Colombia

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Thu Dec 23, 2021 2:50 pm

UN Confirms 73 Killings of Human Rights Defenders in Colombia

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The sign reads, "Over 50 massacres and over 190 people murdered," Colombia, Dec. 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @PrensaRural

Published 22 December 2021

The highest number of murders by department was registered in the Cauca Valley, which was the epicenter of massive protests against President Ivan Duque.


On Tuesday, the United Nations Office for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed that at least 73 human rights defenders were murdered in Colombia in the first eleven months of 2021.

"The OHCHR analized 191 homicide complaints. Of these, it verified 73 cases, 35 cases are in the verification process, and 83 cases are inconclusive," the UN agency said.

The highest number of murders by department (31) was registered in the Cauca Valley, which was the epicenter of the massive protests against President Ivan Duque's economic policy.

Other departments where murders of human rights activists were verified were Antioquia (6), Cundinamarca (5), Norte de Santander (4), Choco (3), Santander (2), Arauca, Caldas, Caqueta, Cordoba, Huila, La Guajira , Meta, Putumayo, Risaralda, Nariño, and Tolima.


The figures on State terrorism and paramilitary violence, however, could be much higher. So far this year, the Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ) has registered 159 human rights defenders murdered and the Ombudsman's Office has counted 130 cases.

Previously, at the presentation of the report "Announced Deaths" on Dec. 7, the Jose Alvear Restrepo Lawyers Organization (CAJAR) and the "We Are Defenders" program denounced that the Colombian State was timely warned about the risks that human rights defenders faced.

"Despite this, the Duque administration, which has the responsibility of deploying institutional responses to tackle these risks, did not act diligently," outlet Rural Press stressed, recalling that 572 social leaders have were killed since the far-righ politician came to power in 2018.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/UN- ... -0002.html

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Colombia: Controversy Over Made-Up Version of Otoniel's Arrest

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For Otoniel, considered the biggest drug trafficker in Colombia, there were several rewards, including one from the United States that set five million dollars for his capture. | Photo: Twitter/@JGalloComunes

Published 22 December 2021

Dairo Antonio Usuga, alias Otoniel, head of the Gulf Clan, claims he turned himself in to authorities and was not captured.


The arrest of Dairo Antonio Úsuga David, alias Otoniel, head of the Clan del Golfo criminal organization, caused controversy in Colombia after the criminal acknowledged that he was not captured, as the government claimed, but instead turned himself into the authorities.

Otoniel's testimony demolishes the official version that the criminal leader was arrested after a highly precise intelligence operation, widely reported by local media.

Usuga assured the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) on Tuesday that he was aware of the operation against him and that he himself facilitated his capture by approaching a group of soldiers to present his surrender and that there was no confrontation of any kind.

At the time, the government described Otoniel's arrest as the most important in the country since the fall of drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.

As part of the Osiris operation, which Duque himself promoted as part of a strong media campaign, Usuga was arrested and a policeman was reported dead.

Usuga, who is in the process of extradition to the United States, told the JEP that he took off his shirt to show that he was unarmed and approached a group of uniformed men to protect his life and turn himself in.


"@IvanDuque y @Diego_Molano repeat the lie hoping that the electorate will believe their good management in security. They didn't capture him; he turned himself in and confessed. Don't lie to the country anymore, their management is lousy and the figures of displaced people, murdered leaders and massacres prove it."

Social networks abounded with comments that the alleged capture of the criminal was a farce and described the government's version as yet another lie during the Duque administration. They even asked: "How did a policeman die in the operation?"

For Otoniel, considered the most significant drug trafficker in Colombia, there were several rewards, including one from the United States that set five million dollars for his capture.

From the government, the Minister of Defense, Diego Molano and the head of the National Police, General Jorge Luis Vargas Valencia, including President Duque, denied Otoniel's version.

On the other hand, the newspaper La Nueva Prensa revealed on Wednesday that an alleged contractor of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) negotiated with Otoñiel his surrender to the U.S. justice system.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0014.html

Like so many of the US 'strategic partners' , Mr Dookey is so crooked he requires two assistants to help screw on his pants in the morning: a pre-requisite for participants the the largely phony US 'War on Drugs'.

Meanwhile Venezuela is forcing or shooting down private jets loaded with the contraband at a rate of about one a week. "No good deed goes unpunished."
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Tue Dec 28, 2021 3:11 pm

Forced Displacements in Colombia Increase by Over 169% During 2021
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 27, 2021
Tanya Wadhwa

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The Peace Community of San José de Apartadó is one of the many communities that has seen an increase in paramilitary violence and threats. They carried out a march for the right to life on December 23, 2021. Photo: Contagio Radio

The Office for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES) condemned that 2021 had been the year with the highest number of victims of forced displacement events in Colombia since the signing of peace agreements in November 2016


The Consultancy for Human Rights and Displacement (CODHES), on December 22, warned of an alarming increase in massive and multiple forced displacement events in Colombia during 2021. The CODHES reported that between January and November, 2021, 82,846 people were forcibly displaced from their homes and territories, a figure that represents an increase of 169.3% as compared to the same period in 2020. The CODHES further reported that a total number of 167 displacement events were recorded in these eleven months, which represents an increase of 65.3% in relation to the same period in 2020.

CODHES also reported that this year’s increase in displacement incidents had been marked by an increase in displacement of Afro-descendant and Indigenous communities. The organization informed that seven out of ten displaced people belonged to one of these ethnic groups. It detailed that in total, 37,664 Afro-descendants and 18,979 Indigenous people were forced to abandon their homes and move away from their territories.

According to CODHES’ data, the departments of Nariño, Antioquia, Chocó and Cauca in the Pacific and Northwest regions of the country are the most affected and have the highest number of victims. The human rights organization condemned that 2021 had been the year with the highest number of victims of forced displacement events in Colombia since the signing of peace agreements between the former government of president Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerilla group, in November 2016, in Havana, Cuba.

INFORME 📑 Desplazamiento Forzado en Colombia: 82.846 personas desplazadas a nov. 2021. Aumento del 169% respecto a 2020. 7 de cada 10 personas desplazadas tienen pertenencia étnica. Nariño, el departamento más afectado. Fuente: SISDHES @CODHESColombia pic.twitter.com/IG3FulGdU7

— CODHES (@CODHESColombia) December 22, 2021


The increase in paramilitary violence, cocaine production, and the conflicts between illegal armed groups to define control over land for drug trafficking and illegal mining activities are the main causes of the escalation of forced displacement in Colombia. The paramilitaries specifically target those who work to defend land and natural resources, and protest against the cultivation of illicit crops and illegal mining in their territories.

According to the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ), as of December 23, 2021, 167 environmentalists, land defenders, human rights activists and leaders of Afro-descendent and Indigenous communities had been murdered by illegal armed and drug trafficking groups just in 2021. The number killed since the signing of the peace agreements is 1,282. Additionally, according to the INDEPAZ’s other records, over 320 people had been killed in 91 massacres perpetrated in this year.

The grave humanitarian crisis has been recognized and condemned by different agencies of the United Nations. For the past three years, civil society and human rights organizations have been organizing and demanding measures to protect people in rural areas and dismantle paramilitary groups operating in different regions. However, the government of far-right President Ivan Duque has yet to take effective action in this regard.

Criminalization of social movements continues

Meanwhile, the national government, recently, took another step towards strengthening its campaign of criminalization of those who take part in social protests. On December 22, the Senate, controlled by the ruling party and its allies, approved the controversial ‘Citizen Security’ bill, which criminalizes social protest and toughens penalties against citizens who are accused of repeating crimes in public spaces.

Interior minister Daniel Palacios said, defending the law, that it gives “greater tools to judges to punish violent citizens who disturb tranquility, so that the offenders always go to jail and do not walk freely on the streets.”

Various opposition leaders have condemned that several articles of the bill, instead of protecting the citizens, violate their fundamental rights and promote criminal practices.

Senator Ivan Cepeda Castro of the Alternative Democratic Pole, said that the law is “a compendium of provisions that legalize official, paramilitary and private criminal practices. It is a license to kill, the Duque administration’s new fascist aberration.”

Cepeda reported that he, along with 18 other legislators, had already sent a letter to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) to “verify the government’s failure to comply with its recommendations regarding respect for social protest” after the massive protests during the national strike, between April 28 and July 31 of this year. He also said that they would soon file a lawsuit in the Constitutional Court against the law.

Senator Aida Avella of the Patriotic Union (UP) also fiercely criticized the law and called it unconstitutional. “It redefines the concept of proportionality in order to give a license to kill, thereby placing private property above human life,” said Avella. She also pointed out that the law also modifies other norms so that the principles of “presumption of innocence” and “legitimate defense” can be appealed in advance by the police and military involved in any act of violence.

Senator Roy Barreras of the Social Party of National Unity denounced that “what has just been approved criminalizes protest, legitimizes justice by its own hand, legalizes forms of urban paramilitarism. It authorizes the shooting of young people and Indigenous people. It legalizes citizens who want to shoot as if they were ‘good people’ against other citizens.” Barreras also warned that the law “authorizes arbitrary detentions under the pretext of conviction for protection, and legalizes massacres such as that of the children of Llano Verde in Aguablanca who dared to raise their kites on a private property.”

Senator Gustavo Petro and future presidential candidate of the Colombia Humana party said that the bill proves the government support paramilitarism. “You know what the government’s security bill shows? It shows that they have always believed in paramilitarism,” tweeted Petro.

Senator Sandra Ramirez of the Comunes party also rejected the bill, calling it “dangerous,” as it “violates the human rights of Colombians.”

The CODHES also rejected the said law. The organization warned that the law “criminalizes actions carried out within the framework of social protests; legitimizes the use of force (even lethal) by individuals with the status of privileged legitimate defense; and promotes punitive populism, creating crimes and aggravating factors without analyzing implications for the penal system or of its true objective, effect, in the face of crime.”

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... ring-2021/

And the lying bastards of the MSM have the gall to speak of delusional 'repression' in Cuba...
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Tue Jan 04, 2022 1:57 pm

Colombia 2021:The Year in which State Terrorism Became Visible
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 2, 2022
Renán Vega Cantor

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The State and the ruling classes of Colombia, which constitute the counterinsurgent power bloc, have made use of a series of fallacies to hide the terrorist nature of the State in this country, consolidated as such for decades. The first of these fallacies, repeated ad nauseam, is that Colombia is a democratic society with a social rule of law, which, moreover, is ratified by the 1991 Constitution. In the same direction, it is affirmed that Colombian democracy is stable, of long standing, and has not suffered the anti-democratic onslaught of “populism” (read left-wing). It is argued that in this country there is a separation of powers, freedom of the press, respect for individual liberties, all made possible by the unrestricted preservation of private property.

Secondly, it is pointed out that the military forces have been respectful of the constitutional order and have faced multiple wars from which they have emerged victorious. This fallacy has gained strength in the last five years as a result of the signing of the agreement between the government of Juan Manuel Santos and the FARC. Added to this is the fact that these armed forces are neat and, as an institution, are formed by martyrs who sacrifice their lives to preserve the assets of Colombians and, at most, there have been a few bad apples within them who have gone astray and committed crimes or have allied with paramilitaries and murderers, but these are isolated and individual actions that do not compromise the military entity, which has always respected human rights. Even the members of these military forces, in an official campaign that circulates throughout the country, it is said that “heroes do exist” and that they are the ones.

These fallacies, among many others, have been the Colombian State’s letter of introduction to the rest of the world and have been effective, because at the international level they were assumed to be true. And we speak in the past, because if the events of this year 2021 that is ending have had any importance, it is that this year State terrorism in the Colombian style became visible to the world.

One thing is that it has become visible and another thing is that it did not exist. State terrorism did not appear suddenly in this 2021, since it has been a recurrent practice in the last 75 years, as we have endured it directly or indirectly in multiple ways (assassinations, disappearances, tortures, bombings, expulsion of population, conversion of social, ethnic and political sectors into internal enemies, open and disguised anticommunism, judicial persecution, media lynching by the great powers of disinformation, exile…. ), but this never gained prominence in the eyes of the majority of Colombian society and, much less, was it seen outside the country. Some of these terrorist practices have not only been legitimized by sectors of Colombian society (the “well-to-do Colombians”), its intellectuals, its paid journalists, but the denunciations made about this State terrorism were limited to certain activists and political militants, inside and outside the country.

