Colombia’s opposition admits to purposely distorting reality to sink peace process
Source: Colombia Reports
Colombias opposition admits to purposely distorting reality to sink peace process
written by Adriaan Alsema October 6, 2016
Colombias conservative opposition leader Alvaro Uribe is furious with his campaign manager after the latter revealed his campaign purposely promoted indignation and ignorance in a campaign that sought to a sink a peace process with leftist FARC guerrillas.
Former Senator Juan Carlos Velez, the campaign manager of Uribes Democratic Center party, told newspaper La Republica newspaper that his campaign was successful because it purposely fomented indignation, while purposely avoiding to inform the public about the content of the peace deal the party was opposing.
The strategy worked, albeit only just. The oppositions No vote obtained no more than 55,000 votes while abstention was 63%.
The vote did not just sink the peace process that had already started, it also plunged the countrys in a major political, social and public security crisis.
Read more: http://colombiareports.com/colombias-opposition-admits-purposely-distorting-reality-sink-peace-process/
Judi Lynn
(160,415 posts)In term of the regional segments we used their respective accents. On the coast we narrowed down the message to that were going to convert in Venezuela, Velez said.
Additionally, the campaign got the support of Colombias Evangelical community after claiming the peace deals gender-specific party, mainly aimed at victims of sexual violence, was in fact an attempt to attack traditional family values and promote homosexuality.
Uribe, whose last campaign manager fled the country after being caught spreading classified information for his partys political benefit, immediately scolded Velez for revealing the level of dishonesty of the winning No campaign.
Monstrous. These right-wing ####s are really proud of what they've done.
Judi Lynn
(160,415 posts)Colombias students succeed where politicians failed: mobilize masses for peace
written by Adriaan Alsema October 6, 2016
Supporters of peace are organizing major peace marches throughout Colombia, achieving where Colombias political class failed: convincing people to participate politically in favor of peace.
While Sundays election was dominated by an embarrassing abstention rate 62% of Colombias electorate did not cast a vote Wednesdays marches indicated that Colombians do believe in peace, but simply have no faith in the politicians and guerrillas promoting it.
In Bogota alone, student rights organizations called on their fellow students to march to the central Bolivar Square where President Juan Manuel Santos met with his predecessor Alvaro Uribe, who spent years going against the peace talks.
No banners of Colombias morally bankrupt political parties were seen, just white banners, Colombian flags and candles. 30,000 people reportedly showed up.
More:
http://colombiareports.com/colombias-students-succeed-politicians-failed-mobilize-masses-peace/
Perseus
(4,341 posts)1. How much do you know about Santos?
2. Are you in favour of pardoning people who were (and may still be) involved in extortion, kidnappings, drug trafficking , who committed horrible murders on innocent people to not have their day with justice, and be given the ability to even run for office some day?
3. Would you be happy if one of those "Revolutionaries" who have killed many people suddenly became your neighbour?
4. Have you read the "Peace Plan"?
5. How much do you know about Venezuela? I understand this is in Colombia, but knowing about Venezuela may give a perspective of what could happen in Colombia if the peace deal went ahead.
A preview...Chavez held a coup, people were killed, he went to jail, a president (who happened to be his godfather) gave him a pardon, Chavez run for the presidency, see Venezuela now.
Judi Lynn
(160,415 posts)on a Democratic message board.
The original post stands, there is nothing whatsoever incorrect in it. I posted it there for DU'ers to consider what is means, not Venezuela, through the eyes of a right-winger wants to discuss, when the topic is most clearly Colombia and its grotesque situation due to the former fascist President's, completely tied to the right-wing narcotraffickers/death squads, even as far back as his father, BUTTING IN, and trying to direct the Colombian government, regardless of the fact Juan Manuel Santos is the elected President.
Perseus
(4,341 posts)I have traveled to Venezuela and Colombia, lived there and have known the politics intimately for many years, I know a lot of people on both countries, have had friends kidnapped from the FARC who were lucky to make it, I am not right-wing as you accuse me without knowing who I am or even analyzing the questions, but you do show a lack of knowledge on the politics of both countries.
Why is it important to compare what Santos is trying to do and what has happened in Venezuela? For many reasons, to begin with because Santos was a big supporter of Chavez and has shown to be a great supporter of Maduro, even though once in a while he may try to hide it, and if your concept of peace means giving free reign to murderers who could eventually rule the country then you do have a different concept of what justice means.
Don't try to throw personal attacks just because you can't answer any of the questions, you do need to be more informed. There is nothing right-wing about my questions, the fact that you cannot answer any of them doesn't make them so.
