to paramilitaries if they demobilized, the paramilitaries are no longer in bidness.
Nothing could be sillier. It's a great charade. They were never OUT of business. Some of them who had mind-boggling,hellacious histories of massacres, tortures, land theft from campesinos merely came forward,went through the motions of "confessing their crimes" and promised to hang it up, some got very slight slaps on the hands, some did minimum prison stays in relaxed settings, some probably got a pat on the back. Meanwhile the assassinations, massacres, etc. continued, and now the crime rate is escalating all over again.
Human rights groups have all come forwards with statements on this elaborate stunt to reveal it's false, and to ask the government to start applying justice to unimaginable crimes against people.
Colombian paramilitary´s demobilization is a Fraud: Human Rights Watch
By Mauricio Betancourt Bogotá : Colombia | Feb 03, 2010
International organization Human Rights Watch released today, 3 february 2010, its 125 pages report "Paramilitary Heires: The New Face of Violence in Colombia" in which exposes a shocking reality; the demobilization of some paramilitary groups in Colombia was a total "fraud".
HRW´s Head Director for the Americas, Jose Miguel Vivanco, said, during a press conference with the international media, that between 2003 and 2006 Colombia´s President Alvaro Uribe´s Government implemented a demobilization program for about 37 groups that were part of the "violent and mafia paramilitary coalition" of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC, in spanish) that, according to the National Government, was sucessfull due to the participation of about 30 thousand people active in that rebel organization.
However, not long after the demobilization of the main group, several independent cells started to make their appearance and continue with the illegal activities, pointed the HRW.
According to the report, between 2007 and 2008, the attacks against civilians incremented "abruptly" 42 percent from 26 cases with 128 victims to 37 cases with 169 victims.
Using official data, the report also points that there are at least, 7 new paramilitary organizations with about 4 thousand members, though, some NGO´s stated that there are more than 10 thousand activists in those rebel group´s lines.
Vivanco declared that this situation was "forseeable", though, this new paramilitary cells kept some of the old characteristics they still dont have a national command and "seemed to be less focused in fighting the guerrillas" they are still negotiating cocaine and marijuana. This is actually happening because the Colombian Government didnt dismantle the criminal network of the paramilitary coalition.
What actually happened was that the Colombian Government didnt enterview or doble checked on those demobilized activist and, with this lack of certanty, allowed the paramilitary members to recruit civilians that will pose as paramilitaries during the demobilization process while the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia kept their groups in activity.
More:
http://www.allvoices.com/contributed-news/5132924-colombian-paramilitarys-demobilization-is-a-fraud-human-rights-watch~~~~~Remember seeing this part for later discussions with right-wing idiots who claim it's the FARC causing all the trouble in Colombia. They lie, we know they lie, and they know we know they lie. It's probably a good idea to start collecting links!
Colombia in denial about errors of paramilitary demobilization .
Friday, 05 February 2010 08:04 Pablo Rojas Mejia
~snip~
This week, a Human Rights Watch report helped shed light on the issue. HRW, a well-known international NGO, released a report about the new generation of paramilitary militias in Colombia, which was highly critical of the government’s demobilization scheme. Interestingly, the report also revealed the link between the recent re-emergence of paramilitarism in Colombia and the rising rates of crime and violence in major cities.
That link has been common knowledge in many circles for years. Medellin officials, including former mayor Sergio Fajardo, knew that much of their city was controlled by paramilitaries, but they hoped that through social programs they could gradually erode that criminal power structure. Indeed, local crime rates shot up inexplicably soon after the paramilitary warlord known as "Don Berna," who ruled Medellin’s underworld, was extradited to the United States. Looking back, it is clear the power vacuum he left behind set off the very gang warfare that plagues the city today. In other words, the failure of paramilitary demobilization is one of the reasons why crime is rising in Medellin today, and the same can be said, to a lesser extent, about other Colombian cities.
Why did the demobilization program fail to put an end to Colombian paramilitarism?
When the right-wing paramilitaries began to demobilize during the first years of the Uribe presidency, they were responsible for the majority of organized criminal activity in Colombia. They controlled large swaths of the country’s territory, including urban areas, and ruled over a vast, nationally integrated criminal empire, often with the support and tolerance of the authorities. With the demobilization of most paramilitary groups having happened years ago, Colombia was supposed to have entered a post-paramilitary era. Their criminal enterprises were supposedly dismantled and their strongholds brought under the control of the state.
More:
http://colombiareports.com/opinion/the-colombiamerican/8058-colombia-in-denial-about-errors-made-with-paramilitary-demobilization.html~~~~~Human Rights Watch's report on Colombia
~snip~
Paramilitaries and Their Successors
The Uribe administration claims that paramilitaries no longer exist. But while more than 30,000 individuals participated in a paramilitary demobilization process, there is substantial evidence that many were not paramilitaries. Others never demobilized, and some returned to crime after demobilizing. Law enforcement authorities never investigated most of them.
