mortar training. The story cited Colombian government claims of satellite data indicating the three have established a training camp on Venezuelan territory in the Sierra de Perija, a branch of the Andes whose divide forms the international border heading north from Arauca.
Another salvo comes from Otto Reich, until December 2002 Bush’s assistant secretary of state for hemispheric affairs and subsequently a member of the National Security Council staff. Reich has the cover story in the April 11 edition of National Review, entitled "THE AXIS OF EVIL… Western Hemisphere Version"–sporting a photo of Chavez with Fidel Castro, both in fashionable military fatigues.
Writes Reich: "The first task of the U.S., and whatever coalition of the willing it can muster in the region, is to confront the dangerous alliance posed by Cuba and Venezuela." He does not fail to link this Latin Axis of Evil to the traditional Eurasian one, noting Chavez’ pledge to Iranian President Mohammed Khatami to cut off oil to the U.S. in the event of military aggression against Tehran. He also blasts "Chavez’s misappropriation of Venezuela’s extraordinary oil wealth"–by which he presumably means the diversion of profits into literacy campaigns and other programs to improve the lot of Venezeula’s poor.
Miami-Bogota: The Real "Axis of Evil"?
2005 began with a dramatic deterioration in Colombia-Venezuela relations following the Colombian government’s admission that it sent bounty-hunters to abduct FARC representative Rodrigo Granda Escobar in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, on Dec. 13. The incident prompted a cut-off in trade and diplomatic ties between the two nations. On Jan. 23, tens of thousands of Chavez supporters marched in Caracas to protest the violation of Venezuela’s sovereignty. Some carried banners reading "Bush: Venezuela is Not Iraq!" Speaking that same day, Chavez accused the U.S. of being behind the affair: "This provocation came from Washington, it is the latest attempt by the imperialists…to ruin our relations with Colombia." U.S. Ambassador to Colombia William Wood stated that the U.S. was "100% behind Colombia," and State Department spokesmen began accusing Venezuela of providing a safe-haven for Colombian guerillas. Chavez, in turn, accused Washington of trying to foment war between Venezuela and Colombia, and even plotting to assassinate him.
The situation de-escalated in mid-February, when, following the mediation of Brazil, Peru, Cuba and Spain, both sides agreed to restore full relations and cooperate on border security. But given the profusion of armed groups in the border zone, there is much potential for re-escalation. Last September, unidentified gunmen ambushed a commission from the Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA working on a surveying project in Apure state near the Colombian border, killing a company engineer and six soldiers–one grim instance of Colombia’s endemic violence spilling across the frontier into Venezuela’s oil zone.
Another came in late March when the Ezequiel Zamora National Campesino Front (FNCEZ), a civil peasant organization in Barinas state, reported that one of their activists had been hacked to death by the hired thugs of a local landowner, who they had denounced for disguising his idle lands through bureaucratic means to prevent their being expropriated under Venezuela’s agrarian reform law. FNCEZ accused the landowner of maintaining a private army of some 20 men, with links to Colombian paramilitaries.
And last May, more than 50 men said to be Colombia paramilitaries were arrested at an estate outside Caracas, on charges of planning a coup to remove Chavez in league with opposition businessmen and military officers. Chavez also directly implicated the U.S. "Miami and Colombia are two points of an axis…where the invasion of Venezuela has been planned, trained and prepared," proclaimed Chavez, pointing to the "criminal hand of a group of evildoers."
Strategic Sierra
Despite these tensions, Chavez is inviting new multinational investment for the oil zone–and even an ambitious trans-border project with Colombia. In August 2001, Texaco, PDVSA and Ecopetrol signed a memorandum of understanding for a feasibility study on a new pipeline linking natural gas fields of La Guajira, on Colombia’s Caribbean coast, to Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela’s main export terminal.
In May 2003, PDVSA announced new oil finds of up to 2.4 billion barrels in the Orinoco Basin, and sought foreign partners to develop the fields. Texaco–which merged with Chevron to form ChevronTexaco in 2001–immediately proposed building another pipeline to pump the crude to the coast. Just days ago, on April 1, 2005, ChevronTexaco and the Spanish firm Repsol-YPF announced that they would be jointly investing $6 billion in the new oil field.