On certain occasions in recent years, some of these terrorist practices (assassination of trade unionists, “false positives” – a name created on purpose to conceal the magnitude of State assassinations) were denounced and some knowledge of them has been acquired among sectors of public opinion in Europe. But these genocidal practices have not always been analyzed as the manifestation of State terrorism, considered in a structural way and inscribed in a set of counterinsurgency doctrines and practices, which are permanent, systematic, proper to the logic of the doctrine of national security, anticommunism and the internal enemy, forged in the United States and fully assumed by the counterinsurgent power bloc in Colombia.

State terrorism in this country has been so “successful” that it has become an export service, because the Colombian police and army train (i.e., teach their expertise in terrorist practices under cover of security rhetoric) to more than fifteen states in the world. Also another variable that indicates the “recognized success” of these terrorist practices is the exportation of mercenaries (civilian and military) to different parts of the world, something that also became visible in this 2021 with the assassination of the president of Haiti, a topic we discussed below.

What has happened in this 2021 cracks the erected fallacies and has laid bare the terrorist character of the Colombian State, as shown by two events that we briefly examine: the national strike and the assassination of the president of Haiti.

The national strike

The year 2021 was the year of the extraordinary national strike, the most important social protest in Colombian history in terms of duration, geographical extension and the diversity of social sectors that participated. This strike broke out for reasons of long, medium and short duration. In the immediate term, it was the result of the accumulation of grievances during 2020, due to the confinement, the repression of the regime of subpresident Iván Duque and because the handling of the pandemic showed the dimension of the inequality and injustice existing in the country. As a repressive factor, the immediate antecedent was the massacre of September 9 and 10, 2020 in the streets of Bogota and Soacha, when the police massacred 13 people, among them a Venezuelan citizen. That protest was brutally shut down, with the legitimization provided by the sub president who disguised himself as a policeman and showed up at one of the CAI (Centro de Atención [Asesinato] Inmediato) that had been attacked by the angry crowd.

In the medium term, the strike is part of a broad cycle of protests that is part of what has taken place in the country in the last ten years, and in which various social sectors have participated, although with particular mobilizations in most cases. Within these protests, the mobilization of students (La Mane in 2011, 2017 and 2018), of peasants (Agrarian Strike of 2013), of indigenous people (various mingas and regional strikes in the south of the country) and a first general strike attempt (November 2019), which was postponed due to the irruption of the pandemic, stand out. This nonconformity, latent in various sectors of the population, has been related to the impact of neoliberalism and the signing of unfair free trade agreements, whose direct consequences are experienced and felt by the population that has endured worsening conditions of existence. In the long term, the strike is related to large urban protest movements that have taken place in Colombia, and of which can be taken as a starting point -not because it was the first, but the most significant- the popular insurrection at national level on April 9, 1948. And we point out this milestone, because the strike of 2021 has been predominantly urban, a feature that should be highlighted, because this variable explains to a large extent the visibility of State terrorism.

The brutal state response to the just and legitimate protest of plebeian sectors of the urban world has shown two things. On the one hand, the miseries and inequalities of the cities, large and small, in Colombia, where the existing structural inequality between the countryside and the city is reproduced, in which a small minority lives as it is in their inverted urban ghettos (for the rich), as if they lived in the opulent neighborhoods of the cities of the first world, while millions of Colombians survive in the midst of appalling misery, job insecurity, unemployment, informality and daily hustle and bustle. On the other hand, this inequality is maintained and reproduced, among other reasons, by the brute force of the Colombian State, whose presence in the poorest areas of the country, including the cities, is reduced to military battalions, police stations, CAIs… without any social presence, because there are no hospitals, schools, parks, or state companies to provide employment and help the population.

Repression has been the daily bread in the poor areas of the country, including its cities, which means that, above all, young people of both sexes suffer harassment, persecution, stigmatization, sexual violence… However, until the Paro, a dominant image of this state and para-state violence (since it resorts to paramilitary groups and hired killers to “clean” the neighborhoods of “undesirable people”) predominated: it was marginal and, to some extent, justified among the urban middle classes as necessary to contain insecurity, or to confront the insurgent movement in agrarian areas.

Until the outbreak of the strike, it was thought that the Colombian State was only repressive of the insurgency in the countryside, but it was assumed that the military forces were meek doves in the cities, where they did not experience what the peasants endure daily, who are subjected to the dictatorship of the military forces and their paramilitary emulators. Before the strike, many Colombians from the urban middle classes thought that institutional violence was something marginal and distant, because they had become accustomed to watching our war on television. Bombings, massacres, tortures, rapes, disappearances… appeared as distant and acceptable for many of those sectors, as the cost to be paid by those who rebelled with weapons in their hands. But, not even in the curves, they imagined that something like that could be seen in the cities. And we repeat, it is not that this was not lived in the cities, but that it was endured by the poor in their neighborhoods and this had little interest for the inhabitants of middle class neighborhoods and for the rich and powerful it simply did not exist and did not matter.

But lo and behold, the strike begins and immediately the state repression emerges clearly, using the same mechanisms of official terrorism that it has always used in Colombia. And these mechanisms of repression become more visible as the strike radicalizes and deepens. In the end, the repression leaves a toll of some 80 Colombians murdered by the bullets of the Colombian State. Hundreds of people were wounded, dozens disappeared, twenty women were raped. In the rich neighborhoods there are armed civilians who, protected by the police, shoot at people and these same individuals present themselves as the genuine expression of the “good Colombians” who act to defend their interests from those intruders, Indians, blacks and poor, who dared to sully their luxurious neighborhoods.

The disinformation media lie, as is their custom, about what is happening, but this time, unlike what has always happened, they are ridiculed and their lies are uncovered, because popular communication channels emerge and, through cell phones and social networks, photos and videos are spread about the official criminality and the genocide in progress.

These messages show us that in our country the Israeli methods of repression are replicated, with the use of lethal weapons in demonstrations, the use of helicopters in the neighborhoods of towns and cities to shoot people, the shooting in the face of those who protest (very much in the Chilean and Israeli style) to cause them harm and leave them blind.

In Colombia it happened a bit like the famous story of the Guatemalan writer Agousto Monterroso that says “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there”. In effect, a large part of the country woke up and State terrorism was still there, it had never left, what happened was that people had not wanted to look at it, in a kind of collective cognitive dissonance. Now, it was seen face to face, and not only inside Colombia, but also outside the country. To the point that such an inane and biased body in favor of the great powers, as is the UN Human Rights Commission, in a study released two weeks ago stated:

“between April 28 and July 31 of this year it received reports of 63 people killed during the protest mobilizations that began at the end of April with the National Strike. Seventy-six percent of the deaths were due to gunshot wounds. […] In addition, armed individuals attacked demonstrators, sometimes with firearms, in the face of the passivity of the security forces.

In addition to the documented deaths, there are reports of 60 cases of sexual violence allegedly at the hands of the police. So far, the UN has verified 16. The report devotes a separate section to the criminalization and stigmatization of protesters, often through the media, who are associated with acts of vandalism or terrorism. The Office was also concerned about attacks on human rights defenders and journalists who have documented the events.” [Available at: https://news.un.org/es/story/2021/12/1501462%5D

The fact that even the Office headed by Michelle Bachelet, which had previously justified State Terrorism in Colombia, made such statements highlights the way in which the image of the supposed Colombian democracy has been eroded at international level. And the image that remains is the one that fits the reality suffered by the majority of Colombians living in this country: a terrorist regime, counterinsurgent, that resorts to all methods (military, judicial, media…) to maintain the inequalities and privileges of an insignificant minority, whose representatives are the same that in the political sphere have governed this country for two hundred years.

But, as in the case of the terrorist State of Israel, the Colombian does not lag behind and not only denies the UN’s remarks, but also says that this instance intervenes in politics and with its condemnation sullies the honor of prestigious national institutions (such as the police, the Esmad and the armed forces) which he exalts as an example of patriotism. Through this path of rejection and denialism there is a confirmation of State terrorism that has come to public light in this 2021.

“They are not killing” was the synthetic message with which Colombian State Terrorism was denounced at the international level. And that message, as it had not happened in the recent history of our country, permeated in various areas outside Colombia and was amplified in different sporting, artistic and diplomatic scenarios during 2021. A clear sign that Colombian State terrorism began to be confronted outside our borders, which can be considered an important advance in terms of political clarification.

Assassination of the President of Haiti

On July 7, 2021, Jovenel Moïse, the president of Haiti, was assassinated in his residence. The material assassins were part of a transnational commando of mercenaries. As soon as the crime became known, the news began to circulate worldwide, being the most outstanding fact the composition of this group of mercenaries, most of them of Colombian nationality. That was the first surprise of the fact, and the second that they were not just any kind of mercenaries, but many of them had belonged to the Colombian National Army.

Of course, it was not the first time nor will it be the last time that Colombian military enlisted to carry out an operation of international terrorism, because they have been doing it for several years, to the extent that the counterinsurgency and criminal expertise of the armed forces of the Colombian State has been positively valued in the international market of mercenaries, encouraged by several countries in the world, starting with the United States.

In spite of these antecedents of organized assassination, the case of Haiti showed before the world the character of the repressive forces of the Colombian State, because the same thing they did to the President of Haiti, with all the sadism of the case (resorting to torture, for example) is what they have been doing with absolute impunity in our country for 75 years in the countryside and cities, as was ratified during the National Strike.

A few facts are revealing of the behavior and characteristics of these military forces: some of the mercenaries who participated in the crime of the Haitian president had been decorated for their great counterinsurgency achievements in Colombia, and even one of those who was killed had received honors for his deeds of war [See attached photo]. Another of the militia-mercenaries was being investigated for his direct responsibility in the state crimes known as “false positives” and another is a first cousin of Rafael Guarín, Security Advisor to the government of Sub-President Iván Duque. These data highlight the nexus between the Colombian State, its armed forces, international mercenarism and the crime of a president of the continent. All this is a staging of international terrorism in the Colombian style, which became visible to certain sectors of our continent and the world.

These two characteristics, that the mercenaries were Colombian and military, raise fundamental questions: Why did Colombian military participate in the assassination of a sitting president? What is the relationship between the counterinsurgency training of the Colombian army and this type of crime? What does the United States say about their participation in this crime, considering that seven of the Colombian military who assassinated the president of Haiti were trained at the School of the Americas? Among the great things taught by the United States in that school of official crime, is it not taught how to carry out coups and kill presidents? What links exist between the Colombian State and the intellectual organizers of this crime, when it is known that one of them, a resident in Miami, the Venezuelan Antonio Intriago, appears in a photo with Iván Duque when the latter was in the electoral campaign?

The links become more suspicious when we know of the multiple plans organized from Colombia (such as Operation Gideon) to kill the Venezuelan president and when we know that one of the organizers of the assassination of Jovenel Moïse is a Venezuelan, based in Miami and owner of CTU Security, a mercenary company. To complete, there is a lot of evidence, including photographs, showing the links between Antonio Enmanuel Intriago, owner of the Miami-based company that hired the mercenaries who assassinated the president of Haiti, and high ranking members of Uribism, which controls the Colombian State.

With all these elements, and many others that are barely known, there is no doubt that the State Terrorism that has been imposed in Colombia no longer operates only internally, but has become a non-traditional export of the country, as attested by the crime of the president of Haiti, one of the most shameful events of 2021, where the direct participation of mercenaries of the Colombian State armed forces, trained in the United States, was clear. This can no longer be hidden, no matter how much Semana Magazine has tried to clean the face of the Colombian Army hitmen, who even, as a clear example of the media manipulation of the upside-down world of which Eduardo Galeano spoke, are presented as “innocent victims”, simple tourists. Yes, the Colombian Army hitmen were enjoying the beaches of the Caribbean, while preparing the crime of the president of the poorest country of the continent!