Successor groups to the paramilitaries, often led by mid-level paramilitary commanders, are rapidly growing. The Colombian National Police reported that as of July 2009 the groups had more than 4,000 members and were rapidly expanding their areas of operation. Like the paramilitaries, the groups are engaging in drug trafficking, actively recruiting, and committing widespread abuses, including massacres, killings, rape, threats, and forced displacement. In Medellín, after a steady decline in official indicators of violence, there has been a dramatic surge in homicides since 2008, apparently committed by these groups.
In recent years the Colombian Supreme Court has made unprecedented progress in investigating accusations against members of the Colombian Congress of collaborating with the paramilitaries. In what is known as the "parapolitics" scandal, more than 80 members-nearly all from President Uribe's coalition-have come under investigation. But the Uribe administration has repeatedly taken actions that could sabotage the investigations, including by issuing public and personal attacks against Supreme Court justices. Meanwhile, investigations by the Attorney General's Office into senior military officers and businesspersons who allegedly collaborated with paramilitaries have moved forward slowly.
The implementation of the Justice and Peace Law, which offers dramatically reduced sentences to demobilized paramilitaries who confess their atrocities, has been slow and uneven. Four years after the law was approved, there are still no convictions. Most paramilitaries are not even participating in the process. Prosecutors have made little progress in recovering illegal assets and land that paramilitaries took by force.
President Uribe's extradition, in May 2008, of most of the paramilitary leadership to the United States interrupted the leaders' confessions in the Justice and Peace process. It remains unclear to what extent US prosecutors are questioning the paramilitary leaders about their accomplices in Colombia, or their human rights crimes.
Military Abuses and Impunity
In recent years there has been a substantial rise in the number of extrajudicial killings of civilians attributed to the Colombian Army. Army members, under pressure to show results, kill civilians and then report them as combatants killed in action. The alleged executions have occurred throughout the country and involve multiple army brigades. Initial information indicates that the rate of killings may have dropped in 2009, possibly as a result of international attention and the opening of criminal investigations.
The Attorney General's Office is investigating cases involving more than 2,000 victims, though prosecutions are moving forward slowly. In preliminary findings after a June 2009 visit to Colombia, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Philip Alston noted, "The sheer number of cases, their geographic spread, and the diversity of military units implicated, indicate that these killings were carried out in a more or less systematic fashion by significant elements within the military." He said that the Colombian military justice system contributes to the problem by obstructing the transfer of human rights cases to the ordinary justice system.
President Uribe for years publicly denied the problem existed, and accused human rights groups reporting these killings of helping the guerrillas in a campaign to discredit the military. After a major media scandal in 2008 over the executions of several young men from Soacha, a low-income Bogotá neighborhood, Uribe dismissed 27 members of the military. There were several more dismissals in 2009. But President Uribe has continued to claim that the executions are only isolated cases.
Violence against Trade Unionists
For years Colombia has led the world in killings of trade unionists, with more than 2,700 reported killings since 1986, according to the National Labor School, Colombia's leading NGO monitoring labor rights. The bulk of the killings are attributed to paramilitary groups, which have deliberately targeted unions. Though the number of yearly killings has dropped from its peak in the 1990s, when the paramilitaries were in the midst of their violent expansion, more than 400 trade unionists-many of whom belonged to teachers' unions-have been killed during the Uribe government.
Impunity in these cases is widespread: in more than 95 percent of the killings there has been no conviction and the killers remain free. In recent years there has been an increase in convictions, primarily due to US pressure (see below), but even at the current rate of convictions it would take decades for Colombia to get through the backlog.
Human Rights Defenders
The Colombian Ministry of Interior has a protection program for human rights defenders, journalists, and trade union leaders. But the program does not cover all vulnerable groups.
In addition, the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman's office, which conducts on-the-ground monitoring of the human rights situation around the country with the goal of preventing abuses, regularly issues "risk reports," warning of threats to communities and individuals. But other Colombian authorities have at times ignored the risk reports, failing to take necessary measures to prevent abuses.
As noted by Margaret Sekaggya, UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, in preliminary findings after her September 2009 visit to Colombia, "
prime reason for the insecurity of human rights defenders lies in the systematic stigmatization and branding of defenders by Government officials," who brand them as "terrorists" or "guerrillas."
Illegal Surveillance
In February 2009 Colombia's leading news magazine, Semana, reported that the Colombian intelligence service, DAS, which answers directly to President Uribe, has for years been engaging in extensive illegal phone tapping, email interception, and surveillance of a wide array of persons viewed as critics of the Uribe administration. These include trade unionists, human rights defenders, independent journalists, opposition politicians, and Supreme Court justices.
The Attorney General's Office opened an investigation into the surveillance, but Semana reported that prosecutors inexplicably focused almost exclusively on surveillance carried out in 2002-05 (during the tenure of former DAS chief Jorge Noguera, who is on trial for homicide and links to paramilitaries), despite evidence that the DAS has engaged in systematic surveillance for years afterwards. Two of the prosecutors conducting the investigation resigned, but the investigations have continued moving forward slowly.
Meanwhile, according to Semana, the illegal surveillance continued. For example, Semana revealed that numerous calls of Supreme Court Assistant Justice Iván Velásquez, the lead investigator of the "parapolitics" scandal, had been illegally intercepted through the end of August 2009. More:
http://www.hrw.org/en/node/87513
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