But oil companies definitely have a sweeter deal on the Colombian side of the border, where Uribe is moving to free the industry from public oversight. Chavez, in contrast, has boosted royalties private companies must pay the Venezuelan government to fund his ambitious social programs.
The new pipeline connecting ChevronTexaco’s gas fields in the Colombian department of La Guajira to Venezuela’s Lake Maracaibo would have to cross the Sierra de Perija, where Uribe and JINSA now claim a FARC-IRA training camp is operating. La Guajira itself is among Colombia’s most violent regions, with a string of assassinations of indigenous leaders by presumed paramilitary forces reported already this year. The new pipeline may carry war and human rights abuses to Venezuela as well as gas.
On April 4, hundreds of representatives of the Bari, Yukpa and Wayuu indigenous peoples from the Venezuelan side of the Sierra de Perija, clad in traditional dress and wielding bows and arrows, marched in Caracas to demand a halt to coal mining operations near their traditional lands.
"We want to tell companero President Hugo Chavez that he can’t continue granting land concessions in the Sierra and in Guajira without consulting us first, as required by the constitution," said Wayuu community leader Angela González.
The indigenous protestors made clear they supported Chavez, who instated guarantees of indigenous autonomy in his new constitution in 1999. Many wore red berets, symbol of the ruling Fifth Republic Movement. "Companero Chavez, support our cause," read one sign, according to an Inter-Press Service account.
ChevronTexaco and Shell are among a handful of foreign firms operating coal mines in the Sierra in joint ventures with the Venezuelan state company Carbozulia. The coal is currently transported by truck to Maracaibo, the port and regional capital, but there are plans to construct a rail line for this purpose, as well to build a deep sea port in the Gulf of Venezuela, just to Maracaibo’s north. The new gas pipeline would be another artery through this same conflicted border zone.
The deep sea port project is part of a continental scheme known as the Initiative for South American Regional Infrastructure Integration (IIRSA), being promoted by the Inter-American Development Bank. Lusbi Portillo of Homo et Natura, a Venezuelan environmental group that supported the indigenous protesters, told Inter-Press Service, "We are opposed to these mining-port projects that form part of the IIRSA, which will serve to take our energy, mining, forestry and biodiversity resources to Europe and the United States."
Hugo Chavez is in a difficult position. He needs more oil and gas revenues to fund the populist social programs which guarantee his support among the peasants and urban poor. But cooperation with the multinational industrial agenda for the bloody border zone may cost him his support among indigenous peoples. Worse still, by welcoming oil companies which appear to be cooperating in a destabilization drive, he could be making a noose for his own neck.
——
RESOURCES:
Initiative for the Integration of Regional Infrastructure in South America
(IIRSA)
South America–The Next Swamp?, JINSA, March 2005
"Satellite reveals hideout deep in jungle used by IRA fugitives"
Sunday Times, London, March 13
"Venezuela: Whose Side is the Oil Cartel On?"
WW4 REPORT #102, September 2004
"Chavez: Miami-Bogota ‘Axis of Evil’ Plots Venezuela Invasion"
WW4 REPORT #99, June 2004
On Otto Reich and Venezuela destabilization, see:
WW4 REPORT #30
——————-
Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 10, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
President Uribe Threatens San Jose de Apartado Following Massacre
by Virginia McGlone
After eight years of existence, the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado in Antioquia, Colombia, continues to stand strong in the midst of a war that they do not want to be part of. But in the wake of the Feb. 21 massacre of community leader Luis Eduardo Guerra together with his eleven-year-old son and six close friends and relatives, the community faces the gravest crisis of its history.
Guerra and his comrades were massacred on their way to his cocoa grove, near Mulatos, one of the outlying settlements that dot the hills around San Jose de Apartado. An outspoken leader of the community who had traveled to participate in international human rights forums, Guerra had been receiving death threats for a year. In December, he was detained at a local army checkpoint and briefly interrogated by troops of the 11th Brigade. In August, his wife and young daughter were killed by a grenade left behind by the Army’s 11th Brigade following a battle with guerillas in their settlement of La Union. Over the summer, two local campesinos at San Jose, Leonel Sánchez Ospina and Joaquin RodrĂguez David, were assassinated by paramilitary gunmen who operate on village lands with the connivance of the army.