Not even the worst media manipulations will ever be able to deny this crime, to which State terrorism Made in Colombia is directly linked and now an export product for the disgrace of our country and our America.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/01/ ... e-visible/

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Colombian Paramilitaries Invade Farmers Lands in Bolivar

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View of Villa del Rosario town, Bolivar Department, Colombia, 2020. | Photo: T

Published 31 December 2021

On several occasions, the Agro-Mining Federation has denounced that paramilitary actions are carried out in complicity with local military and civil authorities.


On Thursday, the Agro-Mining Federation of Southern Bolivar (Fedeagromisbol) denounced that paramilitaries belonging to the Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AGC) have been invading the properties of farmers in the Bolivar department for months.

"Urgent! Alert! Gulf Clan or Gaitanistas paramilitaries invaded Mina Mocha, Mina Facil, Mina Piojo, and Mina Mochila in the rural area of ​​Montecristo,” Fedeagromisbol tweeted.

The invasions of properties occurred amid air operations of the Colombian military forces, which have not been able to implement dissuasive actions to confront the paramilitaries who continue to terrorize citizens and forcing them to move to other areas.

On several occasions, the agro-mining federation has denounced that these paramilitary actions are carried out in complicity with local military and civil authorities.


The residents of the rural areas of Bolivar have created “citizen commissions” to face the attack of the paramilitaries. These community efforts, however, have failed to guarantee minimal security conditions in the region.

In July, for example, several inhabitants were killed in the San Pablo municipality. The paramilitary violence also affected Mina Piojo town, where the president of the Community Action Board, Oswaldo Perez, was assassinated. A month later, dozens of inhabitants were displaced from their homes due to the presence of far-right armed groups.

On Sep. 26, Erley Osorio was kidnapped and disappeared by the Gaitanistas. Since the authorities did not act in time to find him, he was later found dead.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0006.html

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They kill more than 20 people in Arauca, amid fighting

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The Army announced that together with the Police they will set up a special security device in the area. | Photo: Twitter
Published 3 January 2022

In the last hours there have been homicides and forced displacements in the municipalities of Tame, Fortul, Saravena and Arauquita, in the Colombian department of Arauca, on the border with Venezuela, with a balance of more than 20 people killed, amid fighting between armed groups irregular.

So far the authorities report more than 2,000 displaced as a result of the attacks in that region of northeast Colombia, which have led to several massacres, according to users of social networks and spokespersons for rural communities.

Juan Carlos Villate, representative of Tame, Arauca, spoke to a Colombian radio station about the critical situation in the four municipalities, assuring that January 2 was the "most violent day in the last ten years."


He reported that more than 27 people were killed in less than 24 hours, "and surely the figure could rise to 50 during this Monday."

In the Puerto Lleras sector, Saravena municipality, they located four bodies. One of the victims would be Orlando Herrera, a resident of the sector, according to the local media outlet La Frontera.

In another event, according to preliminary information, four other people were killed in Tame, but an official confirmation from the authorities of how the attacks were carried out would be lacking, while among the fallen there are numbers of civilians and combatants from irregular groups.


"Every minute people write to us. We, as a network of officials, report the disappeared to us, they say that they are taken from their homes. The homicide figures can double, because the number of missing persons already exceeds 50," Villate said. .

Regarding the situation in Arauca, the Ombudsman's Office said that - according to information compiled by its regional office - in the "last hours there have been homicides, threats, illegal detentions, massive displacements and risk of forced displacement in border municipalities, specifically in Tame, Fortul, Saravena and Arauquita ".


In social networks, images of dead civilians circulate, whose bodies were left on rural roads and sidewalks, while the indignation of what was described as the first massacres of the year 2022 grows.

Previously, the mayor of the municipality of Aruaquita, Etelivar Torres Vargas, in statements to a local television station, said that, according to reports collected by the Government of the department of Arauca, "there is talk of 17 people killed until approximately six in the afternoon." .

Torres Vargas commented that, according to different information, murders have occurred both in Arauquita, as in other municipalities such as Saravena, Fortul and Tame.


The municipal president pointed out that hundreds of residents speak of the possibility of displacement after these events.

The Colombian National Army issued a statement in which it stated that "it was known that in some parts of the municipalities of Saravena, Arauquita and Fortul there was a series of homicides."


He indicated that "apparently there is a confrontation for the control of illicit economies" between members of the armed groups National Liberation Army and dissidents from the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

The Army announced that together with the National Police they will set up a special security device in the area, to assist the local authorities and collaborate in clarifying the facts.

In the Municipality of Tame there were clashes in La Horqueta, a sector near the El Botalón village, while between La Esmeralda and Fortul there was another armed clash that left several dead.

The Joel Sierra Foundation, a defender of Human Rights in the southeast of the country, confirmed an incursion into armed groups in the municipalities of Arauquita, Tame, Fortul and Saravena.


Colombia urges a ceasefire between armed groups

The senator of the opposition Alternative Democratic Pole Iván Cepeda urged armed groups in Colombia to declare a ceasefire and hostilities in areas such as Arauca and the Pacific coast to protect communities.

Given the events that occurred in the last hours in those regions, where more than 20 deaths and hundreds of displaced people due to clashes between armed structures have been recorded, Cepeda urged to create a favorable climate for a peace process to be developed in the next government that results of the 2022 elections.

For his part, the senator, but for the Green Party, Antonio Sanguino assured that humanitarian actions are urgently needed in Arauca.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0001.html

Google Translator

Of course the government would blame revolutionaries...but does that not look like a turf battle among the feudalistic mafias which do much of the boss's dirty work?

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Report the first massacre of 2022 in Colombia

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Indepaz indicated that at least three people died in the massacre perpetrated in the Jamundí municipality. | Photo: Snail News
Published January 4, 2022 (6 hours 44 minutes ago)

According to Indepaz, those who died in the massacre worked in the construction sector and had lived in Colombia for five years.

The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz) denounced in the last hours of Monday the first massacre of the year in the Colombian department of Valle del Cauca.

In the statement published on its Twitter social network account, the Institute indicated that at least three people died in the massacre perpetrated in the Jamundí municipality, all of Venezuelan nationality.

According to Indepaz, the deceased worked in the construction sector and had lived in Colombia for five years.

The Ombudsman's Office had issued an alert regarding the number of homicides registered in the municipality of Jamundí perpetrated by irregular armed groups in the region.

According to Indepaz, in 2021 at least 96 massacres were registered, while the number of social leaders assassinated was 171.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0002.html

'Our' 'democratic' 'ally'..........
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Mon Jan 10, 2022 3:15 pm

Colombia: 6 People Killed in the Magdalena & Nariño Departments

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A child flees from paramilitary groups, Colombia. | Photo: Twitter/ @almayadeen_es

Published 10 January 2022

Massacres against the population continue to occur given that Colombian president Ivan Duque has not done much to prevent them.

Colombia’s Institute for Development and Peace Studies (INDEPAZ) denounced the assassination of three people in the Magdalena department and three citizens in the Nariño department over the weekend.

According to Police Colonel Alfonso Reyes, the Nariño massacre stemmed from a dispute between wealthy landowners who usually pay thugs to intimidate farmers and gain their territories.

Reyes called on the community to remain calm since agents from the Technical Investigative Corps (CTI) are working to speed investigations and apprehend the culprits. "As soon as we have the results we will inform them to the community," he stressed.

The murder in the Magdalena department was perpetrated by heavily armed men who entered a house located in the El Salon sidewalk in the Julio Zawady district and immediately opened fire against its inhabitants. The victims were identified as Jorge Hernandez, Patricia de Armas, and their 17-year-old son William.

This department’s community denounced that they have received threats, attacks, and pressures from the paramilitary groups Los Pachencas and the Gulf Clan, which demanded them to sell their farms and properties.

To counteract the operation of armed groups, the Ombudsman’s Office issued an alert order for this region in November 2021 and has follow-up it closely ever since. However, massacres against the population continue to occur since Colombian president Ivan Duque has not done much to prevent them.

“The first thing the State should do to eliminate paramilitary violence once and for all is to enforce the Peace Agreement signed with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016,” Attorney General Francisco Barbosa considered.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0002.html

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Colombia: Three Citizens Shot Dead In The Casanare Department

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Forensic doctors analyze the victims' bodies, Casanare, Colombia, Jan. 6, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @VenezuelaAF

Published 7 January 2022

Heavily armed men entered a house in the Mani municipality and immediately opened fire against its inhabitants.


On Tuesday, the Colombian Institute for Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz) reported a massacre in the Casanare department, where paramilitary groups shot dead three citizens.

Heavily armed men entered a house in the Mani municipality and immediately opened fire against the people. The victims were identified as Vicente Soto, his 17-year-old son Gustavo Soto, and the municipality’s former registrar, Alfonso Sandoval.

Although the Ombudsman’s Office did not warn of the presence of armed groups in the Mani municipality, it alerted that there will be an expansion of criminal actions from Aguazul, La Salina, Sacama, Tamara, and Yopal towns to this municipality.

The population of these territories has not properly denounced the situation for fear of reprisals by armed groups. However, they say the authorities know what is happening and still have not done much to prevent it.


On Dec. 26, 2021, another massacre occurred on the Sabanalarga sidewalk in the Casanare department, where a group of armed men shot dead three members of a family. On Jan. 4, INDEPAZ also registered the murder of three Venezuelan citizens residing in Colombia in the Valle del Cauca department.

Following these murders, the Ombudsman’s Office convened an extraordinary security council, which decided to intensify the intelligence operations in such territories and offer an over-US$17,300 reward to anyone who provided information to apprehend the culprits.

"The civilian population cannot continue to be the victim of indiscriminate violence by armed groups. We will do everything we can to contain this situation and prevent it from happening ever again in the future," Attorney General Francisco Barbosa stated.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Col ... -0002.html

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Attack in Cali, Colombia leaves at least ten policemen injured

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Security bodies of the city of Cali carry out investigations to find those responsible for the attack. | Photo: @elpaiscali
Published 8 January 2022

The Secretary of Security and Justice of Cali reported that two of the wounded have serious injuries and the rest have minor injuries.

The Mayor's Office of the Colombian city of Cali confirmed on Friday night that at least ten officials from the Mobile Anti-Riot Squad (Esmad) were injured during a bomb attack.

According to the Secretary of Security and Justice of Cali, Carlos Soler, it was an attack against a truck in which 15 soldiers from Esmad were mobilized and indicated that the explosive with which the vehicle was attacked would have been remotely activated.

The incident left at least ten injured police officers who had already been evacuated from the area and transferred to various health centers in the city.

Soler reported that two of the wounded have serious injuries and the rest have minor injuries.

Mayor Jorge Iván Ospina rejected the attack and announced a reward of 70 million pesos for those who provide information that allows not only to clarify what happened, but also to identify those responsible for the attack.


"Today more than ever our society must be united against terror," the Mayor wrote on his Twitter account.

Defense Minister Diego Molano spoke about the recent attack and affirmed that the authorities will not rest until they find those responsible.


The authorities remain in the place offering support to the residents of the area whose houses were affected by the detonation of the charge against the Police truck.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0002.html

Google Translator

The misery of the people of that neighborhood has just begun: Dollar to a donut that the police will 'interrogate'(torture) the 'usual suspects' until someone gives an answer they like.

Here's something for those wounded cops:
Image
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Fri Jan 14, 2022 4:42 pm

UN indicates that 78 human rights activists were killed in Colombia in 2021

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The UN office in Colombia warned that the number of human rights defenders killed could increase in the coming days. | Photo: coeuropa.org.co
Published 13 January 2022

The UN indicated that a total of 31 human rights defenders were killed in the department of Valle del Cauca

The UN Office for Human Rights in Colombia revealed on Wednesday that at least 78 human rights defenders were killed in the South American country during 2021.

According to the UN office in Colombia from January 1 to December 31, 2021, 202 allegations of homicides of defenders were reported. Of these, it has verified 78 cases, 39 cases are in the verification process and 85 cases are inconclusive, the international organization noted.

The agency clarified that the number of murders of human rights defenders does not represent all the murders in Colombia but the cases that they have received and verified.

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When breaking down the information, the UN Office indicated that of the total murdered, eight were women and five of them were indigenous. Of the 70 men, six belonged to Afro communities and six were indigenous.

