Colombia returns land to peasants plundered by militia

[Catherina]

Colombia returns land to peasants plundered by militia
Agencia EFE April 10, 2013 19:30


Monteria (Colombia), April 11 (IANS/EFE) President Juan Manuel Santos travelled to the northern province of Cordoba Wednesday to preside over the restoration of lands taken away from 60 peasant families by the founders of Colombia's murderous AUC militia movement.

"Where murders reigned, the peasants return," Santos said to an enthusiastic ovation.

"You who have suffered from violence like nobody else understand the significance of seizing these lands from the Castano clan," the president told a crowd of some 400 people in a rural area near Monteria.

Besides the return of 671 acres of land, each of the 60 families will receive 45 million pesos (nearly $25,000) to help them rebuild.

....

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/agencia-efe/130410/colombia-returns-land-peasants-plundered-militias

[ocpagu]

2. Finnally some justice for these peasants.

Full justice, of course, would only be achieved if AUC was fully held responsible for the more than 250,000 people they killed.

[rdharma]

3. Don't forget Uribe! eom

[Judi Lynn]

4. Too bad former President Uribe's brother, Santiago, can't be there for the occassion!

He was very friendly with the Castanos, the narcotrafficking death squad AUC brothers who took this land in the first place from the inhabitants.

Unfortunately, it appears Fidel had his henchmen kill his other brother, Carlos, and Fidel was killed, etc.

[center]



Fidel, Carlos (called "Mono Leche" because he was so white)[/center]

Uribe's brother met with Vicente Castaño: 'El Aleman'
Friday, 18 March 2011 06:04
Adriaan Alsema

Santiago Uribe, the brother of Colombia's former President Alvaro Uribe met with assumed dead paramilitary leader Vicente Castaño, AUC commander "El Aleman" testified before court.

According to newspaper El Espectador, Freddy Rendon Herrera, alias "El Aleman" said that Uribe met with Castaño and Raul Hazbun, a north Colombian businessman who mediated between the paramilitaries and banana company Chiquita, that has been convicted in the U.S. for financially supporting the paramilitary organization.

El Aleman told the court that Hazbun had told him the meeting between Uribe and Castaño, who was in charge of the paramilitary organization's drug trafficking operations.

Newspaper El Tiempo on Thursday reported that the paramilitary leader also accused "emerald czar" Victor Carranza of financially suporting the AUC.

More:
http://colombiareports.com/uribes-brother-met-with-vicente-castano-el-aleman/

[Catherina]

5. Death threats against eight journalists over land restitution

Death threats against eight journalists over land restitution

Published on Friday 10 May 2013.

...

Headed by a photo of an automatic weapon, the leaflet gave the eight journalists 24 hours to leave the city and said they would be killed if they did not stop covering subjects related to land restitution. It described the eight journalists as “military targets” and issued a warning to “all journalists.”

...

Reporters Without Borders added: “The authorities must also do whatever is necessary to stop paramilitary groups from deliberately intimidating not only journalists but also human rights activists, peasant leaders, labour representatives and environmentalists.”

The leaflet is not isolated. Last month, the same group threatened leaders of the peasant movement that supports land restitution in Cesar department. Several have been murdered while others have stopped pressing for the return of their land because of the threats being made in several departments.

...

The threats come two years after the government’s June 2011 ratification of Law 1448, which orders the return of 2 million hectares of land to 400,000 families displaced by the violence since 1991. Some armed groups opposed to the law have been trying to block the process ever since, supported by various political and economic sectors of society.

http://en.rsf.org/colombia-death-threats-against-eight-10-05-2013,44598.html

the threat leaflet

“Warning” for Bogotá TV reporter doing story on paramilitaries

Published on Monday 16 July 2012.

Reporters Without Borders is very disturbed by the threatening phone call received on 13 July by Paul Bacares, a journalist with the public TV station Bogotá Canal Capital who is currently preparing a report on Colombia’s paramilitaries. The three-minute call, a recording of which can be heard online, consists of the sounds of automatic weapons fire against a musical background.

...

The report that Bacares is currently preparing is about the paramilitary presence in the central department of Boyacá. It highlights the ability of these armed groups to infiltrate the legal economy and their links to local politicians and other public figures. It is this aspect of the report that is undoubtedly the chief motive for the threat to Bacares.

“If anything prevents his report from being broadcast, we will be ready to make it available on the censorship circumvention website that we plan to launch in the next few months,” Reporters Without Borders added. “We address the same offer to all other journalists who are prevented from working normally, including the indigenous community radio stations in Cauca department, where the population is currently caught in the crossfire between the regular army and guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).”

...

http://en.rsf.org/colombia-warning-for-bogota-tv-reporter-16-07-2012,43034.html