For months before the massacre, campesinos traveling from San Jose Peace Community settlements towards Apartado, the municipal seat some 20 kilometers away, were routinely harassed by soldiers, held at roadblocks and interrogated about their supposed support of the FARC guerillas. After denying any knowledge, they were accused of covering for the guerrillas, then sent back with a warning to the rest of the Peace Community threatening reprisals for guerilla collaboration.
In the days following the massacre, San Jose’s settlements of Bella Vista, Alto Bonito and Buenos Aries came under indiscriminate machine-gun fire and bombardment by military helicopters, forcing some 200 campesinos to abandon their homes and groves.
Things have only deteriorated since then. An April 1 statement from the Peace Community reported a "massive displacement" of residents from various settlements as well as San Jose’s central village towards the hamlet of La Holandita, where a refugee camp has been established. The mass flight, both from sporadic aerial bombardments and the military occupation of the villages, has prompted the attention of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which has sent a team to San Jose.
The Peace Community had planned to celebrate its eighth year on March 22 by officially declaring seven of the settlements as Peace Zones, and demanding recognition by the government, paramilitaries and guerillas alike as communities of conscientious objection. Instead, they are alerting international human rights organizations of the dire emergency they face. The community’s March 22 statement said that the government has made clear its "plans to do away with the Peace Community."
On March 15, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, meeting in Costa Rica, issued an urgent statement calling upon the Colombian government to comply with earlier orders to assure the safety of San Jose de Apartado’s communities.
Colombian President Alvaro Uribe’s response was to accuse the Peace Community of collaborating with guerrilla forces. In a speech delivered March 20, following a meeting of his Security Council in Carepa, Antioquia, Uribe said: "The peace communities have the right to establish themselves in Colombia thanks to our regime of liberties. But they cannot, as is practiced in San Jose de Apartado, obstruct justice, reject the Public Force… In this community of San Jose de Apartado there are good people, but some of their leaders, sponsors and defenders are seriously signaled by people who reside there as auxiliaries of the FARC, and they want to use the community to protect this terrorist organization."
Rights groups protest that Uribe’s statement puts the community of San Jose at risk of another massacre by the army or paramilitaries. Uribe also criticized Peace Community members for their unwillingness to collaborate with the military investigation into the massacre. Peace Community leaders counter that they have every reason to mistrust the military. They point to the experience in 2000, when a similar massacre occurred at the settlement of La Union; when residents testified to authorities about the involvement of the military, many were threatened and some others were assassinated.
The Peace Community maintains that the government is working in bad faith as long as their village and settlements remain under military occupation. The community’s March 22 statement cited the Colombian constitution’s guarantee to self-determination and international law in support of their right to non-involvement in the war.
Meanwhile, human rights organizations within Colombia and around the world are waiting for Uribe to issue a formal reply to the demands of the Inter-American Court for Human Rights. Stateside peace groups which support the community, such as the Fellowship of Reconciliation, are struggling to give a public voice to San Jose de Apartado as the world’s attention is elsewhere.
RESOURCES:
Fellowship of Reconciliation on the San Jose massacre
See also WW4 REPORT #107
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, April 10, 2005 Reprinting permissible with attribution
http://WW4Report.com
Continue ReadingCOLOMBIA: PEACE COMMUNITY UNDER OCCUPATIONDisgraced former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori—now hiding from corruption charges in Japan, and officially barred from seeking office until 2010—hopes to run for president again in 2006, and is promoting his campaign with a new soft-drink, Fuji-Cola, a fizzy product… Read moreGenocide goes better with Fuji-Cola
Peasant Pacifist Leader and Family Killed by Army at San Jose de Apartado
by Virginia McGlone
Less than a month away from the eighth anniversary of the founding of the
Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, in Colombia’s violence-torn
Antioquia department, a campaign of intimidation by the Colombian army in
collaboration with paramilitary forces has left several dead at the
village. The community had planned on using the occasion of the March 23
anniversary to officially declare seven more of its outlying settlements as
Peace Zones, or areas of non-cooperation in the war.
In late February, troops began mobilizing to San Jose de Apartado’s
outlying settlements, especially Mulatos; several members of these
communities have been detained and interrogated. The communities of Buena
Vista, Alto Bonito and Buenos Aires have come under indiscriminate
bombardment by helicopter, displacing some 200 peasants. Finally, one the
founders and leaders of the Peace Community has been massacred together
with his family and close friends.
Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, was murdered on Feb. 21 by what area witness
testimony confirms to have been an operative of the 11th Brigade of the
Colombian army. Luis Eduardo’s remains were found together with those of
his son Deiner Andres Guerra Tuberquia, 11, and his companion Beyanira
Areiza Guzman, 17. The bodies were found naked and partly mutilated, with
signs of torture and beatings; Deiner’s head was found several meters from
his body. They were apparently detained while working their cocoa fields
near Mulatos, and taken to the nearby settlement of La Resbalosa, where
they were slain and left in a shallow grave.
Members of the community of Mulatos searching for Guerra also found the
bodies of Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia, 30, close friend of Guerra and member
of the Peace Community council in Mulatos; his wife Sandra Milena Munoz
Pozo, 24; and their children Santiago Tuberquia Munoz, 2, and Natalia
Andrea Tuberquia Munoz, 6. This family was also found with signs of torture
and partly mutilated.
The process of corroborating these events was a slow one due to negligence
on the part of the national prosecutor’s office (Fiscalia) commission that
was sent to investigate the matter. After receiving the information from
the Peace Community counsel, it took until Feb. 26 for the bodies to be
officially processed, and another two days before they were returned to
their relatives.
The world peace and human rights community have hailed San Jose de Apartado
as a key player in the process towards peace in a country that has known
almost half a century of war. In recent years, rights observers stationed
at the village from Peace Brigades International and Fellowship of
Reconciliation have helped restrain armed attacks on the community. The new
killings represent a significant escalation.
The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado is demanding that the
government punish those responsible for the massacre of Luis Eduardo
Guerra, his family and his friends, and all human rights violations that
have taken place in the area over the last eight years.
The Peace Community is also demanding that their initiative to declare
themselves conscientious objectors as a whole community-a stance they call
"active neutrality"-be respected as a constitutional right.
Luis Eduardo Guerra was a primary voice of these demands and initiatives,
having been appointed by his community as interlocutor with the state and
the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which recently issued orders to
the Colombian government to protect residents and leaders of the Peace
Community.
Guerra had taken his community’s message to NGOs and forums in countries
like Germany, Spain, Italy and the United States, but always kept the focus
on the struggle in his jungle village. As he told one international
conference at the Social Forum of the Americas, in Quito in July 2004:
"Why so many meetings and events, if we are getting murdered, gentleman?
Why expensive hotels, NGO experts and so many intellectuals-all of this for
what, if what we urgently need is that you to helps to not die."
—
RESOURCES:
Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado:
http://www.cdpsanjose.org
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Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March. 7, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
by Weekly News Update on the Americas
COCALEROS BLOCK ROADS
On Feb. 17, campesino coca growers (cocaleros) in the Peruvian district of
Tocache, in the Huallaga valley in San Martin region, began an open-ended
strike to protest the recent aerial spraying of pesticides by the Peruvian
National Police (PNP) over coca fields and other crops. Both the Interior
Ministry and the government’s anti-drug office denied they had conducted
any such spraying as part of recent anti-drug operations in the zone. The
strike was called by the Committee of Struggle in Defense of the
Environment and Ecology of Tocache, which said numerous local residents,
especially children, were suffering health effects from the spraying. Some
6,000 campesinos blockaded the Federico Basadre highway between Puerto
Pizana and Tocache, halting all cargo and passenger transport, and staged
demonstrations in the town center of Tocache. Tocache residents are
demanding that the government send a high-level commission to verify the
effects of the spraying. (La Republica, Lima, Feb. 22, 23; Prensa Latina,
Feb. 24)
Tocache mayor Pedro Bogarin told Agence France Presse that the province is
against drug trafficking and supports police anti-drug actions, but rejects
that "for a desperate action they are using internationally condemned
methods such as [aerial] fumigation." According to Bogarin, "There are at
least 30 people affected, including a little girl, with digestive poisoning
because a white milky substance was dropped over the zone, especially in