According to the agency's report published on Wednesday, the highest number of homicides against defenders occurred in the department of Valle del Cauca, where 31 were killed, five of them in the capital Cali.

Meanwhile in Cauca the number of murdered was eleven, three of them in the town of Algeria, constantly besieged by illegal armed groups.

The UN Office for Human Rights documented that six defenders were killed in Antioquia, while in Chocó and Cundinamarca, there were five in each.

For its part, in the department of Norte de Santander, bordering Venezuela, four other defenders were reported murdered.

The agency pointed out that of the 39 crimes that are still being verified, the majority occurred in Cauca (8), Nariño (6), Antioquia (5), Putumayo and Bolívar (4) and Valle del Cauca (3).

The UN also warned on Wednesday that the child population in Colombia is the main victim of the social and armed conflict in the country, despite the fact that the number of crimes against minors fell after the signing of the Peace Accords.

According to the report published by the agency, at least 220 minors were recruited by irregular armed groups during the period from July 2019 to June of last year.

In this sense, Colombian civil society organizations urged that the peace talks between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army be deepened, seeking to stop violent crimes, including the recruitment of infants and adolescents.

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“In Arauca we have suffered every form of war”
Amid an escalation in the armed conflict in the border region of Arauca, social leader and human rights defender Sonia López discusses the broader context of systemic state violence against communities

January 13, 2022 by Colombia Informa

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Colombia's Arauca department is one of the most heavily militarized in the country, in addition to being home to several transnational oil extraction projects. Photo: Colombia Informa

On January 2, multiple organizations in the department of Arauca, Colombia, declared a humanitarian emergency in the region, due to increased clashes between the National Liberation Army (ELN) and dissidents of the demobilized Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). However, the context of the current violence in this region is much broader.

Arauca, a department located in the eastern region of Colombia on the border with Venezuela, has several mining and energy projects and one of the highest soldier-to-population ratios in the country. It also has a wide range of social and popular organizations that have historically fought for their permanence in the territory.

During the last few days, the humanitarian emergency caused by confrontations between the ELN and FARC dissidents has left 27 people dead, in addition to an undetermined number of retained and displaced persons.

The Joel Sierra Human Rights Foundation was the first organization to alert about this situation and has been constantly accompanying the communities in affected areas. Colombia Informa spoke with Sonia López, representative of the Foundation, about the context in the department beyond the current situation.

Colombia Informa: Many media outlets have attributed the humanitarian emergency in Arauca to the confrontations between ELN and FARC dissidents. What other contextual elements do you consider relevant to understand what is happening?

Sonia López: Colombia is itself immersed in an international social, political and economic dynamic, determined by the capitalist mode of production, which outlines each country’s specific tasks according to their interests of accumulation. Our country has been assigned the task of supplier of raw materials. In this sense, our territories have become a target for the looting and plundering of natural resources. In order to achieve these objectives of capitalist accumulation, the Colombian State, servile to the empires, has unleashed a strategy of aggression against the Colombian people, their social organizations, and their life project.

Arauca has some particular characteristics: its wealth in natural resources (oil, water and biodiversity) make it attractive for national and foreign capital, as well as the fact that it lies on the border with the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Our territory is geostrategic in the context of the imperialist war and its interventionist plans against our sister country.

The social and popular movement in Arauca throughout its history has built a social fabric that has resisted and materialized its plan for life under the slogan “in defense of life and permanence in the territory”. Our struggle to defend this plan for life has meant we have been stigmatized, persecuted and criminalized by the Colombian State and seen as “internal enemies” in the framework of the national security doctrine.

CI: How has this impacted the communities in the region?

SI: Here we have suffered the rigors of war in all its forms: on the one hand, historical state neglect in terms of social investment. What exists in Arauca today in terms of infrastructure in health, roads, education, is the product of social mobilization campaigns that have pressured the state to make these investments. The Colombian State has declared our territory a laboratory of war and here they have implemented the various strategies in their alleged wars of counterinsurgency, counter-terrorism, and anti-narcotics, among others.

With this, they have stigmatized us, declared our territories ‘rehabilitation and consolidation zones’, and consolidated the paramilitary project. Under Plan Colombia, they have used the different iterations of aerial fumigation and militarization. They have massacred us, they have continued (and perfected) the practice of extrajudicial executions with more than 100 documented and denounced cases in Arauca.

We have also faced selective political persecution and imprisonment on a large scale. Since 2002 to date we have had at least 353 comrades prosecuted and/or imprisoned, which is an average of 18 social leaders, community leaders, and human rights defenders per year. Added to this are the consequences of the armed conflict. During 2021, 150 people were selectively assassinated, dozens were detained and wounded, and civilian property was affected, among other impacts.

Almost forty years of oil extraction in the region have not resulted in a dignified life for the people of Arauca, on the contrary, we are faced with a social, humanitarian, economic, and environmental catastrophe. The oil corporations are responsible for the financing of this war and the criminalization of the social movement.

We have denounced this economic financing of the public forces and the structures of the prosecutor’s office, which are responsible for designing and carrying out the judicial persecution against leaders and human rights defenders. In addition to financially supporting the prosecutor’s office, the police and the army through cooperation agreements, the oil companies have even declared themselves as victims in the criminal proceedings against the leaders who have been prosecuted.

This situation has worsened with the implementation of new oil projects in Saravena, Arauquita, Tame, and Fortul. These new oil projects coincide with the implementation of the so-called strategic zones of integral intervention or future zones, which are nothing more than the continuity of Plan Colombia and its war plan, wherein the military element is central. These programs have had limited social assistance programs, with the intention to clean up the image of the public force that has been discredited by the more than 6,402 cases of extrajudicial executions and the massacres that they have carried out during the mobilizations.

CI: What responsibility does the National Government have for what is currently happening in Arauca?

SL: The State is the sole entity responsible for guaranteeing human rights, therefore, in the situation of the country and of Arauca, the Government, as representative of the State, is responsible by action and omission. On the one hand, it does not guarantee the minimum subsistence conditions for the majority of Colombians, as evidenced by the high rates of poverty, extreme poverty, and unemployment. On the other hand, it has carried forward criminalization strategies that have taken the lives, freedom, and integrity of people, peoples, and territories.

In the face of the armed conflict, it has not had the will to comply with the minimums agreements that were reached in the peace agreements.

Nor has it complied with the agreements reached with the social movement during the various mobilizations and spaces for dialogue.

CI: What is the position of the Joel Sierra Foundation regarding the militarization of the territory as a response to social problems?

SL: In Arauca, as in the rest of the country, there is a social, political and armed conflict, which has structural causes based on inequality and inequity generated by the capitalist mode of production, which must be overcome. As long as these causes persist, violence will be the order of the day.

Arauca is a highly militarized territory. There are more than 9,000 military personnel, in addition to the police and the army. This militarization has not been at the service of protecting the life, integrity, goods and projects of the people of Arauca, but at the service of the interests of national and foreign capital, mainly to take care of the oil infrastructure. If militarization were the solution to the humanitarian crisis in the territory, it would have already been solved.

CI: How is this reflected in the current context?

SL: This situation in Arauca has been continually used by the State to justify the high level of militarization and with it, the aggression against the communities and their projects. It has also been a way to continue preparing the ground for the interventionist plans against Venezuela, as Arauca is key for this geostrategically.

Today it would appear that after years of state neglect in social investment, high levels of human rights violations, and looting and dispossession, the State, the National Government and the security forces want to show themselves as protectors of the Araucanian civilian population. However, their real interest is to protect and guarantee their economic interests in the territory. It is no coincidence that the two new battalions arrived precisely in areas where new oil projects are being developed.

CI: How have communities and social processes historically responded to this context of extractivism and systematic violation of human rights?

SL: Despite years of state neglect in social investment, structural and direct violence, and daily consequences of the armed conflict, the communities in Arauca have organized themselves in the various sectors and social processes around a “plan for life”. This plan outlines the political commitments, proposals, programs, and projects with which they have been making social, political, and economic transformations to guarantee a dignified life and permanence in the territory.

On a daily basis, the projects in defense of health continue to be materialized and strengthened, such as the public hospital network and incorporating ancestral and traditional medicine, as well as strengthening public and quality education at various levels. We have worked hard in peasant production and have gone beyond production to agro-industrialization, with the processing plant for bananas, milk, and agro-inputs. We have also worked to strengthen the Agro-food Peasant Territories for agroecological food production, water care, and to protect the environment. In addition, we are committed to the provision of public services through community enterprises such as water treatment plants in Saravena – ECAAAS ESP, Fortul – EMCOAFOR, Arauquita – ECADES, among others.

We continue working for peace, which we understand as the full exercise of rights. For this reason, on a daily basis the “Plan for Life” of the social movement is our proposal for peace, for a peace that is reflected in real conditions, for the permanence in the territory in conditions of dignity.

CI: What actions have been taken by the social and community organizations to respond to what is happening?

SL: In light of the latest events, committed to our legacy of defending life and territory, we have been making the situation visible, calling on municipal and departmental authorities, humanitarian organizations, and the international community to accompany the initiatives proposed by the communities to protect life and guarantee permanence in the territory.

We have also encouraged the communities to strengthen the community fabric and self-protection mechanisms for the protection of life and territory.

The original article appeared in Spanish on Colombia Informa.

https://peoplesdispatch.org/2022/01/13/ ... rm-of-war/

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‘Don’t Come Back!’ Residents of El Rosario Municipality of Colombia Expel Infantry Battalion
January 12, 2022

Residents of El Rosario municipality in the Nariño department of Colombia expelled an infantry battalion, by surrounding them and expressing that the military was not welcome. The municipality is in an area where there is significant presence of dissidents of the now-defunct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

In images circulated on Monday, January 10, by Colombian media Caracol, a group of military personnel can be seen cornered by around 200 people, shouting “Don’t come back!”

The Colombian Army has already confirmed the incident, stating that civilians “carrying machetes confronted the uniformed personnel and tried to provoke them.” In this situation, the army “withdrew from the area” in order to “avoid confrontations with the civilian population.”

Tense climate

In recent weeks, there have been military deployments and survillance operations in Nariño department, after police officer Tomás Blanco Rolón was kidnapped around the end of December by FARC dissidents—ex-members of the now dissolved armed organization who did not sign or have not adhered to the 2016 peace agreements. Although the police officer was released after about 72 hours, the army remained in the area, and clashes with locals have been reported.

Five civilians, including two children under the age of 15, were injured in crossfires. This situation generated anger in the municipality of Leiva, and 20 soldiers were detained by inhabitants of the area. They were released after the intermediation of the Ombudsman’s Office.

Recently, the army has requested “the municipal and departmental authorities to take legal action over these violent acts perpetrated by the civilian population, in compliance with the constitutional principle of harmonious collaboration between institutions.”

For his part, the Secretary of the government of Nariño, Amilcar Pantoja, informed, “we have started a dialogue among all sectors of the society to build trust, at all costs, and to avoid any type of circumstances that are detrimental to the communities.”

“We, from the government, will continue to make all efforts to guarantee stability in these areas that have suffered and continue to suffer from the presence of armed groups,” Pantoja added.

https://orinocotribune.com/dont-come-ba ... battalion/

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UN condemns violations of children in the conflict in Colombia

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Armed groups in areas such as Chocó increased the number of isolated people due to the imposition of restrictions that limited them to basic services. | Photo: EFE
Published 12 January 2022

The dispute between the armed groups to expand their territorial control and the illicit economies generated social insecurity in communities where the majority of children lived.

The United Nations (UN) warned this Wednesday that the child population in Colombia is the main victim of the social and armed conflict in the country, despite the fact that the number of crimes against minors fell after the signing of the Peace Accords.

According to the report published by the agency, at least 220 minors were recruited by irregular armed groups during the period from July 2019 to June of last year.

"Between July 2019 and June 2021, the Colombian Ombudsman's Office issued 94 early warnings to prevent possible human rights violations in the regions affected by the conflict," the UN stressed.


The United Nations specified that a total of 118 children, some of whom were only two years old, were victims of murder, mutilation, or sometimes torture; It should be noted that three Venezuelans were registered among the massacred infants.

