Colombia This Week

07/06/2007

Fri 01 – Thousands march against Transferences Law; press report blames censorship.

• Tens of thousands of Colombian teachers, students and their supporters held marches to protest against a proposed Law covering budgetary transfers to the regions and municipalities, and the National Development Plan (PND) that they say will cut funding for education and teachers' pensions. The marchers also opposed the proposed Free Trade Agreement (FTA,) with the United States. Contingents came from around the country for a march in Bogota that the government said drew 100,000 participants; organizers put the number at 250,000. Observers said the demonstration, which brought unprecedented disruptions to traffic, was the largest in at least two decades. This was the third march against cutbacks in two weeks, Inter Press service (IPS) reports.
• At a time when President Uribe’s government is embroiled in a scandal about its links with paramilitaries - Reporters without Borders has assessed the real impact of the demobilization process on the work of the press. Taking advantage of World Press Freedom Day celebrations in Medellin, the organization made a fact-finding trip to Colombia spending much of it in Monteria. In its meeting with local and national journalists, both those who are still working and those who have had to flee, and with human rights and press freedom activists, Reporters Without Borders found that the paramilitary threat continues to weigh on journalists and encourages the local ones especially to censor themselves. The organization was also expressed concern at  what they described as government-level pressure on some media and the unequal treatment of journalists who are exposed to danger, Alert Net reports.

Sat 02 – Five dead in shootout near Medellin; army sweeping the Vaupes in search of Ingrid.

• Five people were killed and three more injured in a shooting in the municipality of Donmatias, (Antioquia). Police were investigating if any armed group was behind the massacre, whose authors are as yet not clear Efe reports.
• The Colombian Army is sweeping the jungles of Vaupes Department, near the border with Brazil, in search if Ingrid Betancourt and a group of hostages kidnapped by the FARC. Operations started when the Colombian army obtained a radio report announcing that one of the kidnapped (police officer Jhon Pinchao) had escaped from their captors after being held for nine years, El Tiempo reports. 
• The Colombian government has transferred jailed FARC members to a holding centre as part of President Uribe’s bid to win freedom for 60 rebel-held hostages, including three U.S. defence contractors and former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt. “This is advancing the national government’s goal of freeing all the kidnapped people who are in the power of illegal armed groups,” Uribe’s office said in a statement. The government hopes its “humanitarian gesture” will prompt an in-kind response from the guerrillas. The statement added that the prisoners must demobilize and promise not to return to crime and be under the supervision of a foreign government or the Catholic Church to qualify for release on June 7. Many jailed rebels have rejected the release, however, saying they will accept it only through negotiations between the FARC and the government. “We are not prepared to negotiate our principles,” FARC members in northeast Colombia’s Giron prison said in a statement. Captured FARC rebels insist on being treated as political prisoners or prisoners of war, Associated Press reports.

Sun 03 –  Massacres and paramilitary land seizures behind the bio-fuel revolution in Colombia.

• Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia's population of 3 million displaced people. Several companies were collaborating by falsifying deeds to claim ownership of the land, said Andres Castro, the general secretary of Fedepalma, the national federation of palm oil producers. A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80% of palm oil land titles in some areas. "If there have been abuses and the titles are shown to be false, then the land needs to be returned and all the weight of the law needs to be brought down on those that are responsible," said Castro. Christian Aid is funding an effort to protect peasants who are trying to reclaim land from the paramilitaries, said Dominic Nutt, who has visited the plantations. "It is the dark side of biofuel."  Displacement continues, with an average of 200,000 cases registered every year over the past four years, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, The Guardian reports.
• The Colombian Indigenous organisation (ONIC) denounces the disappearance of 18 members of the Embera Katio group who were dispersed by the authorities a week ago after riot police charged against them to stop their protest. Dismissing the allegation made by the authorities that the strike was ‘incited by the guerrilla groups’, the president of the ONIC, Luis Evelis Andrade, said that initially the group formed a part of hundreds of indigenous protesting on the road between Medellin and Quibdo, RCN radio reports.

Mon 04 – FARC spurn jail deal as government liberates Granda amid confusion and protests.

• The FARC insists it will not release any hostages even though the government has announced plans to free some 200 jailed rebels.  In a statement sent to the media, the FARC also said the gesture by President was a "farce". They reiterated their demand for a demilitarized zone as a condition for any talks on freeing hostages.  "The demagogic announcement of a unilateral release of prisoners has nothing to do with an exchange, which must be reached through an accord with the government," the statement said.  The plan was merely an attempt by the president to divert attention from a scandal linking some of his political allies to illegal paramilitary groups, the statement said, the BBC reports.
• The Colombian government has released Rodrigo Granda, known as the FARC‘s "foreign minister", in the hope he will encourage the rebels to release 56 hostages they hold. President Alvaro Uribe said French President Nicolas Sarkozy had pushed for Mr Granda's release. He was flown by helicopter from the prison grounds to Bogota, where he was taken to the offices of the Roman Catholic archbishop. Mr Uribe announced the release in a TV and radio address.  "The government has guaranteed his safe passage so that he may promote peace," Mr Uribe said, El Tiempo reports.
• Members of the FARC reportedly kidnapped the local police commander of Florida, a strategic town in Valle del Cauca, and one of the two municipalities the FARC are demanding the Uribe government demilitarize as a condition prior to talks on releasing hostages.  The seizure occurred even as President Alvaro Uribe announced he had freed a jailed rebel leader to try to broker the release of rebel-held hostages, authorities said on Tuesday.  Police Capt. Guillermo Javier Solorzano, a local businessman, and his son were forced into a vehicle by uniformed man. Regional police commander Col. Ricardo Restrepo said that guerrillas from the FARC were responsible and were seeking to extort the families, Caracol radio reports.