the village of Pisana." Bogarin said he has a video proving the
allegations. (AFP, Feb. 21)
On Feb. 23 and 24, the National Confederation of Agricultural Producers of
the Cocalero Basins of Peru (CONPACCP) supported Tocache residents in
protesting the spraying with a 48-hour strike in neighboring Ucayali and
Huanuco regions. Businesses and public offices were closed in Aguaytia, and
in Tingo Maria bus and truck transport was affected. Campesinos marched on
Feb. 24 in the town centers of Tingo Maria and Aguaytia to protest the
fumigation, which they said had affected other crops besides coca. (LR,
Feb. 24, 25)
On Feb. 24, agricultural and other grassroots organizations met in Tocache
and reportedly agreed to lift the strike. The decision came as the police
and Tocache mayor’s office threatened to use force to unblock the roads if
necessary. (LR, Feb. 25)
Meanwhile, one campesino died and two were injured as a result of a
confrontation with stranded passengers at a roadblock in Asillo district,
Puno region, in southern Peru. Asillo residents have been on strike since
Feb. 17, demanding the resignation of mayor Antolin Huaricacha, who they
say embezzled municipal funds. (LR, Feb. 23)
REBELS KILL THREE POLICE
On Feb. 20, a presumed column of the Maoist rebel group known as Sendero
Luminoso (Shining Path, or SL) attacked a unit of the Peruvian highway
police just outside Tingo Maria (Huanuco region) on a stretch of the
Federico Basadre highway linking Tingo Maria to Pucallpa (Ucayali region)
in Peru’s central forest region. According to press reports, the group of
20 rebels killed three officers, took their weapons and burned their Land
Cruiser police vehicle. Before leaving the scene, the attackers reportedly
painted a hammer and sickle on the asphalt and left a red flag marked with
the initials SL. They also apparently left a sign reading "We demand a
political solution to the problems derived from the people’s war," a slogan
used by SL members in Peru’s jails. Police in Tingo Maria say the attack
was carried out by a Sendero Luminoso column made up of followers of
"Artemio," head of the SL’s Regional Committee of Huallaga, and was led by
Artemio’s lieutenant, Hector Aponte Sinarahua, alias "Clay." An SL column
under Artemio’s command was blamed for two similar attacks last June in
Aguaytia, Ucayali, in which a Navy officer and two police agents were
killed. (La Republica, Lima; AFP, Feb. 21)
Other reports suggest that traffickers of illegal lumber, contraband
gasoline or drugs might be responsible for the Feb. 20 attack. Interior
Minister Felix Murazzo told the Lima daily La Republica that he believes
the attack was carried out by the SL in response to anti-drug operations in
the Huallaga valley in recent days, in which the Peruvian National Police
(PNP) destroyed 29 coca leaf maceration pits (where the leaves are crushed
into coca paste, the main ingredient in cocaine). According to Murazzo, the
SL is linked to drug trafficking and sought to pressure area residents to
observe a strike called by cocaleros for Feb. 23 and 24. Murazzo said a
link between the SL column and gasoline trafficking gangs had not been
ruled out; he admitted that it is still not clear who carried out the
attack. Elsa Malpartida, secretary of organization for the National
Confederation of Agricultural Producers of the Cocalero Basins of Peru
(CONPACCP), denied that cocaleros had anything to do with the attack.
Initial rumors suggested that the police agents who were killed were taking
bribes from illegal gasoline traffickers, and that the attack was a
settling of accounts. Murazzo said there would be an investigation into
whether any police agents are involved in the profitable contraband
gasoline trade. Gasoline is sold tax-free in Pucallpa, making it 60%
cheaper than in the rest of the country, and its sale is officially
restricted. (LR, Feb. 22)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 27
CAMPESINOS DEMAND MINE CLEANUP
On Feb. 1, a group of ronderos–organized campesinos–seized the San
Nicolas mine in Hualgayoc province, in the northern Peruvian department of
Cajamarca, to demand the decontamination of the Tingo-Maygasbamba river,
which supplies drinking water to some 12,000 local residents. The
occupation began after authorities from the Energy and Mines Ministry
finished an inspection of the decontamination efforts being carried out by
the owner, who is in the process of shutting down the mine. The ronderos,
who had requested the government inspection, waited until authorities left
and then took about 15 of the mining camp’s workers and security guards
hostage and blocked all entrances to the mine, allowing only water and food
to be brought in for the hostages. At a meeting with provincial and
departmental authorities on Feb. 2, the ronderos gave the government 72
hours to force the mining companies to make good on their promise to clean
up the river.