Judi Lynn
(160,415 posts)White knight? Colombia peace deal hinges on hardliner Uribe
Joshua Goodman and Andrea Rodriguez, Associated Press
Updated 1:56 am, Friday, October 7, 2016
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) Former President Alvaro Uribe fanned widespread resentment of Colombia's largest rebel group as he crisscrossed the country, campaigning for weeks against a peace deal he said would appease "terrorists" or lead the country down the path of communist Cuba.
But Colombians now look to the conservative hardliner as a potential savior of the accord that hangs by a thread following voters' shocking rejection of the deal in a referendum Sunday.
Colombia's political landscape was upended by the referendum. President Juan Manuel Santos, who has staked his presidency on trying to end the half-century conflict, was weakened by the vote while Uribe was seen as the big winner.
After trashing the agreement as a gift to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, whose rebels are blamed for dozens of atrocities, Uribe sounded conciliatory in victory and offered to be part of a "national accord" aimed at ending the conflict.
More:
http://www.chron.com/news/world/article/White-knight-Colombia-peace-deal-hinges-on-9883038.php
UpInArms
(51,279 posts)And sleeping on ten thread count sheets
Judi Lynn
(160,415 posts)State, paramilitaries responsible for most of Colombias human rights violations: Report
written by Joel Gillin September 22, 2014
The vast majority of human rights violations in Colombia last year were committed by paramilitaries and government forces, according to a conflict analysis NGO. In the report published this summer by the Center for Research and Public Education (CINEP), the group registered a total of 1,332 human rights violations against Colombian civilians last year.
Groups that had emerged from officially defunct paramilitary organization AUC were the biggest offenders, responsible for some 44% of the violations, while state forces, including the military and police, were responsible for 43%. The FARC and other guerrilla groups committed about 15% of the violations.
2013 human rights violations in Colombia
Neo-paramilitary groups like the Urabeños or the Aguilas Negras were suspected of carrying out the vast majority of homicides and threats, while the police received most complaints over assault.
The numbers released by CINEP are in line with figures from a recent report by the Colombian NGO Somos Defensores which claimed that of the 194 crimes against community leaders, five of the known perpetrators were from the FARC or ELN. Paramilitaries and state forces were responsible for 128 of these crimes.
http://colombiareports.com/state-paramilitaries-human-rights-violations/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Right-wing paramilitarism in Colombia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Paramilitarism in Colombia)
Right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia are armed groups that claim to be acting in opposition to revolutionary Marxist-Leninist guerrilla forces and their allies among the civilian population. These paramilitary groups control the large majority of the illegal drug trade of cocaine and other substances and are the parties responsible for most of the human rights violations in the latter half of the ongoing Colombian Armed Conflict. According to several international human rights and governmental organizations, right-wing paramilitary groups have been responsible for at least 70 to 80% of political murders in Colombia per year, with the remainder committed by leftist guerrillas and government forces.
More:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_Colombia
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
CONFLICT-COLOMBIA: Paramilitaries Threaten Peace Talks with FARC
By IPS Correspondents
. . .
Due to the fact that paramilitary forces are blamed for the lions share of rights abuses in conflict-torn Colombia, local and international rights groups are staunchly opposed to the possibility of them being granted political status.
More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/2000/06/conflict-colombia-paramilitaries-threaten-peace-talks-with-farc/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
About Colombia
. . .
The Paramilitaries
Colombia�s rightwing paramilitary death squads are notorious for their brutality and have been responsible for the vast majority of the human rights abuses that have occurred in the country in the past 25 years.i They are infamous for their use of vicious violence, including massacres with chainsaws, brutal torture, sexual violence and cutting off of limbs as tactics designed to instil fear and terror among those they target. The scale of their violence is astonishing and it is estimated that the paramilitaries have killed around 150,000 Colombians and displaced hundreds of thousands more (see Forced Displacement).
Though paramilitary-style forces have been around in Colombia since the 1960s, the origins of those which exist today can be found in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These origins, however, are complicated and overlapping though essentially modern day Colombian paramilitaries derived from three sources:
◾As leftwing guerrilla movements grew in strength in the 1970s and 80s some Colombian landowners and business leaders began establishing private armies that would defend them from guerrilla extortion attempts;
◾In the early and mid-1980s as individual drugs traffickers grew more powerful and wealthy they formed cartels, most notably the Medellin and Cali Cartels. These cartels formed their own private armies to defend their business interests.
