Latin America
Related: About this forumDead Dog in Reservoir Helps Drive Venezuelans to Bottled Water
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-04/dead-dog-in-reservoir-helps-drive-venezuelans-to-bottled-water.htmlThe carcass of a dead dog floats on the lake that supplies tap water to 750,000 Venezuelans. Witch doctor Francisco Sanchez has just dumped the previous nights sacrifice from a cliff, contaminating the resource that has become more scarce than gasoline in Caracas.
The water from Lake Mariposa, polluted by sacrifices and garbage from a local cult, is pumped to a 60-year-old treatment plant that lacks the technology to make it safe for drinking, said Fernando Morales, an environmental chemistry professor at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas who has visited the site.
Eight kilometers (five miles) away from the lake, in Caracas, sales of bottled water are booming, with families paying the equivalent of $4.80 for a five-gallon jug, twice the price of gasoline.
The treatment process has not adapted to the steady degradation of the water source, Morales said in an interview at the university campus Aug. 22. I wouldnt use this water at home.
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)Mass grave found in Colombia
By Peter Krupa | Published: January 29, 2010
Sweet Jesus. A mass grave containing 2,000 bodies was discovered outside a Colombian town, 200km south of Bogotá. The towns residents say its been there since 2005. While the military says the bodies are guerrillas killed during fighting, the townspeople told El Nuevo Heraldo that they suspect many murder victims are among the dead as well.
Human rights activists say at least 63 people have been forcibly disappeared in the Macarena region, where the grave is located. The grave contains so many bodies, its contaminating the water supply. The Colombian media apparently first reported on the grave in early December. So far, the government doesnt sound too enthusiastic about picking through and identifying the bodies.
http://www.latamdaily.com/2010/01/29/mass-grave-found-in-colombia/
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Colombian Mass Grave Of More Than 2000 May Be Civilian Trade Unionists, Not Military Casualties
Colombia is currently the most dangerous country in the world for trade unionists, and the U.S. is likely implicated in the murders.
August 5, 2010 | If you want to understand whats behind the recent tension between Colombia and Venezuela, think smokescreen, and then go back several months to some sick children in the Department of Meta, just south of Bogota. The children fell ill after drinking from a local stream, a stream contaminated by the bodies of more than 2,000 people, secretly buried by the Colombian military.
According to the Colombian high command, the mass grave just outside the army base at La Macarena contains the bodies of guerilla fighters killed between 2002 and 2009 in that countrys long-running civil war. But given the armys involvement in the so-called false positive scandal, human rights groups are highly skeptical that the dead are members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and the National Liberation Army, the two insurgent groups fighting the central government.
False positive is the name given to the Colombian armed forces operation that murdered civilians and then dressed them up in insurgent uniforms in order to demonstrate the success of the armys counterinsurgency strategy, thus winning more aid from the U.S. According to the human rights organizations Comision de Derechos Homanos del Bajo Ariari and Colectivo Orlando Fals Borda, some 2,000 civilians have been murdered under the program.
The bodies at La Macarena have not been identified yet, but suspicion is that they represent victims of the false-positive program, as well as rural activists and trade unionists. The incoming Colombian president, Juan Manuel Santos, was defense secretary when the murders were talking place. Santos also oversaw a brief invasion of Ecuador in 2008 that reportedly killed a number of insurgents. The invasion was widely condemned throughout Latin America.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/world/147728/colombian_mass_grave_of_more_than_2000_may_be_civilian_trade_unionists,_not_military_casualties
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No to the promulgation of war. No to the moving of the Manta base to Colombia. Political graffiti found on a wall in Colombia depicts a skull spewing forth guns. Stencil: Communist Youth of Colombia.