On the other hand, the UN estimates that in the age range of two to 15 years of age, 14 Colombians suffered from sexual violence, not counting those cases that have not been reported out of fear.

“The concentration of violence in some regions, such as Antioquia, Caquetá, Cauca, Chocó, Guaviare, Putumayo and Valle del Cauca, is due to the limited presence of the State, difficulties in guaranteeing social and cultural rights, illicit economies, the presence of armed groups and high levels of poverty, "said the official document.

In this sense, Colombian civil society organizations urged that the peace talks between the Colombian government and the National Liberation Army be deepened, seeking to stop violent crimes, including the recruitment of infants and adolescents.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/onu-cond ... -0031.html

Google Translator

The swine-ish Columbian government will of course blame these atrocities on the Left but these things have been characteristic of drug gangs and fascist militia. It is of course possible that some left wing insurgents have 'gone wrong' but I want to see independent information.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Wed Jan 26, 2022 3:03 pm

Elections in Colombia: Prospects for Change and Absence of Guarantees
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on JANUARY 25, 2022
Lautaro Rivara

Few doubts remain about Gustavo Petro’s favoritism for the Colombian presidential elections in May. However, the outlook is becoming more uncertain due to the continuity of the armed conflict, structural violence and doubts about electoral guarantees.

The Latin American and Caribbean electoral calendar for 2022 promises to be no less hectic than that of the previous year. Among the upcoming elections and referendums of different signs -Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, Peru, perhaps Haiti- two contests will attract the most attention due to the specific geopolitical weight of their respective countries: the general elections in Brazil in October and the Colombian parliamentary and presidential elections. After 20 years of pro-Uribe governments, and with the eternal backdrop of the armed conflict, Colombia is not only playing its alternation but also the future of the unfinished peace process.

What and how is the election in Colombia?

The electoral agenda will begin with the parliamentary election on March 13, in which citizens will have to elect a total of 108 senators and 188 members of the House of Representatives. In the Senate, 100 seats will be chosen by national constituency; two by the special constituency for indigenous peoples; one will go to the second most voted presidential candidate – the so-called “opposition statute”; and five will automatically correspond to the political representation of Comunes, the former FARC party, emerged from the demobilization of the eponymous guerrilla after the 2016 peace agreements.

As for the Chamber, 161 seats will be elected by territorial constituency in the 32 departments of the country and in Bogota, the capital district. One will again go to the second most voted presidential candidate; two for Afro-Colombian peoples; one for the Raizal community of the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina; one for Colombians abroad -a discrete quota for a population estimated at 4. 7 million people according to the Chancellery itself; one for indigenous peoples; five for Comunes; and 16 for the special constituency for peace, by which 167 rural municipalities will seek who will represent the 9 million victims of the internal armed conflict officially recognized by the State.

In addition, coinciding with the parliamentary election, the population will elect the presidential candidates in the internal consultations of the coalitions that will go to the polls, in a scheme that seems to blur more and more the traditional liberal-conservative bipartisan scheme of all Colombian history. Elections for president and vice-president, whose term of office will run until 2026, will take place on May 29. If no ticket wins half plus one of the votes, there will be a second round on June 19.

The crisis of Uribism and the favoritism of the Historical Pact

In Parliament, the ruling Democratic Center could lose its first minority in the Senate, with 19 seats, and second minority in the House, with 32, due to the high disapproval indexes of President Iván Duque (72% according to Invamer) and of his mentor and former President Álvaro Uribe Vélez (68%). The latter is accused of being responsible for a notorious case of witness tampering that earned him two months of house arrest. And he has also been associated to the scandal of the so-called “ñeñepolítica”, by which the renowned drug trafficker José “Ñeñe” Guillermo Hernández would have contributed with drug money for the purchase of votes in the 2018 presidential election, as was revealed by journalists Julián Martínez and Gonzalo Guillén of La Nueva Prensa.

But the fact that best explains an electoral panorama that was unthinkable just a couple of years ago is the National Strike of 2021, accompanied by a series of massive protests in rural areas and in some of the main cities of the country, such as Bogotá and Cali, in rejection of the tax reform bill presented by Iván Duque. The escalation of repression by the Armed Forces, the ESMAD and even the deployment of paramilitary groups in several departmental capitals contributed to the crisis and made it visible at international level. According to the NGO Temblores, there were 44 homicides allegedly at the hands of the security forces; another 29 undetermined; there were 1,617 victims of physical violence; 82 victims of ocular aggressions; 28 victims of sexual violence and 2,005 arbitrary detentions. With different figures, Human Rights Watch, Indepaz and the Ombudsman’s Office, among other organizations, also validated the numerous cases of human rights violations.

In the midst of this crisis, and after a long dance of seduction and rejection with the right wing not attached to former President Uribe, the candidate anointed by the ruling party, former Minister of Finance Óscar Iván Zuluaga, stated that he will compete alone on behalf of the Democratic Center, a space that sees its electoral prospects diminished.

In addition to the governing party, there will be three other coalitions in dispute. From the left to the center-left is the Historical Pact, which gathers the Colombia Humana of the former mayor of Bogota Gustavo Petro; Soy Porque Somos of the Afro-Colombian social leader Francia Márquez; the Patriotic Union -a party that survived the “genocide for political reasons” of more than 5 thousand of its militants and leaders in the 80’s-; the Colombian Communist Party; the Alternative Democratic Pole; the indigenous party MAIS; the Congress of the Peoples; and the party of former congresswoman Piedad Córdoba, among others. Leaders of the Alianza Verde party, which has its own pre-candidate, the liberals of Luis Fernando Velasco and even figures who used to be part of the Uribe party, such as Roy Barreras and Armando Bendetti, also added their support.

Few doubts remain about the favoritism of Petro, the coalition’s main armorer, who started his electoral campaign on January 14 in the locality of Bello, in the department of Antioquia -historic bastion of Uribism- under the slogan “if Antioquia changes, Colombia changes”. Petro, former militant of the urban guerrilla of the April 19th Movement in the 70’s and 80’s, built his political capital as senator elected in 2006 and as a denouncer of the so-called “parapolitics”, as it is known to the collusion of politicians and paramilitaries during the demobilization process of the Autodefensas Unidad de Colombia (AUC), during Uribe’s first presidency. Petro revalidated his capital later, in his tenure as mayor of Bogotá, until his removal by Attorney General Alejandro Ordóñez in 2013, in one of the region’s first lawfare cases. As presidential candidate, Invamer polls give him 48.4% of voting intention, very close to victory in the first round, and a comfortable 68.3% in the second round.

In second place is the Hope Center Coalition, with the participation of the Dignity party, the MOIR, the New Liberalism, Colombia has a Future and Citizen Commitment, the party of the best positioned candidate of the coalition, the former mayor of Medellin and former governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo. To breathe new life into a front that has suffered the schism of numerous parties and leaders, the candidacy of Ingrid Betancourt was recently added – announced from her residence in France – whose name gained global notoriety after her kidnapping by FARC guerrillas in the former San Vicente del Caguán peace zone, and her subsequent release in 2008.

Lastly, and to the right of the political spectrum, is the Coalición Equipo por Colombia, a league of former mayors and governors of conservative orientation. The space is formed by Creemos Colombia, of the former mayor of Medellín Federico Gutiérrez; País de Oportunidades, of the powerful Syrian-Lebanese businessman of the Caribbean Coast, represented by the former governor of Atlántico and former mayor of Barranquilla Alejandro Char; the Partido de la U, who declined the candidacy of its president Dilian Francisca Toro and will support the former mayor of Bogotá Enrique Peñalosa; and finally, with less competitive candidacies, the traditional Conservative Party and the MIRA party.

The armed conflict and the absence of political and electoral guarantees

Due to the multicultural approach of the pioneering 1991 Constitution, Colombian electoral law provides for special ethnic representations, as they are locally considered. In addition to the political and economic exclusion of indigenous, black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero communities, and to the postponement of entire regions such as the Pacific, the Orinoco and the Colombian Amazon, there is the urgent need for representation of victims and former combatants of a conflict that has not ceased to worsen despite the partial and formal achievement of peace five years ago.

Its most evident symptoms are the more than 1,200 former combatants and social leaders assassinated since the Havana agreements; the 6,402 so-called “false positives”. 402 so-called “false positives” recognized by the Special Jurisdiction for Peace, a State crime that involved the murder of civilians presented as guerrillas killed in combat; the continued armed activity of FARC dissidents, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and, above all, of numerous paramilitary formations such as the Gulf Clan; the 102 massacres committed in 2021 and so far this year according to the Indepaz foundation; and, finally, the overheating of the Colombian-Venezuelan border, particularly in the Colombian departments of Norte de Santander and Arauca. In the latter, the Ombudsman’s Office established that 33 people were killed and 170 families were displaced by the actions of irregular groups.

The continuity of the conflict, and the fact that the so-called “anti-subversive” policy has historically been the main battle horse of Uribism, explain some of the uncertainty of the Colombian political and electoral panorama. The same happens in relation to electoral guarantees, after the allegations of fraud and vote buying in 2018. And even in relation to the personal security of the candidates, considering the death threats that the paramilitaries of the Águilas Negras-Bloque Capital made to Petro on December 4, 2021, or to the contemporary history of a country in which, in the last century alone, seven assassinations were committed.

The arguable “oldest democracy in Latin America” will see in the times to come if it manages to consolidate the most precarious and recent peace in the continent.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Thu Feb 17, 2022 3:29 pm

Reveal alliance between a general and Colombian drug traffickers

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The Colombian Army announced in a statement the dismissal of Herrera Díaz as commander of the Sixth Division. | Photo: Change
Published 14 February 2022

General Herrera Díaz explained in some audios that the pact with the drug traffickers was to confront the FARC dissidents.

The media released audios on Sunday in which the recognition made by the commander of the Sixth Division of the Colombian National Army, Major General Hernando Herrera Díaz, of an alliance with local drug trafficking groups is revealed.

The magazine Cambio and Noticias Uno revealed a recording, which would be of a meeting of commanders of the Brigade 29 of the year 2019, in which General Herrera Díaz is heard explaining that the pact with the drug traffickers is to confront the FARC dissidents .

The soldier admitted his link with the Los Pocillos gang, which controls a corridor through which 150 tons of cocaine flow per year, 15 percent of world consumption, according to the report.


“These manes (two alleged drug traffickers identified as Pocillo and Caliche), when I... brother, understand, the manes continue to handle drug trafficking, they continue to commit crimes. I meet with them, they come here, they talk to me”, the general is heard saying, who at one point in the audio affirms: “This is the f... war”.

In the meeting with his subordinates, Herrera Díaz also stressed that he prefers to see the enemies dead than captured: "And you have to neutralize that structure, but to neutralize is to kill them," he said.

The general, consulted by the media that made the report, denied that he had any relationship with the Los Pocillos gang, said that he did receive visits from Caliche and Pocillo, but as signatories of peace, and assured that he is in favor of giving Take enemies down, but only if they are armed.


The commander of the Colombian Army, General Eduardo Enrique Zapateiro, for his part, issued a statement in which he stated that the military "exercises its capabilities within the regulatory framework established in the Political Constitution, laws and international treaties, always with strict respect for human rights and the application of international humanitarian law.

The media authors of the article concluded that alliances between public forces and drug traffickers to confront other criminals "is not something new in Colombia, but it has always been illegal and clandestine (...) That is as true and evident as it is unprovable on the ground. judicial".

In a statement issued on Sunday night, the Colombian Army announced the dismissal of General Herrera Díaz as commander of the Sixth Division, and announced that it had requested the Attorney General's Office to initiate an investigation into the events reported in the report. to determine responsibilities.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0002.html

Google Translator

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NOTES ON THE COLOMBIAN POLITICAL LABYRINTH

Eder Pena

Feb 16, 2022 , 11:45 a.m.

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Gustavo Petro is the center-left candidate called to win the next presidential elections against Uribismo (Photo: José Aymá)

Colombia is experiencing the prelude to the general elections in which, among thousands of positions, those of president and vice president will be renewed for a period of four years, and will be held on May 29. For one of the formulas to win, it must obtain half plus one of the total votes; otherwise, a second round, or ballot, will be held on June 19 between the two candidates with the most votes.