Last Oct. 11, representatives of the San Nicolas, Goldfield, Corona,
Coimolache and Colquirrumi gold mines had promised regional authorities and
the ronderos that in 30 days they would begin the cleanup of the Tingo
river and would build water purification plants. None of the mining
companies have done so to date. Local residents have been complaining about
the mining pollution for 40 years, but the problem worsened over the past
decade as the river water turned thick and yellowish from chemicals dumped
by the mining companies. Many local residents suffer from gastritis,
allergies and skin diseases. Regional mining director Genaro Carrion
admitted that the Tingo river is severely contaminated and that the San
Nicolas mine has proven the worst polluter. (LR, Feb. 2, 3) Energy and
Mines Ministry adviser Felipe Qea confirmed that San Nicolas was fined five
times since 2000 for failing to comply with the terms of a closing plan and
an environmental management program, among other issues. Qea said the
Mining Council always managed to find legal loopholes to suspend the
sanctions.
The ronderos ended the occupation of the San Nicolas mine on Feb. 5 after
reaching an agreement with a high-level commission of the Energy and Mines
Ministry. Under the terms of the agreement, the ronderos will have direct
control, through their representative organizations, of cleanup
enforcement, starting with a Feb. 22 meeting with the 12 mining companies
that operate in Hualgayoc province. At the meeting, the ronderos and the
mining companies will establish a timetable for the companies to clean up
the Tingo-Maygasbamba river. The ronderos will also inspect the San Nicolas
mine on Feb. 23 to challenge company claims that the mine is not polluting.
(LR, Feb. 6)
RIGHTS VIOLATORS FREED
Peruvian judges have freed a number of people who have been jailed for more
than three years without a sentence, allegedly to comply with a
recommendation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. On Jan.
25, the Lima Superior Court’s Fifth Special Criminal Chamber ordered the
release of Col. Fernando Rodriguez Zalbabescoa and noncommissioned officer
Nelson Carbajal Garcia. Rodriguez is one of the founders of the
paramilitary Colina group, responsible for torturing and murdering
government opponents; Carbajal was an operative of the group. Julio Chuqui
Aguirre has also been freed; he is accused in the Colina group’s November
1991 massacre of 15 people at a family barbecue in the Barrios Altos
neighborhood of Lima, and in its June 1992 abduction and disappearance of
La Republica journalist Pedro Yauri. The Fifth Special Criminal Chamber
also ordered the release of Cesar Hector Alvarado Salinas, charged in the
Barrios Altos massacre. Due to be released in April are two more Colina
group members: Orlando Vera, charged in the Barrios Altos case; and
Guillermo Suppo, accused in the Barrios Altos case and in the La Cantuta
case, involving the abduction and murder of nine university students and a
professor from the Enrique Guzman y Valle (La Cantuta) university. Supreme
Court of Justice president Walter Vasquez Vejarano said an investigation is
under way into the judges who allowed trials to be delayed for so long.
(LR, Jan. 31, Feb. 2, 5)
In late December eight generals linked to former security advisor Vladimiro
Montesinos Torres were freed after the 36-month rule was upheld by the
Constitutional Court. The generals were Walter Chacon Malaga, Orlando
Montesinos, Carlos Indacochea, Abraham Cano Angulo, Ricardo Sotero Navarro,
Luis Delgado de la Paz, Luis Alberto Cubas Portal and Juan Yanqui
Cervantes. Brothers Luis and Jose Aybar Cancho, linked to an arms
trafficking scandal that brought arms from Jordan to the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), have also been freed. (LR, Feb. 6)
In other news, US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant Jose
Maria Aguilar Ruiz, nicknamed "Shushupe," was shot dead Feb. 1 in an
apparent contract killing in Peru’s Pucallpa prison. Aguilar was a key
witness in a drug trafficking trial against Vladimiro Montesinos. (LR, Feb.
2)
US activist Lori Berenson, serving a 20-year prison sentence in Peru on
terrorism charges for involvement in the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement
(MRTA), sent a letter to supporters in which she analyzes the Nov. 25
ruling by the Inter-American Human Rights Court (CIDH), upholding her
sentence. Berenson notes that shortly before the CIDH was to rule in her
case, the Peruvian press sparked a public outcry by implying that a CIDH
ruling in her favor could lead to the release of all Peru’s jailed rebels.