On April 1st, the Huffington Post printed a story by Dan Kovalik on the discovery of a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies in the Macarena region of Colombia, located near a military base staffed by US advisors. The grave was found only because the pile of rotting flesh contaminated the local water supply and children started getting sick. The Procuraduria General, a Colombian government agency tasked with uncovering corruption, verified the existence of the grave. On March 15, 2010, Jhonny Hurtado, a key witness in exposing the mass grave, was assassinated. The Colombian military admits responsibility for this grave. The discovery only adds to the false positives scandal, which the Colombian military has tried to cover-up. The false positive scandal refers to a practice within the Colombian military of killing civilians and dressing them in FARC uniforms to claim them as guerilla kills.
More:
http://www.peacecouncil.net/pnls/10/794/794columbia.htm#ursula
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Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)In September 2010, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights visited the La Macarena site and confirmed 446 unidentified bodies that had been reported as guerrillas killed in combat since 2002 were buried in a graveyard but did not find signs of a mass grave nor of any clandestine burials. A report by UN officials called for the identification of the bodies and confirming whether or not human rights violations had been committed. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed its concerns "about the lack of effective controls and adequate records regarding reports of people killed in combat, which raises questions about the circumstances surrounding their deaths." The Colombian Defense Ministry acknowledged the UN's findings and stated that it would support any subsequent investigations.[4
If it were not old news I would post this on LBN, "Bodies buried in graveyard!!" If you'll notice there are no further conspiracy stories that appear after the release of the UN findings. All the reports about mass graves are pre-UN findings.
You are DU's Maduro.
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)Why? Dead so and so's buried in a mass grave, a fact you struggle with.
The stories stopped being written as the news was OUT, it was no longer NEWS.
The report is clearly factual, nothing you can say can possibly refute it. It happened.
Maybe you'll find an article from El Universal to clear things up.
In the meantime, the children DID become ill, people realized the water was all WRONG, it was foul, it was nasty, it was horrible, it was contaminated by the run-off from the DEAD DUDES hidden below the grass, thrown there in a rush, without any thought to cleanliness, or order, or civility after the atrocities.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)and locating a cemetery near a water source without appropriate safeguards is a bad bad bad idea Mrs. Maduro. At least its not contaminating the water supply to a major city like Bogota or Caracas.
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)and the source of that illness was lots and lots of illegally dumped HUMAN BEINGS.
Can't get around that fact.
Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)Get back to us on that. I mean that story is from over 3 years ago.
Judi Lynn
(160,211 posts)which no doubt you'd like to see:
La Macarena: Locals Occupy Airfield in Peaceful Protest
News from Colombia | on: Thursday, 4 August 2011
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The airfield that has been occupied sits alongside a large military base built on land seized from local peasants, who have yet to receive compensation. Although the area was taken by the military in 2002 there has yet to be any significant investment in social or economic infrastructure in the region. In 2009, during a JFC delegation, a mass grave containing up to 2,000 bodies was discovered alongside the base. Shortly afterwards, Jhonny Hurtado, a local peasant human rights activist who testified to the delegation was shot dead outside his home. In 2010 a Human Rights Hearing was held in the town, with over a thousand people gathering to give testimony of the abuses they had suffered at the hands of paramilitaries and state forces. Following the hearing one of the organisers, Norma Irene Perez, was shot and killed.
http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/news/article/1059/la-macarena-locals-occupy-airfield-in-peaceful-protest
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Jul 22, 2010
Colombia denies existence of Meta mass grave
posted by Kirsten Begg
The Colombian government denies reports of a mass grave found in the south-east department of Meta, claiming that the allegation is a strategy to derail the Andean nations free trade agreement (FTA) with the European Union (EU).
A group of NGOs and a political movement headed by Liberal Senator Piedad Cordoba reported Wednesday that a mass grave containing 2,000 bodies had been found in the Meta municipality La Macarena, next to an army installation.
According to the government, the claims are an attempt by NGOs opposed to the FTA to generate a scandal, to undermine the E.U.s ratification of the agreement it signed with Colombia in May.
It is considered to be suspicious that this NGO is promoting this allegation, precisely when in September, in Europe, Colombia will try to ratify an FTA with the European Union, its not a coincidence, a government source told Caracol Radio.