2021 was another bloody year for the neighboring country with a balance of 96 massacres registered by Indepaz , as well as dozens of community leaders and former guerrillas who were killed. The same NGO recorded 2,005 arbitrary arrests and 79 deaths during the National Strike that began on April 28 against the tax reform project.

The political and social polarization is evident, in the midst of it are the working classes drifting from a crisis of meaning, which is not only Colombian, but which has affected its political class in a situation in which each failure is worth numerous lives. .

In this 2022, in addition to achieving the Caribbean Baseball Series championship, Colombia could have elections with unprecedented results.

THE COLOMBIAN LEFT IN ITS LABYRINTH

For decades, even after the 2016 referendum on the peace agreement between the State and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia - People's Army (FARC-EP), the sectors that make life around the Colombian left have lived in reference to the civil war that has involved several armed groups. This has been opposed by a constellation of actors linked to the right (or " good people ") who propose an armed or strong-handed solution. The so-called "uribism" stands out as the most characteristic vertex.

Seeking to avoid the permanent marking of polarization as a media stigma, several political platforms have abandoned any express purpose of "making the revolution" or "walking towards socialism" as analyzed by Edwin Cruz Rodríguez in 2016. The matter becomes more acute when, via social networks, the armies of bots call "mamerto" any discourse that contains concepts such as "social classes", "exploitation", "bourgeoisie" or "proletariat", hence the leftist discourse has migrated to other notions impregnated with democracy, citizenship, respect for differences, among others.

Analysts have described a history of aversion or antipathy to the ideas of the left in Colombia, both among the elites and among an important part of the working classes. The reasons are multiple and overlap, but they emerge from the war and its thousands of deaths, its effect on the development of politics, the evolution of the economy, the distribution of the population and even the cultural values ​​of the people.

In the course of history, the confrontation went through dialogues that led to peaks such as the 1991 Constitution, exterminations such as the " red dance " that extinguished the Patriotic Union or the devastating Plan Colombia based on the National Security Doctrine, called "Security Democratic" by Álvaro Uribe Vélez and Juan Manuel Santos. From there derived the current diagnosis of the sector in which each organization assumes itself as more leftist than the others, followed by moral or intellectual superiority as the standard of each sect that is seen by the others as "enemy". The contradictions between the discourses and the praxis, above all the "tactical" alliances, have caused many of the sympathies or trust of the electorate to evaporate.

The sectors of the political left maintain elastic relations with the popular movements in which the articulation of the agendas of social struggle with the electoral objectives has been fluid. Meanwhile thousands of social and political leaders have been assassinated, disappeared, criminalized and threatened, which increases the levels of proscription of any sector that lives outside the neoliberal narrative.



The popular discontent that was sharpening in the first decade of this century detonated in 2010 and continued with university strikes in 2011 and agrarian strikes in 2013, indignation that remained intact during the riots of 2019 and 2021. Other turning points such as the The Agrarian Summit or the initiatives in favor of peace gave impetus to more compact processes of mobilization and popular agitation in which the efforts of the movements contrasted with the dispersion of the identities and memories accumulated in the Democratic Pole.

This coalition of organizations was lukewarm in accompanying the Patriotic March due to its alleged links with the armed insurgency and expelled the Communist Party for "double militancy", even when it remained silent in the face of the corruption of Samuel Moreno during his term as Mayor in Bogotá ( 2008-2011). The disarticulation between the social struggle and the political discourse did not allow either to take advantage of the division between Uribe and Santos or to generate coherent political projects that would counteract the neoliberal onslaught of the economic elites.

IS THE POLITICAL CENTER A MIRAGE?

Coinciding organizationally has borne fruit for the Colombian left sector, as it was experienced in the initiative of the Social and Political Front, in the Independent Democratic Pole and in the Alternative. Somehow they managed to confront the stigmatization cultivated in a decade of "democratic security" that criminalized and repressed all expression of the left under the label of "terrorism." Given this, the left field responded with mobilizations for peace and the accompaniment of the dialogues and negotiations between the State and the FARC, which allowed showing other facets, both discursive and practical.

The price to pay for the "right-wing" of Colombian political culture has been the migration of many political parties to the so-called "political center." This led the former mayor of Bogotá (2012-2015), Gustavo Petro, to a second round in the 2018 presidential elections as the only opposition to Uribismo and helped the left get its best historical votes since 2002, and was able to influence the 13 million voters who participated in the Anti-Corruption Consultation.

Due to the fact that polarization has been imposed as violence and not as a debate and due to the historical cruelty of the Colombian oligarchy, large sectors of the population have chosen to renounce it. In this way, the so-called "center" has been constituted in the space of "political militancy" of the middle class and debate, the fundamental nucleus of the political struggle, has been replaced by "harmony".

In this way, social conflict, assumed as the destruction of the other, established that polarization was bad, that the fundamental objective of the middle classes is to be outside of it and that this is democracy.

The imaginary that in neoliberalism we will all become middle class is at the most perverse crossroads because the promise of individual success and entrepreneurship is running out and, when it arrives, it does so slowly. As the historian Ricardo López says in an interview with El Espectador : "With this, the belief that social cohesion, democracy and political restraint and the middle class go hand in hand fails." López adds that "the promise of individual success and entrepreneurship has not materialized and they reproduce forms of exploitation."

The so-called "political center", a moderate ideological position that is intended to be intermediate or equidistant in relation to the left and right poles, is entrenched in a middle class derived from a model of democracy sustained by the ideology of the free market, economic inequality and gender hierarchies in the world of work. Perhaps the myth that there is neutrality in that class paves the way for the rise to "a way of doing politics and a profoundly anti-democratic society" that legitimizes structural or factual violence in the name of "peace."



The center parties make up the center-left and the center-right according to their proximity to one of the two, according to Armando Estrada Villa , "they gain prominence in times of institutional crisis, strong social confrontations or in cases of acute confrontation between the two extremes politicians, when radical solutions have no viability".

López, for his part, adds that "with the idea that, by staying as middle classes, they are maintaining democracy, they can even go against the political party that created the material conditions for them to become middle class." This has been seen in Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia.

Before the next electoral competition, with an agglomeration of "center" candidates such as Sergio Fajardo, Alejandro Gaviria, Ingrid Betancur and Jorge Robledo, the question arises as to whether Petro's "centrist" electorate assumes that there are no longer classes or conflict of classes, especially because social inequality and social demands or claims are criticized in his discourse.

It is possible that the exacerbation of these inequalities and demands due to the pandemic will help you not have to explain much. Already the demonstrations against the Tax Reform demonstrated that the supposed equidistance of these classes in the face of neoliberal looting is not that great, their relationship with the State is to help its reconfiguration to respond to the interests of the elites, but the imbalance was greater in the proposal designed.

WHAT WILL PETRO'S PATH BE?

Statistical polls place the economist and former guerrilla as the wide favorite , who is part of the center-left coalition Historical Pact and extended his hand to the "centrist" Coalition Center Hope to work together on a single proposal for unity and dislodge "Uribe neoliberalism." The pre-candidate declared that "the objective is to win in the first round, without falling into arrogance" and that it is about "reducing" the "unnecessary fears" that have been created around his figure, since he embodies a political sector that never before has ruled the country.

The social researcher and director of the organization Somos Ciudadanos, Felipe Pineda Ruiz, explained to Página/12 that "part of Petro's current campaign strategy revolves around convincing people from the middle classes of the main and intermediate cities of the country, to moderate his discourse on economic matters, to distance himself from any relationship with Venezuela, to defend the peace process with the FARC and possible dialogues with the ELN guerrillas", adding that he moderated his proposal towards the landowners, in addition to continuing to cultivate relationship that it has established for 15 years with the Democratic Party of the United States to try to expand its voter base.



It is a popular unifying force that embraces liberalism inspired by the figure of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, who advanced towards electoral victory at the head of an anti-oligarchic and transforming movement before being assassinated in Bogotá in 1948. He did not ally himself with any of them. of the representatives of the dominant caste but, believing that they were going to respect "democratic institutions", he was betrayed by those elites that continue to govern and murder at close range.

Petro seeks to unify the working classes to resolve, from the reform of the State, the deep differences generated by the oligarchy. He recently responded to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in the face of the "cowardly left" accusations made by the president to Colombian politicians who repeat the accusations made by Duque and Uribe against him. As is necessary, Petro's criticism of the Bolivarian model focuses on Venezuela's oil dependency, with which he seeks to get rid of the accusations of "Castrochavista" made by his detractors and the media allies of him.

Programmatically, its initiatives revolve around activating the industrialization of the productive apparatus and the transformation of the energy matrix by replacing fossil energy sources with renewable energy sources (wind, solar, hydrogen, geothermal, etc.) .

The senator also celebrated Gabriel Boric's victory in the Chilean presidential elections, stating that he expects "a change of era in Latin America in many ways, especially in overcoming a system that has permanently governed regions such as Chile and Colombia, such as neoliberalism. ".


His criticism of the agro-export model causes disruption in the already mentioned tension between Uribe and Santos , which reflects an intra-oligarchic dispute, however they are far from real solutions that distance Colombia from the crisis of peripheral capitalism expressed, in part, by the bankruptcy of the model extractivist, which includes oil but also other agricultural and mining commodities .

However, Petro's proposals rub against green capitalism whose founding edict is the New Green Deal (or Green New Deal) which is nothing more than a flight forward by corporations towards greater complexity of technologies, greater dependence of mining and emissions, more extractivism to try to cover the current level of consumption with renewables and, above all, maintain blind faith in infinite economic growth that will imply, sooner or later, a rapid depletion of fuels and minerals, and the usual increase in greenhouse gas emissions.

When it comes to the consumption or burning of fuels, it is not about "us" but about elites exploiting the majority (including the middle classes) through the " illusion of wealth ". Petro's speech betrays his inability to denounce that wealth is the engine of ecological destruction, instead preferring to shoot into the air with symbolic measures such as renewable energies that supplant calls for significant systemic change.

However, Petro's agricultural approach is oriented towards the distribution and cultivation of land, taking into account that 3,000 people have 80% of the country's fertile land: "One of the greatest inequalities that exists because they are not produced, no country makes the mistake of turning its fertile lands into pastures (devoting it to cattle), that is why we cannot industrialize," he said.

DECLINE OF URIBISMO: THE DANGER OF THE WOUNDED MONSTER

Uribism is in a terminal crisis for intrinsic reasons and others not so much, as part of the political class it operates in favor of economic groups that are part of the global financial oligarchy, they are essentially transnationalized and have no major interests to do with the Colombian nation. a permanent looting space.

The handling of the pandemic and the crisis of capitalism in full swing has impacted the population, so the popularity of Iván Duque continues to fall, with just 21% support and almost 70% disapproval. In all regions of the country, the performance of the ruler is poorly qualified, even in areas where he obtained huge amounts of votes in 2018 to come to power.

To contain popular reactions, Duque approved a Security Law that is pointed out by the opposition as violating the right to life, the legal instrument would criminalize protests, legalize urban paramilitarism and allow legal shooting of young people and indigenous people as happened almost a year ago. year in some Colombian cities during the National Strike.

On the other hand, Uribe's tours of the cities of the Colombian interior have generated insults from popular sectors that publicly reject his link to paramilitary violence and the inefficient government of Duque. The former president has sought to increase polarization through street provocation disguised as "social contact" while he has published a list of insults against Petro on his social networks.


Regarding Venezuela, Duque has resorted to veiled aggression by intensifying the war between armed groups in which the Colombian Military Forces operate based on the conflict destabilizing Venezuela. As far as he has been able, he has disintegrated the Peace Agreement, which has resulted in unfortunate numbers of displacements, massacres and murders of both social leaders and signatories of the Agreement.

The decline of uribismo does not necessarily imply its disappearance from the political spectrum, its internal contradictions, such as those evidenced in the audio leaked to María Fernanda Cabal, appear to be the emergence of radicalized sectors acting in a more desperate manner, which could intensify paramilitary violence in the territories where they exercise their traditional cultural and political hegemony and put it into practice on electoral dates.

