In Colombia appears a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies
The unidentified bodies have been deposited by the Army since 2005
Relatives of a missing person whose body was found in a mass grave bring its remains in a coach - AFP -
~snip~
More than a thousand graves in the country
The horror of La Macarena has been topical since the existence of over a thousand mass graves of unidentified bodies in Colombia. Until late last year, forensic had registered some 2,500 corpses and nearly 600 of them could have been identified and the bodies returned to relatives.
The location of these graves has been possible because of the statements in free version of the middle-rank of the allegedly demobilized paramilitaries and the benefiting from the controversial Justice and Peace Law that guarantees a symbolic sentence in exchange for the confession of their crimes.
The last of these statements was that of John Jairo Renteria, also known as Betún, who has just revealed to the prosecutor and the victim’s relatives that he and his supporters buried "at least 800 people" in the Villa Sandra farm in Puerto Asis, Putumayo. "We had to dismember people. All in the AUC had to learn it and was often made with people alive," the paramilitary leader has confessed to the prosecutor for Justice and Peace.
"The government does not want to investigate"
Alfredo Molano. Sociologist and author
Alfredo Molano, one of Colombia's most influential columnists, has toured the country as a chronicler of violence, which earned him exile to escape threats of military and paramilitary.
More:
http://www.comitepermanente.org/english/in_colombia_appears_a_mass_grave_containing_2000_b.html~~~~~Army mass grave in La Macarena
Miami’s El Nuevo Herald and Spain’s Público have run stories in the past two days about a shocking find in La Macarena, about 200 miles south of Bogotá.
Residents say that after it entered the strongly guerrilla-controlled zone in the mid-2000s, Colombia’s Army began dumping unidentified bodies in a mass grave near a local cemetery. The grave may contain as many as 2,000 bodies.
Público reports:
Since 2005 the Army, whose elite units are deployed in the surrounding area, has been depositing behind the local cemetery hundreds of cadavers with the order that they be buried without names. …
Jurist Jairo RamÃrez, the secretary of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights in Colombia, accompanied a delegation of British legislators to the site several weeks ago, when the magnitude of the La Macarena grave began to be discovered. “What we saw was chilling,” he told Público. “An infinity of bodies, and on the surface hundreds of white wooden plaques with the inscription NN
and dates from 2005 until today.”
RamÃrez adds: “The Army commander told us that they were guerrillas killed in combat, but the people in the region told us of a multitude of social leaders, campesinos and community human rights defenders who disappeared without a trace.”
More:
http://www.cipcol.org/?p=1303
(Center for International Policy)
~~~~~
A Cemetery Full of Questions
By Constanza Vieira
~snip~
Orjuela is not pointing fingers or accusing anyone. He is simply calling on the authorities to investigate. "The only means of proof we have is what the community has told us," he commented to IPS.
"They tell us, but they won't confirm it in public, because they're scared," he added.
After Orjuela and a human rights group sent requests to the prosecutor general's office and the office of the inspector general, the latter carried out an on site inspection and produced a report that has not been made public.
Based on that report, the office of the inspector general's Dirección Nacional de Investigaciones Especiales (national office of special investigations) responded in February that its aim was "to fully identify the approximately 2,000 bodies," to which end it hoped to set up "a specialised laboratory" in La Macarena, in conjunction with other institutions.
More:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=52396
~~~~~
COLOMBIA: MASS GRAVE UNDERSCORES ONGOING HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES.
By Andres Gaudin
The discovery of a common grave containing the bodies of more than 2,000 victims of Colombia's violence, the release of an official report confirming that in recent years paramilitary commandos have assassinated more than 30,000 people, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) document criticizing the passivity of the administration of President Alvaro Uribe in confronting the ultraright irregular forces and the president's plan to use students and other sectors of civil society as informers in the fight against drug trafficking confirm the extreme fragility of human rights guarantees in Colombia.
~snip~
In early December 2009, a denunciation by British lawmakers, which slipped under the radar claimed that a common grave had been found in the town of La Macarena, 200 km south of Bogota, containing the bodies of at least 2,000 victims of the paramilitaries. Details of the discovery became widely known only after the publication of a story in the Spanish newspaper Diario Publico on Jan. 26, on the eve of a visit to Colombia by a mission of European legislators.
"What we saw was chilling, countless bodies and, on the ground, hundreds of wooden markers with the inscription 'NN' and dates from 2005 to the present," said Jairo Ramirez, executive secretary of the Colombian Comite Permanente por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (CPDHCPDH Coast Plaza Doctors Hospital (Norwalk, CA) who accompanied the British parliamentarians.
Ramirez added that the Army commander in the region said that the bodies were guerrillas who died in combat but that people in La Macarena said that they were civic leaders, campesinos, and people who lived in the community and disappeared without a trace.
The horror of La Macarena adds to the list of more than 1,000 common graves. Antonio Albinana, the Diario Publico journalist who broke the story detailing the discovery, said judicial sources confirmed to him that, through 2009, "more or less" 2,500 bodies had been found, about 600 of whom have been identified. They were not guerrillas, said Albinana.
More:
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/COLOMBIA%3A+MASS+GRAVE+UNDERSCORES+ONGOING+HUMAN+RIGHTS+ISSUES-a0220242610
~~~~~
Dan Kovalik
Human and Labor Rights Lawyer
Posted: April 1, 2010 09:22 AM
U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves
The biggest human rights scandal in years is developing in Colombia, though you wouldn't notice it from the total lack of media coverage here. The largest mass grave unearthed in Colombia was discovered by accident last year just outside a Colombian Army base in La Macarena, a rural municipality located in the Department of Meta just south of Bogota. The grave was discovered when children drank from a nearby stream and started to become seriously ill. These illnesses were traced to runoff from what was discovered to be a mass grave -- a grave marked only with small flags showing the dates (between 2002 and 2009) on which the bodies were buried.
According to a February 10, 2010 letter issued by Alexandra Valencia Molina, Director of the regional office of Colombia's own Procuraduria General de la Nacion -- a government agency tasked to investigate government corruption -- approximately 2,000 bodies are buried in this grave. The Colombian Army has admitted responsibility for the grave, claiming to have killed and buried alleged guerillas there. However, the bodies in the grave have yet to be identified. Instead, against all protocol for handling the remains of anyone killed by the military, especially those of guerillas, the bodies contained in the mass grave were buried there secretly without the requisite process of having the Colombian government certify that the deceased were indeed the armed combatants the Army claims.
And, given the current "false positive" scandal which has enveloped the government of President Alvaro Uribe and his Defense Minister, Juan Manuel Santos, who is now running to succeed Uribe as President, the Colombian Army's claim about the mass grave is especially suspect. This scandal revolves around the Colombian military, most recently under the direction of Juan Manuel Santos, knowingly murdering civilians in cold blood and then dressing them up to look like armed guerillas in order to justify more aid from the United States. According to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pilay, this practice has been so "systematic and widespread" as to amount to a "crime against humanity." And sadly, when Ms. Pilay made this statement, she literally did not know the half of it.
To date, not factoring in the mass grave, it has been confirmed by Colombian government sources that 2,000 civilians have fallen victim to the "false positive" scheme since President Uribe took office in 2002. If, as suspected by Colombian human rights groups, such as the "Comision de Derechos Humanos del Bajo Ariari" and the "Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda," the mass grave in La Macarena contains 2,000 more civilian victims of this scheme, then this would bring the total of those victimized by the "false positive" scandal to at least 4,000 --much worse than originally believed.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/us-colombia-cover-up-atro_b_521402.html
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