Colombian President-elect Juan Manuel Santos met with members of the NGOs who made the allegation in Bogota on Wednesday. Santos Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin and his Vice President-elect Angelino Garzon also attended the behind-closed-doors meeting. No comment was made on the meeting, which was attended by members of British NGO Justice for Colombia, an organization vocally opposed to the Colombia-EU FTA because of Colombias human rights record.
More:
http://colombiareports.co/colombia-denies-existence-of-meta-mass-grave/
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Twelve bodies a week discovered in mass graves across Colombia
News from Colombia | on: Friday, 5 July 2013
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According to the national investigation unit 5,279 bodies have been found in 4,077 mass graves. In 2010 JFC took a delegation to one of the biggest graves discovered, in the La Macarena town in southern Colombia. Whilst the 2005 process has allowed certain truths to come out, it has been widely criticized for failing to bring anyone to justice for the crimes committed and for failing to bring an end to the paramilitary structures which continue to operate across Colombia. It has become known as the impunity law. By the end of 2012, seven years after the law which allowed for the supposed demobilisation to take place, only 14 sentences had been handed out by the courts. When the paramilitary chiefs began to reveal information about involvement from high level politicians, they were immediately extradited to the United States where their continued involvement in truth hearings has become almost impossible.
More:
http://www.justiceforcolombia.org/news/article/1438/twelve-bodies-a-week-discovered-in-mass-graves-across-colombia
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2010-04-11
U.S. and Colombia Cover Up Atrocities Through Mass Graves
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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 Colombias 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 Armys 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.
That this grave was discovered just outside a Colombian military base overseen by U.S. military advisers the U.S. having around 600 military advisers in that country is especially troubling, and raises serious questions about the U.S.s own conduct in that country. In addition, this calls into even greater question the propriety of President Obamas agreement with President Alvaro Uribe last summer to grant the U.S. access to 7 military bases in that country.
More:
http://vaticproject.blogspot.com/2010/04/us-and-colombia-cover-up-atrocities.html
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Protest letter on Mass grave in La Macarena, Colombia
05 May, 2010
Sr. Álvaro Uribe
Presidente de la República
Palacio de Nariño
Bogotá
Colombia
On behalf of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), which represents 2 million workers and strong supporters of democratic rights, I am writing to express our very deep concern at the discovery of a common grave near to the Colombian town of La Macarena.
We also condemn in the strongest possible terms the recent murder of Mr. Jhonny Hurtado, one of the human rights activists who denounced the existence of the grave. Mr. Hurtado used to be a trade union activist and had been forcibly displaced as a result of death threats.
We understand that an initial study carried out by the Special Investigation Unit of the National Prosecutors Office estimated that there were approximately 2000 unidentified bodies in the common grave in La Macarena, a figure which coincides with that of an independent delegation of British parliamentarians, trade unionists and lawyers who visited the site in December 2009.
This is deeply concerning given that well over 100 Colombian trade unionists have disappeared in recent years.
The ACTU understands that contrary to claims by some official reports - that the mass grave is part of the La Macarena municipal cemetery and contains bodies interred there over a period of 20 years the facts, supported by photographic evidence are that a) it is an annex separate from the municipal cemetery and b) almost all the bodies were put there between 2002 and 2009.
Given the recent revelations, including those of the United Nations High Commissioner and their Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, according to which the Colombian army has been involved in what the UN describes as systematic assassinations of Colombian civilians you will understand the growing concern over what has happened in La Macarena above all because the grave is next to the biggest military base in the region.
The murder, on 15 March this year, of one of the human rights activists most closely associated with revealing the situation in La Macarena Jhonny Hurtado, chairperson of a local human rights committee is also a cause for deep concern, as are the reports by witnesses who say they saw troops from mobile brigade no.7 near where he was killed.
More:
http://www.actu.org.au/Campaigns/International/InternationalSolidarity/ProtestletteronMassgraveinLaMacarenaColombia.aspx
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Bacchus4.0
(6,837 posts)The UN already debunked the La Macarena falsehood. You can start another thread on mass graves in Colombia if you like. Tells us about the water supply in Caracas.