The staunch defense of individualism, through the illusion of wealth, to the middle classes will be the engine of Uribismo and Petro is left with the question of the social organization he would resort to if he won. Paramilitarization in a society thrown into "centrism" could be one of the most complex challenges that his eventual government would face, all from the rise of fascism disguised as the "right side" that validates equidistance, the search for peace without justice and the misogyny disguised as "defense of the family".

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/no ... colombiano

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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Wed Feb 23, 2022 3:04 pm

Former Senator Piedad Córdoba denounces a plot from the US

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The former senator asked the Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Barbosa, to open the rigorous investigations. | Photo: @orlandoserpa
Published February 23, 2022 (2 hours 48 minutes ago)

Córdoba, who aspires to return to the upper house for the Political Pact political movement, said that they asked him for money to access a video in which the conspiracy to his detriment would be proven.

Former Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba denounced on Tuesday that members of the Colombian embassy in the United States (USA) and US diplomats would be behind a plot against her.

At a press conference, Córdoba, who aspires to return to the upper house for the Political Pact political movement, said that they asked him for money to access a video in which the conspiracy to his detriment would be proven.

The video "involves, among others, ambassadors Juan Carlos Pinzón and Alejandro Ordóñez, as well as US official Michael Kozak, Undersecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere," the policy stated.


He said that these characters would be "conspiring for my extradition and the planting of new judicial set-ups in the midst of the current electoral campaign."

In a subsequent publication on Twitter, the candidate for the Senate asked the US authorities to “review these complaints and take the corresponding measures to prevent an intervention in the campaign from its territory or with the collusion of its officials. election in our country.

“I request the Attorney General of the Nation, Francisco Barbosa, to open the rigorous investigations into these illegal actions. You cannot continue to commit crimes against the opposition with impunity,” he asserted.

He also asked Colombian Foreign Minister María Lucía Ramírez to offer explanations "before the alleged action of the officials in his charge, both of the extortion apparently in the name of Mr. Hernández and of the reported facts that involve the diplomatic personnel under his responsibility."

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0004.html

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They denounce the murder of two peasant leaders from Magdalena Medio, Colombia

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The CNA attributed the two crimes to "the dirty war of the Colombian State." | Photo: Indepaz
Published February 23, 2022 (8 hours 22 minutes ago)

With these crimes, the number of social leaders assassinated in Colombia so far in 2022 would rise to 30.

The National Agrarian Coordinator (CNA) of Colombia denounced on Tuesday night the murder of two leaders of the peasant organization in the district of Puerto Oculto, in the municipality of San Martín, located in the northwestern department of Cesar.

“Once again the dirty war of the Colombian State is raging against the peasantry of the CNA, they have just assassinated our comrades Teófilo Acuña and Jorge Alberto Tafur,” warned the peasant association in a message posted on Twitter.

The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz) also pointed out in the social network of micromessages that Acuña and Tafur were "historic social leaders of Magdalena Medio."


The CNA mentioned that Acuña "had been persecuted and the victim of a judicial set-up sponsored by the Colombian State" in December 2020.

The communication media Colombia Informa, for its part, noted that the social leader was currently facing his trial in freedom.


"During the last few months, he denounced persecution and threats against him," he said.


George Tafur. Source: @CNA_Colombia.
Meanwhile, Tafur was a member of the new National Board of the CNA elected in November 2021 within the framework of the organization's VII Assembly.


In other messages posted on Twitter, the CNA highlighted that "a couple of days ago the comrades had denounced that the police and (the) mayor of San Martín César were threatening and harassing the communities that were victims of violence and acting hand in hand with the landowner Wilmer Diaz.”

Based on a count made by Indepaz, with these two crimes the number of social leaders and human rights defenders murdered in Colombia so far in 2022 would rise to 30.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0001.html

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The ELN calls for a 72-hour armed strike throughout Colombia

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The ELN is the last recognized insurgent group in Colombia after the peace agreement signed by the FARC in 2016. | Photo: @ElNewSiglo
Published 20 February 2022

The announcement of the armed strike comes prior to the legislative elections in Colombia scheduled for next March 13.

The Colombian National Liberation Army (ELN) announced on Sunday a 72-hour armed strike starting February 23 throughout the country.

"Against President Iván Duque and his bad government, the National Liberation Army (ELN) decrees an Armed Strike throughout the national territory," reads a statement from the irregular group.

According to the text, the measure will take effect from 6:00 a.m. on February 23, until 6:00 a.m. on February 26, 2022, under the recommendation to the civilian population to stay in their homes or places work and avoid commuting.


The document, without the signatures of any leader of the insurgent group, does not detail how the measure in which the population will only be able to mobilize for funeral activities or hospital emergencies will be applied.


In response to the ELN announcement, the Colombian Defense Minister, Diego Molano, stated that the Public Force is prepared to face the threats of the Colombian insurgent group.

Diego Molano described the statement as a fact that seeks to "generate fear in Colombians" and added that the armed forces are deployed in the country to respond to the ELN's action.


The announcement of the armed strike occurs prior to the legislative elections scheduled for next March 13, in the midst of a series of attacks against the Public Force, in various regions of the country.

Inspired by the revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara and Liberation Theology, the ELN is the last recognized insurgent group in Colombia after the peace agreement signed by the FARC in 2016.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0022.html

All above Google Translator.

Dunno what to think about ELN, in Columbia they seem to be continuing the good fight but the government of Venezuela denounces them as drug-dealing terrorists.
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 02, 2022 2:02 pm

Image

Elections in Colombia: Prospects for Change and Lack of Guaranteesb]
March 1, 2022
By Lautaro Rivara – Feb 20, 2022

With legislative and presidential elections coming up in Colombia, the supposedly “oldest democracy in Latin America” will see if it can consolidate the most precarious and recent peace on the continent.

The Latin American and Caribbean electoral calendar for 2022 promises to be no less hectic than that of the previous year. Among the upcoming elections and referendums that are slated for this year—Costa Rica, Mexico, Chile, Peru, perhaps Haiti—two contests that are expected to attract the most attention, due to the specific geopolitical weight of these respective countries, are the general elections in Brazil, which are supposed to take place in October, and the Colombian parliamentary and presidential elections, slated for the first half of 2022.

After 20 years of governments that have supported the Uribism movement—named after Álvaro Uribe Vélez, who was president of Colombia from 2002 to 2010—and with the eternal backdrop of the armed conflict, Colombia is not only playing for change but also for the future of an unfinished peace process.

What Will the Electoral Process in Colombia Look Like?

The electoral agenda in Colombia will begin with the parliamentary election on March 13, in which citizens will have to elect a total of 108 senators and 188 members of the House of Representatives. In the Senate, 100 seats will be chosen by national constituency; two by the special constituency for Indigenous peoples; one will go to the presidential candidate who gets the second-highest number of votes—the so-called “opposition statute”; and five will automatically correspond to the political representation of the Comunes party—which was created in 2017 by members of the former FARC party (Common Alternative Revolutionary Force) following the 2016 Havana peace accords.

As for the House of Representatives, 161 seats will be elected by territorial constituencies in the 32 departments of the country and in Bogota, the capital district. One seat will go to the vice presidential candidate who receives the second-most votes under the opposition statute; two will go to Afro-Colombian peoples; one will be for the Raizal community of the archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina; one will go to Colombians living abroad—estimated to be around 4.7 million people according to the 2012 figures provided by Colombia’s Foreign Ministry; one seat will be for Indigenous peoples; five seats will again be for the Comunes party; and 16 seats will be for the special constituency for peace, by which 167 rural municipalities will participate to elect candidates who will represent the 9 million victims of the internal armed conflict officially recognized by the state.

In addition, coinciding with the parliamentary election on March 13, the various parties in Colombia will also elect the presidential candidates during the internal consultations of the coalitions that will go to the polls, in a scheme that seems to increasingly blur the traditional liberal-conservative bipartisan scheme present throughout Colombian history. Elections for the positions of president and vice president, both of whom will hold office until 2026, will take place on May 29. If no ticket wins more than 50 percent of the votes, there will be a second round of voting on June 19.

The Crisis of Uribism and the Favoritism of the Historic Pact
In Parliament, the ruling Democratic Center, which is the party formed by former Colombian President Álvaro Uribe Vélez, could lose its present first minority in the Senate, with 19 seats, and second minority in the House, with 32, due to the high disapproval ratings for President Iván Duque (whose disapproval ratings reached 75 percent, according to an Invamer survey of September 2021) and for his mentor Uribe (who had a disapproval rating of 68 percent). The latter is accused of being responsible for a notorious case of witness tampering that led to a judge placing him under house arrest for two months in August 2020. And he has also been associated with the “alleged electoral corruption” scandal also called “ñeñepolítica,” according to which the renowned drug trafficker José “Ñeñe” Guillermo Hernández had contributed drug money for the purchase of votes in the 2018 presidential election in Colombia, as was revealed by journalists Julián Martínez and Gonzalo Guillén of La Nueva Prensa.

But the fact that best explains the electoral panorama in Colombia, which was unthinkable just a couple of years ago, is the national strike of 2021, accompanied by a series of massive protests in rural areas and in some of the main cities of the country, such as Bogotá and Cali, in rejection of the tax reform bill presented by Duque. The escalation of repression by the Armed Forces, the ESMAD (Colombia’s Anti-Disturbance Mobile Squadron) and even the deployment of paramilitary groups in several departmental capitals contributed to the crisis and provided visibility to these protests at the international level.

According to the nonprofit organization Temblores—which “[documented] practices of police violence” during the national strike in Colombia—between April 28 and June 26, 2021, there were 44 homicides allegedly at the hands of the security forces (another 29 homicides remained undetermined with regard to the exact cause of death); 1,617 victims of physical violence; 82 cases of violence resulting in eye injuries to the victims; 28 victims of sexual violence; and 2,005 arbitrary detentions against the demonstrators. Providing varying figures, Human Rights Watch, Indepaz and the Ombudsman’s Office, along with other nonprofits and agencies, also validated the numerous cases of human rights violations during the demonstrations that took place in Colombia.

In the midst of this crisis, and after a long dance of seduction and rejection with the right wing that was not associated with Uribe, the candidate chosen by the ruling party, former Minister of Finance Óscar Iván Zuluaga, stated in January 2022 that he will run alone on behalf of the Democratic Center, a move that will most likely diminish the electoral prospects of the Democratic Center.

In addition to the governing party, there will be three other coalitions that will “aim to define single candidates among different political forces” on March 13. From the left to the center-left is the Historic Pact Coalition, which brings together “presidential pre-candidates,” such as former mayor of Bogotá Gustavo Petro for the Colombia Humana and Afro-Colombian social leader Francia Márquez for the Soy Porque Somos (“I am because we are”) movement. Other “political movements” that form part of the Historic Pact Coalition are Patriotic Union—a party that has survived the “genocide for political reasons” of more than 5,000 of its militants and leaders in the 1980s; the Colombian Communist Party; the Alternative Democratic Pole; the Indigenous and Social Alternative Movement (MAIS); the People’s Congress; and the party of former Congresswoman Piedad Córdoba, Movimiento Poder Ciudadano, among others. Even figures who used to be part of Uribe’s Democratic Center party, such as Roy Barreras and Armando Benedetti, have come out in support of the Historic Pact.

Few doubts remain about the favoritism of Petro, the coalition’s main builder, who started his electoral campaign on January 14 in the locality of Bello, in the department of Antioquia—a historic bastion of Uribism—under the slogan “if Antioquia changes, Colombia changes.” Petro, a former militant of the guerrilla group known as the April 19 Movement in the 1970s and 1980s, built his political capital as a senator when he was elected in 2006 and as a denouncer of the so-called “parapolitics”—the collusion of politicians and paramilitaries during the demobilization process of the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC)—during Uribe’s first term as president. Petro revalidated his capital later, in his tenure as mayor of Bogotá, until his removal by Attorney General Alejandro Ordóñez in 2013, in one of the region’s first lawfare cases. As a presidential candidate, Petro received promising poll numbers from Invamer: 48.4 percent of voting intention, very close to victory in the first round, and a comfortable 68.3 percent in the second round.

