Colombia This Week
20/04/2007
Fri 13 – Thousands march against violence in Cali after car bomb explosion.
· Tens of thousands of people marched through the streets of Cali to protest against the bombing of the city's police barracks, blamed on the FARC. The car bomb gutted the five-floor police headquarters before dawn on Monday, killing a taxi driver and injuring 19 officers in the barracks, and 15 civilians on the street outside. "We're here to demonstrate that Cali is united and not afraid," said Angelino Garzon, governor of Valle de Cauca department, whose capital is Cali. Visiting the city on Thursday evening, President Uribe announced he would move his office to Cali in the coming days to monitor security and oversee social programmes. Interior Minister Carlos Holguin warned that urban militias loyal to the FARC were trying to step up attacks against the city, which has long been the site of a vicious turf war between the rebels, far-right paramilitaries and rival drug traffickers, the Washington Post reports.
Sat 14 – Two police dead in FARC’s attack in Putumayo; girl killed in cross-fire in Buenaventura.
· Two policemen were killed and five more people injured after the FARC targeted a police patrol. According to the National Police two artifacts exploded while a police patrol was in the Cairo settlement of La Hormiga municipality (Putumayo); police blamed the 48th front of the FARC for the attack, Efe reports.
· An eleven year old girl injured in an exchange of fire between the FARC and the Colombiah Navy in Buenaventura last week has died as a result of her injuries. Navy Colonel Hector Aguas also reports that twelve other people where killed in violent actions and shootings, blaming a urban front of the FARC for the attacks, El Tiempo reports.
· The Colombian Constitutional Court upheld the conviction of former Governor of the department of Casanare, Miguel Angel Perez Suarez, for receiving money from the paramilitary groups active in the area. According to reports he received many millions of pesos from paramilitary commander Martin Llanos while seeking re-election in this department, Caracol radio reports.
Sun 15 –NGOs increase humanitarian attention in Nariño; US groups condemn Army’s HR certification
· Recent fighting between the FARC and the Colombian Army in the remote rural area of Rio Tapaje, Nariño department, has displaced several thousand families. The affected area, in which some 13,000 people live, is largely inhabited by Afro-Colombians. In response to the current situation - which has caused shortages of food, gas, and medicines - the Church World Service reports it has helped expedite a shipment of rice, beans, salt, and cooking oil, along with ten 1,000-litre tanks of water and children's recreational items to the affected area, Relief Web reports.
· The US State Department's decision to certify that Colombia has improved its human-rights performance was was considered ‘disappointing’ and ‘undeserved’ by US organisations. The decision is especially confusing in the current climate, in which Colombia's military has seen itself caught up in a flurry of scandals. In the past year, officers have been accused of torturing recruits, killing police on behalf of drug traffickers, planting car bombs, killing civilians and passing them off as guerrillas, and – along with the presidential intelligence service – working closely with paramilitaries. Amid all of these serious human-rights questions, it is unfortunate that the State Department has given Colombia’s Defence Ministry a chance to celebrate this “recognition” of its record, the US-based Centre for International Policy (CIP) reports.
Mon 16 – More than 15,000 displaced this year; EU Commissioner arrives in Colombia with aid budget.
· More than 15,000 Colombians have been forced to flee their homes in the first 100 days of this year, the worst displacement in the last decade of the country's armed conflict. Fighting between security forces and leftist rebels was the chief source of violence causing an exodus of poor farmers and their families, the Consultancy for Human rights and Displacement (CODHES) reports. U.S.-financed spraying of herbicides on crops used to make cocaine also contributed to the displacements. "Fumigation causes the expansion of coca growth into new areas, and the Nariño department is a laboratory of war in which all the factors that generate Colombia's armed conflict come together, CODHES director Jorge Rojas told Reuters.
· Half of Europe's aid for Colombia over the next seven years will go directly to victims of the civil war and civil society organisations that provide them with assistance. During her three-day visit to Colombia, European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner announced that Colombia's aid for the 2007-2013 period would be increased to 160 million euros (216 million dollars), for all of the EU programmes in Colombia. The issues of greatest concern to the EU in Colombia are social cohesion, regional economic integration linked to competitiveness, the fight against drug trafficking, "and of course respect for human rights," said the commissioner. "As always, these programmes go on one hand towards the government but on the other towards the NGOs and civil society," Ferrero-Waldner said in response to a question from IPS during a news briefing. The proportion of aid that will go through the government and directly towards the communities and civil society is "fifty-fifty," Adrianus Koetsenruijter, EU ambassador to Colombia and Ecuador, told Inter Press Service.
Tues 17 – Scandal creeps closer to Uribe; NGOs: flaws in registration of IDPs leads to denial of services.
· Senator Gustavo Petro, reports that paramilitary fighters established their hold over the province of Antioquia while President Uribe was governor of the region. In a congressional debate, Petro showed dozens of documents that he said described two farms owned by the Uribe family that were used as meeting points for paramilitary death squads during Uribe's time as governor between 1995 and 1997. Citing government records and statements by members of the security forces, Petro revealed that a civilian self-defence program organized groups known as the Convivir - championed by Uribe while governor of Antioquia - was infiltrated by members of the death squads. The Convivir have been since shut-down. "The Convivir ... ended up bringing paramilitaries to the farm of the current president of the republic, who apparently had no idea what was happening," Petro said. Eight politicians, all supporters of Uribe, are in jail awaiting trial for organizing the paramilitaries, the Associated Press reports.