The 182 members of the nationalist "Etnocacerista" group who were arrested
for a Jan. 1-4 armed siege led by Antauro Humala Tasso in the southern
Peruvian town of Andahuaylas have been jailed and are facing trial for
rebellion, murder and illicit association to commit a crime. They will not
face terrorism charges. The siege left four police agents and two Humala
supporters dead; it also led to the Jan. 10 resignation of
Interior Minister Javier Reategui Rossello, who was replaced by national
police chief Felix Murazzo. (LR, Jan. 15; El Nuevo Herald, Jan. 11)
From Weekly News Update on the Americas, Feb. 6
(http://home.earthlink.net/~nicadlw/wnuhome.html)
RESOURCES:
Lori Berenson’s letter is online at:
http://www.freelori.org/herownwords/05jan_community.html
——————-
Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March. 7, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
Peasant Pacifist Leader and Family Killed by Army at San Jose de Apartado
by Virginia McGlone
Less than a month away from the eighth anniversary of the founding of the Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado, in Colombia’s violence-torn Antioquia department, a campaign of intimidation by the Colombian army in collaboration with paramilitary forces has left several dead at the village. The community had planned on using the occasion of the March 23 anniversary to officially declare seven more of its outlying settlements as Peace Zones, or areas of non-cooperation in the war.
In late February, troops began mobilizing to San Jose de Apartado’s outlying settlements, especially Mulatos; several members of these communities have been detained and interrogated. The communities of Buena Vista, Alto Bonito and Buenos Aires have come under indiscriminate bombardment by helicopter, displacing some 200 peasants. Finally, one the founders and leaders of the Peace Community has been massacred together with his family and close friends.
Luis Eduardo Guerra, 35, was murdered on Feb. 21 by what area witness testimony confirms to have been an operative of the 11th Brigade of the Colombian army. Luis Eduardo’s remains were found together with those of his son Deiner Andres Guerra Tuberquia, 11, and his companion Beyanira Areiza Guzman, 17. The bodies were found naked and partly mutilated, with signs of torture and beatings; Deiner’s head was found several meters from his body. They were apparently detained while working their cocoa fields near Mulatos, and taken to the nearby settlement of La Resbalosa, where they were slain and left in a shallow grave.
Members of the community of Mulatos searching for Guerra also found the bodies of Alfonso Bolivar Tuberquia, 30, close friend of Guerra and member of the Peace Community council in Mulatos; his wife Sandra Milena Munoz Pozo, 24; and their children Santiago Tuberquia Munoz, 2, and Natalia Andrea Tuberquia Munoz, 6. This family was also found with signs of torture and partly mutilated.
The process of corroborating these events was a slow one due to negligence on the part of the national prosecutor’s office (Fiscalia) commission that was sent to investigate the matter. After receiving the information from the Peace Community counsel, it took until Feb. 26 for the bodies to be officially processed, and another two days before they were returned to their relatives.
The world peace and human rights community have hailed San Jose de Apartado as a key player in the process towards peace in a country that has known almost half a century of war. In recent years, rights observers stationed at the village from Peace Brigades International and Fellowship of Reconciliation have helped restrain armed attacks on the community. The new killings represent a significant escalation.
The Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado is demanding that the government punish those responsible for the massacre of Luis Eduardo Guerra, his family and his friends, and all human rights violations that have taken place in the area over the last eight years.
The Peace Community is also demanding that their initiative to declare themselves conscientious objectors as a whole community-a stance they call "active neutrality"-be respected as a constitutional right.
Luis Eduardo Guerra was a primary voice of these demands and initiatives, having been appointed by his community as interlocutor with the state and the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which recently issued orders to the Colombian government to protect residents and leaders of the Peace Community.
Guerra had taken his community’s message to NGOs and forums in countries like Germany, Spain, Italy and the United States, but always kept the focus on the struggle in his jungle village. As he told one international conference at the Social Forum of the Americas, in Quito in July 2004:
"Why so many meetings and events, if we are getting murdered, gentleman? Why expensive hotels, NGO experts and so many intellectuals-all of this for what, if what we urgently need is that you to helps to not die."
—
RESOURCES:
Peace Community of San Jose de Apartado:
http://www.cdpsanjose.org
See also WW4 REPORT #92
——————-
Special to WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, March. 7, 2005
Reprinting permissible with attribution
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