Colombia: six killed at site of notorious 1990s massacre as violence returns

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Colombia: six killed at site of notorious 1990s massacre as violence returns

• Latest atrocity at Mapiripán may be linked to drug trafficking
• Former guerrillas and paramilitaries operate in area

Joe Parkin Daniels in Bogotá
Tue 18 Dec 2018 16.26 GMT

Six people have been killed in a remote Colombian town notorious as the site of one of the worst massacres of the country’s civil war, stoking fears that the brutal violence of the past has returned.

President Iván Duque tweeted confirmation of the massacre which took place in Mapiripán, in Colombia’s eastern plains on Monday night. Initial reports say one minor was among those murdered.

The Colombian government signed a peace deal with leftist insurgents the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (or Farc) in late 2016, formally ending 52 years of civil war that left more than 260,000 dead and 7 million displaced. The military and state-aligned paramilitary groups contributed to the bloodshed.

That deal was supposed to usher in a new, peaceful chapter in Colombia’s history, but atrocities continue at an alarming pace. At least seven massacres have been committed by myriad groups since March last year, while murders of human rights defenders and local activists have soared since the signing of the peace deal.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/18/colombia-massacre

[Judi Lynn]

1. History is being repeated, and that's not good in Colombia. This story is monstrous.

From the Guardian article in the original post:

Mapiripán has been a byword for atrocity since July 1997, when a paramilitary death squad armed with chainsaws and machetes beheaded and butchered dozens of people suspected of collaborating with the rebels. Estimates of the death toll range between 13 and 77 but the final figure has never been established as victims’ bodies were dumped in a nearby river.

This is what Wikipedia has to say about the original massacre at Mapiripán:

The Mapiripán Massacre was a massacre of civilians that took place in Mapiripán, Meta Department, Colombia. The massacre was carried out from July 15 to July 20, 1997, by the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC), an outlawed right-wing paramilitary group.

On July 12, 1997, two planeloads of paramilitaries arrived at the airport of San José del Guaviare, which also served as a base for anti-narcotics police. The paramilitaries then traveled through territories where the Colombian National Army manned checkpoints.

On July 15, 1997, the paramilitiaries arrived at Mapiripán. They used chainsaws and machetes to murder, behead, dismember, and disembowel a number of civilians. Because the bodies were thrown into a river, it is unknown exactly how many people died but the U.S. State Department claimed in 2003 that at least 30 civilians were killed[2][3]

In proceedings before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, the government of Colombia admitted that members of its military forces also played a role in the massacre, through omission.[4] General Jaime Uscátegui allegedly ordered local troops under his command to stay away from the area in which the murders were taking place until the paramilitaries finished the massacre and left. Retired General Uscátegui was later prosecuted, put on trial, and subsequently acquitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapirip%C3%A1n_Massacre

Graphic images connected to valuable information located in google images of the massacre at Mapiripán:

https://tinyurl.com/y7hg53zv

[Judi Lynn]

2. Right-wing paramilitarism in Colombia

. . .

Paramilitary violence is overwhelmingly targeted towards peasants, unionists, teachers, human rights workers, journalists and leftist political activists.[96][97]

Paramilitary abuses in Colombia are often classified as atrocities due to the brutality of their methods, including the torture, rape, incineration, decapitation and mutilation with chainsaws or machetes of dozens of their victims at a time, affecting civilians, women and children.[15][95][96]

Paramilitary forces in Colombia have additionally been charged with the illegal recruitment of children into the armed ranks. Though this is an offense punishable by national law, the prosecution rate for these crimes is less than 2% as of 2008.[98]

Many of these abuses have occurred with the knowledge and support of the Colombian security forces. A 1998 Human Rights Watch report stated:

... where paramilitaries have a pronounced presence, the army fails to move against them and tolerates their activity, including egregious violations of international humanitarian law; provides some paramilitary groups with intelligence used to carry out operations; and in other cases actively promotes and coordinates with paramilitary units, including joint maneuvers in which atrocities are the frequent result. ... In areas where paramilitaries are present, some police officers have been directly implicated in joint army-paramilitary actions or have supplied information to paramilitaries for their death lists. Police have also stood by while paramilitaries selected and killed their victims. On many occasions, police have publicly described whole communities as guerrillas or sympathetic to them and have withdrawn police protection, a violation of their responsibility under Colombian law to protect civilians from harm. Instead of reinforcing the police after guerrilla attacks, police commanders have withdrawn officers, thus encouraging or allowing paramilitaries to move in unimpeded and kill civilians.[35]

. . .

http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Right-wing_paramilitarism_in_Colombia