· US-based NGO Refugees International reports that the Colombian government systematically undercounts the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) through its official Registry and thereby denies services to thousands of vulnerable people. Colombian Law 387, which defines the government's obligations to IDPs, sets forth the following criteria for inclusion in the Registry: a person must be displaced because of violence or the threat of violence due to internal conflict, generalized violence, massive violations of human rights, or violations of International Humanitarian Law. The restrictiveness of the law is evident in 2006 statistics from Nariño, where only 43% of applications were accepted into the Register. Colombian NGOs and the Catholic Church keep independent databases of displaced people. Their figures suggest that the government is greatly under-estimating the scale of displacement in the country. They provide a figure of 2.9 million people internally displaced from 1995 to 2006, while the government of Colombia cites 1.9 million for the same time period. Displacement continues throughout Colombia on a massive scale; government figures indicate that more than 200,000 people are still displaced annually, Reuters reports.
· Attorney General Mario Iguaran announced the arrest of an official accused of stealing US$911,000 from the Choco department’s health care budget. Twelve children and three adults died of hunger in March alone in this department. The investigation began after a complaint by Colombian Ombudsman Volmar Perez about the deaths of children as a result of malnutrition and dehydration. There have been other incidents of corruption in the department, whose governor and 31 mayors are being investigated, according to the Attorney General’s office, Latin-American Press reports.
Weds 18 – Government and ELN agree on temporary ceasefire; US Congress delays military aid.
· The Colombian government has agreed to an "experimental" cease-fire proposed by the ELN, which is engaged in peace talks with the government hosted by Cuba. The move could mark a breakthrough in negotiations between Uribe’s government and the 5,000-member National Liberation Army, which has been fighting the state since 1964. "The president has asked me to accept the ELN's experimental and temporary cease-fire proposal," Colombian peace negotiator Luis Carlos Restrepo told reporters, adding that the government will be flexible in the way it implements its demand that the ELN concentrate its fighters in a geographic area as part of the accord. Chief ELN negotiator Pablo Beltran said earlier in the week the group was willing to temporarily halt aggression, such as blowing up energy installations, but that to gather its fighters in one place would be "suicide", Reuters reports.
· US human rights groups supported the Congressional dealy on US funding to Colombian armed forces: “the US Congress should maintain a hold on military assistance to Colombia until alleged links between paramilitary groups and state officials are thoroughly investigated, Amnesty International USA, the Centre for International Policy, Human Rights Watch, the US Office on Colombia and the Washington Office on Latin America said in a joint statement today. Just 12 days after Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice certified that the Colombian government and armed forces are making progress on human rights, the US Congress on April 17 put a hold on the remaining fiscal year 2006 funding to the Colombian Armed Forces. Congress has apparently placed the remaining funding of $55.2 million on hold out of concern about alleged links between the head of the Colombian Army and the paramilitary group known as United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), the New York Times reports.
· The president of the Colombian Constitutional Court, Rodrigo Escobar Gil admits he met paramilitary commander Rodrigo Tovar Pupo (Jorge 40) back in 2002. In a statement to the press he said that the meeting was for humanitarian reasons after his girlfriend was kidnapped by the paramilitary group. He also rejected the accusations made by Senator Miguel de la Espriella that he also met with paramilitary commander Salvatore Mancuso, Caracol radio reports.
Thurs 19 – Cornered Uribe denies assisting paramilitaries; Volcano erupts, thousands fled.
· President Alvaro Uribe fought back against allegations he aided the rise of right-wing paramilitary fighters when he was governor of the department of Antioquia, calling an opposition politician who made the accusations a "slanderer." Sen. Gustavo Petro had accused Uribe of letting his family's farms be used by the paramilitaries. "To be a mediocre guerrilla and such a lucid slanderer speaks very poorly of the character of the guerrilla," Uribe said during a speech in the city of Cartagena, referring to Petro's time in the defunct leftist rebel group M-19, which made peace with the government in 1990. Petro, who has fashioned himself as Uribe's nemesis in congress, has said he was in the M-19's political wing and never fired a shot. Meanwhile, the scandal over ties between the far-right death squads and the establishment continued to widen as three more pro-government congressmen, including a senator who was Uribe's private secretary when he was the governor of Antioquia department between 1995 and 1997, were called to testify before the Supreme Court, the Associated Press reports.
· Thousands of people were evacuated after the Nevado del Huila, a long-dormant volcano erupted, causing avalanches and floods that swept away houses and bridges. There are about 10,000 people living in the area around the volcano, and about 3,500 had been evacuated, Luz Amanda Pulido, director of the Colombian national disaster office, said. There were no reports of deaths or injuries. The eruption sent an avalanche of rocks down the volcano's sides and into the Paez and Simbola rivers, causing them to flood, the Associated Press reports.
· The Procurator General’s office (Procuraduria) has approved the US extradition request for AUC commander Francisco Javier Zuluaga, (alias Gordo Lindo). Zuluaga, jailed at Itagui, in the outskirts of Medellin in his capacity as a paramilitary commander under negotiations with the government, has being part of a drug-trafficking ring that sent cocaine shipments to the US, El Colombiano reports.
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