In second place is a centrist group, the Hope Center Coalition, which includes the Dignity Party, the Revolutionary Independent Labor Movement or MOIR, New Liberalism and Citizens’ Commitment, the party of the best-positioned candidate of the coalition, the former mayor of Medellín and former governor of Antioquia, Sergio Fajardo.

Lastly, and to the right of the political spectrum, is the Coalición Equipo por Colombia (Team for Colombia), a league of former mayors and governors of conservative orientation. The coalition consists of Creemos Colombia, the party of the former mayor of Medellín Federico Gutiérrez; País de Oportunidades, the party of Alejandro Char, the powerful politician and businessman of Syrian and Lebanese descent who was formerly the governor of Atlántico and mayor of Barranquilla, in Colombia’s Caribbean coast region; the Partido de la U, who declined the candidacy of its president Dilian Francisca Toro and will support the former mayor of Bogotá Enrique Peñalosa; and finally, with less competitive candidacies, the traditional Colombian Conservative Party and the MIRA Movement Party.

The Armed Conflict and the Absence of Political and Electoral Guarantees
Due to the multicultural approach of the pioneering 1991 Constitution, Colombian electoral law provides for special ethnic representations, according to local considerations. In addition to the political and economic exclusion of Indigenous, Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal and Palenquero communities, and the postponement in the inclusion of entire regions in Colombia, such as the Pacific, the Orinoco and the Colombian Amazon, there is an urgent need for the representation of victims and former combatants of a conflict that only seems to be worsening, despite the partial and formal achievement of peace five years ago under the Havana peace accords.

The worst consequences of the “decades of conflict” in Colombia have been the death of more than 600 social leaders and human rights defenders since the Havana agreements, according to the 2020 figures provided by the United Nations; the 6,402 so-called “false positives,” a state crime that involved the murder of civilians presented as guerrillas killed in combat; the continued armed activity of FARC dissidents, the National Liberation Army (ELN) and, above all, of numerous paramilitary formations such as the Gulf Clan; the more than 90 massacres committed in 2021 and 14 massacres that have been reported so far this year, according to the Institute of Development and Peace Studies (Indepaz); and, finally, the rising tensions on the Colombian-Venezuelan border, particularly in the Colombian departments of Norte de Santander and Arauca. In the latter area, the Ombudsman’s Office established that 33 people were killed and 170 families were displaced by the actions of irregular groups.

The continuity of the conflict in Colombia, and the fact that the so-called “anti-subversive” policy has historically been the main workhorse of Uribism, explain some of the uncertainty that governs the Colombian political and electoral panorama. The same happens in relation to electoral guarantees, as seen during the allegations of fraud and vote-buying in 2018. And even in relation to the personal safety of the candidates, considering the death threats that the paramilitaries of the Águilas Negras-Bloque Capital made to Petro on December 4, 2021, or to the contemporary history of a country in which, in the last century alone, seven presidential candidates have been assassinated.

It remains to be seen if arguably the “oldest democracy in Latin America” can, in the times to come, manage to consolidate the most precarious and recently achieved peace in the continent.

https://orinocotribune.com/elections-in ... uarantees/

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UN rejects murder of ex-combatant Jorge Santofimio

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The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace of Colombia denounced that a total of 32 social leaders have been assassinated so far in 2022. | Photo: Commons
Published 26 February 2022

"Their irreparable loss is a tragic reminder of the urgency of reinforcing the protection of those who laid down their arms..." said Carlos Ruiz Massieu.

The special representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations in Colombia rejected the three violent attacks in recent hours against former combatants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. People's Army (FARC-EP) in Putumayo, Huila and Valle.

Representative Carlos Ruiz Massieu expressed his rejection of the murder of ex-combatant Jorge Santofimio, in Puerto Guzmán, Putumayo, and who was part of the Granja de la Paz.

"His irreparable loss is a tragic reminder of the urgency of reinforcing protection for those who have laid down their arms and remain committed to the peace process and are committed to peace," said Carlos Ruiz Massieu, who said that the previous week he had been with Santofimioo talking about the critical security situation.


In the attack, which occurred while the former insurgents were meeting at one of the so-called peace farms, his son, another child and two female ex-combatants were injured.

“Jorge's is the second murder of ex-combatants this week. I again urge that no effort be spared to strengthen the security of former combatants and communities that unfortunately continue to be victims of threats, harassment and violence.”

From the Comunes party they denounced on Thursday night that a former Farc combatant was murdered in the municipality of Puerto Guzmán, in Putumayo.

“Minutes ago they assassinated the peace signer Jorge Santofimio. Men with rifles shot at a meeting in the community cooperative in La Granja”, says the statement of the party that was born with the Peace Accords.

The story of Pastor Alape, a member of that community, says that the board of directors of the cooperative of La Granja (Puerto Guzmán) was meeting and at that moment armed men entered and shot at the humanity of ex-combatant Santofimio.

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Colombia also lamented the assassination of the peace signatory leader, Jorge Santofimio, a partner in our environmental and sustainable development initiatives in the Colombian Amazon.

Jorge Santofimio led the Common Community Multiactive Cooperative (COMUCCOM), located in the municipality of Puerto Guzmán, recalled the UNDP.

From the Plowing La Paz Corporation, he promoted the creation and development of the Community Nursery Network of the Amazon.

The network articulates 12 community organizations, six from peace signatory communities and six from peasant communities.
This Network is an example of Jorge's determination to build peace and reconciliation between communities and with nature.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0008.html

Google Translator

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Social leader assassinated in Tibú, number 33 in Colombia in 2022

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"Gustavo Torres was a recognized social leader and in 2017, after the formation of the Caño Indio Productivo Association, he was forcibly displaced," details Indepaz. | Photo: Colprensa
Published 27 February 2022

In addition to the persecution of social leaders, the country counts six ex-combatants killed and 19 massacres perpetrated in 2022.

The Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz) denounced this Sunday the murder of another social leader in Colombia, the new incident occurred in the municipality of Tibú, department of Norte de Santander.

According to Indepaz, the victim responded to the name of Gustavo Antonio Torres and was killed by a group of armed men who entered his home, which was located in the village of Tienditas in Tibú.

"Gustavo Torres was a recognized social leader and in 2017, after the formation of the Caño Indio Productivo Association, he was forcibly displaced," details Indepaz.

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The Ombudsman's Office had issued an alert for the presence of illegal armed groups in Tibú, which actively participate in the context of the Colombian social and armed conflict, with the social leaders classified as military objectives.

The groups that mobilize in the department of Norte de Santander are: The National Liberation Army (ELN); The Ratrojos; and the dissidents of the former FARC-EP.

The genocide does not stop in Colombia, so far this year 19 massacres have been perpetrated, as well as the murder of 33 social leaders and six ex-combatants included in the Peace Agreement.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/colombia ... -0016.html

Google Translator

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UN Report: More than 7 Million Colombians Under Influence or Control of Armed Groups
March 2, 2022

A report by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) indicates that more than seven million Colombians live under the influence or control of illegal armed groups.

The report, entitled “Humanitarian Response Plan Colombia 2022,” is a record of the range of needs and crises that Colombia is suffering from, and details that in 2021 clashes between illegal armed groups intensified, disputes that continue five years after the signing of the peace agreement between the FARC-EP and the Colombian government.

“In the areas affected by hostilities, human rights violations such as displacement and massacres have increased significantly,” reports a Colombian media outlet.

According to the report, these clashes make it difficult for humanitarian aid to enter these territories, which aggravates the situation for those who are in the line of fire between these armed groups. The increase of hostilities has increased 113% compared to the previous year.

The most affected area is the Pacific coast, which according to the UN agency experienced “more than 62% of emergencies at the national level, and the regions of Bajo Cauca and Catatumbo were also affected to a greater extent.”

Since the 2016 peace agreement was signed, the outlet reports, more than 801,288 people have been displaced as a result of violence, which represents an average of 133,548 per year, and the projection is that massive displacements will continue this year.

The government of Iván Duque has conclusively violated the peace agreements. Since the beginning of his presidency, the murder of demobilized guerrillas and social leaders at the hands of paramilitary groups has been increasing.



Featured image: Colombia’s Pacific coast is the most affected by the proliferation of paramilitary groups. File photo.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune


https://orinocotribune.com/un-report-mo ... ed-groups/
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Re: Colombia

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 11, 2022 3:00 pm

UN Calls on Colombian Gvm’t to Guarantee Peaceful Elections

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The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, called on the government of Colombia to urgently adopt a policy against criminal organizations. | Photo: Twitter @Servindi

Published 11 March 2022 (4 hours 20 minutes ago)

The UN called on the government of Iván Duque to guarantee peaceful and violence-free elections in a country regularly shaken by murders of social leaders and human rights defenders.


The United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, expressed on Thursday to the Colombian government the need for the upcoming elections in that country to take place in an atmosphere of peace.

Bachelet praised the advances in transitional justice and urged the Executive to guarantee that the elections take place without violence.

Just hours before the legislative elections on March 13, which will be followed by the presidential elections (May 19), the Chilean diplomat presented the annual report on Colombia before the UN Human Rights Council.

She affirmed that "since the signing of the (Peace) Agreement, significant steps have been taken for the consolidation of peace, democracy and political participation".


Among them, she mentioned the demobilization of the extinct Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People's Army (FARC-EP) and its constitution as a new political party, as well as the creation of the 16 peace seats in Congress for the victims of the armed conflict.

Bachelet called on the government of President Iván Duque to "guarantee the right to participate in the upcoming elections in an environment free of threats and violence".

At the same time, she described as "very important" the progress made in transitional justice by the Truth Commission, the Special Jurisdiction for Peace and the Unit for the Search for Missing Persons.

In this sense, she affirmed that: "their contributions have been essential for the rights of victims to truth, justice, and reparation".

Bachelet also urged the authorities to support "this independent work and to protect the victims and witnesses who participate in the transitional justice process and the people who make up these institutions".


However, it was reported that 17 candidates from the Special Transitory Peace Circumscription number 12, which includes the departments of Cesar, Magdalena, and La Guajira (north) abandoned their aspirations for a seat, as they considered the security conditions insufficient.

The candidates claim that there was not the promised state funding for campaigning, nor were the victims of the armed conflict prepared for voting.

For these reasons, they consider that the process is implemented in such a way that the powerful and their political machines win. This situation caused a group of 25 candidates for these peace seats to go on strike on March 4.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/UN- ... -0003.html

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War Victims Drop Out of Colombia’s Rigged Election Campaign

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War victims warn of rigged election campaign in Colombia. March. 10, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@madhawa86

Published 10 March 2022 (12 hours 2 minutes ago)

About 18 victims' representatives walked out of Colombia's congressional elections, alleging that authorities manipulated fraudulently to vote for their victimizers.

Congressional hopefuls from the Caribbean region competed for seats in the House of Representatives created for the victims of 16 regions that have been historically neglected.

The transitional seats were created in the framework of an ongoing peace process between the government and the now-extinct FARC guerrillas. The victims have affirmed that the elections in northern Colombia were manipulated to favor the family of a military leader and the criminal Clan Gnecco.

The victims have also claimed that paramilitary group AGC had banned rivals of Jorge Tovar, son of jailed paramilitary warlord Jorge 40, from campaigning in the northern region. It has not been possible for candidates to embark on campaigns since electoral authorities never transferred the promised campaign funds.

The victims have expressed that they will not legitimize a process that was clearly designed for the arrival of the victimizers. They warned that constituency #12 was rigged from day one to guarantee all political clans' opportunities and the biggest victimizer's son.


A victims' representative from Tolima stated that allies of the now-extinct FARC guerrilla group and multiple clans were vying for the victims' seat in the southern province. In this respect, Former Interior Ministers Juan Fernando Cristo and Guillermo Rivera confirmed that the peace seats in Tolima and Cesar could end up in the hands of victimizers and regional clans.

According to a statement from the former ministers, the candidates never received the advance funding mandated by the Constitution. They remarked that the government had done nothing despite the victims' protests.
Actual victims cannot be deprived of their rights again. The former ministers also noted that the peace seats are for them, not for the perpetrators or the political clans.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/War ... -0021.html
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