◾Again in response to the growth of the guerrillas the Colombian Army began to implement, with the assistance of US military advisers, an increasingly brutal counter-insurgency campaign that involved the use of clandestine death squads made up of off-duty soldiers and paramilitary-style personnel to carry out a secret �dirty war� against those perceived to be sympathetic to the guerrillas.
More:
http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/about-colombia/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Colombian Militia Boss: We Burned Hundreds of Bodies
BOGOTA The erstwhile commander of Colombias right-wing militias said that his men systematically burned hundreds of their victims at the behest of officials and military brass who sought to downplay the level of violence in the Andean nation.
Salvatore Mancuso, extradited to the United States a year ago to face drug charges, made the admission while testifying via videolink from Washington.
A portion of the session, which featured the former head of the AUC militia federation answering questions submitted by families of the paramilitaries victims, was aired in Colombia on RCN television. Mancuso said the burning of the bodies was a favor that (now-deceased AUC founder) Carlos Castaño was doing for the authorities.
He said the decision came after a meeting where politicians, senior military officers and other notables asked the AUC to dispose of victims bodies as a way of holding down the number of deaths that could be attributed to the militias. That discussion took place at a time when evidence of militia massacres was coming to light, according to Mancuso, who said the militias dug up their buried victims and cremated them in ovens set up near the Venezuelan border.
More:
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=333321&CategoryId=12393
http://www.ipsnews.net/2000/06/conflict-colombia-paramilitaries-threaten-peace-talks-with-farc/
[center]~ ~ ~[/center]
Death Squads Continue to Reign in Colombia
03/24/2014 03:18 pm ET | Updated May 24, 2014
Dan Kovalik
Back in 1996, Noam Chomsky wrote a quite terrifying piece about the U.S.-backed Dirty War in Colombia, and in Latin America generally, entitled, The Culture of Fear. This article was an introduction to the magnificent book by Father Javier Giraldo, S.J., entitled, The Genocidal Democracy. In this piece, Chomsky wrote,
Two facts should be uppermost in the minds of North American readers of Father Giraldos documentation of the reign of terror that engulfed Colombia during the Dirty War waged by the state security forces and their paramilitary associates from the early 1980s. The first is that the democra-tatorship, as Eduardo Galeano termed this amalgam of democratic forms and totalitarian terror, has managed to compile the worst human rights record in the hemisphere in recent years, no small achievement when one considers the competition. The second is that Colombia has had accessories in crime, primary among them the government of the United States ... (which has) helped to train and arm the assassins and torturers of the narco-military-landowner network that maintains stability in a country that is rich in promise, and a nightmare for many of its people.
As Chomsky further explained, the U.S. bears primary blame for Colombias paramilitary state which has carried out this terror against its own population because the U.S. created the paramilitaries haunting Colombia. Chomsky cites Colombias former Minister of Foreign Affairs Alfredo Vasquez Carrizosa who explained that during the Kennedy Administration, Washington took great pains to transform our regular armies into counterinsurgency brigades, accepting the new strategy of the death squads. Chomsky explains, the Dirty War escalated in the early 1980s not only in Colombia as the Reagan administration extended these programs throughout the region, leaving it devastated, strewn with hundreds of thousands of corpses tortured and mutilated people who might otherwise have been insufficiently supportive of the establishment, perhaps even influenced by subversives.
In the 1980s, the U.S. support for death squad states in such countries as El Salvador, Guatemala and Colombia was fairly well known amongst the U.S. population, and was discussed in the press on an intermittent basis. I recall, for example, watching news segments about this phenomenon on 60 Minutes, including about the murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador by U.S.-backed forces on this very day 34 years ago, and even remember this being a topic of conversation in the U.S. Catholic Church. Today, however, this is not a matter of public discourse, is hardly ever mentioned in the press, and most Americans, even ones very well informed, have therefore been led to believe that such death squad states are a thing of the past.
More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dan-kovalik/death-squads-colombia_b_5021244.html
ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC., ETC.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,262 posts)which everyone had said wouldn't happen because of the referendum. That's a message to the Colombian voters ...
Judi Lynn
(160,415 posts)JuanMa would be hard-pressed to accept the prize, which everyone was certain he had earned, and that Colombia would finally have peace, if this doesn't work out.
Alvaro Uribe (up to his ugly little nose in narco-traffickers (was discovered by the US Defense Department in 1999 to be a friend to Pablo Escobar, and narcotraffickers, along with his father) has been fighting this from the first day of Santos' struggle to reach peace for the country.
This is beautiful news. Hoping like hell it will apply enough pressure to put the people and Santos over the top.