Tues 05 – Despite record year for fumigation, new estimates show coca rising in Colombia .

• The US government reported that the amount of land under coca cultivation in Colombia increased 9 percent in 2006 over the previous year, reaching 388,000 acres in 2006, up 32,600 acres from 2005, according to figures released by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). The Washington Office for Latin America (WOLA), a US-based research and advocacy group, believes these figures offer fresh and disturbing evidence that aerial herbicide spraying of coca fields is failing to curb coca production. “On the contrary, fumigation is prompting farmers to replant as quickly and in as many locations as they can, contributing to the dispersal of coca growing and Colombia’s internal armed conflict to new areas of the country”, syas WOLA Senior Associate John Walsh. 
• A letter bomb slightly injured two government officials in the second package to explode at a state building in Bogota in the last two days. Police said the device exploded in the office of the Superintendence for Economic Solidarity, wounding one of the directors and an employee, who became suspicious of the package just before it detonated. Colombia's Deputy Education Minister Gabriel Burgos was wounded in his face and hands on Monday when a package exploded inside his office. No group has claimed responsibility, Reuters reports.
• In a statement to the press, French President Mr Sarkozy welcomed Mr Uribe's "very important and courageous decision" to free Rodrigo Granda, a prominent FARC member, and expressed the hope that the FARC would respond positively. President Uribe, who had previously announced that he would release up to 200 jailed rebels as part of a unilateral goodwill gesture, said the first 50 prisoners would be freed on Tuesday after they had officially demobilized and promised not to return to crime, BBC reports.

Weds 06 – Prosecutor re-opens 131 cases of killing of civilians; HRW rejects liberation plans.

·         The Colombian public procuracutor's office, (Procuraduria) has reopened 131 disciplinary investigations against the army for the killings of civilians presented as leftist rebels killed in action. Most of these were shelved after internal investigations by the military that typically went no farther than gathering testimony from troops involved. The prosecutor's office was still tallying the number of deaths and officers implicated, but in almost every case it identified three common elements: victims appeared to be falsely presented as leftist rebels killed in combat, crime-scene evidence was tampered with, and the military's criminal justice system made only a cursory investigation. The spokesperson said the killings were a nationwide phenomenon, echoing findings by the U.N. Human Rights report that noted extrajudicial executions "are tending to become increasingly common." The U.N. report also said pressure on commanders to boost rebel kill counts may have fuelled criminal acts by the military, Associated press reports.

·         The US Congress should tell President Uribe that his proposal to release politicians convicted of crimes in collusion with paramilitaries jeopardizes the US support for his government, according to Human Rights Watch. The letter also called on him to abandon a proposal to release politicians currently under investigation for aiding paramilitaries, in exchange for confessions. Uribe has justified his proposal by saying that it will contribute to establishing the truth, but HRW warned that the proposal in fact risks undermining the progress being made by courts and prosecutors who are investigating paramilitaries' political networks: “after decades of impunity, Colombia's courts are finally starting to shed some light on politicians' collaboration with paramilitaries," said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director of HRW, ‘but in  Orwellian fashion, Uribe now claims that to further the truth, the indicted politicians must go free", AlterNet reports.

Thur 07-  Sarkozy to raise Colombia in G8 summit agenda; Amnesty dismisses FARC’ liberations.

• French President Nicolas Sarkozy will lobby other world leaders at this week's Group of Eight summit in Germany to push for the release of French-Colombian hostage Ingrid Betancourt. Betancourt has been held since February 2002 by the FARC group. Sarkozy has made pushing for her release a foreign policy priority, and Colombian President Uribe said it was at Sarkozy's request that he freed a senior FARC member in a bid to broker a deal with the rebels. "He will discuss it with the G8, Sarkozy's spokesman David Martinon told reporters, adding that winning the backing of G8 leaders would be useful but would not secure a breakthrough.” The solution will not come from the G8 but the G8's commitment can be an additional weapon in this process, which is difficult and complicated," he said, Reuters reports.
• In a public statement, Amnesty international said that the decision made by the Colombian government to release Rodrigo Granda as well as some 200 members of the FARC group, must not pave the way for the unconditional release of paramilitaries and guerrillas who are currently under judicial investigation for serious human rights abuses.

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